everybody's free?

For some reason, some people seem to accept the Christian response to the problem of evil to be found in the idea that we are free and chose amiss, therefore allowing evil. However, are we really free?

The more that scientific, psychological and sociological knowledge advances, the more we are discovering that we are not actually free. Leibniz suggests that there are 2 main ways of thinking about human freedom:

Liberty of Spontaneity

Anthony Flew believes that a free act is something that flows from the nature of a person and is not forced from an individual by anything outside of them. This understanding of freedom is known as freedom of spontaneity. Flew uses the example of a man who is choosing a wife to marry. The man may feel that his choice is free, but actually the choice he makes is constrained by his background. Friends and family will know the sort of person that is likely to appeal to him. His action, according to Flew, is free as it arises out of his nature and without external compulsion, but it is not random or arbitrary. Flew states;

''To say that Murdo was free to ask whichever eligible girls of his acquaintance he wanted, and that he chose to ask, was accepted by, and has now married Mairi of his own free will, is not to say that his actions and choices were uncaused or in principle unpredictable... Indeed those who knew Murdo may have known what was going to happen long before the date of the wedding...''

Flew also uses the analogy of a man who is hypnotised to attend a library at a ertain place and time, to borrow a certain book. The man is also hypnotised to forget these instructions. On coming to, the man will carry out the instructions and believe them to be of his own free choice. This is entirely consistent with being free in terms of freedom of spontaneity as we can think of ourselves as free so long as we do not have a full knowledge and understanding of those factors that influence us; here, the hypnotist.

The problem with such an understanding of freedom for theists is that it laces the blame for any evil that may have emerged from man's exercising of his free will back with God. This is as if choice is determined by a persons nature, then God could have provided all people with a certain nature that would have meant that they would still be free and only choose the good. Obviously this only works if you accept this definition of freedom.

Vardy criticises such an idea of freedom for actually being too restrictive. He states;

''Freedom is not just freedom of action as Flew assumes. It is a freedom to choose to make ourselves into different types of being.''

For Vardy, freedom is much more than simply acting according to our natures without any external compulsion. Instead, it is having the opportunity to change our very natures if we so wish.

Liberty of Indifference

This is a form of freedom that assumes that when we have choices, we make our decisions without regard for what has come before us. Mackie states that the liberty of indifference is a state in which there is ''no set of antecedent sufficient causes for an individual to choose one option as opposed to another.'' A person ultimately has no influences acting upon them when they make a decision here.

If indeed, we do have liberty of indiffernce, the freedom to act in ways that are not wholly determined by our background and genetic make-up, then perhaps God could not have created us so that we are both free and never sin, as in the idea of liberty of spontaneity. It is to this issue that we must now turn.

The Utopia Thesis

Some have suggested that God could have still created in the state of the liberty of indifference and made us to choose the right on all occasions. For instance, Descartes states that God can do the logically impossible, such as square a circle and so on, using this model of God, it should be possible for him to do the seemingly logcal impossible of creating free beings who will always choose the good. This idea was described by Ninian Smart as the Utopia Thesis. However, if we accept that God can do the logically impossible, then he does not care for or love his creation as he had the chance to create us free and always to choose the good, thus creating a world free of suffering and evil, but refused to take this chance. Such a God, who can do the logically impossible is either evil, or simply does not exist.