Does God Value Free Will?
Horia George Plugaru writes for Talk Reason that there is a reason to think that perhaps free will wouldn’t have as much value to God as believers assume:
Human beings are so conceived that their proper functioning requires the daily abandon of FW [free will]. I am talking about the sleep period. Usually we sleep at least 5 hours per day (some doctors say the ideal sleep period is 7-8 hours per day). This means that a person who lives say, 50 years, sleeps during his life at least 90,000 hours. ... And so the question arises: if God values our FW so very much, why did he create us in such a way that for an important period of our lives we are forced to abandon our FW? In other words, if FW is so important from God's point of view, then why didn't he create us so that we would use our FW non-stop during our lives?
At first one might think that this is a rather trivial and childish argument, but I’m not so sure. Plugaru‘s general argument is that if anything is so valuable that it justifies the existence of extreme evil like the Holocaust, it seems implausible that there should be a reason to abandon it for significant portions of our lives. There is, I think, some merit to that. Apologists have to place a great deal of value on free will in order to make their case, but it seems quite indispensable.
There is another point which Plugaru doesn’t mention but helps his case. Sleep is needed for good health; therefore, temporary abandonment of free will is necessary and acceptable for the maintenance of good health. If that is the case, why not allow for the suspension free will to protect the health of others? If our bodies shut down and go to sleep against our will in order to keep us functioning right, why doesn’t our free will shut down against our will to prevent us from harming others?
It’s an interesting question.
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Comments
Have you ever considered sleep a point of restoration for the body. Have you ever considered that there is a fine balance between free will and predestination? Think of the millions of things that happen everyday that are in complete balance of each other. Too me life is always about balance - look at anything or anyone out of balance and what do you get? A destroyed body or a destroyed mind or destroyed spirit? I can’t understand why majority of people don’t see intelligent design behind this beautiful balance.