Updated: 10/30/04
For the sake of exploration into the concept of free will and then
prophecy, I am going to assume that there is a super being which by some
stretch of imagination we could call God. This is not to say that there is a
God or that there is not a God. It is rather to define the minimum attributes,
which a God must possess, so we can honestly examine the concept of free
will.
We must first ask the question, does God have free
will? To say that any super being does not have personal free will is
unthinkable. To be a super being, one must have room and freedom to navigate
through the physical, mental and physic universe. To be a super being, one must
have super intelligence and super knowledge. Super knowledge and super
intelligence assures the super being (or God) of having super power. Super
power does not necessarily mean infinite power. It does mean the super being
can do and know things naturally and physically, which to us lesser beings,
appear as miracles.
So at the very least, we grant free will, super
power, super knowledge and super intelligence to our super being. This is a
minimal requirement. One cannot arrive at super-being-hood without traveling
there. Knowledge is an evolution. Knowledge and Intelligence is the end result
of the wise and proper utilization of free will. It is the result of trial and
error. You cannot know what is true unless it has been tested against what is
false.
Even if a super being were born, created or just happened,
he would still need to have experience in order to develop that intelligence,
and to discover that knowledge. That super being would still have to
authenticate his knowledge and intelligence. This means the super being would
have to do that which later may be found to not be in keeping with his super
knowledge. He must do this in order to discover and prove that his super
knowledge is true. In other words, the super being would have to experiment with life and science. He
would have to make mistakes. It would be like learning to play chess. First you
must learn the rules (or make them up). Then wrong moves teach you the right
moves.
To conclude that any being could be born (or come
into being) with all super knowledge is again unthinkable. Knowledge is a
product of development. It must be found out and acquired. It is the product of
experimentation and honest thinking. Knowledge is the result of experiments. It
is the consequence of living, seeing, analyzing and doing. Knowledge is the
reward of errors and mistakes. Knowledge is the derivative of failure and then
of success.
As I said before, some people try to describe God as
though he were the greatest baseball pitcher in the universe. But they do not
allow him either a catcher or batter (much less do they allow him a team). Now
be sensible. No super being could develop in a vacuum. We must grant
development to our super being. Such a grant demands that there be other beings
with which to interact. So we are forced to accept that there is not just one
super being, but there must be at least a family of them.
However, we are only talking about the super, super
being, the old man if you will, the head honcho. We will call this super being,
God.
Alfred Whitehead's "Process Theology"
demonstrates that God (our super being) cannot actually see the future. The
reason is that man has free will (as does all intelligence) and thus, even God
could only guess what decisions man will make when faced with any given
situation.
In order to better understand free will, we need to
divide the concept of prophecy into its component parts. There are two different
concepts, both of which we call prophecy. Sorry, it is just one of the failures
of our English language.
First, there is the concept of calculation,
which some insist on calling prophecy. If a fuse burns at one foot every thirty
seconds and we have sixty feet of fuse, we can prophesy when the blast will
occur, (unless there is a wet spot under the fuse). That is calculation. IF
we have super intelligence, super knowledge and super instrumentation, we can
calculate about when the San Andrea Fault will rupture. If we have super
knowledge and super instrumentation, we can calculate (prophesy) when the next
asteroid will hit the earth. In other words, there are many events, which a
super intelligence could divulge to man, and man would call that prophecy. But,
in fact, that is calculation. That is seeing the future only from the standpoint
of what is known now and projecting that curve of knowledge into the future. It
is not SEEING the future. That is CALCULATING the future.
Look at the San Andrea Fault. There must be
thousands of things that must be taken into consideration. The rain, the snow,
the temperature, the highs and lows of the atmosphere, the ocean swells, the
pull of the sun, moon and other bodies, the electrical interaction of heavenly
bodies, the building or releasing of pressure in the near by faults, removal of
underground oil and water, underground explosions, motion of the continental
plates, magnetic fluctuations, movement of the deep magma, strength of the
rocks, the build up of heat in the deep earth, and hundreds of other affecters
must be considered. And let us not forget man's ever grinding bulldozers.
The point here is, that even a super being could
only be general about when the trouble will come. Why? Because even nature
seems to have some interconnected toss of the dice, which speeds events up or
slows them down. Or, maybe some unknown or unforeseen events can even cause a
failure in the fulfillment of the calculation. Sometimes a wet spot puts out
the fuse.
The second concept of prophecy is that of actually SEEING
the future. By seeing, I mean actually seeing some event before it happens, not
by calculation, but by some super being, or some super process, introducing the
vision or the seeing. Now if man does have free will, no one, not even a super
being or God, can SEE the future. He can calculate the future and most likely
be right, but he cannot SEE the future.
If any super being, or God,
could SEE the future, then man does NOT have free will.
Now read that again!
SEEING the future means that the future is already
determined. It cannot be changed. Suppose there were no free will for mankind
and you were a seer one thousand years ago. Your super intelligent hobby was
just to sit and actually watch the future. Could you applaud the good
characters and boo the bad characters like Hitler? No indeed. It would be like
watching a stage play. You would applaud the villain as loudly as the hero,
especially if he played his part in superb fashion. The players on earth's
stage would simply be actors following the script written for them. That is
what it means to SEE the future. Neither Whitehead, nor I, agrees with that.
As habit driven as man is, he still does not always
follow his own set patterns of activity. Sometimes there are wet spots in men's
lives. Sometimes, there are wet spots in the responses of society to
difficulties, to trouble and even to their religious beliefs. This book may be
your wet spot.
So, either man has free will and no one can SEE the
future, or someone CAN see the future, and therefore, man does NOT have free
will. Is the future determined by what should happen (what is calculated)? Or,
is the future determined in advance and man is just an actor on earth's stage?
Maybe the future is merely determined by events if and only when those events
actually DO happen.
Finally, we have set our stage so we can
intelligently discuss free will and prophecy. What are some of the elements we
must consider when we think about the CLAIMS of prophecy? We must think of
super beings, Gods, aliens, brain tumors, insanity, past and present knowledge,
subconscious, science, belief, hypnotism, delusions, prevarications, illusions
of grandeur, profits, hoaxes, and with all of this we must even include onions
and hot peppers for supper. Then we must add fevers, traumas, tragedies and
leaving out many others, we must also include religion.
Surely, you didn't think this was going to be
simple.
It has rightly been said that the proof of the
pudding is in the eating. But, you cannot eat prophecy. Most prophecy cannot be
understood until after it happens - or does not happen. Almost all
specific prophecies never happen, unless of course, it is based on calculations
and it does not hit a wet spot.
Here is a prophecy for you, which you can deposit in
the bank. And you can quote me on this because there is no way it can be false.
It was revealed to me by an ancient, crossed wired Greek. I take absolutely no
credit for it.
"The Republicans, the
Democrats shall defeat."
Now that is a prophecy that will make the
Republicans very happy. It is a prophecy, which will also make the Democrats
very happy. Why? Because each will read it to suit their own ideas, their own
ambitions and their own beliefs.
Why is prophecy so hard to understand, so confusing
and so hard to arrive and agree on a solution as to what the prophecy
really says? I will answer that for you. It is because prophecy is so hard to
understand, so confusing and so hard to arrive and agree on a solution
as to what the prophecy really says. Now do you understand? Did I clear that
up?
Don't laugh! You have just been exposed to the
concept of prophecy as it is used by religious believers, spiritualist
believers and believers in man's lack of free will. Religious believers long
ago found out that the only prophecies that were of value to them were those,
which could be bent, contorted and reshaped to suit their preconceived ideas of
what the prophecy SHOULD say.
I am becoming more and more amazed at what the
geneticists are finding out about the control which our genes and DNA has over
our health, our life span, our intellect, our likes and dislikes, our strength,
our organs of the body, our coordination, our development, our ability to
digest certain foods and to reject others, our sexual drives, and on and on
they go. New evidence is found every day that seems to take away a little bit
more of our free will. Are we really just actors on the stage of life? Are our
decisions preprogrammed into us?
But, as I look at these things more closely, I find
in them knowledge which can make man more free. This knowledge can be
used, and IS being used, to make man LESS dependent on his genes and DNA, more
in charge of his own future, and more able to change the calculations
(prophecies) of his future.
Have you ever tried to analyze why you chose the
blue car instead of the red one? Or, bought this brand of peas instead of that
one? Have you ever figured why you put your money in this bank instead of that
one? Have you ever wondered why you chose to read this book and not that one?
Have you ever wondered why you chose to believe one religion and not another?
Have you ever wondered why some people are Atheists and some are Baptists? Have
you ever wondered if you were born in Africa what your religion would be? And
what prophecies you would hear? Have you ever wondered why some people are
professors and some people are clerks? Of course not.
What I am saying here is, some people do NOT use
their free will to make intelligent and useful decisions. While
other people DO use their free will to make wise and intelligent decisions for
their own advantage (and for the advantage of mankind). Wise use of free will
is not automatic. It is a mental CHOICE, and you must make it. You get stopped
by the police. He asks if you have a driver's license. You say you do. He asks
to see your license. You say it is at home. My friend, you DO NOT have a license
as far as that policeman is concerned. And it is the same with free will. Use
it or lose it!
To the person who uses his free will wisely and to
his advantage, all of life is a wet spot. To a person who does not use his free
will wisely, the fuse burns on. Free will is only the property of those who
have learned to think, to honestly doubt the molds that others say we should
pack ourselves into. Wise free will use is hard work. Wise free will demands
that we learn to evaluate the claims fostered daily upon us by government,
religion, business and a host of others. The wise use of free will is like
swimming up stream. The wise use of free will can change outcomes and make any
prophecy into a falsehood, calculated or not. But, FREE WILL IS NOT FREE. It is
hard work!
Wise use of free will is a hard job, an occupation.
Wise use of free will needs hard won knowledge. Knowledge takes hard honest
studying. Science is wise free will at work. Cancer cures take wise free will
to discover. Wise use of free will takes hard honest thinking and beyond all
that, it takes COURAGE. The wise use of free will is one of the most unpopular
concepts known to man. It puts a man in a most unpopular minority. It brings
ridicule and hostility from those who believe a God can SEE the future. It also
brings fear to those who do not yet understand, who do not wisely use their own
free will, who have not yet learned to separate fact from fiction - who believe
instead of thinking.
The wise use of free will makes a person different.
He does not follow the popular and the easy. He does not listen to, "It
can't be done." He does not follow unbelievable claims. The wise exercise
of free will makes a person, or a nation, carve out their own destiny. He
follows the true, the honest and the right way - the way of knowledge. Wise
free will pays attention to the calculated, but it pays NO attention to those
who claim to SEE the future. Why? Because he wisely uses his free will. He can
separate fact from fiction, the true from the false. He has become a true man,
as (hopefully) will be the future of all mankind.
Now, a carefully calculated true prophecy may apply
to those who do not develop wise use of free will in their lives. But, even if
the prophecy comes from a super being and may apply to those who do not wisely
exercise their free will, it does not have to apply to you. If you are worried
about the prophecy (calculation) of the San Andrea Fault rupturing, then move.
Use your free will. Use your head. Think! After all, that is what free will is.
It is learning to think honestly and clearly about all the various claims made
by prophets, religions, governments, business and such. Then it is having the
COURAGE to act upon that honest thinking. That is, one should make some wise
free will decisions to skirt known traps, dangers and unbelievable (or
believable) claims.
Wise free will is the activation of honest thought
and honest action in our lives. Wise free will demands knowledge, and knowledge
demands honest studying and experimentation to find it. The wise use of free
will demands that we find out the truth about those proclamations, promises and
prophecies which daily bombard us. Wise free will limits believability. In
other words, the more you know, the less you can believe. And after all, is
prophecy not just a CLAIM that someone says happened in their heads. Is it not
just a claim, which one can only believe or doubt? And is it not the wise use
of honest doubt that protects us from con artist, liars, politicians, prophets
and preachers?
SEEING the future is a falsehood. Because of free
will, SEEING the future cannot happen. Calculating the future may be true. But,
the wise use of free will can turn true calculations into a tool, which we can
use to better determine our own destiny (and our national destiny).
It may be a fine time, right now, to realize that we
need some wise use of our own free will. We need to bring crime, drugs, world
tensions, religious beliefs, hostility, government excesses, education and a
host of other evils under the control of our WISE FREE WILL. These evils do
have calculated results, and the results are gruesome to contemplate. If we
wish to carve out a better national destiny, we better get started - and soon!
Prophecy is a terror only to those people and
nations who left their free will, and their honest knowledgeable doubt - at
home.
Copyright 1999 Thomas E.
Blaylock, Jr.