Closer To Truth

Why Is Free Will A Mystery?

CONSCIOUSNESS -
Episode Synopsis
Our human sense is that our will is fully free. Our scientific sense is that every action is determined by a prior action. Free will versus determinism is a big question, affecting morality, responsibility, even consciousness.

Can Free Will Survive God's Foreknowledge?

MEANING - The tension between human free will and God’s knowledge of the future threatens both. It’s called God’s ‘foreknowledge’—God knowing now what will happen later—and one need not believe in God to appreciate the puzzles.

Does God's Knowledge Ruin Free Will?

CONSCIOUSNESS - Since God (supposedly) knows everything and can never be wrong, including about future events, how could those future events not come to pass? If we cannot do other than what God knew prior, how then free will?

If God Knows the Future, What is Free Will?

CONSCIOUSNESS - For God to be God, God must be infallible and know the future perfectly, including all my actions from birth to death. For my will to be free, my actions must not be constrained. But if God knows the future - if God literally knows now what I am going to do later - then how are my actions later not constrained? How then free will?

Arguing God with Analytic Philosophy

MEANING - I desire God to be real, so I know that the easiest person to fool is myself. That's why I favor rational arguments for, and against, the existence of a Supreme Creator.

Fallacies in Proving God Exists

MEANING - The more I want God to exist, the more I must question proofs of God's existence. "Bad arguments for God" scare me. Maybe all the "God Arguments" are bad? I hope not.

How To Think About God's Existence

MEANING - God exists? God does not exist? I find flaws and fallacies in both sides. So I step away from "arguments" about God and ask how to approach God's existence. What's the process?

What Is Ultimate Reality?

COSMOS - What’s the deepest nature of things? Our world is complex, filled with so much stuff. But down below, what's fundamental? Only the physical world? Or anything nonphysical?

What Things Are Real?

COSMOS - Is the physical world real? Or an expression of consciousness. Is consciousness real? Or an illusion? Is there a spirit world? Many dismiss anything other than the physical.

How Can Emergence Explain Reality?

COSMOS - Does ordinary stuff have mysterious properties? Take anything; find all its parts; combine those parts any way you like. What do you expect? Nothing at all like what you have. It's called "emergence" and it describes how wondrously our world works. But is it a real mystery?