Avoid these 15 mistakes about Free Will, Christianity, and Consciousness

In this final part of the common mistakes series, we cover mistakes about free will, Christianity, and consciousness.

OUTLINE

00:00 Intro
1:03 Mistake 163
20:10 Mistake 164
21:36 Mistake 165
22:29 Mistake 166
23:40 Mistake 167
25:17 Mistake 168
40:56 Mistake 169
44:19 Mistake 170
46:13 Mistake 171
47:21 Mistake 172
47:49 Mistake 173
49:02 Mistake 174
52:56 Mistake 175
54:09 Mistake 176
59:22 Mistake 177
1:09:02 Mistake 178 (Bonus)

CORRECTION

RESOURCES

THE USUAL...

[MajestyofReason]

*_CORRECTIONS and LIST OF MISTAKES FOR PART 7_*

⚠️Correction⚠️



✅List of Mistakes✅

_Free Will_

1:03 Mistake 163: So. Much. Unclarity. About. Free Will.
20:10 Mistake 164: LFW is required for love
21:36 Mistake 165: Libertarianism = you can do anything
22:29 Mistake 166: Determinism = force/coercion
23:40 Mistake 167: Merely asserting that free will requires a soul

_Christianity_

25:17 Mistake 168: Papering over, downplaying, ignoring, or misrepresenting OT atrocities
40:56 Mistake 169: No point in evangelizing if universalism is true
44:19 Mistake 170: Explicit belief in Christ on Earth is required to avoid hell
46:13 Mistake 171: Lord, Liar, Lunatic trichotomy

_Consciousness_


47:21 Mistake 172: Neurological basis of religious experience
47:49 Mistake 173: Merely asserting that souls require God
49:02 Mistake 174: “How can mind come from mindless matter?”
52:56 Mistake 175: Physicalism entails determinism
54:09 Mistake 176: Thinking mental-physical correlations is a slam dunk
59:22 Mistake 177: Thinking the interaction problem is a slam dunk

_Bonus mistake_

1:09:02 Mistake 178: Not subscribing to Majesty of Reason or becoming a patron

[andresjimenez]

Joe, I know you've explained why you speak more from a Christian theistic point of view or with Christian theistic philosophers (you being an agnostic). But : Could you make more videos with or for atheist philosophers? (from anywhere in the world with whom you can dialogue: It would be interesting to see how these issues are treated from Latin America, China, India, Africa or the Middle East) There are some Spanish philosophers (Ernesto Castro, Javier Pérez Jara, Lino Camprubí and Carlos Blanco ) and an Argentine physicist (Gustavo Esteban Romero) who are involved in these types of debates from atheist or agnostic positions.



[archangelarielle]

No, the interactions problem is how does something non-physical, i.e., spaceless/ timeless do anything let alone interact, as it equivalent to not existing at any point in space, in any point in time.

[shassett]

I come to this channel for your clear and concise explanation of topics in Philosophy. I stay because you cap a twenty-minute section on free will with a mom joke.

[Zictomorph]

Thank you! I've been trying to put my finger on the Reverse Construction problem for a while now.

[contage]

Bro is just firing some shots at us 20:03 🤣😂

[EarnestApostate]

Yeah, thanks for talking about the interaction problem. I only find dualism as the least likely of the three as it requires both physical and mental to be separately real things, which seems less parsimonious than one being dependent on the other.

[vexifiz]

Great video, honestly have shifted away a little from Phil of religion but love your stuff on free will and consciousness

[АртурИванов-чэ]

Wow! Finally an episode on free will! I haven’t watched everything to the end yet, but (especially if this topic has not been raised), I would like to know your opinion about the argument that supposedly if determinism is true and there is no free will, then you “can’t really know anything.” Apologists often like to use this argument, saying that if you are “predetermined” to a certain conclusion by prior states, then you cannot come to a true judgment, and supposedly this is possible when there is free will and people can “freely choose” (?!) the truth. Also in this context, I would like to ask one day to parse the TAG argument. In particular, these two arguments are used by self-proclaimed YouTube philosopher and apologist Jay Dyer. Maybe invite him as a guest?

[resurrectionnerd]

The free will argument breaks down because under Christian theism, people aren't given a free choice to exist. No, existence is forced upon people because Christians believe God creates the soul of every individual and instantiates them in the actual world (and also knows what they will freely choose _only if_ God decides to create them).

Since God didn't have to create people, it follows that this makes God responsible for all moral evil committed by humans and also responsible for their eternal fate. God knows what they will freely choose _if_ created so their actions and destiny all comes down to God's decision to create.

We can sum this as follows - if God decides to create, then that seals your fate!

[RatioChristiTAMU]

40:40 bro, from my brain to your mouth. As someone who personally *agonizes* over the violence in the OT, it really discourages me when fellow Christians don't seem to take this seriously. To paraphrase Origen, they believe there is none greater than God (in which they are right) yet believe such things about Him as would not be believed of the most savage and unjust of men.

[dominiks]

It's great that you made the distinction between soft determinism and compatibilism! Very often people - even philosophers - treat those two terms as synonymous, when this is not in fact the case

[TheOtherCaleb]

Joe Schmid, the philosophy wizard himself

[MaxSix]

That depressing moment when you realise you are trying to scroll a document being displayed in a video...

[TrueShepardN]

Great video Joe, as always from a moderate episcolpalian

[dancinswords]

On mistake 165, I don't think anyone actually thinks that libertarianism _is_ the view that we can just do anything. The point of saying "I can't flap my arms and fly" is to provide an agreed upon example of a limit to our freedom, to set up the question of why some limits to our freedom are okay while others wouldn't be, e.g. "it's impossible for us to flap our arms and fly, so why couldn't it be impossible for us to harm others?" If one action being physically impossible for us, despite our will to do so, isn't an unacceptable limit on our free will, then we have to ask why any other action being physically impossible for us would be. This is a counter to the claim that we have to be free, not only to _will_ harm to others, but to actually carry out that will, or else our free will would be limited in an unacceptable way.

My favourite points I've never heard before from this video:
1. Turning the "love must be a free choice" argument against the trinity, by asking if its members freely choose to love each other.
2. Reversing the construction problem, by asking how non-mental things could be constructed from mental things, if mind is fundamental.

[jeremymr]

Thought-provoking video! I'm not a professional philosopher but I think about this stuff a lot. I would like to challenge some of your alleged "mistakes" and also the premise of the video:

1. It seems to me like it's not an error to argue that if determinism is true it's the same as force or coercion. Someone might disagree with that and make a good argument against that, but I don't think the point of view is necessarily an error in reasoning. If an evil wizard uses a love potion on someone who has rejected his romantic advances time and time again, then the person under the spell would fall in love with him and genuinely want the wizard for the duration of the potion, but this is clearly force and coercion--if it wasn't, then there would be no point of a love potion existing. If determinism is true, we are all under its spell and as free as a falling domino. Even if we like falling down, we are still forced to.

2. I think one could rationally argue that free will requires a soul or that physicalism entails determinism, even if you disagree with those stances. Because many believe you can't get free will from either causation or randomness or any combination of both, then a soul might allow for something totally beyond our understanding that could somehow allow free will. I suspect if we do have free will, it has something to do with consciousness. Sort of like how we experience consciousness even though it's hard to understand how it exists, we experience and understand what it means to feel free to make choices even though people disagree about the nature of free will. Maybe free will is entirely a phenomenon of consciousness that has no explanation involving laws of physics, causation, randomness, etc. It's kind of abstract and mindblowing and may sound logically impossible but I think it's a valid view. Especially when you realize the universe might literally have popped out of nothing, or there may be a god that exists outside of space and time, etc. There are a lot of claims in philosophy that seem impossible or improbable, but I think are conceivable and one can rationally argue for. It's not up to us what the nature of reality is. I think it might be weirder than we can imagine.

3. Many view compatibilism to be a mistake. Or libertarianism. It seems to me like a lot just comes down to a matter of taste, a point I think Graham Oppy has made about the god debate. You may find a lot of these ways of thinking to be mistakes and provide reasons for that, but someone else could rationally justify them, or be justified in asserting them on the basis they think they're self-evidently true. For example, "physicalism entails determinism" may seem obviously true to some and they might view it as the burden of proof on someone who disagrees to demonstrate how to get free will from causation/randomness, and totally reject philosophical language that tries to get around the problem by defining free will differently or something. The existence of philosophers arguing for a view doesn't make it any more true, in my opinion. Just like the existence of PhD creationists doesn't make creationism true.

I probably didn't do the best job articulating some of this, but for what it's worth that's my thoughts!

[fujiapple]

49:24 Nb4 Cameron Bertuzzi states, "Questions are not arguments."

[bigol]

As long as God is omniscient, we do not have free will!

[Kentrosauruses]

Okay Joe, next project is to find clips of people making each of these mistakes in a super long super cut