There's 'free will' and there's 'free won't'

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GEORGE TEMPLETON: COMMENTARY Faithful“Just as some food is good to eat, some ideas are goodto think”.  Our ideas are framed by big eternal questions. What is knowledge belief, and faith?  KnowledgeTrue knowledge is more than factual.  It includesexplanation.  Not all facts are the same.  There are different types.
Historical FactHistory relies upon interpretations of cultural,sociological, and political data and can be revised.  The web site“Conservapedia” reveals a ministry of the truth, preaching NewtGingrich and right-wing, think-tank ideology targeting school books to teachintelligent design as science, refute Einstein’s relativity, and claim aChristian Constitution.  Lengthy arguments are impressive but withoutmerit when they build upon a false and deliberately distorted foundation thatthe recognized academic community disagrees with.
Mathematical FactWe are all born with an unconscious knowledge of the principleof identity.  We don’t learn it from our experiences.  We takefor granted that circumference equals Pi times diameter but Pi never comes outeven regardless of the number of digits – at least so far.  So, the relationshipseems only approximate, appearing to be a tool for converting between the worldof linearity and the world of curvature.
Common sense sees only three dimensions and easily visualizesonly two.  Math is a tool helping to understand the multidimensionality ofreality.
We don’t know if math was discovered or created.  Wedon’t know if all problems are solvable.  Some are explosivelycomplex and intractable.   Heisenberg’s 1926 uncertaintyprincipal set a limit to simultaneous knowledge of motion and location.  
Machines that can reason and have feelings become theoretically possible if astrategy exists that can efficiently solve all problems.   However,God may have created a universe that humans cannot completely know. 
Scientific FactScientific facts are always uncertain, inexact, subject tomeasurement, testing, confirmation, revision, correction, and improvement. Science corrects itself and consequently is subject to cherry-picking by thefaithful who do not understand the broad sweeping consequences of their denialof fact.  It only takes a single confirmed example to revise science. All the pieces of the puzzle, from related disciplines must fit.  Sciencerequires a correspondence principal such that the new creation encompasses andexplains the old.
Science is more than measurement and testing. It’s human explanation.  There is an element of faith in that and inthe questions that are asked.   Science cannot replace faith and itsuse of symbols and myths but faith must not take its symbols literally.
Thousands of years ago the earth was thought to be flat withwaters above and below the in-between sky.  The stars were affixed to a rigidhemisphere that rotated.  The earth was motionless, and the sun andheavenly bodies danced about it in unchanging perfection.  Religion andscience augmented, cooperated, and supported one another.  God was in theheavens and all was well until Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton upset this harmonywith their radical views of a reality that was not intuitive.  Earth wasnot central and stationary.
It was rejected by the Church, which convicted Galileo ofheresy in 1633 and did not remove his writings from their list of evilpublications until October 31, 1992! Galileo’s sin was describing whathis telescope revealed.
It was Newtonwho developed the explanation of gravity.  Gravity was everywhere,invading God’s perfect heaven and leaving little space for him.  Newton’s ideasexploded far beyond the simple equation about force, mass, andacceleration.  It implied the deterministic universe that Thomas Jeffersonbelieved in.  There was a God who created the universe, wound it up like aclock, and let it run.  If we could document initial conditions and forcesadequately, we could completely describe how the universe would evolve.  TheGod who altered the lives of great men and directed the course of history wasobsolete, replaced by clockwork.
Newtonian mechanics marked a widening gap between the worldof science and religion that the members of each discipline tried to reconcilewith increasing difficulty.  God couldn’t stop the sun at the battleof Jerichowithout the consequences of his very own laws.  State and Churchseparated.
The rift widened when experiments verified that time was nota river of constant flow.   Einstein’s past, present and futurewere all equally present just like length, width, and height.  Science hadto rely on philosophy to avoid the destruction of causality and the paradoxesof time travel.
Quantum mechanics revealed an uncertain universe whereSchrodinger’s cat could be simultaneously alive and dead, whereconsciousness made of mind, soul, and spirit could be fundamental universalquantities like energy and momentum.  Objective reality allowedinstantaneous action at a distance even perhaps to the other side of theuniverse, but the speed of light could not be made instantaneous to account fora six day creation of a 6000 year old universe without the consequences of thelaws of physics.
BeliefBelief is an opinion with little supporting evidence that isheld to be true.  It falls short of knowledge.  Because the humanmind possesses belief, it is always personal.  Belief can be undercut atany moment by new findings or mere opinion.  No command or will to believecan create faith.
Robert Ornstein, in his 1991 book Evolution of Consciousness, explains how our choices areimpulsive and made subconsciously, long before we even realize it.
Michal Shermer, in his August 2012 Scientific Americancolumn, explains how free will is an illusion.  Allowing time forcontemplation, rationality can prevent impulsive behavior.  This is called“free won’t”.  Sexual abstinence is freewon’t.  “Free won’t” preserves human volition.
Our senses are accomplices in our perceptions, but they arelimited as is our access to and understanding about the strength offacts.  Our perceptions are our world-view or what we choose to payattention to.  Emotions make conclusions before contemplation has achance.  Arguments then justify those premature conclusions instead ofevaluating alternatives.
When we know we are right, why should we seek alternatives orpay attention to anyone else?  A limited perception does not promote abalanced view.  Unfortunately, critique is not always constructive becauseit implies the superiority of the inquisitor and his ideas.
Our beliefs depend on how we think.  Rational reasoningrequires more effort than intuitive awareness.  Confirmation bias createsand validates its own knowledge, hinders openness and critical examination, andmakes urban mythology doubtless.
Propaganda misrepresents, deceives, and manipulates beliefusing distortion and lies.  Society rewards winning more than how the gameis played, but science claims that our evolution is more than a random cosmicray and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “red in tooth and claw”. It is snuggle, struggle, adaptation, and cooperation.
The organization, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, daysbefore the election, claimed that the Judeo-Christian ethic, responsible for America’sgreatness, is being destroyed by President Obama.  Is it more than gaymarriage and Obamacare?
FaithIn his 1957 book, Dynamicsof Faith, Paul Tillich sees faith as the most centered act of thehuman mind, an act of the personality as a whole, and a matter of freedom. He defines faith as ultimate concern.  It is artistic creation, scientificknowledge, ethical formation, and political organization.  It is“what ought to be”.  It would be harmless were it onlyfeelings.
Faith imposes its own facts, truth, and beliefs, but a faithwhich destroys reason destroys itself.  If faith were the opposite ofreason it would dehumanize man.
The truth of faith is different than the truth of science andhistory.  The truth of faith can neither be confirmed nor denied byscience.  Science should not try to interfere with faith and faith mustnot repress science.  Anthropology does not shake faith when it fails toconfirm the forty years wandering in the desert following the Exodus.  Thecriterion for the truth of faith is whether it still lives in society.  Noman or church owns the infallible truth of faith.
Faith contains an element of uncertainty, doubt, andthe courage to accept and live with that.  Faith is not a belief thatsomething is true, because doubt would be impossible.  Faith cannotguarantee factual truth though it has to interpret the meaning of facts. Faith is not an unconstrained relativism, acceptance, adaptation, or tolerance. The passionate fanatical defense of dogma and political ideology will notproduce the acts of love that come from ultimate concern.
Faith is not a lack of evidence compensated by an act ofwill.  It is not unquestioning surrender to infallible authorities.   Itdoes not depend on the literal historical validity of Bible stories or otherfacts, but is now and points toward the future.  Faith rests upon symbolicmythical ritual and is intuitive and active.  It is conscious, true andecstatic.  Without faith, morality degenerates into a socialadaptation.  Humanists have faith, though it is faith in man instead ofGod.  Symbols of faith go beyond the Cross to include the American Flagand Constitution.  To make sacred that which is less than ultimate isidolatry.
A representative of the Church claimed in a radio programthat birth control causes abortion and sexually transmitted diseases such asAIDs.  The sin of birth control does not reduce the sin ofabortion.    It was an effective argument, targeted to thegeneral public, against our president’s re-election.  No justificationfor this claim was given.  Common sense argues that birth control preventspregnancy and therefore reduces abortion.  Emotion should not be enough toconvince us.
HonestlyPoliticians who misspeak do so without consciousattention.  When they take back their words they deny their soul.  Iftheir views are a matter of faith, we should respect them and not call them disgusting. What we should question is whether beliefs are ultimate concern, or justpreliminary and whether they have been adequately presented including both proand con.
Critical thinking surveys priorities, consequences,alternatives, and information sources, before making decisions.  Instead,our politics seems to think that it has a proprietary right to impose itstruth.  We must resist this for America’s sake.