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An interesting test of "Free Will".

It occurred to me that an interesting test of free will would test the "will". I propose this test.

Believe, for an entire day, in God.

I have these questions after you have completed the test:
Can you do it?
How is this test flawed?
What, if anything, does it prove?
How would you modify the test?
What other questions should we be asking about this test?

Tags: free will, belief, psychology

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Permalink Reply by Gila Guerilla on August 12, 2011 at 11:26pm

What we can will ourselves to do certainly isn't free, at least it is not without limits. I feel reasonably sure that we would all like to be what we are not in some way, small or large. I'd like to be more friendly, more tolerant, perhaps able to sing (better), to be able to play guitar like Mark Knopfler or Eric Clapton, blah, bah, blah. Anyway, these desires I cannot will into existence. No matter how much I practice guitar, I never come any where near their level. What we can will ourselves to do, certainly is limited.

The argument that evil must exist, and that we must have freewill in order to get a ticket into heaven just doesn't wash. If a god made the universe, and that god wanted us all to be lovely palsy-walsy friends together, (or whatever), the god could have made us all behave that way by our very natures. Being like that would only be a change in the limits of so-called free will. If we MUST HAVE FREEWILL for theology to be true, then it fails, because, (and I repeat): what we can will ourselves to do is not free, it's limited.