134. Fate Versus Free Will .
Part one
This is one of the knottiest problems of all times.
Mankind has thought about it for centuries. I have no
intention of stating what philosophers, scientists, rationalists and religious
scholars have said about it. I will discuss this problem in an entirely
different light; the insight of mysticism. Right at the outset, I want to state
that, despite years of thought, I have not arrived at any solution. I think it
is an insoluble problem. It ends in a paradox, which I will state somewhere. Let
this mote start with stating the two theories. Then the pros and cons of each
hypothesis will be examined. We will see
if one or both hypothesis can be rejected
Hypothesis. Fate. According
to this hypothesis, in its pure and extreme form, everything is predetermined.
What a person will do during his life has been determined before his birth, by
God (1-2). I quote from al-Ashqar:
‘The central knowledge of Allah, by
which He ruled that He would create whatever He wanted to exist, and……………….. He
wrote down all of that in Al-Lau hal-Mahfooz ‘the preserved tablet’ in His
words. So the heavens and the earth…….and everything in between them and in
them___ all of that is preserved in the Al-Lauh al-Mahfooz.
The
creation of whatever Allah, the Almighty, has decreed should exist, according
to His prior knowledge and what was written by His pen; whatever happens in
reality is identical to that prior, written knowledge.’
In other words, God has decreed all things as they will be.
To a modern man it is a preposterous notion. Nobody
infringes on his independence. If this hypothesis was true then he was a mere
puppet. He does not for a moment thinks that he is a puppet. Moreover it flies
against one’s own daily experience. Let us say I want to move my arm. I think
about it and will my arm to move, and it moves. I do not have to get permission
from anybody. All our actions are our own. We usually have multiple choices; we
choose one of them, for whatever reasons
But others, who have thought about free will a little more
deeply, have come to a different conclusion. They think that free will is an
illusion. In other words we think that we have free will but in reality we do
not. It is a mere illusion. This passage from Somerset Maugham’s novel ‘of
human bondage’ illustrates this point:
At
last Philip said: “Well, I can’t say anything about other people. I can only
speak for myself. The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I
can’t get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an
illusion which is one of the strongest
motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have choice, and that
influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it
was inevitable from all eternity.”
“What
do you deduce from that?” asked Hayward.
“Why,
merely the futility of regret. It’s no good crying over spilt milk, because all
the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”
I had read these
passage decades ago, and at that time was struck by its novelty. Why do Philip
and others arrive at that conclusion? I believe for two reasons:
First, they think
it was determined as such. It was in their destiny. It was written in the
stars. If there were two choices to a possible action, and they took option
number one, they were destined to choose option number one. Had they taken
option number two, they were, since all eternity, chosen to take option number
two.
The other reason
is that one is a product of nature and nurture. Our nature is made by the genes
that we inherit; half the genes from one’s father and the other half from one’s
mother. We are nurtured by where we are born and where we are raised. Our
parents, our teachers, our peers, the environment surrounding us, are the
predominant forces that mould our character____all during childhood.
We have absolutely no independence during nature or nurture. Nobody asks us
where you want to be born? Where you want to be raised? Who should be your
parents?
Therefore,
although it appears that we perform actions according to our own free will, how
much of that free will was made by the twin forces of nature and nurture_____both,
as we have determined, were beyond our control. That is why the character of
Philip said that the free will is an illusion.
Now, let us
examine the evidence and the arguments in support of fate
1. The hypothesis
of fate has been handed down to us through religious books and scriptures. John
Calvin in Christianity, Ibn Tamiyah in Islam, Swami Vivekananda in Hinduism(3),
believed in it and their beliefs were derived from their scriptures. Partial
support is also found in Judaism.
However, since
this mote does not regard scriptures as evidence or argument, he is going to completely
disregard it.
2. Some persons
have been able to tell future events. That means future exists somewhere, which
these persons have the ability to read (or see )
To be continued
(1) “Divine will and
predestination” by Umar S. al-Ashqar
(2) Majmoo’ al-Fattawa by Ibn Taymiyah
(3) Swami Vivekananda (1907) "Sayings and utterances".. “Therefore
we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free-will; the very words
are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that we know
is within our universe, and everything within our universe is molded by
conditions of time, space and causality. ... To acquire freedom we have to get
beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here”
