Why Were the Graves of So Many Jewish GIs Marked by a Cross?
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If your choices are real, something beyond the physical must exist. This essay argues that free will logically points to a soul—and ultimately, to God.
Are you free to choose to read this essay? To answer that, you need to answer a more fundamental question: Do you have real free will? That is to say, do you have the ability to influence, at least to some extent, the course of your life through your actions, emotions, or thoughts?
If your answer to the more fundamental question is “no,” you can continue to read or stop right here. The choice to do so is not yours anyway. Your answer implies that whatever is happening, has happened, or will happen, both internally and externally to yourself, is not up to you, never was, and never will be – you have no influence over events. Rather, things simply happen to you.
Conversely, if your answer to the fundamental question was “yes,” then let me encourage you to freely choose to continue reading.
Let’s assume, for the moment, that all that exists consists of physical matter and energy1 and that there is no non-physical realm beyond the physical world. This theory is sometimes called “physicalism.” If this is the case, everything is subject to physical laws, whether or not we know what they are. By everything, I mean everything, including the mass and energy that constitutes our brains as well as everything else. Sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, inorganic matter, organic matter, and living creatures – all these constitute the universe and are subject to physical laws.
Accordingly, if we could know at some point in time the state of all the mass and energy in the universe, we could (theoretically) compute the next state of the universe, and so on, for as long into the future (or past) as we wanted. At least in principle, it is not different from our ability to calculate the position and speed of a stone someone throws under known initial conditions.
We will probably never be able to know the state of all the mass and energy in the universe at some particular moment (the reasons for this include Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics). It is also likely that we do not presently know all the physical laws, and we quite certainly do not have the computing power to make the relevant computation. Nevertheless, if all these were available, then the state of the universe in the next moment would be knowable, and so on.
In a purely physical universe, every thought is either determined or random—and neither allows for free will.
The meaning of this is that if physicalism is true, the universe is deterministic – fixed from beginning to end – even if we are unable to calculate or know what is going to happen. Even chaotic systems, as complex as they are, are deterministic. Even if quantum mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle are true, all that does is introduce an element of randomness into a system that follows probabilistic laws or can be understood as statistical distributions.2 This is the way of thinking of contemporary mainstream physics.
There has never been a documented scientific observation, at any scale, that has contradicted this approach and revealed natural processes that are neither deterministic nor random. Moreover, quantum mechanics has proven (for example, with Feynman diagrams) that if we discovered a new particle or new physical force that can physically interact with our universe, it also would be subject to these scientific laws of randomness within a quantum statistical distribution.3
To sum up, the best scientists in the world consider our universe to be deterministic with random quantum fluctuations. As a result, it appears to be the case that human beings do not have and cannot have any influence on what occurs in the universe, which includes our brains, which consist of physical matter and energy. All events in the universe, particularly in our brains, are either deterministic, random under probabilistic laws, or some combination of the two. In other words, every thought, feeling, or sensory experience that we have is a physical state or series of physical events that are either predetermined or random under probabilistic laws. We, as agents, or “selves,” have no way to influence them.
At this point, we should ask: What is the self? According to physicalism, the universe contains only mass and energy, and a person’s self-consciousness depends upon their brain state, which consists of neurons connected by synapses. These are made up of physical particles that are subject to the laws of physics.
According to such a conception of the self, a new intentional thought that is generated in a person’s brain necessarily involves some change in the state of the particles that constitute that person’s brain. Why? Because if the particles remain in the same state, with the same level of energy, momentum, spin, electromagnetic charge, etc., nothing new is happening in the brain. Functional MRI imagery reveals a clear correlation between mental activity and changes in the states of the particles in a person’s brain, with the signals recorded by the device changing in correspondence with mental activity.
The question, then, is how is free intentional thought possible if our brains are entirely physical? Generating a new thought by one’s own will requires a physical change to the mass or energy in a person’s brain. According to the laws of conservation of mass and energy, intentional (and hence non-random) change must be caused by something. What is that something? What caused it? What caused the cause? And so on. If every thought necessarily depends on a string of events that began far before it was intentionally (so to speak) generated in a person’s brain at some particular time, where is the self in all this?
If the brain is only matter and energy, the self does not choose—things merely happen to it.
In the physicalist universe, any change in the state of the human brain from one state to another is necessarily a function of deterministic/random physical laws. The change just happens; it results from the state of the forces and particles in the preceding state. The self does not really instigate it, and choice and free will do not really exist since the self, according to this conception, is the mass and energy of a person’s brain that changes in accordance with physical laws. Intentional thought is thus an inexistent mere illusion and cannot be the result of free will.
Any act of free will must originate outside the physical universe.
If you insist upon claiming that the change between brain state A and brain state B is the intentional result of your free, independent will and state B is not the deterministic/random result of the forces and matter of state A, then you are essentially claiming that the change from A to B is not a function of the laws of nature. It is not a natural event but a supernatural, non-physical one.
To remove any doubt, let us ask: what could possibly be the source that brings about such a change in your brain state, which is caused by free will? Let us examine the fundamental possibilities. One possibility is that the source that dictates the change exists in the physical world – for example, in state A. In this case, the change is, by definition, deterministic, and in any case, does not constitute free will. Another possibility is that there is no source that dictates the change at all – in which case the change is, by definition, random, and again, anyway, does not constitute free will. The conclusion, then, is that any change brought about by free will must have a source that dictates it, but one that does not exist in the physical realm. The source dictating the change is, therefore, non-physical.
To sum up what we have said so far, in an entirely physicalist universe, free will is impossible. Free will cannot result from matter or energy that are in a stable, unchanging state since if they do not change, how could they be the cause of free will?
If, conversely, free will is the result of a physical change, then (according to physicalism) the relevant changes in matter and energy would necessarily be either deterministic or random, and thus, a choice made as a result of such a change would not be truly a choice and certainly would not be free. Since free will cannot be a function of changes in matter or energy nor of matter and energy in stable states, it must necessarily be a function of something that is neither matter nor energy. The source of free will, if it exists, is not in the physical universe.
To return to where we started, in a physicalist universe, we cannot affect the course of our lives. Even our own thoughts, even the thoughts that we have right now, cannot be freely willed.
If you are unwilling to accept that you do not have free will (and it is a choice!), then we need to go back to the original assumption we presented earlier, that the existence consists only of physical mass and energy and that there is no non-physical reality beyond that. This assumption must be rejected. In other words, someone who is convinced that he actually has free will must accept the existence of a non-physical reality or essence. This essence is not part of the physical universe of matter and energy, which is entirely deterministic or random and is therefore not subject to the laws of physics. This non-physical essence is not subject to physics, but it can affect the laws of physics. It can influence the physical world and change its deterministic processes or at least can non-randomly cause certain probabilistic events to occur rather than others. It can influence the physical human brain and induce processes within it that are the results of free will. If it were not for this non-physical essence, human beings would be no more than a collection of particles without any possibility of free will.
What is this non-physical essence called? Whatever you want. Throughout history, it has been called the soul, the spirit, an angel, or whatever. Where is this essence found? Minimally, it is present in every human being, assuming that we all equally have the capacity for free will. I will call this essence the soul for the purposes of this discussion.
Where does the soul come from? The non-physical soul, which is not part of the physical universe, cannot be found within the dimensions of space/time of the physical universe.4 Hence, there must be a non-physical dimension of reality, which is the locus of the soul. Within the soul’s non-physical locus lies its capacity to influence the physical world through free will; and more fundamentally, it is in this non-physical locus that the soul’s free will itself resides. This non-physical origin—the source of the soul, of the capacity to affect the physical world through free will, and of free will itself—may be referred to, as I soon will elaborate, as God.
So, God, or a Higher Power, or whatever name people give, exists. At this point, the name is not important. “I will be that I will be” (Exodus 3:14) was once the answer given to someone who asked God what is His name. In this discussion, I will call this entity God, but anyone who prefers can refer to it as “the flying spaghetti monster.”
Based on modern science, we logically demonstrated two important principles:
The logical conjunction of these two principles implies the following: If there is free will, then God exists. Anyone who believes that free will is a fact ought to accept that God’s existence is a fact. In other (but logically equivalent) words, denial of God’s existence requires you to admit: “I do not have true free will, or the ability to think, feel and act freely and by my own initiative. Every choice, thought, feeling, or action in my life is the result of a chain of prior physical events that “I” have no influence over and never had. They simply happen to me from the moment I was born, and I do not have and never will have a choice or an option but to experience them without the ability to change them until the day I die.” This is a significant conclusion that it is worth pausing to consider.
If free will exists, God exists—denying one logically denies the other.
In practice, even someone who believes that they do not truly have free will lives their life as if they did. Why? Because they, like everyone, consider their choices and decide “freely” on a regular basis: Should I take out the garbage now or later? What should I watch on television? What should I wear to work? How should I phrase the contract about the merger? How deep should I make the surgical incision? Who should I marry? Who should I vote for? And so on. Society as a whole works under the practical assumption that human beings have free will. This assumption is the foundation of our moral values and our conceptions of justice and law. For anyone who seeks to be honest and logically consistent, the argument above establishes that anyone who lives their life with the practical assumption that he or she has free will should also live their life with the practical assumption that God exists.
What does it mean to live one’s life with the practical assumption that God exists, or, more simply, how and why is the existence of God relevant to us?
Understanding simple concepts can be complex – close attention is recommended for this section. First, we need to understand the logical implications of the existence of God. These are fundamental and are direct implications of the argument made above, especially that God is the non-physical source of free will. For the sake of discussion, we will focus on the source of a single free decision that is revealed “on the tip of a needle” (the discussion will focus on free will itself – on the freedom to choose – and not on the variable contents of any particular choice).
Free will is eternal since it is non-physical and, as such, not within time and space; it thus has no beginning and no end. Therefore, the source of free will’s existence, i.e., the non-physical dimension, locus or “place” where free will is a reality, is also eternal. The existence of the source depends only on itself because if the existence of the source depends on another factor, then free will also depend on that other factor, and if it is dependent, then it is not free and certainly not eternally free. In other words, the non-physical source of free will always exists, and its existence depends solely on itself – it is its own exclusive cause. It is “a necessary being by virtue of itself.”
To put it simply, if we have free will, its non-physical source – God – is eternal and the sole cause of Himself, i.e., “necessarily existent by virtue of itself.” The latter concept is taken from Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish legal authorities in history, one of the most important medieval philosophers, a polymath and physician who was an uncompromising rationalist. In Part II of Maimonides’s philosophical magnum opus, The Guide to the Perplexed, he uses a different argument to prove that God is necessarily existent by virtue of Himself. This is not the place to go into it in depth, but we will enthusiastically make use of some of the logical implications of the existence of a necessary being by virtue of Himself.
In this essay, we will delve into three of these implications. They are actually easier to prove using the argument from free will. The first is that the necessary being is not composed of parts. The second is that there is only one necessary being. The third is that He is omnipotent.
Why is it impossible for the necessary being to be composed of two or more elements? Because then its existence would be dependent on the existence of its components and their coming together. All these would then be necessary conditions for the existence of the necessary being. The necessary being would therefore not be necessary by virtue of itself and, in fact, would not be a necessary being at all but only a possible being, i.e., it could exist or not exist depending whether the conditions for its existence were realized.
If we use “free will language,” this argument is even simpler: the source of free will cannot be composite because then free will would depend upon that composition taking place, and if it is dependent, it is not free. Moreover, since the source of free will is not composite, then it and the free will it contains are one. Free will emanates from God’s essence. It is a divine power in which He and His will are the same. At the very least, God, the necessary being by virtue of Himself, has free will.
Why can there not be more than one necessarily existent being? If more than one necessarily existent being existed, they would have one thing in common – that they are both necessarily existent – and at least one thing that distinguishes them, that exists in one and not the other. One of them would thus be a composite, and we have already established that a necessarily existent being cannot be composite. Using the language of free will, two distinct sources for free will are impossible because the choices of one of them would dictate the choices of the other, rendering the will of the latter not free.
Why must the necessarily existent being be omnipotent? Since it has free will and free choice, and it has no component that does not have free will – for we have already established that it has no components, there can be no limit as to how it exercises that will. In other words, it has free will and free choice in relation to everything. Particularly, the very existence of everything depends upon its free will. It is the cause of all existence. Therefore, nothing can obstruct its will since even the existence or the absence of anything that obstructs it, is by its will.
Now, after elaborating on the meaning of God, we get to the big question:
The simple answer is: He told us. In establishing that He is the necessarily existent being who is the cause of all existence, we have also established that He created the physical universe and the non-physical souls of all human beings from His free will. He gave them His teachings where He related that He exists and instructed them what He wants from them. Since everything that exists is in accordance with His free will, all His teachings exactly as they are today are completely in accordance with His free will.
The logical argument of this essay is complete and I could conclude it here. However, there is a more complex answer to the opening question of this section. It is intended for whoever is interested.
If everything is the result of God’s free will, one might ask:
Skepticism is a common human tendency. We are all skeptical to some degree or another, and that tendency also derives from the Creator’s will, as is clear from the argument made above. Although it is impossible to address every doubt or uncertainty, the elegance of this demonstration is that the common theme of all its elements – free will – is the foundation not only of the argument for the existence of God but also the key to establishing the desirable way to behave, given that we have free will.
What God wills most is not obedience, but that we choose freely.
Let me return to the original logical argument: If we have free will, then God is the necessarily existent being, and it was He who granted us free will. In other words, it is His will, at least, that we lead our lives freely. That addresses question # 1.
Can we freely choose from within a naturalistic-materialist way of life?
Human choice is almost always (i.e., almost all people almost all the time) based on two simple principles that were well-articulated by Sigmund Freud: the pleasure principle and the reality principle. According to these principles, each person’s choices are directed at maximizing their subjective pleasure and minimizing their subjective suffering. At times, one’s understanding of reality leads one to choose to suffer somewhat in the present because it is worthwhile in order to gain future pleasure or lessen future suffering. These principles constitute pure egoism. Since people are different, the causes of pleasure and suffering and their relative weights will be different for different people or for the same person at different times of his or her life.
The principles, however, nearly always (to understate) explain human behavior. Each person’s inner life is complex, and pleasure can be related to suffering or the other way around, but at least most of the time, most of us know if the totality of how we relate to something leads to pleasure or suffering. Even a masochist, for example, makes use of these principles to make their choices; the difference between them and a non-masochist is simply that their sources of pleasure and suffering are different. An altruist is also guided by these principles since they derive pleasure from ensuring the well-being of other people and suffer upon encountering others’ suffering. Alternatively, they derive pleasure and avoid suffering in fulfilling their altruistic ideals.
The pleasure and reality principles guide in this way nearly every value or disposition that motivates a person, particularly such values and dispositions that come from the materialist-naturalist aspect of reality. The closer one gets to realizing the value or expressing the disposition, the greater the pleasure. Conversely, failing to do so will cause suffering. Even the choice of the values by which a person leads their life depends upon the pleasure and reality principles. People nearly always adopt values whose realization will bring them pleasure or at least decrease their subjective suffering. As long as human beings have an ego (and the Freudian superego is included in the ego), they will always be impacted by personal considerations that dictate their choices.
Even if you insist that a person’s choices are not nearly always a function of the pleasure and reality principles, you have to admit that these principles are significant factors in determining a person’s (yourself included) motivations over the course of his life. Honest self-awareness is all that is required to realize this. Consequently, human free will is limited as one has a fixed tendency to choose specific behaviors that give one pleasure and to refrain from behaviors that cause suffering. If free will is limited in this way, it is not truly free. It is potential rather than actual free will and the existence of this mere potential does not realize God’s will, which is that we choose freely; And we have already established that God’s will is not constrained in any way. That addresses question #2.
When we adhere to a particular spiritual or religious practice, are we truly exercising free will? Not necessarily. Most of the time, it, too, will only be in a limited way. Why? The reason is that just like the naturalist-materialist, a person most often follows a religious or spiritual practice in order to maximize pleasure or minimize suffering in the present or future. Regardless of whether he was brought up to practice that religion or adopted it at some point, fulfilling its norms and values will give him pleasure, and not doing so will cause him suffering. As I mentioned above, as long as a person has an ego, he can never escape personal biases. And that is the heart of the issue.
The logical argument we have made so far led to the conclusion that in order for us to have true free will, we need to work on gaining full control over the ego. How can one control one’s ego? It is seemingly simple: we need to free our ego from the bonds of the egoistic principles we described above. However, it is hard to see how to do that in practice. Human beings do not naturally have mastery over their own egos – such mastery conflicts with natural human egoism. The human ego (including the superego) cannot be expected to teach itself to transcend itself in order to achieve self-mastery. That expectation is paradoxical. It is here that the connection between divine and human free will is revealed.
We have shown that God wills that we choose freely and that His will cannot be constrained. Therefore, He gave us the tools or teachings originating in the transcendent that are necessary to teach us to master our egos and actualize our free will. If so, what religious or spiritual practice should we choose? We should choose one that has a transcendent origin that was given by the will of the Creator to teach its practitioners to master their egos and completely actualize their free will. That addresses question # 3.
How can people choose freely if divine will determines everything? The simple answer is that this is precisely what God wills—that we choose freely—and nothing constrains His will.
As explained above, our soul’s free will emanates directly from God. Whenever we exercise free will, we do so through God’s own free will, granted to us by His absolute unconstrained essence.
One may further wonder: if God is omniscient and knows the future, aren’t our choices already pre-determined? The answer is that God does not passively know a pre-existing future; rather, He actively creates reality—and with it, time and particularly the future. By granting our souls a share in His free will, we become coexisting creators of the future with Him, in perfect accordance with His will, “in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). In fact, He taught us this from the beginning. When God “breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils” (Genesis 2:7), He bestowed free will upon humanity directly from His divine essence. That addresses question #4.
Why does God want us to choose freely? Space does not permit also discussing this question fully, but one can find an excellent explanation in Kabbalistic writings, particularly the interpretations of Lurianic Kabbalah presented by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (Ramchal) and later by Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag, the author of the Sulam. Briefly, God is a perfect non-physical entity because He is the primal cause or source of reality that He brought into existence by His free will. Nothing exists that He did not cause, and His will cannot be constrained. All reality is by His will and in His domain, and from this, it follows that nothing exists that God is lacking. Therefore, He is perfect.
God creates reality and, in doing so, imparts His perfection to it; He does not need to receive anything from it because He lacks nothing. In order for the created reality to receive God’s perfection as much as possible, it must draw as close as possible to Him in a manner analogous to the physical world, wherein the degree of interaction of different elements is a function of how close they are to one another.
How is it possible to draw close to God, given that He is a non-physical entity? Non-physical closeness cannot be measured in space or time as a non-physical entity is not bound by them. Rather, non-physical closeness is measured by the essential similarity of the two entities that have the potential for closeness. The more similar they are, the closer to one another they are in their essence. The non-physical “distance” between identical entities is zero, while the non-physical distance between two entities that are opposites in their essence is maximal.
In the language of the Sulam, the process by which two entities draw close to one another in their essence is called the “identification of form” [hashva’at tzurah]. When a human being, the pinnacle of Creation, transforms from an entity with the potential for free will to one whose free will is actualized, he identifies his form with God’s form as God’s free will is actual (and never only potential since His will determines everything and has no constraints). In doing so, the person draws close to God, or in other words, cleaves to Him and fulfills the purpose of Creation.
Only each individual can transform his potential free will into an actual free will. If this transformation is dictated by something external to him, even by God Himself, His will becomes dependent and certainly not free.
It is important to me to point out that although I rely on Jewish sources in this argument, that does not mean that everyone must draw close to God as Jews. It is God’s will that everyone is born into or exposed to a particular religious/spiritual environment, which will influence his or her religious path. Accordingly, if you were born a Jew, the logical conclusion is that God’s will is that you be Jewish and His suggestion that you draw close to Him through Judaism. Your membership in the Jewish people is God’s will. Judaism understands that most people engage in Jewish practice out of their egoistic natures and that practice is thus not the exercise of their free will. Nevertheless, “through [studying and practicing the mitzvot] not for their own sake, he will come [to engage in them] for their own sake” (Babylonian Talmud 105b), i.e., it affirms the principle that acting in accordance with God’s teaching not for the sake of God eventually leads to the performance of the action for the sake of God. In other words, the choice to practice Judaism that arises from egoistic motivations can eventually bring about the correct practice of Judaism for the sake of the giver of the Jewish Torah – God – without any egoistic motivation but rather as an exercise of free will.
This is the meaning of the phrase in Ethics of the Fathers: “All your actions should be for the sake of Heaven” (Avot 2:12). In other words, all your actions should result from your free will and should not be done for the sake of attaining some present or future pleasure or avoiding some suffering. They should not even be for the sake of the pleasure a person has in realizing their values, or out of avoidance of the suffering that would result from not pursuing their values. Rather, one’s choice should only be for God’s sake. Only when one’s choices are completely free of the pursuit of any self-interest are they truly free.
A truly free choice has no cause—only a purpose.
Why are only choices for the sake of God lacking in self-interest and completely free? True free choice necessarily involves choosing for no cause whatsoever, since if there is a cause, regardless of whether it is internal or external, the choice is not free but the result of the cause. Exercise of free will nevertheless involves free choice and is not random. How? True free choice has a purpose rather than a cause. It is not driven by a cause but rather seeks to fulfill a purpose. However, even choosing for the sake of a purpose is not necessarily free in practice, since as long as the chooser identifies with the purpose, it is also effectively the cause of his choice. Thus, the purpose toward which a free choice is directed must be unfathomable since people naturally identify, with varying intensities, with their conceptions of things, whether they are tangible or abstract. For example, when a person has the purpose of achieving great monetary wealth or infinite joy, his conception of wealth or happiness will instantly become the motivational cause of his choice.
What, then, is an unfathomable purpose? The unfathomable cannot be tangible since the tangible is something perceived by definition. The unfathomable must therefore be abstract, but not every abstraction is unfathomable. For example, the concept of happiness, even infinite happiness, is, of course, conceivable relative to a particular subject. Such concepts are conceivable because they are definable, meaning that subjective boundaries can be set for their application.
“Failure,” for example, is excluded from the set of experiences associated with the category of “happiness” for most people. An unfathomable abstract purpose has content that cannot be defined by any boundary. Nevertheless, it is not empty of content. Indeed, human beings cannot identify with a purpose that completely lacks content; yet an action that is motivated by a contentless cause and performed for a contentless purpose is nothing but a random event, and anyway not an expression of free will. So what is unfathomable and abstract that contains undefinable content? The only thing that can be characterized in that way is a “perfect entity” since anything imperfect necessarily has boundaries. Who, then, is the only perfect entity? God, the necessarily existent being, is the only perfect entity. He is perfect according to the abovementioned argument. He is the only perfect being, as any being that is not necessarily existent has at least one imperfection – that it is not necessarily existent.
In conclusion, if we have free will, God is the necessarily existent being Who gave it to us. Any free choice we attempt to make is possible only by the power of God’s will, and therefore it is only fair and logical that we freely choose to do His will by accepting His teachings. Even if the free will we now possess is only a potential, it still feels like we actually have it. And rightly so.
Why? Because this is the nature of free will – its actualization is solely up to the person who is free. You can actualize your free will at any moment, instantly, as it is only up to you. As I have pointed out, an external factor causing you to actualize your free will would be a contradiction. The moment an external factor is involved as such, your choice would be dependent on that factor and not free by definition.
Even if you answered the opening question of this essay negatively, and you don’t believe you have free will, almost all of us and society as a whole operate under the practical assumption that we do have it. Accordingly, it is only logically fair that we should also operate under the practical assumption that God exists. In the end, practically, it’s up to your free will whether to operate as such. That was no less true before you read this. The only thing that has changed is that now you know who alone can grant free will, in His very own image.
What this article fails to observe is that so much of human behaviour is not driven by the careful and rational consideration of our options. We simply react to situations, often in an involuntary, reflexive way. We may wish that we all took the time to make "good" decisions, however, the reality is that we were Created with emotional and reflexive responses which serve us well most of the time and that is what drives us most of the time.
I'm not sure exactly where the author's argument first breaks down, but beginning with a premise that our life is a sequence of willful actions, free or not, cannot lead to a comprehensive view of human behaviour.
ADS, this article stands even if only a single free choice is ever made—“on the tip of a needle,” as the author himself explicitly writes. The existence of even one genuinely free choice already entails the existence of a soul that makes it, and of God as its metaphysical ground.
You are correct that we are created with reflexes, instincts, and urges that shape the field of our choices. In the author’s terms, many of these are “free choices in potential” rather than fully actualized freedom. Yet even within that field, we remain free to decide which urge to follow. By repeatedly doing so, we can meaningfully influence the trajectory of our lives—up to the point where our actions align fully with halacha and are done for the sake of Heaven.
The author has defined freedom so narrowly that I don't believe that a genuinely free choice is ever made. The notion of "for the sake of Heaven" is inherently a circular argument.
The author defines free will as it is ordinarily understood in human perception and language: as the absence of limitation, at least within the frame in which it is exercised. Any limitation there—and especially any form of dependency—negates genuine freedom.
You may deny the existence of free will, but then you are committed to denying it altogether, not merely in part. Yet you neither live nor think as though this were true, which places your position in an internal contradiction.
I think that you'll find that among ordinary people using words like "freedom" and "independence" in a non-religious context, these words lack the absolutism that this article is imposing on them. Actions involving "egoistic motivation" are seen as exercises of free will by most people.
The presumption that these things can be absolute is the same as the presumption that is being made here about God. Of course, either presumption will imply the other. That is the circular nature of the argument.
I believe that all freedoms are constrained. There is no internal contradiction. Your "either/or" formulation is just another example of the failings of this sort of absolutism.
Some either do not understand, or do not wish to understand, that the limited or partial freedom you speak of, logically requires at least one frame in which freedom is absolute.
As stated, if in every frame there is dependency, then there is always dependency—and if there is always dependency, there is never freedom.
One should be courageous enough to call their position by its proper name: on your view, as shown here above, freedom does not exist at all. Yet you do not truly live your life as though that were the case, and that is where the internal contradiction lies.
If one's claim is that the very core of absolute freedom is itself limited, then one's statement is equivalent to saying that truth is falsehood. It is a postmodern formulation that dissolves meaning. It may sound appealing to certain ears, but it does not correspond to reality. One may attempt to evade truth, but it will eventually assert itself.
If for example, God forbid, someone close to us dies, that is the truth - he is not both alive and dead. Surely you agree it is difficult to conduct an intelligent conversation with someone who denies the existence of truth altogether.
Few things in real life fall neatly into "is or is not". Even your example of alive or dead has a period of ambiguity. When was the exact moment of death? That ambiguity doesn't deny the facts of life and death nor the truth that we all will die.
I simply accept that there is much ambiguity in the world and that resolving ambiguity is a subjective exercise of free will. It is simplistic to believe that we'd all arrive at the same conclusion ("truth") if we all possessed the same facts. You only have to study controversial court cases to see how divergent our conclusions can be.
It is striking how often doubt is elevated—not as a tool for seeking truth, but as a way of avoiding it. Yet reality itself is not ambiguous once it is properly examined. Something either is or it is not.
Cardiac death or brain-respiratory death are no exception. In real life, contrary to what you suggest, people know whether their loved one is alive or dead once a qualified physician has made the determination. And even acknowledging that misdiagnoses can occur, once a person is buried and does not return to life, there is no lingering dilemma.
Even in quantum physics, whatever the interpretation, once a property is measured it yields a definite value. And in courts of law, once evidence is authenticated and presented, the dispute is not about its existence, but about its validity, weight, and interpretation—which ultimately involve human judgment.
Do not hide behind perpetual doubt. Examine, measure, and know.
Receiving the capacity for free choice directly from God and directing those choices toward God may appear circular, or it may not; in either case, it is perfectly coherent. More importantly, cleaving to God—or to perfect existence, however one chooses to formulate it—is a common and deeply human aim. In the article, the author shows that God alone can ground and enable such a genuinely free journey.
I don't object to this sort of absolutism for its own sake. The problem with it is in how it impacts a person's worldview. It implies that there is some singular "perfect existence" when, in fact, we each have our own lives to live within the circumstances in which we find ourselves. What we can aim for is entirely subjective.
Of course, we all operate within circumstances—whether objective or subjectively perceived. Yet even at the subjective level, our experienced reality is not internally contradictory: something either exists within it or it does not when we examine it. A claim cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.
There is no escaping truth; sooner or later it confronts us. Either absolute freedom exists, or it does not. But if it does not, then what you call “partial freedom” is not freedom at all—it is merely a more complex form of necessity.
Choose what you believe—if indeed you can truly choose. And if you do, even practically, the article shows that it is only logically coherent to live accordingly, assuming God’s existence.
cont' 1:
That state is not the negation of free will, but its highest realization.
If, however, you deny even this limited freedom, then your own argument collapses under its own weight: your reasoning, your objections, and your future positions would all be entirely determined, random, or some combination of the two—leaving no room for genuine persuasion or intentional change.
There is a duality that you are failing to recognize. The miracle of creation is that order emerges from chaos. In spite of all of the randomness in the universe, the sun still rises every morning and bathes the Earth in the same life-sustaining sunlight, etc.
Likewise, our thinking which is the product of an unfathomable number of random events is capable of organized thought. However, our decisions, good or bad, still depend on our chaotic state of mind.
Order may indeed emerge from chaotic systems, but chaos—properly understood—is itself a deterministic dynamical regime (google it). It therefore has nothing to do with freedom. Your thoughts may arise from chaotic processes as well; that does not make them free.
What you are describing is not duality, but shifting levels of complexity within the very same deterministic or, at best, random reality. Neither determinism nor randomness constitutes freedom.
If your thoughts are genuinely free, then you originate them independently through free will—analogously to the way God created the world through His free will, encompassing both its chaotic and its ordered phases.
cont' 2 and last:
And if you instead argue for partial freedom, then you must concede a crucial point: if freedom exists at all—even minimally—there must be at least one frame in which it is absolute. For freedom is, by definition, independence. If in all possible frames what is called “freedom” is always dependent on something else—whether physical causes or randomness—then freedom does not exist even partially. In that case, “partial freedom” is not a weaker form of freedom, but merely a more complex form of necessity.
Yes, with that definition, freedom does not exist. You are the one creating a "partial freedom" by introducing an externality to explain our decision-making capability.
There cannot be two independent sources of freedom—read the article carefully. As the article shows, there is only one possible source of freedom, and that is God. There can be no separate “internal” and “external” origins of free will. Rather, our free will is our participation in God’s absolute free will—an ability granted to us by His free will alone.
You may deny that freedom exists; that is, at least practically, your own free choice to make.
The article simply demonstrates that if you conduct your life in practice as though you possess free will, then it is only logically consistent to conduct your life in practice as though God exists. The manner of that practice is explained within the article itself.
Very interesting read!