My partner, Polly, and I have six adult children, ages thirty-one to forty-five. We have sixteen grandchildren, aged four to twenty-three. I regularly see most of my children and grandchildren every week or two. Now that the NFL season has started, I will see several of my sons and their families when they stop by to take advantage of my Sunday Ticket Package on YouTube TV. Over the past two weeks, I have seen all our children and thirteen of our grandchildren. I have texted our granddaughters who are now in college at Ohio State University and Miami University — Oxford, respectfully. Our family is dysfunctional, but we are close.
Because I am close to my spouse, children, and grandchildren, I naturally have some influence over them. Not controlling influence as was common during our Fundamentalist Baptist days, but influence in giving advice or sharing my opinion. And I am opinionated, as I always have been. I love discussions and debates about religion, politics, philosophy, economics, and the state of the Cincinnati Reds and Bengals. Years ago, I expected our family to be of one mind, but those days are long gone. Now I genuinely want to hear Polly’s opinions and those of my children and grandchildren. I am fascinated by how their thinking and beliefs have evolved post-Evangelicalism.
Libertarian free will is a myth. According to Got Questions, an Evangelical site, libertarian free will:
. . . is basically the concept that, metaphysically and morally, man is an autonomous being, one who operates independently, not controlled by others or by outside forces. According to the Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (InterVarsity Press, 2002), libertarian free will is defined as “in ethics and metaphysics, the view that human beings sometimes can will more than one possibility. According to this view, a person who freely made a particular choice could have chosen differently, even if nothing about the past prior to the moment of choice had been different.” In the libertarian free will paradigm, the power of contrary choice reigns supreme. Without this ability to choose otherwise, libertarian free will proponents will claim that man cannot be held morally responsible for his actions.
Interestingly, most of the Internet sites offering up definitions of libertarian free will are Christian. Regardless, libertarian free will posits that people operate independently, not controlled by outside influences or people. This is patently false. Free will is fiercely argued, with some philosophers believing people don’t have free will. Others believe we have free will in a limited sense. These discussions are above my pay grade, but I generally believe all of us are influenced by outside sources. From the time we are born, we are influenced by people, events, and circumstances. As an old man, I have pondered the people and things who have deeply influenced my life. Could it be otherwise for a husband, father, and grandfather?
What I don’t have is controlling influence; influence that demands obedience and conformity. In our Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) years, I demanded my spouse and children obey me as the patriarch of the family. I believed, as did Polly, that this hierarchy was commanded by God and taught in the Bible. Post-Christianity, Polly and I adopted an egalitarian worldview. This required us setting our children free to think for themselves and make their own decisions. While I always appreciate them asking me for advice — what old man doesn’t want to feel needed? — their decisions are theirs. I may share my beliefs or opinions with them, but there’s no demand to conform. Thus, whether to believe in God (any God), go to church, or follow the teachings of the Bible is up to them, not me. Whether they end up in the Evangelical Hell is on them, not me. Yes, I am an atheist, as is their mother, but I make no effort to evangelize them. Am I happy that none of my children attend Evangelical churches, and some of them are atheists or agnostics? Of course.
Of course, the question in the title is only asked by fearful Evangelicals; people who are afraid of being punished by God and going to Hell. I understand their fear, having walked in their shoes for the first fifty years of my life. Deconverting helped to break and dispel my fear of God and Hell. There is no God, no Heaven/Hell, no fear. All Polly and I know to do is to live a fear-free life and raise a bit of hell. 🙂
But, Bruce, you can’t know for certain whether there is a Hell. True, but I can’t be sure Lizard People don’t walk among us either. All I know to do is to skeptically and rationally look at the central claims of Christianity (and Lizard People), and live accordingly. I live a God-free and Hell-free life before not only my family, but my neighbors. I want them to see authenticity — sans God, Christianity, and the Bible. Much as I did as a Christian, I let my little light shine. If my spouse, children, or grandchildren find an affinity with my beliefs and way of life, that’s on them, not me. They are free to live their lives as they wish. I will love and support them regardless of what they believe or how they live their lives. Our objective is for all of us to live openly, freely, and honestly.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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This definition of libertarian free will surprised me, mainly in that it refers to being controlled by outside forces, rather than influenced. To say that we are none of us influenced by outside forces is, quite obviously, insanely ludicrous. Every decision we make is, to greater and lesser extents, the result of circumstances outside of ourselves, other than those that are specifically tied to our physiology. If I feel cold and turn the heat up in the house that is an outside influence. It’s not control, but it’s a major factor.
The point at which ‘control’ is a factor is in the nature of the decision making itself. I may think that I choose to turn up the thermostat because I am cold (taking into account other factors, especially cost) but determinism suggests that I could not have made any other choice. Our brains, and our bodies, are machines. They are in many ways complex, but also very poorly executed and prone to malfunction. The one thing that drives us, however, is that they operate by the passage of neurons in our brains, over which we have no control. If I’d qualified that comment by saying no ‘meaningful’ control, or ‘little’ control, then I’d have allowed a little free will into our lives but, in fact, we have none. Zero. Zilch. It’s tiny neurons dropping into place in a near infinite stream that control us.
The good news is it doesn’t matter. It may be neurons doing the work but they are our neurons in our bodies. Our experiences can be entirely consistent with the feeling that we are operating freely (in fact, it’s impossible to live life NOT thinking one has free will), and anyone who has never read about the subject is never going to give it a moment’s thought.
Ah, the concept of free will. It’s complex, and likely there’s a lot more for scientists to learn before we answer that question.
Actually, in my earlier years of deconstruction, I WAS afraid that I was leading my children astray, possibly condemning them to eternity in hell since I stopped our church going when the kids were very young. Deconstruction helped me work through that fear, and now I am glad I didn’t put them through years of religious indoctrination. Even though I was scared at first, I strongly felt that my lidsshpuld have the opportunity to explore religion/philosophy on their own terms. They’ve both thanked me for that.
Do you know what I’m afraid of? I attend my family’s fundy church sometimes, my 2 small g\sons run to sit with their best buddies 3 little boys who are the homophobic pastor’s sons. My family aren’t homophobic, I wish they would leave. I look at the 5 little boys in a pew together and wonder if one or more might discover they are gay as they get older. I won’t mind, but worry about that ranting pastor’s boys. I think he’d shun a gay son and we all know how devastating the consequences of that can be for gay teens.Worry about hell? nah not a chance. And if it did exist as.is often said, the company there would be a million times more inviting than the occupants of s fundy heaven
It’s sad when children and grandchildren don’t have parents or grandparents that can show them the truth and they go into eternity lost in the lake of fire separated from Jesus Christ 😭😭😭
Some parents and grandparents choose to teach their children and grandchildren how to think instead of what to think. I want them to be able to skeptically and rationally look at your version of Christianity and see it in all its bankrupt glory; to study and analyze your beliefs and come to their own conclusion that the emperor has no clothes. I am confident that my children and grandchildren can see right through you, Revival Fires, even at their young ages. By the time they are adults, they will know you are peddling lies and bullshit. You are nothing more than an object lesson, a reminder of what happens when a man uncritically accepts dogma and stops thinking for himself.
I once considered myself a Libertarian. That may be the reason why I see it as a political, economic or philosophical term. That said, although I knew libertarians who were atheists or agnostics, most were conservative Christians of one kind or another. So it was interesting to see the term used in a religious context.
It seems that “libertarian free will,” as it’s defined, negates the claim that one can only attain salvation through Jesus. What if someone hasn’t heard of Jesus? And how would the will of God or the way of Jesus reveal themselves through “their” words (i.e., the Bible) if someone hasn’t learned how to read?
And, of course, we all know that people who “accept Jesus” (or however you want to phrase it) have almost always been influenced by something or someone outside themselves. I didn’t spend as many years in Evangelical (or any other kind of) Christianity as Bruce or some commenters have, but I never knew of anyone who “accepted Jesus” as their “Lord and Savior” in a vacuum.
I get the feeling that “libertarian free will” is simply a way Evangelicals rationalize their belief that everyone who doesn’t “accept Jesus” is going to Hell, regardless of whether they were in any position to know about him.