The Shape Of Reality: Are We Really Free?

As noted in the opening post in this series, I believe Christianity offers compelling reasons to believe that truth is found most fully and consistently within the framework of a Christian worldview. The second post addressed the need for an objective foundation for morality. Of course, using the language of morality only makes sense if we are moral beings - that is, if we are significant moral agents who have an obligation to choose good and avoid evil.  This can only happen if we are free to make that choice, and therein lies another key question: Are we really free?

Generally, people believe that at some point everyone freely chooses  to make good and/or bad choices. Jaegwon Kim, philosopher at Brown University, has noted,

"We commonly think that we, as persons, have a mental and bodily dimension.... Something like this dualism of personhood, I believe, is common lore shared across most cultures and religious traditions." 

 Mind and Language published a paper in 2010 entitled “Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal?” After studying a broad sample of people in the United States, Hong Kong, India and Columbia,

“The results revealed a striking degree of cross-cultural convergence. In all four cultural groups, the majority of participants said that (a) our universe is indeterministic and (b) moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism.” 

Consensus is not an air-tight way to arrive at truth, of course, but it is an insightful way to see what experiences humanity in general share. Most people believe we exercise some form of free will.

Not everyone agrees. When Rodney Brooks and Rosalind Picard debated the question, “Can Robots Become Human?” at a Veritas Forum at MIT in 2007, the following exchange took place (as recorded in “Living Machines” and published in A Place For Truth) :

Brooks: “ I think of myself as a robot, as a bag of skin full of biomolecules, and if I step back, that’s what [my wife] is, that’s what my kids are. But I have this completely different way of interacting with them, with unconditional love, which is not part of that scientific view. So I have multiple views I operate under every day.”

Picard: “I don’t just call those multiple views, I call those inconsistent views…so there’s no purpose, there’s no meaning, there’s no free will.”

Brooks: “That’s why I said I have a set of inconsistent views that I live under, because that’s really desolate, but it’s the truth.”

Picard: “Yeah, that does seem pretty desolate, and I wonder how you – why you care?”

Brooks: “I live in a fantasyland. That’s the fantasyland I’ve chosen to live in…”

So what is actually happening?

Assassin's Creed

As best as I can cobble together from the film, this is the background of Assassin’s Creed.

There are these assassins, and they have an initiation creed:

Assassin: "Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember..."
Initiate: "Nothing is true."
Assassin: "Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember..."
Initiate: "Everything is permitted."
Assassin: "We work in the dark to serve the light. We are Assassins."

Yikes. (Anti-hero...check!) What is so important that they are permitted to do anything immoral or illegal to serve this vague light?

Apparently, when Eve ate the apple, she exercised free will and as a result seeded the first sin into the world. Since then, everything has gone downhill: violence, greed, poorly made movies, etc. The Templars at some point decided that they would find the apple and genetically undo the damage that has been done (apparently sin is biological). Sounds great, but that also means free will goes out the window as everybody does what the Templars want them to do. The Assassins formed to stop the Templars from doing this.  

Fast forward five hundred years. The modern Templars are on the verge of getting the apple. They have apparently captured all the modern Assassins and managed, through some sci-fi wizardry, to find a way to send a modern descendent of an Assassin back to relive the life of a former Assassin. By doing this, they will be able to figure out where this elusive apple has been hidden for the past 500 years. One super naïve scientist, Sophia, is convinced the Templars will use this power to bring worldwide peace by deleting the genetic basis of violence in everybody (hello, Nobel Peace Prize!). I don’t think it will give much away to say that her plan is not the same as the other Templars.

Days of Future Past: Do Our Choices Matter?

“So many battles waged over the years... and yet, none like this. Are we destined to destroy each other, or can we change each other and unite? Is the future truly set?” – Charles Xavier

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a story about free will and human nature.  Sure, it’s many other

things as well – an excellently crafted movie, an equal rights parable, a commentary on human atrocities, a discussion starter about evolution – but  the latest installment in this thought-provoking franchise is perhaps the most cerebral of all.

As he considers the carnage of the Mutant/Human war, Xavier wonders, “Are we destined to destroy each other? Or can we change who we are?” The Mutants have found a way to jump a few days into the past and avoid small catastrophes, but changing single events cannot alter the larger arc of stubbornly insistent history. All seems lost; both the characters and the conflict are succumbing to the chaos. Bryan Singer noted in an interview:

“[Days of Future Past] confronts the notions of hope and second chances. It's characters that are lost trying to find themselves. In X-Men one and two, the characters had come into their own and knew who they were. In this one, they're all lost. And they're trying to keep it together.”