I was talking with a friend a while back and the subject of free will came up from a religious talk we were having that explored various confusions and details that my friend had become quite caught up with. His argument was that if God is all knowing and our destinies are pre-determined then we have already been organized into those who are saved, and those who are damned. If this is the case, then we, in fact, would not have free will according to various religious sources.

From a secular standpoint, many people argue against the idea of free will stating instead that people are shaped by their environment and only have the ability to react to it. This theory is supported by the very idea of culture. Culture is always a product of the environment people inhabit, where every aspect of it at one point had some functionality to make it a necessity for those who lived there. That is why culture is so diverse and widespread because it illustrates the unique reactions by people to their unique environment.

So, the religious argument proposes that if God were to be all knowing, then it would not make sense for us to have free will because it would imply uncertainty in God’s plan, and the secular arguments are that men have no free will because they are products of their environments. While I find both of these arguments to be very strong in reason, I do think that it is much more complicated than that and we can conclude that we may be heavily influenced by our environment, or that God’s plan does guide us tremendously, but that we do poses the ability to choose. Meaning we do have free will.

For those looking at it from a religious avenue, the argument that Gods all-knowing ability is what negates the idea of free will, and for some discredits the idea of a God all together, is actually a very compelling argument. If a God already knows what the future is, then what is the point of proving ourselves to him by living a human life on earth. He should know who is and is not worthy of his kingdom by the definition of being all knowing, therefore discrediting the very nature of the faith.

Furthermore, if we are masters of ourselves and forge our own destiny then we should come to the conclusion that there is no God because God is all-knowing yet somehow the randomness of our free will and direction is able to coexist with a figure who should already know, implying that he really doesn’t know. For some people, this is a major crack in the logic of God that is maybe overlooked. So, the viewpoints are often that we have no free will because God knows and plans exactly what we are to do, or that there is no God because how can he know everything if we can do whatever we want unchecked, causing doubt toward his legitimacy?

However, I think it’s more complex than that. When various religious sources claim that God is all knowing, I would not interpret them as stating that the future is fixed. I would conclude that they mean God is aware of each choice that we are presented with and knows where each one will take us. In other words, God sets up the map and knows each destination based on what places he allows us to choose. Each of us are placed on this map and must make choice after choice to arrive at our ultimate destination being Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory. This lays out a plan, of what he ultimately hopes you would choose to get to be with him, but allows us to choose another avenue in which he is also knows the unfortunate destination of.

Think also of the concept of alternate universes. This is a theory proposed by some of the brightest minds and more often than not, atheists. I would not imagine that the very religious could claim that an omnipotent God could be so dull that he could not conceive all the realities that could present themselves before him, all within one thought. All alternative universes mean is that there is an unlimited amount of futures that are possibilities do to the choices that we make in the present.

Just as I explained earlier, God is able to see which one is materializing as we actively make our choices, but he can just as easily see every other possible future or universe because he made the map. He knows the product of every combination of choices. This is a theory that in my opinion bridges a gap and may explain a problem of believing in an all knowing being while maintaining the idea that we are free willed people. That our choices are not pre-determined by some deity and that we can chose the future we want to live in.

From the secular standpoint, choices are what refute this idea that we have no free will. While an environment does demand special attention and appropriate response to it, the claim that every choice we make is the result of an outside influence is an overreach, because that would entail that all choices are purely reactionary which I do not believe is true.

That is what makes us different from animals, our creative abilities that allow us to find solutions which are not called for by our environment. Our environment may make us angry which would elicit a rash or bold decision, but we are not bound by that anger. We can practice temperament and chose a smoother rout. Yeah, your environment made you angry and made you want to do something, but for those who know themselves well and can control themselves, they give themselves the option to act against their environments called response and chose something else.

As long as people don’t limit themselves to one option we give ourselves the right to choose, and it would only make sense that our environment would inherently control our choices if there was a direct correlation between certain outside influences consistently producing the same systematic result.

Often times you ask yourself why did I do that? Or what made me think this? Which by the very nature of the question does imply that an outside influence, our environment, provided us with a choice to make. However, providing the choices is all that our environment can do and simply presenting you with a choice does not dictate what you do with it. All the power we really have is to either do something or not, with whatever extent we chose to do it. We never make the options or opportunities, they are always created for us or pre-determined by the different worlds we all live in. To do this or that however, lies in our hands and is up to our creative will.

So, if our free will rests entirely on our decisions then we must analyze how and why our minds are made up. To make a decision you have to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of every choice you make, determining what is best for you. So, what variables are we considering here, what is the one thing that is completely original that our environments cannot supply us with. It cannot be any material thing, and it cannot be a characteristic or behavior because those are all things we can pick up from our parents or siblings or whoever.

I believe that the variable that define us as beings with free will is hope. Hope is the one thing that we all have regardless of class, color, nationality, friends, family. Whatever you are hopeful in is the wildcard that allows you to pursue yourself. To be hopeful in yourself where you know who you’d like to be, even if your environment keeps you from being that currently, being hopeful in that person you’d like to be is what makes us free. To pursue the unrealized self in the knowledge that you’ll never be perfect. Our environment may make a choice preferred or obvious to the current situation, but I don’t think it will always align with our sense of self.

To be clear, I do believe that our environment is the leading proponent in shaping what we become, where we go, and what we look like. But who we are I think is unique and cannot be mitigated or suppressed by our environment. While a lot of people do just go with the flow and ride the current their environment provides, there are those who are sure of themselves that take the riskier path or make the riskier decision because we can do that.

It is possible that two men of equal background go about the same things differently. If not life would be boring and everyone would be completely predictable. What Choices we come across may be up to the environment we live in, but I believe people may do anything to whatever extent that they please, as free willed people.