Just some personal thoughts on faith arranged in a simplistic way. To be honest, I don't know exactly where I'm at in terms of religion. This is just a little thought experiment that's been cooped up in my mind that I'd rather put on paper. Let's begin.

Are We Free?

Many basic beliefs presuppose freedom, regret, pride and morality. But when you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that’s necessary for believing in that something. This has always created challenges for me, theologically and logically, to be precise.

Theological Challenge: God knows the future with respect to God's action, but God has to wait for our choices to proceed. He doesn't know the future except as the set of all possible events and with that, God simply knows what you will freely choose. Foreknowledge isn't the same as predestination. Our freedom is built in; it's an ontological reality, an aspect of our being, not tied to time.

The Theological Challenge, then, can be split into two concise parts.

• Foreseeing the Future: if possible, the future is somehow set
• God's Omniscience: if God knows everything then God knows the future; if it's set, you aren't free

Logical Challenge: The apparent necessity of the future is simply a statement about what you will freely choose.

The Logical Challenge, can be split into three parts.

• Scientific Materialism: the belief in universal causation (every event or phenomenon results from, or is the sequel of, some previous event or phenomenon, which being present, the other is certain to take place) means there is no freedom. Freedom isn't real because everything can be explained or determined by scientific means.

• Libertarianism: the belief in indeterminism (there are uncaused events) invites us to trust our feeling of freedom. But uncaused actions aren't that great of an alternative to Scientific Materialism (random actions don't mean we are freely choosing in the sense we want to believe that we are).

• Compatibilism: the belief in universal causation, but asserts that our actions are caused by internal mind states and are as such, free. Those inner states, though, have causes, that have causes that eventually leave the action as out of our control.

The ideas of "not being free" have obvious limitations, the most glaring of which give poor accounts of what we take to be true everyday or what fits our own experiences. That being said, the idea of "being free" isn't flawless either, as I'm literally writing my doubts about it right here.

What are your thoughts?

What Is There?

As I see it, there are six definite schools of thought to embody when questioning your reality.

1. Monism: the universe is one substance; matter is all there is. There are no such things as thoughts, desires, pains or even itches. Reductively, though, thoughts, desires, pain and itches do exist, but are only neural events.
2. Idealism: mind is all there is; matter is a form of mind (i.e. invoking quantum physics).
3. Dualism: the universe is composed of both matter (an extension of mass) and mind
4. Interactionism: both minds and bodies exist, and can causally interact with one another; interactionism fits the agency theory (thoughts can cause a physical events); body/brain events can influence thoughts
5. Epiphenomenalism: mind is a by product of physical processes, physical causes create mental states; sometimes requires a form of dualism so that inviolable physical laws are not broken
6. Parallelism: body and mind, being so different, simply have no way to interact, so God or someone else keeps the two substances in perfect parallel; it just looks like they interact because of a pre-established harmony between the two (i.e. minds have mental effects, bodies have physical effects)

Where do you align?

Is There A God?

This is the problem of any theism, regardless if there are atheists questioning the very same things or not. The powers of finite beings? Well if God is all powerful, how can anything or anyone ever ultimately do anything? The problem of Evil? How can anyone reconcile the existence of Evil with that of a God who is, in either absolute or relative terms, omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent? The language about God? If language deals with reality and God transcends reality, what do words about God mean?

I really don't know what to think. I obviously have questions and doubts, but not a definitive stance. I know a few things about how to think about my struggling faith, but I don't know exactly what to think. When I was younger I used to be so "Gung ho" about my faith, and now it's severely lacking. And what's more frustratingly worrying to me is the fact that I don't feel in a rush to solve this dilemma.

I feel that might be the same for a few others in my demographic. Raised in church school throughout life, only to forget what's been forced upon you for so long once on your own.

What is your stance?