Is God a Taoist?
Refound a wonderful article I read a long time ago in Douglas Hofstadter's (of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame) and Daniel C. Dennett's collection of essays: "The Mind's I : Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul"
It is called "Is God a Taoist" by Raymond M. Smullyan (a math and logic expert). It is a dialogue between a mortal and God. And it is wonderful and full of great questions and non answers. Here's an excerpt on free will
- Mortal: And therefore, O God, I pray thee, if thou hast one ounce of mercy for this thy suffering creature, absolve me of having to have free will!
- God: You reject the greatest gift I have given thee?
Mortal: How can you call that which was forced on me a gift? I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not! - God: Why would you wish not to have free will?
*Mortal: Because free will means moral responsibility, and moral responsibility is more than I can bear! - God: Why do you find moral responsibility so unbearable?
- Mortal: Why? I honestly can't analyze why; all I know is that I do.
- God: All right, in that case suppose I absolve you from all moral responsibility but leave you still with free will. Will this be satisfactory?
- Mortal (after a pause): No, I am afraid not.
- God: Ah, just as I thought! So moral responsibility is not the only aspect of free will to which you object. What else about free will is bothering you?
- Mortal: With free will I am capable of sinning, and I don't want to sin!
- God: Why does the thought of your sinning frighten you?
- Mortal: I don't know why! For one thing, you do have a reputation for meting out rather gruesome punishments in the afterlife!
- God: Oh, that's what's bothering you! Why didn't you say so in the first place instead of all this peripheral talk about free will and responsibility? Why didn't you simply request me not to punish you for any of your sins?
- Mortal: I think I am realistic enough to know that you would hardly grant such a request!
- God: You don't say! You have a realistic knowledge of what requests I will grant, eh? Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do! I will grant you a very, very special dispensation to sin as much as you like, and I give you my divine word of honor that I will never punish you for it in the least. Agreed?
- Mortal (in great terror): No, no, don't do that!
- God: Why not? Don't you trust my divine word?
- Mortal: Of course I do! But don't you see, I don't want to sin! I have an utter abhorrence of sinning, quite apart from any punishments it may entail.
- God: In that case, I'll go you one better. I'll remove your abhorrence of sinning. Here is a magic pill! Just swallow it, and you will lose all abhorrence of sinning. You will joyfully and merrily sin away, you will have no regrets, no abhorrence and I still promise you will never be punished by me, or yourself, or by any source whatever. You will be blissful for all eternity. So here is the pill!
- Mortal: No, no!
- God: Are you not being irrational? I am even removing your abhorrence of sin, which is your last obstacle.
- Mortal: I still won't take it!
- God: Why not?
- Mortal: I believe that the pill will indeed remove my future abhorrence for sin, but my present abhorrence is enough to prevent me from being willing to take it.
- God: I command you to take it!
- Mortal: I refuse!
- God: What, you refuse of your own free will?
- Mortal: Yes!
- God: So it seems that your free will comes in pretty handy, doesn't it?
For the rest of the dialogue click here - it's worth it.
Also, for some blog commentary and other reading recommendations click here and here.