Religious Liberty—Self-evident Truth?

Jonathan Gallagher September/October 1999 "Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free . . ." So begins the 1776 Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, widely recognized as influential in the subsequent framing of the Constitution. Here clearly stated is the frequently unspoken assumption of free will and choice as an inborn ability possessed by all. Even more significant are the references to "Almighty God" and "the Holy Author of our religion," for they demonstrate what Jefferson believed was the source of such free will and liberty.

"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?" asked Abraham Lincoln. His reply: "Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy the spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors." Most significant is his statement that "the love of liberty which God has planted in us." There can be no question here of what Lincoln saw as the source of the liberty principle. God put it there!

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains," wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract. Leaving aside the polemical terms of the statement, what of the assertion that human beings are born free? While not specifically identifying divine intervention, Rousseau too takes "natural liberty" for granted.

In case we might somehow miss what liberty means, John Quincy Adams helps us out: "Liberty--a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power."

Self-evident?

And what of these most familiar words from the Declaration of Independence? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

What are these self-evident truths? Self-evident back then, perhaps. But could the framers of the Declaration have expressed it the same way today? It is debatable whether they would get past the initial hurdle of the First Amendment.

To assert that the Creator endowed human beings with certain unalienable rights and that liberty's source is in divine creation is surely a most definite statement of religious conviction. The question, then, is whether this is still true today?

For the majority today (though they may not say so directly), such ideas are out of step with current understanding. Is it really true that the origin of liberty is divine? And what if you reject the concept of Creation itself? It could even be argued by some that this is an outdated constitution, since it is predicated on assumptions that many in society no longer accept.

That is not to deny current belief in God; simply to comment that the concept of being endowed by the Creator with rights including liberty--and by extrapolation human rights and religious liberty--is out of step with the majority view of origins. The involvement of the Creator in endowing human beings is certainly not part of a "scientific worldview."

So we are created free, born free, endowed with God-given freedoms. Yet from the viewpoint of modern secularist science there is a big question above this statement.

Taken for a Ride

Six-year-old Calvin takes another toboggan ride with his cuddly toy tiger companion in Bill Watterson's widely appreciated cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes. The scene is a frequently used device to highlight some aspect of philosophy.

The conversation goes something like this.

Calvin: "What do you think, Hobbes? Is human nature good, with some bad parts?"

Hobbes: "Mind that tree!"

Calvin: "Or is it bad, with some good parts?"

Hobbes: "Watch out for that rock!"

Calvin: "Don't keep trying to change the subject. Or is human nature unknowable, just a product of random chance?"

Smash. The pair go careening off the edge of the gully to plummet into the snowbank below.

Hobbes: "I choose crazy."

This is a pointed illustration of the way we tend to see things. Is it consistent to believe in free will and a universe created by chance? How can we explain free choice and liberty--especially religious liberty--if our origins are purely the result of physical laws?

And how do we really know we are free, anyway?

Liberty or Fatalism

Free will can be defined briefly as the ability to make a choice without compulsion from previous events, the necessity of the situation, or the intervention of external agents. But it is hard to see a reasonable explanation for its existence in a world determined by "natural laws." For if the natural world is to be "rational," it is argued, then it must be based on a series of causes and effects. An absolute act of free will is outside of this chain of causality, and therefore, by very definition, is irrational!

Such a fatalistic attitude challenges our place in this modern scientific world. For if I am simply the product of a variety of laws that operate in the physical, then I am a machine, complex though I may be. And thought, though real, is conditioned by forces outside of myself. And should I, by some peculiar set of circumstances, come to believe that I exercise free will and determine my existence, my relationships, my behavior by choice, then I am mistaken. Or if not, then I must invoke something other than mechanical laws for who and what I am.

Of course, some have responded by arguing that the concept of free will is false, that the very idea we are free to make choices is an illusion. Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace minimalizes individual free will, since by its very nature such a concept is so unpredictable. Tolstoy, it seems, would happily give up free will, if he was then left with an explainable history based on "the discovery of laws"--rather like Newtonian physics, presumably. Speaking of the "great men of history," Tolstoy writes: "Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity."

Benedict de Spinoza also rejects the ability to choose. "There is no such thing as free will. The mind is induced to wish this or that by some cause and that cause is determined by another cause, and so on back to infinity."

Unpalatable, perhaps, but at least internally consistent! Most of us, particularly those with faith in a higher morality, will not want to follow Tolstoy or Spinoza. Our own experience--even our consciousness of our self and our existence--tells us otherwise. As Isaac Singer quaintly puts it: "We have to believe in free will. We've got no choice."

Or in the words of James Boswell, Samuel Johnson's biographer: "Dr. Johnson shunned tonight any discussion of the perplexed question of fate and free will, which I attempted to agitate: 'Sir, [said he,] we know our will is free, and there's an end on't.'"

But the fact that we may unthinkingly accept that we possess free will can blind us to its relevance. Because we believe we can decide and make choices--it seems so obvious, self-evident even--we can take such "free will" for granted. It may not occur to us that the more "reasonable and rational" life we should be leading (if we are part of some self-produced universe) is one in which all decisions are already made. Since we believe we have free will, we unconsciously reject a life in which we are born, live, and die without making choices.

Free to Decide

In the popular metaphysical view that is usually called "scientific," there is little room for a true process of choice--seemingly no logical way in which human beings could ever possess free will.

The situation is rather like the horse-leaser in sixteenth-century Cambridge, England, who would face potential riders with the unrealistic choice of "take the horse nearest the door or leave it." Not a viable set of options if you wanted to select a mount to take you somewhere--which is why such a choice of no choice passed into the vernacular as "Hobson's choice," a free choice that does not provide a realistic alternative.

Yet isn't accepting the inescapable applications of the laws of matter and energy somewhat of a cosmic Hobson's choice?

If (and this is a colossal "if") if the universe--and all in it--has arrived from physical processes governed by mechanistic laws ever since its origin (whatever "Bang" that may be), then ideas of individual free will, ethics, and morality are illusory. Any "decision" (if that is really what it is) is only a conditioned response to a set of stimuli, and the result is predictable, even predetermined.

Of course, a system of ethics demands free will. Without the capacity to choose, the individual is not responsible, and cannot be held liable for his or her thoughts and actions. We look at the world of experience through our senses and believe we are born to choose. But why should we make such a sweeping assertion?

Matter clearly follows the laws of Isaac Newton, quantum physics, and all the rest. Chemical elements do not "choose" to react in a certain way one day and in a different way the next. Simple life forms also hardly exhibit free will in their existence. Conditions favourable for growth occur, and so the organism flourishes. It does not make a conscious choice to grow or not to grow. It may seem superfluous to labor the point, yet because we unconsciously accept our ability to choose, we can easily fail to see how different our existence would be without conscious choice.

The Fox

Even "higher" organisms do not have the same quality of choice. Operating on instinct and limited experience, animals do make certain choices, but only within a narrow range of possibilities.

The fox is out hunting. It sniffs the ground; it pricks up its ears at the slightest sound. It analyzes the information its senses give it. Does it turn left or right in its search for lunch? The decision made is surely dependent on which of the sense stimuli is strongest.

Is the fox conscious of the options or that it has made a choice? More significantly, is it aware of matters of existence, the meaning of life, of its ability to choose within a universe of right and wrong? The evidence for this conclusion is curiously absent.

The fact that we humans use highly developed thought processes in our brains should not blind us to their seeming uselessness in a mechanical kind of universe. They are superfluous, too complex, and, from a primary survival perspective, redundant. What practical value, what species advancement, is there in philosophical thought--in the writing of this article, even? [Comments to the editor, please!]

But in reality a capacity for abstract thought that is more metaphysical than physical means that the very opposite choices may be made than logic would dictate.

Why women and children first? Why care for the sick and the dying? Why expend time and resources on anything or anyone that has no core value to the state, or to society, or to yourself? If we do live in such a pragmatic universe, then the Nazis were right after all.

Turning Darwin on His Head

When it comes to matters of intellectual choice, of self-denying choices, we face a "scientific" dilemma. Free choice turns Darwin's survival of the fittest on its head, for it allows a whole range of moral, ethical, philosophical, spiritual, and other metaphysical values. Only by identifying such values as being progressive for the survival of the species can a determinist make the logical somersault to explain freedom of choice, and such a logical somersault is inherently illogical anyway, from a deterministic viewpoint! In the words of James Froude: "To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible."

"What is freedom?" asked Archibald MacLeish, and then gave his own answer: "Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for yourself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing."

The dehumanization that results from a lack of freedom--when human rights are denied, above all the right to practice freely in accordance with religious convictions--is exactly that: turning people into things. When human beings are "objectivized" they have no rights. But if in your understanding of the universe there are only "things"--the product of matter combined--then we are all just those very objects!

So what of human rights generally, and religious liberty in particular? Some would even posit religious liberty as the most fundamental of these rights.

If we are simply products of physical and biological evolution, what need is there for protecting individuals, for respecting human rights? Is it not strange that "nature, red in tooth and claw" should produce beings concerned for the welfare of others, especially when the needs of others conflict with your own? Why bother with any kind of religious liberty?

The modern mind-set and religious liberty obviously do not square well. For if all we see and are is the result of the interplay of cosmic physical forces, then where does such liberty come from anyway, let alone the need for God as an explanation of anything?

Why should the United Nations want to say this: "Considering that religion or belief, for anyone who professes either, is one of the fundamental elements in his conception of life and that freedom of religion or belief should be fully respected and guaranteed" (United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief).

And what sense is there in this: "Freedom of thought, of conscience, of religion, and of conviction is, in fact, of the utmost and highest importance. It allows each person to be himself or herself, to have a personal vision of the world, and to act in harmony with the deepest convictions. It is this freedom that allows each one to develop spiritually and to affirm his own dignity to the utmost, and it is this liberty that emphasizes the cultural diversities of men, which are a source of enrichment for the whole human race" (Gianfranco Rossi).

So where did such virtues come from? Why are they "of the utmost and highest importance"? The fatalism of modern ideas about origins should rightfully pull the plug on such concepts. There is no need, except for self-preservation. Such lofty ideals can be maintained only if the absolute existence of good and evil is accepted, and not as just a subjective value judgment on what is best in the circumstances.

This comes pretty close to saying that freedom of choice, human rights, and religious liberty make no sense unless you accept that they are the result of free will put there by the Creator. I realize, of course, that those atheists who accept the need for protecting human rights will protest, shouting that this is an unwarranted assumption. But again the question comes--where do our "higher ideals" come from in a universe dictated purely by natural laws?

The God Explanation

So then--we are back to God! Perhaps the framers of the Constitution saw more clearly than we do that free will and liberty cannot arise in a universe that simply came about by itself. The modern worldview that points to some Big Bang or cyclical process cannot give an explanation for liberty, certainly not the most fundamental of human rights, religious liberty.

The very existence of free will argues for God. A deterministic universe in which every cause is followed by its contingent effect is the logical, "scientific" universe that avoids the God hypothesis. But such a universe does not allow for the development of morality, ethical decisions, or religious liberty, for they all depend on the exercise of free will, which can never be a logical result in a Big Bang universe. Our free will can be explained only by postulating the involvement of a thinking being who already is possessed of free will.

In the same way that predestination destroys individual responsibility to choose good over evil, so too the fatalism of a random, self-generated universe destroys not only God but also our own self-understanding as beings with choices. As W. S. Gilbert wrote, tongue in cheek, for The Mikado: "I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule." If so, if true, what kind of self-identity, what hope for free will? If "Man is a blind, witless, low-brow anthropocentric clod" (Ian McHarg), then why see this world and our place in it as anything more than an ongoing sausage machine that spews out its product without rhyme or reason?

Which is why Friedrich Nietzsche turned his back on such redundant values as compassion and care and humanitarian aid in such a "universe-machine." "It is the duty of the free man to live for his own sake, not for others," he wrote. "Exploitation does not belong to a depraved or an imperfect and primitive state of society . . . it is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power, which is just the will to live."

In other words, we must dispense with any moral or ethical values, since they are pointless in such a worldview. His point was logical enough, but it is a philosophy that has produced a terrible harvest in suffering and death in this century.

Nor can we accept a kind of dualism that says the universe is fated, but we are not--in the words of Alexander Pope who saw the Creator as "binding Nature fast in fate, left free the human will." Even Niccolo Machiavelli is ready to concede that "God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us."

Either Or

We come back to a basic need to choose our operating assumption. Either the universe is determined, or it is not. Either we are merely the product of the interplay of scientific laws, or we are not. Either we have free will, or we do not. Theistic evolutionists, deists, even process theologians, have made attempts to bridge an unbridgeable divide and explain why we can have freedom in a universe that arbitrarily arrived just so.

For true religious liberty to exist, we must truly be free to decide. Our frames of reference may be limited, but we still do choose, freely and without inescapable compulsion from our heredity, from our environment, or even from divine intervention.

And we should delight in such freedom and choice, rather than accept the alternative of moral and ethical pointlessness in a universe without meaning, without aim, without purpose. "Liberty is always dangerous," said Harry Emerson Fosdick, "but it is the safest thing we have."

"For man to become truly free, God had to put man's will beyond even divine intervention," said Meyer Levin. And in making humanity free to decide, even in matters of religion, God places the highest value on our freedom. In Dante's words: "The greatest gift that God in His bounty made . . . was the freedom of the will."

The liberty we are given is that freedom to make our choices, especially in our choice to believe or not, and in our choice to allow others the same choices. Only then can the blessings of liberty identified in the Constitution, and which the Declaration of Independence declares as being God-given and self-evident, be a reality.

The essence of liberty, true freedom of choice, is in this: In the beginning, God chose. Which is why we are, and why we choose.


Jonathan Gallagher is associate director in the Communication Department of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, with special responsibility for news and information.


Article Author: Jonathan Gallagher