Morgan Ashley Chang

Theta Block

A Hand in Our Future

In a world so diverse and prone to change, the decisions each person makes is bound to

differ based on each person’s ideology. And while we may question what the reasoning is behind

these decisions, or ask ourselves "what if I had chosen the other option?" we must actually

question if we are being responsible with the free will we were born with. Man must hold close

to the idea of free will, as it affirms him that he has complete control over his actions; he is not

subject to predestination. Without free will, the sense of individuality that sets the human race

apart from all other living things would be lost, and our society would be void of expression.

Since all that we do is based solely on experience, the decisions we make using our free

will determines every aspect of our lives. John Locke, a famed 17th Century English philosopher

is well known for his stand on nature versus nurture. Locke’s ideas were the foundation for the

idea of tabula rasa, Latin for "blank slate", the concept that the mind and soul is a blank slate

until it gets filled with life's different experiences. When responding in An Essay Concerning

Human Understanding to what affects our decisions, he said, “Let us then suppose the mind to

be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be

furnished? When comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has

painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and

knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.” (Pinker, 5). Locke’s ideals are

vital in understanding that human beings have the final say in their fate with the choices they

make.
 Free will is the foundation which provides man with the ability of choice. What free will

means to mankind is best described by Ayn Rand, “Man is a being with free will; therefore, each

man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to

decide which he wants to be.” When Rand states that “man is a being with free will,” she is

stating that free will is what sets man apart from all other living things. Though believing in free

will gives us the somewhat intimidating responsibility of making choices that lead us to become

good or evil, it is a far better way to look at our choices than to believe that they are involuntary.

Free will separates human beings from other living things in the way that we have the

power to create and express. While all living things have the ability of choice, to live or die, to

run or fight, only man has the ability to express. The Sistine Chapel, the Taj Mahal, all of the

great wonders of the world could not have been created by any other living thing than humans.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German writer, said “Without having seen the Sistine Chapel

one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving.” Michelangelo took

four years to paint the famous Sistine Chapel ceiling, creating a masterpiece only the devotion of

a human could have produced.

Animals can create, but their creations are nothing more than the animal acting upon their

natural instincts, and not an act of creative expression or free will. Natural instincts dominate in

every situation for animals. In December 2007, when there was a brutal tiger mauling at the San

Francisco Zoo, there was heavy debate on whether it was just to kill the tiger. Jack Hanna spoke

on the subject, and “acknowledged that people still have to be mindful the animals retain their

natural instincts. A wild animal is like a loaded gun. It can go off at any time," said Hanna. "They

are wild animals. They are very powerful animals." "People have to understand," he said. "You
can't do anything about this. That's their natural instinct." (ABC News) Animals create and

express because experience and evolution has programmed their mind and bodies to tell them to

do things, not because of emotional-based choices like humans, therefore lacking the ability to be

classified as beings with free will.

Mankind, though born with natural instinct as well, also possesses free will. In contrast to

animals, free will provides man with the dilemma of sorting through choices, a dilemma that

often overtakes their natural instincts. Famous writer George Bernard Shaw said, “Man is unique

in that he has plans, purpose and goals which require the need for criteria of choice. The need for

ethical value is within man whose future may largely be determined by the choice he makes.” If

choice is what makes man unique, than predestination will be the fall of man’s uniqueness to

other living beings. Predestination states that all choices are determined by God alone, the

“Christian doctrine according to which a person’s ultimate destiny, whether it be salvation or

damnation, is determined by God alone prior to, and apart from, any worth or merit on the

person's part.” (Babcock, para. 1) If we are to take both of these ideas into consideration, then if

man is unique because of plans and goals, but God determines these plans and goals for man,

then in the end, it can be assumed that man is not unique, but God is, for God is the one in

control of it all.

One of the most well known believers in predestination was John Calvin. Calvin’s

writings centralized around religious ideas and commentaries on the books of the bible.

However, he is most well known for his ideas published in Concerning the Eternal

Predestination of God. Calvin accepted that each person’s future actions are only following the

path that God had already laid out for them. Whether this path is salvation or damnation was
unknown, and could not be changed no matter what varied choices are made, because God

decides from the beginning of one’s life. Judging from Calvin’s teachings, predestination marks

us as beings without free will, and the way that God lays out our path is no different than a

toymaker programming a toy doll to repeat sayings and cry. The image of predestination that

Calvin builds is one of a conveyor belt in a large shipping factory, where each human being is

nothing more than a box which God sticks a label on which states each person’s final life

destination. No one person wants to think of themselves this way, which is why we must believe

in free will, as it provides to us a sense of being and worth that predestination seeks to remove.

We must live by the concept of free will because the only other option is predestination,

which presents more problems than free will ever could. How many times have we heard

murderers place the responsibility of their actions in God’s hands? Take for instance Kelly

Chadee Forbes, who murdered her husband of just a year this past Thanksgiving. She strangled

her husband with an electrical power cord in a means of “self-defense”. It was not a surprise that

her favorite quote was, “Only God can judge me.” (Nationnews.com) Predestination causes

people to go through with actions without thinking, or even caring about the consequences. To

date, 174 suicide bombers have taken their own lives, and countless others, because they believe

that this was the path that had been predestined for them. If predestination means the approval of

killing others because you were made to prove a message, then the need to free will has become

even more imperative.

The beauty of free will is that it does not limit, and is compatible with other ideas. So

compatible that the act of believing in free will, while still believing that there are consequences

to your actions is the foundation of compatibilism. David Hume, a famous 18th century Scottish
philosopher, was largely associated with this concept. He believed that all of our actions are in a

certain sense caused, but at the same time, we still have free will. Based on Hume’s idea, when

making decisions, we should not give disregard to free will because it still determines our future

to an extent. If it didn’t, he describes in an idea which philosophers refer to as Hume’s Fork that,

“Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are the

result of random events, in which case we are not responsible for them.” (Pinker, 178.) This

thinking is what helps to form the human character, in the sense that the choices are all in

relation to the person we choose to be, not random choices made with no significance. If all of

our choices were random, we would be similar to the programmed beings we are to made to be

by predestination, in the way that there is no meaning behind our actions.

Similar to Hume’s view on experience with the influence of past determining your future

was Karl Marx. Famous for the Communist Manifesto, Marx also published many other texts.

One lesser known piece is The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in which he discusses

what led to Napoleon’s coup d’etat, and possibly more importantly, the role of the individual in

history. “Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not

make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand. The

tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living.” (Marx, 6) Marx

believed that men possess free will and the ability to make their decisions, but the decisions they

make right now have a hand in determining the choices they may be able to make in the future.

Free will allows us to take pride in our choices, something predestination takes away

from the human mindset. In Steven Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of

Human Nature, he includes a limerick that best captures man’s fear of determinism, a good
support for why we should instead believe in free will: There was a young man who said:

“Damn! It grieves me to think that I am, Predestined to move, In a circumscribed groove: In fact,

not a bus, but a tram.” (Pinker, 174) It is a scary thought to imagine that every action made, no

matter how much time is spent pondering it, is already predetermined. When one gets into the

mentality that one’s choices are no longer theirs, one begins to believe that their choices are

worthless and should no longer be thought out. One considers abandoning morals, because what

does it matter if one will eventually end up where one needs to be in the long run? When one

begins believing in predestination, the process of consideration and thinking before one acts

ceases. To avoid this reckless sort of behavior and thinking, one must turn to free will. Free will

keeps us from the frame of mind that we as living things following a mapped plan, that we are

nothing more than a character in a game, being controlled by a force we’re unaware of.

However, an interesting case is posed by some modern day thinkers and writers who link

predestination and free will. They do this by suggesting that believing in free will is actually

predetermined, which is ultimately a paradox against the whole concept of free will. Raymond

Smullyan, a 20th century mathematician and magician states, “I have free will, but not of my own

choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or

not!” Isaac Bashevis Singer, a 20th century Polish-American writer, shared a similar belief and is

often quoted for saying, “We must believe in free will – we have no choice.” It is ironic to think

that even the choice to believe in free will is predetermined. Yet even more ironically, we must

counter this thought by believing in free will on our own accord, just to believe we are fighting

predestination.
 Whether free will is something we choose to believe in, or a belief that we are “born”, or

predestined to believe, it is still a concept that many pride themselves in having. Not believing in

free will leaves us to only believe that God or another higher being has already mapped out our

life for us. And anyone who believes that God has chosen their life lacks the creativity and

curiosity that one who thrives on free will has. Because of this, free will is a concept which can

propel people to their very best.

 Bibliography

Books

1. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. London: Clarendon Press, 1896.

2. Marx, Karl and Daniel De Leon. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Chicago:
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1907.
3. Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York:
Viking, 2002.

Websites

1. Babcock, William S. “Predestination”. BELIEVE Religious Information Source.

September 2, 2007. A Christ Walk Church Public Service. 22 October 2007. http://mb-
soft.com/believe/text/predesti.htm
2. “Zoo Probes Deadly Tiger Mauling.” WZZM13 News. 26 December 2007. ABC News.
April 14, 2008. < http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=85471>
3. “Suspected Wife Talks.” Nation News. 1 December 2007. 25 January 2008 <
http://www.nationnews.com/story/371463299673301.php>