Saturday, December 30, 2023

God's will, God's desire and free will

When people say "God's will" I think they generally mean God's desire. For example, humans are generally thought to have free will, in which case our life is lived according to our own will, not according to the will of a hypothesised supreme being. 

We may believe in a supreme being and we may also believe this being has a desire for us to live in harmony with love, for example. But the idea that a supreme being wills us to live a certain way makes no sense if we believe in free will. 

If we believe a creator made this reality then we could say that this reality is shaped according to the will of the creator. But we can't say that about our lives. We only will things that we can control. The things we cannot control we can only have a desire about. For example, we may desire another person to love us as we love them, but we can't will it. To repeat, we can only will things we control. And if we believe in free will then no creator controls us. That's the whole point of free will and it's something few people seem to understand.

No comments: