Free will

Is action free or determined, Spinoza argues that it is determined but there is a freedom of will in the doctrine of the conatus. This view rests on three metaphysical positions that Spinoza advocates for, namely immanent necessitarianism, reductive naturalism and monism. All that exists and has is and will happen is immanent and inevitably going to happen. This he argues is because nature is constructed by a free uncaused cause (that which has no external constraint). This uncaused cause…

In my argument, I am going to support Strawson’s claims and argue against Libertarians that it is not possible to be truly morally responsible for one’s actions even with this idea of indeterminacy. Libertarians specifically believe that our free will allows us to have true moral responsibility. In order to fully understand Strawson’s views and the views of those that counter him, we must revisit what his basic argument is. As human beings, we make specific choices and carry out actions the way…

The Book of Job probes the question of the problem of evil in the world. This book is one of the more philosophical books in the old testament. It has spiritual value, but it also has a universal philosophical value that touches on the problem of evil. The main character is Job who is an upstanding gentile man of his town. He has a family, a farm, and status in his town. One-day God and Satan are talking and Satan says Job only loves God because he is blessed with a good life. So as a challenge…

We as humans, believe that we are responsible for all the choices we make in life. Some might call it free will but many others might say our lives are determined completely by fate. Free will implies that we the people can do whatever we please and that we are free and uncontrolled. Fate is the idea that no matter what a person chooses to do, something in their lives is already inevitably about to happen. In A Prayer for Owen Meany, written by John Irving, the theme of fate is clearly evident.…

God informs Abraham that he would become “the father of many nations” and would receive a vast land (Genesis 17:5-8 NIV). The completion of this prophecy depended on Abraham's free decision to trust and have faith in God. Many free decisions would lead to his descendants leaving egypt, because Moses freely chose to trust and obey God (Exodus 3:18-4:17 NIV). Nowhere in these passages indicate that God forced these decisions, in fact Moses and God argued…

“problem of evil” and attempts to address the problem by explaining “specific evils and the amount of evil” (311). Several theories centered around this problem are described, such as the privation theory of evil, the therapy theory of evil, and the free-will defense. In the text it is explicitly stated that theists, and believers in God will not deny God’s omnipotence or omnibenevolence (311). Still, some solutions to the problem include the claims that God’s power may actually be limited and…

all-knowing and all-powerful. This is how God is portrayed throughout Paradise Lost, he is always able to stop Satan because he always has a plan. One plan by God that is seen in the text is the creation of humankind. He wants a new species, one with free will, not a creation that will follow God because they are programmed to, but because they believe it is the right thing to do. However, God seems upset at some of mankind’s choices when he says …[M]an disobeying, Disloyal, breaks his fealty,…

less relevant to the people. It has been pushed to the back of their minds and forgotten about. What do fill their minds are the technological advances of society. Berry sees this in himself; he sees how his life is being taken over by the society. To free his mind he went off into the woods where he took the time to escape his normal everyday life. He valued his time in solitude and it changed his mind set after the couple days he was there. He came to realize that people’s minds have become…

you face this extremely bad suffering; such as cancer than the other sufferings you face throughout life will seem good rather than the evil you experienced previously. Swinburne seeks to take the weight off of God’s shoulders by saying we have the free will to experience evil in most cases such as moral evil cases. Supposedly you can only torture a person for so long, until they won’t be tortured anymore after spending that time experiencing it. We can think about the Holocaust when this idea…

conclude that there is no such God that exists. There are many different arguments to justify why God allows evil in the world. None of them can fully explain why God allows evil, but can provide some doubt that God doesn’t exist. Free-Will Defense…