We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

If every effect has a cause, how can there be free choice?

The most common argument given in defense of determinism is that it’s implied in the nature of causation. Every event has a cause, and this cause accounts for the event being the way it is. This cause must itself have had a cause that accounts for it, and so on ad infinitum. Hence, everything must have been predetermined from the beginning (if there was a beginning), and so there is no room for freedom or spontaneity.

Now, I don’t think anyone can dispute the claim that every contingent event must have a cause. The idea of a completely uncaused contingent event is absurd. (Notice, I say every contingent event must have a cause, since I see nothing unintelligible in the concept of a necessary being, such as God, being uncaused. That’s what it means to be necessary, in contrast to being contingent). What is disputable, however, is the claim that every cause necessitates one, and only one, effect.

It’s one thing to say, (a) “ X is the cause of Y,” and another thing to say that (b) “Given X, Y had to happen” and/or (c) “Given X, only Y could happen.” There is no good reason to assume (b) and (c) are universally true. This is nothing more than a philosophical dogma. It is, in fact,  the dogma of determinism.

The fact is that, as David Hume argued centuries ago, we don’t even know what a “cause” is. It is simply a word we use to say “When we observe X, we observe Y after it.” But there’s nothing in the nature of causation itself that says Y must always follow X. So there’s no basis for the assumption that “Given X, Y had to happen, and only Y could happen.”

If we look at the world as a work of art instead of a deterministic mechanism – as western science up until recently has been imagining it – we can see this more clearly. Imagine that we are all artists invited to paint a segment of a grand mosaic, and we paint with our free decisions. Now let’s think about causation in this context.

Imagine Van Gogh’s famous hallucinogenic painting, “Starry Night.” We’d all agree that every riveting detail of this work is explainable by referencing the aesthetic vision that was inspiring Van Gogh to paint this painting. Nothing in the painting is capricious (that is, without a cause). Yet, can’t we imagine a slightly different painting being explainable by referencing this same aesthetic vision?

If the church steeple in the painting had been a centimeter taller or shorter, for example, would it alter the aesthetic achievement of the painting? If it had been a centimeter to the left or right, would it have been inconsistent with the vision that was behind this painting? If one particular stroke of yellow or purple or black had been a centimeter longer or shorter, couldn’t we explain it by appealing to the same aesthetic vision we would appeal to now to explain the shades that are presently in the painting? And so for a trillion other details in this painting.

My point is that a given cause can explain more effects than one, as artist works illustrate. But our own free decisions reveal this as well. So do quantum particles. And so does every aspect of creation! There’s causation everywhere, but there’s also an element (however slight) of spontaneity everywhere.

This dance of order and freedom, structure and spontaneity, is what makes the creation beautiful and an adventure.

So, determinism rests on an unwarranted assumption about causation. It runs against our experience of free decision making, of creating works of art and many other things. And it’s inconsistent with some recent advances in science (as my forthcoming book The Cosmic Dance will attempt to prove). Every effect does have a cause, but its not that case that given that cause, the effect had to follow.

Category:
Tags: ,

Related Reading

A Video Introduction to Open Theism

Here’s a video clip on Open Theism from Greg’s sessions with Travis Reed with The Work of the People. What is Open Theism? Open Theists affirm that God knows all of reality perfectly, so Open Theism really is about the nature and content of the future. Does the future contain real possibilities? We have to wrestle with…

God is Flexible: Romans 9, Part 4

As we continue this series on Romans 9, [Here’s the link to the first post in the series.] today we will look at the famous potter/clay analogy. Most tend to interpret the potter and clay image as supporting the deterministic view of God. But in fact, it teaches just the opposite. This is the fifth argument…

Is God Good?

Andrew Stawarz via Compfight This reflection by David D. Flowers seemed like a good addition to Greg’s recent blogs on free will. Here David talks about the problem of evil and how it is that we can call God “good” in light of a world full of evil. He even quotes Greg extensively. From the…

What about the Gospel of John and Calvinism?

Question: The Gospel of John seems to teach that people believe because God draws them, rather than that God draws people because they believe. If this is true, how can you deny the Calvinistic teaching that salvation is based on God’s choice, not ours? Answer: As you note, many people find support for the view…

Podcast: Doesn’t Jesus Violate the Free Will of Demons When He Casts Them Out?

Greg discusses the free will of demons and speculates on whether God is ever violent towards spiritual entities. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0163.mp3

The Risk of Love & the Source of Evil

On Sunday Greg tweeted the following:  Love IS a tremendous risk. But if humans ever concluded the risk was not worth it, we likely become extinct rather quickly. … Yes, love is risky. It costs us everything, and we sometimes get terribly hurt. But it’s this risk that “makes the world go round.” …  And…