Updated: 10/30/04
 
 
 

FREE WILL

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.

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Copyright 1999 Thomas E. Blaylock, Jr.

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