Free Will Is Not Necessary for Morality

The whole video:

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#atheist #atheism #religion #apologetics #counterapologetics #bible #oldtestament #newtestament #jesus #determinism #freewill

[MasterSpade]

With Great Power, comes Great Responsibility. With ALL Power, comes ALL Responsibility!!
There is NO Free Will in a world with a "god".

[stevewebber]

So many of these arguments depending on free will, seem to hinge on bizarre definitions of free will that pretty much nobody holds.

[weirdwilliam]

The only thing free will is needed for, in Christian theology, is to make every bad occurrence our fault instead of their omnipotent god’s fault.

[soyevquirsefron]

If free will means that “my decisions” are not influenced by external factors, such as my brain chemistry or my biological imperatives or my memory or my personality, then what is the “me” who is making the decisions? How is this decision maker in any way related to my consciousness? It seems like this “free will” would be a separate outside being that controls my thoughts and actions regardless of my memory, preferences and physical state. That’s not “me” at all.

[gergelymagyarosi]

Trent's problem (among many) is he thinks determinism is something that God once decided, and nothing can change that. Especially human actions.
While he thinks free will means God allows that change.

[Thearmdamput]

If will is not determined by anything, then it is random...
If a will is determined, then we can change the factors that determine it....

[skepticusmaximus]

The sylogism presented at 9:00 is:

A. If God does not exist, we do not have moral responsibility.
B We do have moral responsibility.
C. Therefore, God does exist.

I think it's a fallacy of the undistributed middle term.

*Edit:* Actually It's a falacy of the excluded middle. I got the terminology wrong. It's also a fallacy of affiming the consequent.

Another example of affirming the consequent is:

A. All cats have whiskers
B. Trixy has whiskers.
C. Therefore Trixy is a cat.

Trixy could be a performing seal at Sea World.

But the first premise of the guys syllogism is a doosie. Firstly, it's trying to cram in a whole argument of its own with the if/then. "If god does not exist, then we don't have moral responsibility." But it's a single premise, no second premise, then a conclusion that is completely nonsequiter. The missing second premise should be, God is the only source of moral responsibility. Now let's rewrite it:

A. If god does not exist and.
B. God is the only source of moral responsibility, then
C.We have no moral responsibility.

We can also rewrite his syllogism as

A. God is the only source of moral responsibility.
B. We have moral responsibility
C.Therefore, God exists.

The claim that god is the only source of moral responsibility is not only a baseless assertion but to use it in an argument for which the conclusion is that god exists, is begging the question. Put another way it goes:

A. God exists.
B. Only god can do X (whereby X is something known to happen.)
C. God exists.

It never establishes any cause or explanation for X and it begins with with (assumes) its conclusion. It's both circular and nonsequiter reasoning.

[hegyak]

The Matrix talked about this issue of Free Will.

A character knows EVERYTHING that Neo could or will do. What decisions He will make. Neo correctly asks, "How can I make a choice, if you know what I am going to choose already?"

Does Neo have Free Will, if anything He would do, is already known? How does that work?

[krank]

I feel like these people think the *blaming* is the point. That once you've determined whose fault something is, the work is done. We know who to blame, move on. That's why they say you can only blame someone if they had "free will" (whatever that means). Because the point of blaming isn't instrumental, isn't to create some sort of change. They see blame as the *goal*.

[dane]

The problem I see with Christianity's "Free Will" is that the free will of one person can be imposed on another.
Especially when that occurs in negative, life altering, ways. A perfect creator God would know, that restricted
free will would be a necessity.

[odinallfarther]

If God is omnipotent all is the will of god if all is the will of god there can be no free will .

[Kevin_Williamson]

4:36 -- the lettering is that scene looks that way because the video ("Satan's Guide to The Bible") is set in a school room for young children. So all the captions are done in that style.

[rik]

This was a really good explanation of determinism/free will. Thanks!

[TheLithp]

Y'know, it's very telling that their response to "how can you defend genocide?" is always whataboutism. Putting words in my mouth about Craig's supposed intellect aside, I don't usually defend Harris's ideas, but he just showed a quote where Harris clearly explained how enforcing standards of behavior has a pragmatic purpose that has nothing to do with any notion of free will. But okay, let's look at this syllogism.

P1: If no god, no moral responsibility: Is it possible to START with a non-sequitur? These are completely unrelated. Even if you want to claim magic is necessary for free will, which you might be right about because this idea that decisions can be neither determined nor random but some secret 3rd thing seems like pure magical thinking to me, it still wouldn't follow that this magical force needs to be a god.

P2: We have moral responsibility: You're not writing in here what you're actually saying, which is that there's some "objectively correct" moral responsibility. And how do you justify that? Appeal to popularity? Appeal to tradition? Appeal to wishful thinking?

C: So God real: Yeah, obviously, this doesn't work given that neither of the premises make sense on their own, let alone together.

Well, he believes in a god that controls the natural world, so I guess by his logic, the answer of "Who is morally responsible for the lightning bolt destroying the house?" is his god. Which raises an interesting question, obviously he'd say his god can't really be blamed for anything because he's perfect & yadayada, so does that mean his god doesn't have free will? Because, apparently, if you have free will, you can be blamed for things, & vice versa.

I feel like whatever he was trying to prove really got away from him. He tried to make some argument against atheists & ended up exposing like half a dozen arguments against his own position. But I guess what he means is it doesn't make sense to blame people if determinism is true because they're just doing what the laws of the universe dictate what they're going to do. However, that would also mean this whole argument is determined by the laws of the universe. To be fair, that is something I think about sometimes, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about it. I guess this guy's answer is to believe in magic, but he needs the magic to be real in order to convince me to believe it in the 1st place.

[Newcras]

This is my favorite video of yours from the last ~4 years. Somewhat comforting to my terrors of not believing in free will. Your worldview is like atheistic calvinism, lol.

[bradypustridactylus]

Just as in the case of a lightning strike, I don't care if an arsenist is mrorally culpable, I only care if safeguards can be put in place that prevent a recurrence of the incident. The difference is that safeguarding against lightning does not require respect for the humanity, rights, and well-being of the arsonist.

[nadirku]

For the lettering of William Lane Craig at the Talbot school, I think that image is from the "Satan's Guide to the Bible" YouTube video which is fictionally framed as Satan teaching a Sunday School class of children, hence the colorful lettering, rather than something Craig, or the Talbot school put together.

[Ark_bleu]

6:08
Nobody says “I have free will” and means “I have no control over my decisions”. This is wild.

[stephengalanis]

It's astonishing how people don't spot Trent's mistake here. Good video.

[bananaslug.]

Very good job explaining a very complicated problem. Thanks