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Robert Barron | – Does Free Will Exist?

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Robert Barron
By Bishop Robert Barron
48 Comments

A recent article in The Atlantic claimed “A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked.” It focused on an experiment during the 1980s that seems to show our brain “decides” on our behavior before we actually make particular choices. Many believed this confirmed we don’t have free will, that all our thoughts and behaviors are determined.

But is that really the case? Is free will just an illusion? In this episode of “The Word on Fire Show,” I explain some of the classic arguments for free will and its relationship to God and Christianity.

A listener asks why in Catholicism pride is a deadly sin, but Aristotle describes it as a virtue.

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About The Author

Bishop Robert Barron These are brief and insightful commentaries on faith and culture by Catholic theologian and author Bishop Robert Barron. The videos complement his weekly sermons posted and podcasted at WordOnFire.org.

Comment (48)

  2. Why does God not listen to me?My enemies have progressed in life,jobs,families,careers etc.I have been left on the scrapheap.No job,no love interest,poor health,left disfigured by a thug,memory gone.Where does God come in to this?God has passed me and my family by.

  8. Free will exist it's the very reason that problems in the world occur. God gives all even the hands we believe we use to feed ourselves. God loves everyone and answered the prayers of the needy but men decide their fate they diverge from the path set for them.
    In short I believe that everyone is born for a reason and the world could reach near perfection it's just man rebels against God, against what he was made for to great suffering of others.
    you could say free will is nice but it surely put clouds on my head that sometimes I can only hope that he doesn't give up on us because we truly are pitiful and foolish beings unworthy of love yet he's still around answering our prayers.

  9. Bishop even when you point to people or even when people have known that what they do is short of betrayal of their destiny.
    They'll just decide to shrug it off and bend the meaning of God's purpose to whatever is pleasant to them.
    For example: you can literally sit among doctors, scientists and men we consider of great "wisdom" and from time to time you will hear them talk about some downtrodden town in the world and it's lack of human resources like doctors and scientists.
    I jested once and said it's because all the doctors and scientists are here in U.S.
    Of course they laughed and said something like "yes" they acknowledge it – they know it.
    of course I laughed with them but my soul was torn I just have to accept that this to is byproduct of free will. (this happened in a bible "study")
    Yet they keep living on in outright rebellion to their purpose set for them.
    Though who am I to judge I'm just the same as them or probably worst.

  10. So the conclusion is as such: God gives us the final choice for the actions we take in life, but he paves the wave for us to do certain things as part of his plan. Even if he paves the path to our salvation, we can always choose to deny the path and take our own.

    Neat

  11. Please will you stop reducing animal life to merely biological machines. It is such blatant denial of the true reality of their being. They are not merely reacting to instinct, that is such blasphemy. Study any and all animal life forms and you will see the complexities and depths of not only their intelligence but their deep capacity to form very strong bonds including that of love. This is not exclusive to humans, in fact humans often learn true love from animals. There are countless mouse studies that show true altruism. In one such hideous ‘study’ mice experiencing electric shocks were more concerned seeing a fellow being hurt than their own pain. So please, stop sticking to this Aquinas point of view in order to justifying your participation in their pain by eating them and consider living a true God centred life, to the best of your ability, of non violence, peace, mercy and compassion to all of Gods creations. Jesus sums this up perfectly “ To the least of these, you do to ME”.

  12. According to the Old Testament, christians are free to act upon their belief in racism, homophobia, misogyny, rape of women and children, and genocide – although the last one is the prerogative of the esteemed (and 'greatest') US President, and other sociopathic dictators worldwide. Praise be.

  13. This is the weakest and most irrelevant argument I've ever heard regarding freewill. Christians talk about "freewill" all the time but think about this; Why are we told that we have freewill to be a Christian or not, then we're told that we will burn in hell forever if we don't choose God? What happened to your "freewill"? If freewill actually existed, wouldn't one of the choices be "none of the above" or not to participate at all? I don't remember being given a choice like that. Do you?

  15. I don't believe in libertarian free will, but that there is nonetheless an ASPECT of Life which informs action on behalf of reflective consciousnesses. So you can't mechanistically deduce all a person's actions based off of the laws of physics. There is another aspect to things which transcends them, and which can be cultivated given the right elements.

  18. The freewill concept is that you are basically on your own because God will not intervene to help you because of freewill. So this makes him a viewer and not a helper. Then when you die you are condemned because He wouldn't intervene to help you asked him too. All this comes across as entrapment.

  19. I was really hoping for a specific reference from the Bible mentioned; which is a question I've been awaiting an answer for, for years. It will not affect my faith, but I've refrained from asking anyone incase it affects theres. However, "ask, seek, knock"….
    In Revelation; it talks of 144,000 men being spared and protected (a long time ago I read this, so forgive my poor recollection..) but as I understand it, it spoke of 144,000 men of Israel being protected under exile and were the pure/holy. If the Bible can stipulate a pre decided quantity of people of whom will remain righteous; then it is pre decided that the others will fall by the wayside, and hence their free will is superfluous.
    I would welcome any (informed) feedback on this please.

  21. I am still confused. What I take from this, is that God of of course knows the past, the present but only approximately the future, as we all theoretically can choose to be that 1%, that doesn't go to our Bob Dylan concert. Assuming something, even if it is with 99.99% certainty, is far from knowing it, so this seems to contradict the dogmatism of God's omniscience? Can someone help?

  23. You have a limited freewill as which God described to me as ~ You have absolute freewill in being ignorant in your ignorance's, naturally, always, throughout your life time, determination is Satan science, You are all children and your also not knowing. A human race of perpetual children and nothing is new under the sun, as God is the painter of our reality and the story book teller of our fates and destiny, praise God and Glory to his children.

  25. Well, all good common-sensical easily accepted notions of free choice. But. How could you ever tell for sure? Hypothetical: Lunch, menu, Hamburger, pizza, and chicken. Your read the menu and consider. "I had pizza day before yesterday, I ate chicken last night. I think I'll order the hamburger." So, you order the hamburger. Now, that looks like, feels like, and is logically explained as a free choice. But, in this hypothetical, there is a Great Book of Destiny, written before time itself began, and which specifies every action ever occurring in the universe. You painstakingly look up today's date, your name, and the exact moment "you decided" to order the hamburger. And, you see plainly written there, "hamburger." Now, the question is: How can you be absolutely sure that such a book does not exist? How can free will, or free choice, be proven? It can't. No matter what experiment, mental or physical you may devise to trap the truth vis a vie free choice, that experiment, and the results obtained from the experiment may be written down in the book. There is no way to know for sure.

  34. Great Discussion on a huge topic. I hear a lot of Harry G. Frankfurts principle of alternate possibilities in there. For a great 101 introduction on the philosophy of free will, I can highly recommend Robert Kane's "a contemporary introduction to free will" from Oxford University Press.

  35. My question on free will is, if we truly have it, why don't we all have a precognition of accepting to be created?

    If free will is what we have and in order for it to be consistent, when was I freely given the choice to be created?

    It seems to me that without being given the choice to be created, then I simple don't have free will and was forced into exsitance…

    That is not a free choice, that is being forced in to something I have not chosen. There is nothing free about my exsitance!

  36. I’ve heard a materialist say that to be able to freely control the physical determinism that has influence on us would be a miracle. This could be a hint to prove the existence of God. After all, it seems to me that the deterministic scientist preach determinism as it was an independent truthful concept, which would be impossible if determinism was true. Because how would we be able to know that the concept of determinism isn’t influenced by our personal nature and environment

  39. While not necessarily refuting free will per se, De Broglie–Bohm theory seems to me to be a valid possibility when it comes to explaining quantum physics. It seems to me a deterministic universe need not imply the lack of human free will, rather, to me, it simply exemplifies God's grace and mercy, as well as the salvific power of Christ's life, death, and resurrection~

  40. I like what you say about we need a Saint but would they not be like John crying out in the wilderness because of the way the media operates. We need adjitators people who can stir the crowd they are plenty of good people about who can do this but do not get the opportunity everybody should be an evangelist, looking for opportunities every day to express thier faith by a smile, saying hello and helping people in need.tell them how nice you feel when you have a battle with saton and win.tell them about the peace joy and love you feel in your heart.ask them if they would like this in thier heart tell them the power of god in thier life.

  41. Lutheran here. Luthers understanding is much more elaborate than a stepping stone to Calvinism, namely the distinction between free will in the Civil sense (the choice to pick up a pen set it down), and in the moral sense (choosing to do good or evil). As the scriptures clearly say, there is no one who is righteous (Roman's 3:10). Are will in bound in the sense that we can not do anything worthy of salvation. This is why Christ's life death and resurection is so important.

  42. Do I have autonomy meaning I'm responsible for what do? YES.
    Do I have the freedom to fly? Living under water without aid? Go out with my baddies at will? NO! My wife will cut my balls. So no matter how religious what to cut it, there is no free will.

  45. Thanks and God bless you Bishop Barron! I help but wonder if the interaction between Jesus and Philip in John 6:5-7 is a great illustration of free will. We see there that "He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do." Philip had liberum arbitrium to respond and the fact that there was a "correct answer" didn't take away from Philip's free judgment. In the same way, God continually tests us and we, like Philip, are free to respond. The goal for us, perhaps, is to be like Mary in Luke 10:42 and chose "the better part". God bless all of you as you strive to choose the better part!

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