Water seeks its own level

A friend of mine recently asked what, if any, impact the belief in causal determinism (or lack thereof) has in practical day-to-day living. Here’s my answer:

Well, one example to the contrary is this:

I never locked my doors.

This was because I believed that men had no free will and that not only were all things determined, but that they were causally and directly brought about by God. So that, if someone were to break into my house or steal my car, or even if I or someone I loved were to become ill, such an event or circumstance would be directly caused by God himself so that any interference would be bad and wrong.

As you know, this view didn’t serve me very well practically...My car was stolen, keys still in the ignition.

My hope is that my account would serve as a warning or at least a speed bump for pastors who teach these sorts of things. Ideas have consequences.

http://reasontostand.org/archives/2010/01/18/how-does-a-belief-in-causal-determinism-influence-how-one-lives#identifier_3_871

I suppose the most charitable construction we can place on this objection is that “Reason to Stand” is a hoax blog. Wes is really an undercover Calvinist, posing as a libertarian, to make freewill theism look as ridiculous as possible by raising transparently comical objections to Calvinism.

If, on the other hand he’s serious, then he may be in need of round-the-clock supervision. At the very least he should be patted down for matches lest he hurt himself.

i) Calvinism doesn’t take the position that all things are “directly” caused by God. That would be occasionalism, not Calvinism.

While it’s theoretically possible to be a Reformed occasionalist, that’s hardly an implication of Calvinism. Mainstream Calvinism has a robust doctrine of ordinary providence. Indeed, Calvinism is famous–or infamous, depending on your viewpoint–for its robust doctrine of ordinary providence.

As such, God ordinarily brings things to pass through natural agents and agencies. How could anyone with even a glancing knowledge of Calvinism not know that?

It sounds as though Wes got his notion of “causal determinism” from watching reruns of Final Destination 1.

ii) Not locking your doors is just as much of a choice as locking your doors. If he thinks that “causal determinism” prevents him from making choices (or “influencing the outcome”), then it would equally prevent him from not locking his doors.

After all, if it’s causally determined that he will lock his doors, then he can’t leave them unlocked. And if it’s causally determined that he will leave his doors unlocked, then he can’t lock them.

So why would his former belief in “causal determinism” bias him to leave his doors unlocked rather than locking them all the time, or locking them sometimes but not other times?

iii) Likewise, if “causal determinism” prevents him from influencing the outcome, then how could he “interfere” with the outcome even if he tried? Conversely, if he tried, then wouldn’t his attempt be causally determined? If he succeeded in locking his doors, then that would be causally determined–but if he failed to lock his doors, then that, too, would be causally determined.

Indeed, even if he merely toyed with the idea of locking his doors (or not), his idea would also be causally determined.

So why does he imagine that believing in causal determinism points him in any particular direction? How does such a belief bias his course of action or inaction?

iv) Also, as a friend of mine remarked (tongue-in-cheek), “I never locked my doors when I held to a view of causal indeterminism because I believed that events could occur randomly, without any sufficient reason, so there was no point locking the doors anyway.”