Even if our consciousness, personality, and desires are not entirely contingent on the interaction of neurons in our brains, they must still be mostly dependent, since physical changes to human brains are routinely observed to alter them (Ex: the effects hormones have on desires, or the effects of brain damage on personality).
So even if we have free will, it is heavily influenced by our neurochemistry and neuroanatomy.
If God is the architect of our brains, then not only has his design caused us to have propensities to engage in certain behaviors and refrain from engaging in other behaviors; but many of those propensities are for behaviors he is said in the Bible to not want us to engage in (such as greed, violence, and adultery) and many others against behaviors he is said to want us to engage in (such as charity and subservience).
This is especially relevant to (but not limited to) Adam, Eve, and the Gardens tree of the knowledge of good and evil (if one ascribes to a literal interpretation of Genesis). The designed propensity for greed and against subservience would have doomed them to fall, from the beginning; and an omniscient deity would have known this.
I see only three ways this dilemma can be resolved:
- God was unable to design us any other way.
- God actually wants us to refrain from or engage in the behaviors we have been designed with a propensity to refrain from or engage in.
- God does not exist.
Since (if God exists) he is powerful and knowledgeable enough to have created an entire existent framework (matter, energy, space-time, etc.) from the ground up, it is unreasonable to conclude possibility #1.
Since the Bible says that God does not want greed and violence (or all the suffering they result in), and does want charity and subservience, it is unreasonable to conclude possibility #2, given a Christian framework.
Perhaps I am biased against the possibility of such indifference (at best) in a deity, but I nonetheless find possibility #3 to be the most reasonable.
So my main question is; how can possibility #1 be the most reasonable (given either a Christian framework, or simply a theist framework)?
As a side question; if free will merely means freedom from our brains and from sensory input from the physical worldsince what makes a human his or her self is heavily determined by (if not solely determined by) the brainwould the loss of our brains, upon death, cause us to no longer be ourselves?
I suppose I should take a vacation from this forum and leave this discussion to you.
