MORTAL: What! You mean to say you did not choose to give us free will?
GOD: My dear fellow, I could no more choose to give you free will than I could choose to make an equilateral triangle equiangular. I could choose to make or not an equilateral triangle in the first place, but having chosen to make one, I would then have no choice but to make it equiangular.
MORTAL: I thought you could do anything.
GOD: Only things which are logically possible. As St. Thomas said, “It is a sin to regard the act that God cannot do the impossible, as a limitation on His powers.” I agree, except that in place of his using the word sin I would use the term error.
MORTAL: Anyhow, I am still puzzled by your implication that you did not choose to give me free will.
GOD: Well, it is high time I inform you that the entire discussion—from the very beginning—has been based on one monstrous fallacy! We have been talking purely on a moral level—you originally complained that I gave you free will, and raised the whole question as to whether I should have. It never once occurred to you that I had absolutely no choice in the matter.
MORTAL: I am still in the dark.
GOD: Absolutely! Because you are only able to look at it through the eyes of a moralist! The more fundamental metaphysical aspects of the question you never even considered.
MORTAL: I still do not see what you are driving at.
GOD: Before you requested me to remove your free will, shouldn’t your first question have been whether as a matter of fact you do have free will.
MORTAL: That I simply took for granted.
GOD: But why should you?
MORTAL: I don’t know. Do I have free will?
GOD: Yes.
MORTAL: Then why did you say I shouldn’t have taken it for granted?
GOD: Because you shouldn’t. Just because something happens to be true, it does not follow that it should be taken for granted.
MORTAL: Anyway, it is reassuring to know that my natural intuition about having free will is correct. Sometimes I have been worried that determinists are correct.
GOD: They are correct.
MORTAL: Wait a minute now, do I have free will or don’t I?
GOD: I already told you you do. But that does not mean that determinism is incorrect.
MORTAL: Well, are my acts determined by the laws of nature or aren’t they?
GOD: The word determined here is subtly but powerfully misleading and has contributed so much to the confusions of the free will versus determinism controversies. Your acts are certainly in accordance with the laws of nature, but to say they are determined by the laws of nature creates a totally misleading psychological image which is that your free will could somehow be in conflict with the laws of nature and then the latter is somehow more powerful than you, and could “determine” your acts whether you liked it or not. But it is simply impossible for your will to ever conflict with natural law. You and natural law are really one and the same.
MORTAL: What do you mean that I cannot conflict with nature? Suppose I were to become very stubborn, and I determined not to obey the laws of nature. What could stop me? If I became sufficiently stubborn, even you could not stop me!
GOD: You are absolutely right! I certainly could not stop you. Nothing could stop you. But there is no need to stop you, because you could not even start! As Goethe very beautifully expressed it, “In trying to oppose Nature, we are, in the very process of doing so, acting according to the laws of nature”. Don’t you see that the “so-called laws of nature” are nothing more than a description of how you and other beings do act. They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or if you like, how you choose to act.
MORTAL: So you really claim that I am incapable of determining to act against natural law!
GOD: It is interesting that you have twice now used the phrase “determined to act” instead of “chosen to act.” This identification is quite common. Often one uses the statement, “I am determined to do this” synonymously with “I have chosen to do this.” This very psychological identification should reveal that determinism and choice are much closer than they might appear. Of course, you might well say that the doctrine of free will says that it is you who are doing the determining, whereas the doctrine of determinism appears to say that your acts are determined by something apparently outside you. But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the “you” and “not you”. Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Once you can see the so-called “you” and the so-called “nature” as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you. Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish. If I may use a crude analogy, imagine two bodies moving toward each other by virtue of gravitational attraction. Each body, if sentient, might wonder whether it is he or the other fellow who is exerting the “force”. In a way it is both, in a way it is neither. It is best to say that it is the configuration of the two which is crucial.
MORTAL: You said a short while ago that our whole discussion was based on a monstrous fallacy. You still have not told me what this fallacy is.
GOD: Why, the idea that I could possibly have created you without free will! You acted as if this were a genuine possibility, and wondered why I did not choose it! It never occurred to you that a sentient being without free will is no more conceivable than a physical object which exerts no gravitational attraction. (There is, incidentally, more analogy than you realize between a physical object exerting gravitational attraction and a sentient being exerting free will!) Can you honestly even imagine a conscious being without free will? What on earth could it be like? I think that the one thing in your life that has so misled you is your having been told I gave man the gift of free will. As if I first created man, an then as an afterthought endowed him with the extra property of free will. Maybe you think I have some sort of “paint brush” with which I daub some creatures with free will and not others. No, free will is not an “extra”; it is part and parcel of the very essence of consciousness. A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.
MORTAL: Then why did you play along with me all this while discussing what I thought was a moral problem, when as you say, my basic confusion was metaphysical?
GOD: Because I thought it would be good therapy for you to get some of this moral poison out of your system. Much of your metaphysical confusion was due to faulty moral notions, and so the latter had to be dealt with first.
And now we must part—at least until you need me again. I think our present union will do much to sustain you for a long while. But do remember what I told you about trees. Of course you don’t have to literally talk to them if doing so makes you feel silly. But there is so much you can learn from them, as well as from the rocks and streams and other aspects of nature. There is nothing like a naturalistic orientation to dispel all these morbid thoughts of “sin” and “free will” and “moral responsibility.” At one stage of history, such notions were actually quite useful. I refer to the days when tyrants had unlimited powers and nothing short of fears of hell could possibly refrain them. But mankind has grown up since then, an this gruesome way of thinking is no longer necessary.