Free Will

(A citation from an essay 'What is Man?' by Mark Twain.)

A conversation between an Old Man (O.M) and a Young Man (Y.M)

Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?
O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?

Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her to suffer. Isn't it so?
O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?

Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in doing it he exercised Free Will.
O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free Will, and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in that man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his training, and the daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was, COMPELLED him to rescue the old woman and thus save HIMSELF--save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. He did not make the choice, it was made FOR him by forces which he could not control. Free Will has always existed in WORDS, but it stops there, I think--stops short of FACT. I would not use those words--Free Will--but others.

Y.M. What others?
O.M. Free Choice.

Y.M. What is the difference?
O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to ACT as you please, the other implies nothing beyond a mere MENTAL PROCESS: the critical ability to determine which of two things is nearest right and just.

Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.
O.M. The mind can freely SELECT, CHOOSE, POINT OUT the right and just one--its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.

Y.M. The man's?
O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and the character which has been built around it by training and environment.

Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?
O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington's machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong one.

Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and judicially points out which of two things is right and just--
O.M. Yes, and his MORAL machinery will freely act upon the other or the other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the MIND'S feeling concerning the matter--that is, WOULD be, if the mind had any feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.

Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man KNOWS which of two things is right he is absolutely BOUND to do that thing?
O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the mater. Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?

Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then it would have been equally RIGHT for any one else to do it?

Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. Then it would have been RIGHT for a born coward to attempt it?

Y.M. It would--yes.
O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't you?

Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't you?

Y.M. Yes, I know it.
O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be RIGHT to try it?

Y.M. Yes.
O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be RIGHT to try it?

Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can NOT essay it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why claim that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? Why content that because he and David SEE the right alike, both must ACT alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?

Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?
O.M. It is what I think. There is WILL. But it has nothing to do with INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG, and is not under their command. David's temperament and training had Will, and it was a compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The coward's temperament and training possess Will, and IT is compulsory; it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will--will that may do the right or do the wrong, as their MENTAL verdict shall decide.

Man The Maker Of His Destiny

Man The Maker Of His Destiny - We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; SO WE HAVE TO KNOW HOW TO ACT.

Man is man, so long as he is struggling to rise above nature, and this nature is both internal and external... And if we read the history of nations between the lines, we shall always find that the rise of a nation comes with an increase in the number of such men, and the fall begins when this pursuit after the Infinite, however vain the utilitarian may call it, has ceased. That is to say, the mainspring of the strength of every race lies in its SPIRITUALITY and the death of that race begins the day that spirituality wanes and materialism gains ground.

You have to GROW inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual.There is no other teacher but YOUR OWN SELF.

MAKE YOUR OWN FUTURE. "Let the dead past bury its dead". The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each WORD, THOUGHT and DEED lays up a store for you, and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and forever.

I am sure NATURE will pardon a man who will use his reason and cannot believe, rather than a man who believes blindly instead of using the faculties He has given him... WE MUST REASON; and when reason proves to us the truth of these prophets and great man about whom the ancient books speak in every country, we shall believe in them. We shall believe in them when we see such prophets among ourselves. We shall then find that they were not peculiar men, but only illustrations of certain principles.

Go on doing good, thinking good thoughts continuously, that is the only way to suppress base impressions. Never say any man is hopeless, because he only represents a character, a bundle of habits, which can be checked by new and better ones. Character is repeated habits; and repeated habits alone can reform character... The chaste brain has TREMENDOUS energy and GIGANTIC will power.

We can overcome the difficulty by CONSTANT PRACTICE. We must learn that nothing can happen to us, unless we make ourselves susceptible to it.

`It is the coward and the fool who says, "THIS IS FATE”- so says the Sanskrit proverb. But it is the strong man who stands up and says, "I WILL MAKE MY FATE ". It is the people who are getting old who talk of fate. Young men generally do not come to astrology.

The Man-Machine Again

Man is a mere machine and his mind works automatically and is independent of his control--carries on thought on its own hook. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring, beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to sleep? You who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it with subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it would wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning. It begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, "The moment I wake I will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. His mind will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon another subject. Make the experiment and see.

As a rule it will listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.

The mind is independent of the man. He has no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It is master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either, whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you could do it. Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get it accepted? And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a dream-thought for itself? No, correct? So then the waking mind and the dream mind are the same machine? There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts? Things that are dream-like? And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and unfantastic? Dreams that are just like real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers to me: a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in character, each preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is exactly like real life.

A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one way whereby he can get its help when he desires it. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that matter--or--take your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It will take full charge, and furnish the words itself. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words leap out before you know what is coming. Well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee. Flash is the right word. It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words. There is no thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic in its action and needs no help. Where the whit-mechanism is lacking, no amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.

Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine the things perceived. That is all. Take the example of a steam engine. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the lid of the teapot. He didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved the cylinder, from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple matter, crank and wheel. And so there was a working engine. One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not their creating powers, for they hadn't any - and now, after a hundred years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner. Also lets talk about a Shakespearean play. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp- dances, and so on, incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage. It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the ages that came after.

Men observe and combine, that is all. So does a rat. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet, seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble; infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit belongs to the law of their make. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a PERSONAL superiority or a personal dignity above the other.

(A citation from an essay 'What is Man?' by Mark Twain. If you are interested in this Essay please let me know along with your email IDs I will be glad to send it across, trust me it is a good read.)

The history of God

(Note : To all who believe in GOD, please do not get offended I respect your belief, the following post is a citation from an article by Davide Andrea, so please no hard feelings, you always have the option of leaving this page anytime - thankyou.)

Roughly speaking, the human brain developed the Biological God soon after it started developing reasoning, to keep up with reasoning as it started asking existential questions. Unable to explain the experience of the Biological God, humans attributed the phenomenon to external forces, and created the Cultural God.



In the future, reason will be enhanced, while spirituality will be much reduced, though not eliminated. As the Biological God has had less and less effect compared to the juggernaut of organized religion, mutations that reduced the Biological God have not been eliminated by evolution, so, in general, the phenomenon of the Biological God has decreased over the centuries.

Humans developed Animism first, in which humans projected the biological God externally, onto objects and forces in nature. Then came Polytheism, which projected the biological God externally, onto an imaginary Pantheon ("All the Gods"). Finally, humans simplified the Pantheon into a single Omnipotent, Omniscient, Creator.



While developing new forms of the cultural God, humans retained the old forms. Today Animism is still present in Africa and is on the rise with "New Age" beliefs; Polytheism is still strong in Asian cultures (such as Hindu); while Monotheism continues to make inroads thanks to world imperialists who tend to be followers of the Abramic religions (Jewish, Christian, Moslem).

Morality as a socially stabilizing force

For a long time, reason has been overpowered by spirituality, stifling research and discovery. Today, reason has been freed from the bounds of spirituality, which on one side has allowed humans to greatly expand its understanding of the world, but on the other side has weakened social morality. That morality may be based on unreasonable, unfair and arbitrary rules, but it has given society an effective constraint to a damaging free-for-all. Humans now need to develop a different self regulating force, based on reason instead of tradition and spirituality, to replace the moral code, if they want to continue functioning as a society.



Should Reason displace God?
No.

Even if the existence of the Cultural God is disproved, it should be purely for scientific (philosophical) reasons. In that case, the absence of a Cultural God (and the existence of a biological God) should be taught in school, but not in antithesis of spirituality. The dichotomy between Science (reason) and Spirituality (Religion, Astrology, Superstition...) is a false one. These are not at opposite ends of the same axis, but are instead orthogonal, and therefore independent. One can be as little or a much spiritual as one wants, regardless of how little or how much one uses reason.

Spirituality is what makes humans what they are, and is consistent with what humans experience. Spirituality answers existential questions and in so doing gives humans a reason to continue living. (Here I neatly bypass the philosophical question: "Should we strive for the continuation of the human race, or is it OK for it to become extinct?".)

It is possible that further evolution may give the human race a reason to continue existing, either by eliminating existential questions, or by finding a more compelling answer to them. Until then, humans will ask existential questions, and spirituality will answers them neatly. If we assume that the human race, as presently developed, must remain on Earth, spirituality must remain for at least a while longer, to justify the human race's existence and regulate its society.

Does God exist?

(Note : To all who believe in GOD, please do not get offended I respect your belief, the following post is a citation from an article by Davide Andrea, so please no hard feelings, you always have the option of leaving this page anytime - thankyou.)

Does God exist? Yes! No!
Of course, it depends on the definition of God.

Here I use 2 definitions:
1) The "Biological God", as a phenomenon of the human brain.
2) The "Cultural God", as a creation of human society.

Yes, the Biological God exists.
No, the Cultural God doesn't exist per se.

A person isolated from society from birth may still experience the Biological God, but would either not have a Cultural God, or would create his/her own version of it from scratch.

Now I will outline a theory that could explain our experiences of God, and yet allow for its non-existence. This theory is (yet) unprovable, but so is the existence of God. Of course, many more theories have been and will be proposed.

My wish is to give Agnostics an alternative to the views presented by religions, and let him/her apply Occam's razor ("the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected").

The Biological God.
Love, anguish, serenity, hate, intuition, conscious, self, and many other phenomena of the human brain are accepted as just that. Yet Humans aren't able to accept God as simply one more phenomenon of the human brain: the experience of God, and the need for a ultimate figure who gives meaning to our lives, are just that strong.

Why does the Biological God exist?
The Biological God developed in the human brain at the same time as Reason did.
Mutations resulted in both phenomena. In a very simplistic view, assume that these resulted in beings will all 4 permutations of these mutations.



The beings that gained reasoning invented the concept of "meaning" and started to ask "Why are we here? What's the meaning of life?" (these are two of the so called "existential questions"). Of those, the ones who realized that there is no "meaning" to life, lacked the motivation to live and procreate. On the other side, those who also developed the concept of God, created answers to the existential questions, and, satisfied, proceed to live and procreate. Their progeny retained both mutations, and today's humans are both smart and experience God.

Another way of looking at this is that God led to religion and morality; and that those led to social order; and that social order gave humans the stability they needed to survive and procreate. That social order balanced the individualism and freedom that reason gave humans. A tribe that evolved with too much reason and not enough religion would have self-destructed and become extinct.

The point is not "why do humans experience God". That is, don't ask why humans both have reasoning and believe in God, while other Primates don't (we assume).



Instead, understand that if there hadn't been a mutation in certain humans to counteract the logical consequence of reasoning alone, there would be no humans today to ask the question "is there a God?". It is just by chance that those mutations occurred, and that they occurred in such a way to make humans what they are now. There were far many more Primates that didn't develop reasoning (to the extent that Humans have), and some of them still remain today. And there were far many more mutations that did result in reasoning, but not the biological God, and those beings became extinct because they didn't have reason to exist and procreate.



The chance of humans developing both reasoning and the biological God are vanishingly small, so this appears very unlikely (let's say, a 0.0000000001 % probability). But look at it the other way: if those mutations hadn't occurred, and in exactly that way, we wouldn't be here today asking those questions!

Those mutations did occur (that's a 100 % probability), and here we are, asking these questions.
Had there been other sets of mutations, such that other, quite different sentient beings had resulted (also with a vanishingly small probability), they might now be asking what the chances would be for evolution to result in beings exactly like them. But those mutations would have occurred (that's a 100 % probability), and here they would be, wandering what the chances were that they would have developed.

The Cultural God.
Humans created the Cultural God because of their experience of the Biological God, and due to their need to provide default answers when reason can't.

We already explored the Biological God. Let's explore the "Default God".
As Reason answers more and more questions, people need God less and less as a default explanation of the unexplained. This would imply that the portion of questions answered by Reason (science) is asymptotically approaching 100 %. Form this, one could predict that one day the Default God will no longer be needed.



However, the unexplained questions increase as more questions are answered, so it is not clear that Reason will one day explain everything that is presently attributed to God.

So, we said that the experiential God is a biological phenomenon, and that we may predict that the external God as a default explanation for the unexplainable may one day become unnecessary. All this could be stretched into a proof of the nonexistence of the Cultural God.

Even if Humans disproved the existence of the Cultural God, culture has such a momentum that eradicating God purely on rational grounds will be nearly impossible.

Next post - "The history of GOD"
P.S Read this blog too...

Is there a God?

(Note : To all who believe in GOD, please do not get offended I respect your belief, the following post is a citation from an article by Davide Andrea, so please no hard feelings, you always have the option of leaving this page anytime - thankyou.)

So Is there a God? Does it matter?
No, it doesn't, other than the fact that it's such a big deal to so many people. So why bother? Well, spectator sports fascinate many people, even though they are so inconsequential; so please forgive me if I waste effort on this question. Consider it a hobby of mine.

Let me say here that I am not a scientist, nor a theologist, nor a philosopher. My education of these matters has many holes. While I believe that everything I express here has been stated before, I'd be hard pressed to come-up with specific references.

Could humans experience a non existent God?
I am going to use 2 analogies to show how it's possible that
a) God (as normally defined) doesn't exist, and
b) humans experience God and talk as if it existed.

The first analogy is a well known optical illusion. Take two identical lines:



Their length can be made to look different by adding arrow ends:



We know that the lines are equally long, but we feel that the top one is longer. We recognize that our brain is fooled into thinking that the top line is longer, even though we rationally know they are both the same, and we are simply amused by that fact.

Similarly, you may know that there is no God, and yet experience it. You could decide that your brain is fooled into thinking that there is such as thing as "God", even though you rationally know there's no such thing, and be simply amused by that fact.

The second analogy is the expedient of stating that the sun raises from the East and sets in the West. We know that the earth is not flat, and we know that it rotates around the Sun. Yet. we don't think twice about the terms "sunrise" and "sunset". These expressions are left over from a simpler time when people didn't understand astronomy. We keep on using these expressions because are very ingrained in our culture; and if we came-up with physically accurate expressions, they would be a mouthful.

Similarly, if one day we were to prove that there's no God, we'd still use the word "God" as an interlocution ("God you look good!") and as a Creator ("God's creatures"). These expressions will remain from this simpler time when people don't understand the true nature of God. We'll keep on using these expressions because they will remain ingrained in our culture, and because physically accurate expressions will be too complex to use in everyday language.

So, the possible absence of God doesn't preclude us from experiencing it. And God would remain in our culture even if its existence were disproved.

So far, I didn't disprove the existence of God. I simply showed that it's possible that God doesn't exist, despite our experiences and our culture.

Now, in the next post I will state a theory that would allow the non-existence of God yet explain how humans experience God.

Discover Reading

'What we see depends mainly on what we look for.'
- Sir John Lubbock







(All 3 images are copyrighted works of Sharpe Blackmore Euro RSCG produced for Licenced To Learn)

No Soul

Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends upon a parent. For self-preservation man has conceived of the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. In his ignorance, weakness, fear and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically.

According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.

- Buddha on Nirvana (picture courtesy http://sudo.ch/~dkocher/gallery/albums.php)