Posted by:
Henry Bemis
(
)
Date: January 23, 2022 10:43AM
Don't claim that "sky daddy" is "making" you hate.
You hate because you want to, not because someome or something told you to.
It's all on you. It's all on you.
*YOU* are throwing out your own child.
*YOU* are denying rights to people you don't like.
*YOU* are spouting crazy conspiracy theories.
*YOU* are creating your own fears that you claim you have to defend yourself from.
____________________________________________________
COMMENT: Broadly considered, the most important message of this post is not about 'religious hate,' or even 'hate' in general. It is about the power of the individual to control not only their emotions of hate, but also their conduct in response to such emotion. The suggestion is that such responsibility cannot be passed off on something or someone else. 'YOU' are responsible! Powerful stuff.
Now, least I get in trouble, the first thing to ask is whether this is just a vent of frustration or meant to be taken literally. Do we *really* have such power or does religion (or something else) force our 'hate' thoughts and actions upon us, as passive bystanders of our genetics and environment. Read literally, I take it that 'anybody' meant precisely what he (or she) said. (He (or she) is welcome to back-pedal to a mere rhetorical intent if I am mistaken.)
So, then, what does this strong view of free will entail? Well, as already noted, the first thing to go is the standard idea that our thoughts and actions are the result of a human nature that is ultimately *determined* by nature and nurture (genetics and environment). One must now add to the mix, a transcendent power of free will. (Just as 'racism' is not inevitable with human beings, neither is hate!) Once free will enters the mix of human nature, materialist science takes a huge hit, because there is nothing in physics, biology, psychology, neuroscience, or any other science, that accommodates genuine free will within any proposed theory as related to any of these scientific disciplines. In fact, it is much worse. Except for certain interpretations of quantum mechanics (which are currently disfavored) genuine free will (of the sort insisted upon in this post) is anathema to all of materialist science.
I wish I could stop here but unfortunately, I can't. Free will (the notion that there are individual 'selves' (persons) associated with their physical bodies who by their nature can make free choices that govern their thoughts and conduct, independent of external constraints, suggests a metaphysics that involves a classic, religious-type, 'soul' that science emphatically rejects. So, what we have is the following:
The OP's insistence on moral responsibility as related to religious 'hate' entails a commitment to free will that itself plays into the hands of a traditional religious, anti-science, metaphysics. The problem, of course, is to reconcile genuine free will with science, which so far no one has been able to do.
In order to avoid knee-jerk, ill-informed, reactions to the above, consider the following quotes:
First, from arguably the leading philosopher on free will, Robert Kane:
"*Free will* . . . is *the power of agents to be the ultimate creators (or originators) and sustainers of their own ends or purposes.* . . . [T]o will freely, in this traditional sense, is to be the ultimate creator (prime mover, so to speak) of your own purposes. Such a notion of *ultimate* creation of purposes is obscure, to be sure -- many would say it is unintelligible -- but there is little doubt that it has fueled intuitions about free will from the beginning. Its meaning can be captured initially by an image: when we trace the causal or explanatory chains of action back to their sources in the purposes of free agents, these causal chains must come to an end or terminate in the willings (choices, decisions, or efforts) of the agents, which cause or bring about their purposes. If these willings were in turn caused by something else, so that the explanatory chains could be traced back further to heredity or environment, to God, or fate, then the ultimacy would not lie with the agents but with something else." (Robert Kane, The *Significance of Free Will*, p. 4)
From the Harvard psychologist, Daniel Wegner:
"The mechanisms underlying the experience of will are themselves a fundamental topic of scientific study. We should be able to examine and understand what creates the experience of will and what makes it go away. This means, though, that conscious will is an illusion. It is an illusion in the sense that *the experience of consciously willing an action is not a direct indication that the conscious thought has caused the action.* Conscious will, viewed this way, may be an extraordinary illusion indeed -- the equivalent of a magician's producing an elephant from the folds of his handkerchief." (Daniel Wegner, *The Illusion of Free Will*, p. 4)