Will Power
We all are blessed with free will; yet this does not grant us happiness unless we also have faith in God.
The debate between faith and reason is in many ways the decisive battleground in the debate between theism and atheism. This is because most defenses of theism appeal to the inadequacy of reason. Typically these defenses will take the form of claiming that there are appropriate spheres for reason, and appropriate spheres for faith, and that belief in God comes from recognizing the appropriate role for faith and the associated "limitation" of reason. Some theists argue that one can believe in God using both faith and reason. Once again, we should define our terms.[1]
Faith means that one considers a certain claim (e.g., "God exists") to be actual knowledge, absolutely certain knowledge. This claim to certainty is held in the absence of adequate evidence, or in direct contradiction to the evidence. Evidence is considered relevant only in so far as it supports the proposition; and irrelevant or inadequate to the extent that it does not support the proposition.
"Faith" has multiple usages, and often in debates the meaning shifts. For example, a theist might state that an atheist has "faith" too. For example, the atheist has "faith" that the sun will come up tomorrow or that the airplane one is about to get into won't go down in flames. Clearly, this is not the same sense of the word that theists use when they say that they have "faith" that God exists. For example, one can be virtually certain that the sun will come up tomorrow, and this comes from evidence analogous to a repeatable experiment: everyday the sun has come up. Of course, it is not certain; an unanticipated event like the sun exploding could force us to revisit our expectations. The airplane example is yet another case of reasonable expectations based on historical evidence, and the (fortunately rare) exceptions are clear reasons why we can never be absolutely certain when boarding a plane. The theist, however, is absolutely certain that God exists, absolutely certain that no future evidence will appear that would change his or her mind.
"Reason" means the application of logical principles to the available evidence. While the principles of reason / logic are certain, the conclusions one obtains from them are only as certain as the underlying assumptions, which is why science is rarely, if ever, absolutely certain (though in many cases, its theories are certain to a very high degree of probability). In fact, scientific theories are rarely "deduced," but are, instead, "inferred"; that is, they are based on inductive logic, or generalizing from specific examples. The "inferred" theory, if it is any good, will make independently testable predictions, and will explain a range of phenomena that had seemed unrelated before. When multiple, independent tests corroborate a theory, it can, just from a statistical standpoint, become virtually certain. [2]
The critical point here is that while almost nothing is certain, everything is not equally uncertain. Our theories can be ranked by the evidence supporting them, and our degree of "belief" should be similarly ranked; that is, we "believe" in proportion to the evidence--all the way from "completely unsubstantiated" to "some possibility" to "virtually certain." Compare, for example, the theory that leprechauns really do exist with the Germ Theory of Disease. Neither one is certain, but one is far closer to being certain than the other.
I stated that the principles of logic are "certain." This touches on a particularly important part of the faith vs. reason debate. Often, the advocate of faith will say, "But you can't prove the truth of logic, so you must have "faith" in it--just as I have faith in God." This critique of reason brings to mind the story of the child who keeps asking "why?" to every answer offered by the parent. Of course, this infinite regress of cause and effect cannot go on forever. To understand when to stop asking "why?" is to understand a begin to understand the nature of concepts. Concepts do not exist in a vacuum. With one class of exceptions, concepts derive their meaning from some immediately ancestral set of concepts and can retain their meaning only within that context. You hit "bedrock" when you reach the so-called axiomatic concepts, which are irreducible, primary facts of reality -- our "percepts." These percepts form the foundation upon which we build our concepts. How do you know when you've finally hit these primary facts of reality in the long string of why's? You know -- and this is critically important -- when there is no way to deny them, or even to question them, without presupposing that they are, in fact, true. To deny them or to even question whether they are true is to literally utter a contradiction.
This "bedrock" test is very specific. Let's illustrate it with an example. Suppose I say, "Logic is an arbitrary human invention and could be wrong." Well, if it is wrong, then the Law of Contradiction (a thing cannot be itself and its negation at the same time and in the same respect) and the related Law of Identity (a thing is itself) are wrong; but then that means the very words that make up my original claim, such as, "Logic is arbitrary" could mean "Logic is not arbitrary" or it could mean both at the same time and in the same respect. In fact, it could mean "I like chunky peanut butter." If all that sounds crazy and unintelligible, that is because it is, as are all utterances when the truth of logical principles cannot be assumed . The point here is that without the assumed truth of logic, language itself becomes impossible. So the contradiction is this: For my original statement to have any meaning at all, logic has to be true, but the content of my original statement questions that truth: a self-contradiction. Logic, then, is not accepted on "faith" but as a necessary, self-evident truth, something that is required to speak or think at all. The same can be shown for the concepts of existence, consciousness, and the reliability of our senses. Again, there is no way to talk about any of these things being possibly untrue without first requiring them (implicitly) to be necessarily true.
In life one is exposed to claim after claim (Aliens, Heaven's Gate, Pyramid Power, ESP, etc). What criteria do we apply in separating claims that correspond better with reality from others that do not? To use an earlier example, how do we decide that the Leprechaun theory should not be taken just as seriously as the Germ Theory of Disease? The answer is that we know by applying the standard of reason. If faith were a viable alternative to reason, then what are its rules? How do we know when to apply it? How do we know when someone has misapplied it? How can we tell the difference between the effects of faith and the effects of inadvertent, though well-meaning, self-delusion? Indeed, how can we test its validity?
Let's illustrate this problem. A member of Christian sect X believes that all other sects are damned, and she says that she knows this through faith. The person she is talking to is a member of sect Y that believes only sect Y is one true faith, and that all others are damned, including members of sect X--and, of course, she knows this through faith. Clearly they both cannot be right. The member of sect Y asks the member of sect X how she knows that she is not really just hearing the deceitful voice of Satan leading her down a false path. To that our sect X member confidently replies, "I know that through faith as well." Not surprisingly, these are the same answers given by the member of sect Y to exactly the same questions regarding her confidence in the truth of sect Y. There is no independently validated method to resolve this. If reason is not the standard, then there literally is no standard, and people who abandon it have simply written themselves a blank check to believe whatever they choose. Cloaking this irrationalism with comfortable terms like "faith" does not make it any less irratioal. As John A. T. Robinson once put it: "The only alternatives to thinking with reason are thinking unreasonably and not thinking." [3]
http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/reasonvfaith.htm
To further make more clear the study of faith and reason, we need to recall what Acquinas and Scotus taught.
Faith and ReasonWe also need to recall what Locke taught about prior knowledge.
Faith is a special case (iv 16.14). At one point Locke defines it in terms of revelation from God.(5) Faith is "a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and leaves no manner of room for doubt or hesitation." But there is an irony in this apparently quite positive definition of faith. You can have such faith only if your assent is a response to testimony received from God himself, i.e., through revelation. God himself does not lie. For, in Locke's view, it is a self-evident truth that God, if He exists, is good (p. 667.25-26). And Locke believes that we can prove that God does exist (see iv 10).
The big question for Locke is this: how do we know that a testimony, which claims to be from God, is in fact from God? "Our assent can rationally be no higher than the evidence of its being a revelation, and that this is the meaning of the expressions it is delivered in" (iv 16.14). In other words, we have a duty to check the credentials of someone who or something which claims to bring a revelation from God and to ask how sure we are that we have the right interpretation of it.
Locke next defines reason and distinguishes it from faith: Reason, he says, is
the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths which the mind arrives at by deductions [inferences] made from such ideas which it has got by use of its natural faculties, viz. by sensation and reflection (iv 18.2).
Thus reason is concerned with the three degrees of knowledge discussed earlier and the most probable kinds of judgments. In contrast to reason, faith is said to be assent to a proposition not on the basis of reason but on the authority of the proposer as coming from God in some extraordinary way. Such extraordinary communication is called revelation.
Revelation is of two types. Original revelation is "that first impression, which is made immediately by God, on the mind of any man." Traditional revelation is "those impressions delivered over to others in words and the ordinary ways of conveying our conceptions one to another" (iv 18.3). A prophet might hear God directly by original revelation but when he writes it down or tells another person, that's derivative, or traditional, revelation.
Derivative revelation is handicapped in a number of ways: The farther removed from its original source, the greater the danger that it has been corrupted in transmission. The more unfamiliar the language in which it is originally expressed, the greater the likelihood that it will be misinterpreted. Moreover, traditional revelation cannot communicate to us any simple idea which we have not already received through the senses. (Thus, if I have never experienced the color red or the taste salty, this idea cannot be revealed to me by traditional revelation; though it could by original revelation.) Nor can traditional revelation give us any new complex idea whose understanding relies upon simple ideas for which we lack experience (iv 18.3).
Now, some truths might be conveyed by revelation that could also be discovered by reason. If God so chose, He could directly reveal mathematical truths to us and these could then be conveyed from person to person by means of language. Yet we can never be as certain about truths received in this way as we could if we reasoned them out ourselves and had strict deductive proof for them. When we have such proof, we have no need for revelation.
Reason gives us more certainty than faith, Locke holds, and it should be given more weight than revelation when the self-evident claims of reason clash with statements that supposedly come from revelation. Locke thinks it is a psychological fact that "faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts our knowledge" (p. 692).
What things may be accepted on faith?
(i) Things about which reason is incompetent to decide ("things above reason") such as whether the dead shall be resurrected (iv 18.7);
(ii) Some things contrary to the probable conjectures of reason (iv 18.8).
http://www.sullivan-county.com/id2/locke_reason.htm
There are many ways we can learn how faith and reason promotes will power. The popular leaders can also provide us with knowledge to build greater will power.
INNER VISION
WILL POWER - HEAVENLY GIFT, EARTHLY TEST
by John Van Auken
Will, free will, is God's gift to us. In Deuteronomy 30 God states the Earthly situation for us: "I set before thee this day, life and death, blessing and curse, choose thou." It also says: "I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments...." Here is the solution to the dilemma of the two wills, ours and God's: God has set the correct way through his commandments, and we are to use our wills to obey them and love God. Today individual freedom and independent decision-making are the ideals. Obeying is not held in high regard. It's the American way. Yet, even the freedom and independence of the American way calls for lawfulness, moral appropriateness, and consideration for others; in other words, free will within the context of cooperation, decency, and order.
According to the Cayce readings, the Book of Job was written by the high priest Melchizedek, the King of Salem (King of Peace, predecessor to the Prince of Peace), as a guide to all incarnate souls concerning Earth life. The Book of Job presents Earth as a realm of testing, of meeting oneself (soul self) and one's karma, to see if we curse God, as Satan said we would, or seek out God's companionship to better understand why life is the way it is. In the end, Job did not curse God but sought Him out. The two grew to know each other, and all that Job had lost in the test was restored to him, a hundredfold.
This life is a test of our will. Set before us are all manner of opportunities and challenges. We are to choose the best course according to our heart's desire. And that is exactly why the test exists: to determine the true motivation of our hearts. Are we self-centered, self-gratifying, self-glorifying, or cooperative parts of the Whole, God, and all of the creation? Through our choices we reveal our hearts.
Now some appear to be living without making choices. They just roll with the circumstances of life. Whatever comes along, takes them along, with little thought as to the consequences. It is important to set an ideal, a standard by which we guide our decision making. Among the many directives given by Edgar Cayce's attunement to the Universal Consciousness, setting an ideal was number one. Allowing life to carry us in whatever direction it is flowing is not the way of a child of God, whose destiny is to be one with God as a co-creator and companion.
Even with an ideal, the choices are rarely as clear as good or evil. They are often ambiguous. Here the guiding principle for making a choice is love. Whichever choice brings more love to others and to our hearts is most likely the better choice. The greatest commandment, greater than all the laws and prophets, is to love God with all our being and others as ourselves.
Of course, there are laws and realities that can make the loving choice difficult or even impossible. For example, if Jesus so loved us, why did he go away? Wouldn't the more loving choice have been to follow Judas' way, to overthrow Rome, liberate Jerusalem, and raise all of us into paradise? From outward appearances it seemed so, but from inner truth it was not. As Jesus explained to Peter when he said those hard words, "Get thee behind me Satan," we often become stumbling blocks to ourselves and others, because we want to do things the way they appear best to man from a physical, material perspective. But we must learn to see life's decisions from a godly, spiritual perspective -- the way God sees them. This requires more than book knowledge, more than good intentions. It requires a conscious sense of God's guidance in our lives.
Despite the difficulties, getting in touch with God is key to realizing our full potential and purpose for existence. In order to be a companion, we have to have a relationship. To have a relationship, we have to have communication. Is communication with God the same as communication with others? Is God individual or universal? Is God finite or infinite? Obviously, communicating with a universal, infinite consciousness is not the same as communicating with an individual, finite one. This is evidenced by the way Edgar Cayce got his information. He subdued his individual, finite self and attuned himself to the universal, infinite consciousness, the mind of God. Through his efforts we've learned that we can all do this, and we all should do it. God still speaks to those who will listen. It is not a thing of the ancient past and the Old Testament.
Yet, many crimes have been committed in the name of God's guidance. This is why the laws and commandments were laid out for us, to give us a reference point from which to measure guidance. The ten commandments and the "love God and one another" precepts are the best touchstones by which to measure guidance. Jesus told us to judge by the fruits; evil fruits do not come from good sources. If the actions and thoughts resulting from our inner guidance make us better people, then it is of God and fits well with the commandments and laws.
Jesus left because that was best for all of us. As he said, "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there you may be also. But I will not leave you comfort-less. I will send the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, and he shall guide you in all things." How many of us seek this Spirit of Truth and its comfort and guidance? And of those who have sought it, how many have returned to continue to develop the relationship and to improve the communication?
It's a matter of will; choosing to do so. In the midst of all of life's activities and options, it takes will power to budget time each day to attune oneself to the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, the Guide within -- God, our spiritual parent, who loves us and seeks our companionship. What is it that keeps us from seeking God's companionship in our lives? Self. Self's constant interest in its own things, its own ideas, its own desires. The only power capable of changing this is self's will. Using self's will to subdue self's will in order to attune to God's will is the great way to heavenly consciousness and eternal life.
Set before us is a whole day of our own activities or a budgeted time in which we use our will to attune ourselves to God's spirit and will. Choose. The curse God spoke of in Deuteronomy is life with only self's perspective. The blessing is life in cooperation with God's guidance, love, and companionship. As Elihu said to Job, "God speaks to us." Are we making time to hear? Dreams and deep meditation are two channels for hearing God.
http://edgarcayce.org/ps2/innervision_will_power_J_Van_Auken.html
Posted by philcutrara1
at 12:20 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 6 August 2004 2:43 PM EDT
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