Top Highlights

• In short, moral determinism makes God immoral and makes humans amoral.The final view of free choice is moral self determinism. On this view, moral acts are not uncaused or caused by someone else. Rather, they are caused by oneself. This view best fits both the biblical and rationalcriteria. God said to Eve, "What is this you have done?" (Gen 3:13)....
• There are several philosophical objections. The first has to do with the principle of causality-that every event has an adequate cause. If this is so, then it would seem that even one's free will has a prior cause. If one's free will has a prior cause, then it cannot be caused by oneself. Thus self determinism would be contrary to the principle of ...
• But a more precise description of the process of a free act would avoid this problem. Technically, free will is not the efficient cause of a free act; free will is simply the power through which the agent performs the free act. The efficient cause of the free act is really the free agent, not the free will. Free will is simply the power by which th...
• The real question, then, is not whether there are agents who cause their own actions but whether God is the only true agent (that is, person) in the universe. Christians have always denounced (as pantheism) the belief that there is ultimately only one agent (or person) in the…
• There is a second philosophical problem with the claim that humans are the first cause of their own actions: It violates the principle of causality. If we say that a human agent's actions are not caused then have we not…