…made from the stuff of the world but not made by the world. Our body and mind are living organisms, which means they are a product of self-organization – NOT completely a product of the environment but also a product of their own choices. The laws of nature are not causally closed. They may describe what things are but cannot completely explain why events go one way rather than another way. This is a consequence of the failure of Bell’s inequality in quantum physics and the butterfly effect in chaotic dynamics.
So as you see I reject your second premise, that the “body’s action are caused by the world.” God created the universe to support life. And living things are a product of their own choices and neither “caused by the world” nor caused by some design of God. Freedom of will is the whole point of God’s creation of a physical universe.
You may be happy with simply extending determinism to spiritual causes and think it is sufficient to make us “valuable to God” that we are a product of His design. But that only gives us the value of artwork, characters in novel, and machines for the clever designer to be proud of. But such a watchmaker God of the Deists does not interest me, and does not reflect the highest of values which are found in love and relationships. I think it is love relationships which God values rather than mere intelligent design which even computers are capable and I think even excel at. Looking for God in design and intelligence is looking far too low on the scale of things.
This is an interesting topic and perhaps not so simple as many think. Or maybe it is very simple and my mind has not yet figured it right.
So, our body is ‘temporary’ because it is mortal, functioning stardust that disintegrates. Yet, God claimed it is ‘good’ so it must be valuable in the eyes of God (eyes = anthropomorphism).
What happens when our mortal body dies, before we get the resurrection body?
I have heard two kinds of teaching from persons I respect.
The more classic(?) teaching is that some part of us lives and experiences life also during the period when we do not have a body. It would be soul/spirit. Usually people speak about the soul but that leaves the question: what happens to our spirit, assuming that we are body-soul-spirit? Is there only {soul-spirit}, instead of separate soul and spirit?
Whatever the soul/spirit is, it would experience good (paradise etc) or bad (hades etc) straight after dead, before the resurrection. In that sense, it would be a separate entity in us although we now function as a whole.
Another explanation is that we are a whole entity called human. There is no separate soul-spirit entity that would continue life straight after our death. The time period between the death and resurrection is just some sort of blackness, we go to sleep and wake when we get the resurrection body. This explanation avoids the problems associated with the idea that we are separate body, soul and spirit. The weakness is that it seems to contradict traditional interpretations about what happens immediately after our death.
There are also other kind of ideas (hypotheses). At the moment, I am not fully sure which hypothesis is the most correct one. I guess I just have to wait and see.
Related to all this speculation of how spirituality or embodied natures may or may not be related to each other, I found this interview with Timothy Gombis on the Holy Post podcast (Phil Vischer) to be provocative and thoughtful. A lot of Christians won’t be able to “sign off” on everything Gombis says, but on the other hand … that means those same Christians won’t be able to sign off on everything the Bible teaches either! Gombis’ reactions to this (what so many of us claim to be living for) deserves a hearing because in the end … it may be our own traditionally passed-along views that end up being in want of a scriptural defense!
I listened the interview. For me, it showed how trying to condense everything to few sentences easily leads to a one-sided message that lifts up one crucial point but necessarily leaves much out. Timothy Gombis was put into a difficult situation by forcing him to condense everything to a very short statement, without time to think how to say it.
It was a challenge to him but also a challenge to the listener. Hopefully opened many eyes to see how we need to rethink our interpretations by going through the question: what did the Bible actually tell?
Self organization which was created by environment still seems like a product of environment, and yeah, we have some randomness there so we are kinda unpredictable, but randomness is not free will, I still don’t see a choice there.
Which how I see soul, Quantum Physics could be backdoor for a soul to make those choices, but if it doesn’t exist then we are left with randomness which is not us, world which is not us and maybe possible God’s influence which is also not us.
What’s else there? I still don’t see it.
I would never believe in God that plays with dolls. So I guess we agree here, relationship is what God is after.
But yeah, this discussion went in different direction than what the post was about so that’s a stop for me. I will read those discussions you shared instead.
No. It is allowed by the environment. The organization which follows is not a product of environmental conditions so it is not created by the environment.
Disagree. It is free will because we own them. If you accept the result then they are yours. You cannot avoid responsibility by passively watching something when you could in fact have done something.
Actions as a result of some pre-existent “soul” is not free will. That just puts all the responsibility back on whoever created this so called “soul.” You don’t magically get free will just by saying the word “soul” or “spirit.” Quite the contrary, I think free will is the whole point of the physical universe – a system that operates according to independent mathematical space-time laws rather than the whim of some deity.
Besides, this non-physical puppet master idea of souls controlling bodies does not agree with the scientific findings.
Thus I believe in the spirit which accepts and is thus created by the choices of the physical self-organizing process. The free will is already there in the physical processes and not something added by something non-physical.
Randomness is just what free will looks like when you insist on time-ordered causality according to which free will is an incoherent idea. But there is no reason to accept this limitation to time-ordered causality. Free will means we become the cause of our actions, choosing not only the actions but also the person we become. Does someone steal because they are a thief, or are they a thief because they steal? They choose to be a thief when they choose to be a person who steals.