What is your life

Various Corollary Observations Regarding Providence, Predetermination, Prophecy, Free Will, and Personal Responsibility

One cannot end the discussion of the spiritual aspects of our lives without addressing a confusing theological problem – the understanding of providence and predetermination as they relate to free will and personal responsibility.

“Providence”, a concept anchored in the hearts of religious people trusting in the God-father, is the concept that the God-father does and will care for all of his Creation and will “provide” for everybody’s ultimate well-being. As discussed before, this is not borne out by observation. Observation further indicates that life’s principle of automation demands that every living individual must actively take care of its own needs and interests.
In this sense, the pre-human world of lower life presents itself as largely devoid of providence and as devoid of justice and compassion (except for proto-ethical mutual caring within narrow kinship limits of higher orders of animals). Observation also indicates that human existence is based on the principle of freedom and responsibility, while being fully enveloped by the general universe of physical laws and random events and the cruel struggle between species and individuals on the level of lower life forms. This indicates that mankind is responsible for itself in practical, emotional, and ethical terms. Religious belief and selective personal experience (including one’s own) may indicate that God or His Creation does “provide” for some individuals and people at some times, often miraculously. But what must the many, many unlucky and innocent ones say, who were failed by “providence”?
The demand for human responsibility is even more at stake in the question of Divine predeterminism. A riddle results from the thought that God must be all-powerful and all-knowing. This is parallel to the riddle asking whether God can create some object so heavy that he himself cannot lift it. In the case of the all-knowing God, God would also know the future. This would make the course of the world predetermined. It implies that God will not take action to change the future. Thereby, God would have renounced His own freedom, as well as any further creativity. For humans, the result would be a dangerous questioning of freedom and a consequent release from responsibility.
Both riddles – one regarding the weight, the other one predetermination – are rather theoretical and exhibit the limits of human thought and religious understanding. The only practical approach to life lies in assuming no predetermination and accepting human responsibility.
Predetermination is the precondition and basis for prophecy. There are actually two types of foretelling the future – the truly inspired prophecy foreseeing the future and the prediction or expectation based only on an inherent understanding of a situation or system and its environment resulting in valid extrapolation.
If the future of the world were predetermined, prophecy could be possible. However, even in the absence of predetermination, a person knowledgeable about a situation or system can more or less reliably indicate expectations regarding its future performance by extrapolation. A system is the combination of components that function in an interrelated way in accord with the characteristics of the system. A car is a system. A goal-oriented organization of individuals is a system, whereby individual members and the leaders of the organization usually are chosen for their known and predictable behavior. Spengler and Toynbee provided predictions regarding the historic future of civilizations, based on their interpretation of past historic developments. One can rightly assume that most prophetic predictions actually were extrapolating expectations based on understanding.
One must also take into consideration that only those predictions became famous and were remembered which proved correct – the others were simply not reported or forgotten. One can predict and expect that an inherently evil person will end in trouble. In this sense, the prophets could predict that a deviant Jewish people would end up in trouble, a focused people would have chances for success, and good leaders ultimately would appear again.
Predictions are easier to make when they concern general developments supported by a large number of statistical events or individuals. Predictions become unreliable when they depend on a very small number of probabilistic or random events or individuals. For example, one can predict that the rapid disappearance of natural open spaces in the world will lead to an environmental movement for conservancy. One cannot, however, predict whether the protection of a specific piece of land in a specific community will take place, where such an event would depend on the appearing activism of one or very few individuals. Predictions of timing are the most difficult to make and are the most insecure.
As one rejects predetermination, one also would have to reject prophecy, while retaining the possibility of extrapolating and expectations-based predictions. However, there are some striking cases of historically reported true prophesies. There is the famous case of Cortéz’ approach to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán. There is the case of the prediction of tall, white, bearded men appearing from beyond the sea to destroy the Inca empire. There is also the case in Kenya of the Kikuyu’s historic prophesy of the white humans’ approach in the head of a snake which later turned out to be the approaching construction of the Mombasa-Uganda Railroad. There are several reported cases of a soldier in the desolation of trench warfare one day suddenly cleaning and dressing up, only to be killed that day by a stray bullet. There are more stories of unusual foresight. Is there more to the dimension of time than we know and can grasp? This may well be so. However, we cannot responsibly conduct our lives without assuming our mental freedom and consequent responsibility, both being founded on the absence of predetermination.
The subject of free will and personality was discussed in one of the last paragraphs of Chapter 5.1 (on “Freedom of will and freedom of “personality”). There, it was indicated that “free will” actually concerns freedom of decision-making and that both, will and decisions, are expressions of personality, including thought, preferences, discipline, and temperament. As an individual’s personality is understood, many of his or her decisions become predictable. The limitation of human freedom in being tied to one’s nature-given personality was indicated, as were the possibilities and limitations for change of personality. ⁶

6. about the Meaning, Purpose, and direction in Existence –

The Path of our Life
6.1 About the Meaning, Purpose, and Direction in Existence
Since Copernicus’ discovery, highlighted by Galileo’s unfortunate process, we know that our Earth is not at the center of Creation. Additional discoveries in modern times – of a universe filled with billions of galaxies – cause us to expect that there was, is, and will be other intelligent life in this universe that has been in existence for almost 14 billion years by now. There is reason to assume that the appearance of intelligent life on other heavenly bodies, all being formed very hot and subsequently cooling off, has also resulted from an evolution, progressing from some primitive forms of life to the higher forms, as on Earth ⁷ . One must assume that other civilizations in the universe have occurred or will be occurring at various times, most of them at different times from the appearance of human civilizations on Earth.
This implies that the appearance of the animate phase of existence and the appearance of more gifted or “intelligent” living beings most likely did not happen first on Earth.
Why, then, did the delay of 2.5 billion years occur between the appearance of single-cell life on Earth and its evolution during the Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian periods into sophisticated and diversified organisms? Why did it take 600 million additional years of Darwinian struggle for humans to appear on Earth? Certain evolutionary phases may have been just as necessary on Earth as they most likely were on other celestial bodies. But why did they take that long if the next creative idea had already occurred to the Creative Spirit of the universe, to God, at an earlier time?
We now know, that all of this inanimate and natural existence will come to its certain dissolution or end at a calculable time in the future – either in giant black holes or, later, as infinitely dissipating and ever colder radiation.
In conclusion, the inanimate phase of celestial bodies of existence may have been, and still is, nothing but fireworks for the pleasure of one viewer, the Formative Essence of Existence, God. Equally the Darwinian phase of life, ever different on different celestial bodies, may be nothing else but a kaleidoscopic pleasure for its creator, without any other purpose in itself.
The “human” phase of natural evolution (whatever that means on other celestial bodies) attributes mental freedom and responsibility to those living beings on a human level or above (or their leaders) – possibly supported and guided by consciousness and goals or “values”. Thereby, these conscious beings become co-viewers and co-actors of existence, within their limitations, thus adding their own purpose to the evolution of existence.
It is indeed pathetic how we humans, possibly still being in our early phase of development, continue to struggle with our weaknesses – as insects struggle in the mud trying to lift themselves by their wings. There may be no purpose or meaning in the totality of the universe beyond the pleasure of God. But there is specific purpose, meaning, and direction for our own lives to reach our potential and to form our environment in accordance with our values – in improving, perceiving with joy, reaching out in curiosity, and fulfilling human existence – specifically as we regard the shortness of time allocated to our individual lives.
It is of great importance to take a new approach to theology, to incorporate what we now know about evolution and the universe. Too many traditional images, perceptions, and dogmas are not tenable in such an expanded view. What is expected of theology is not only an anthropocentric theology, explaining our own lives, but also a theology commensurate with the observation of ongoing Creation, of natural evolution, of natural catastrophes, and a theology viewing the vast and evolving universe of billions of galaxies, knowing that all will certainly find its ultimate end. One must hope for a new religious understanding of universal existence, of the transcendental essence of existence, of whatever name one gives one’s personal “God”, and of our human existence on Earth ⁸.
If the universe is aimless, there is no other meaning or purpose in life than to be there. A status of aimlessness would exist if all atoms in the universe were to randomly move around forever. The universe is different. Things take shape – in galaxies and planetary systems – and those configuring movements and transformations continue. In the ongoing evolution of the universe, life appears and fills every existing opportunity for its survival with adapted species. Finally, humans appear and find the unique opportunity of their existence in thinking, having values, and forming cultures. Thinking allows a higher level of comfort and power. The values give direction and meaning to human thought and actions.
Is human development the meaning of the entire universe? Most likely, not. Human existence here on Earth exists in one very remote and very small particle of the universe (on “Earth”), squeezed in with the violent astronomical and physical events of the original phase of Creation, with the cruel Darwinian struggle of earlier life forms, and will find its end in self-made destruction or in one of the many natural extinction catastrophes – if not in the end of our Sun and the universe. This leaves as the specific meaning of existence for us humans the filling of the specific niche opened to us and to use the unique opportunities given to our minds.
How can we not see the meaning of our existence in using the opportunities that, in such a unique way, were given to us? We should not just be another species of animals, senselessly feeding on other forms of life, fighting off predators and competitors, and multiplying. This may still be in our blood; we are still part of the real world. But there is more for us in our unique gifts. The fulfilling of our potential in thought and values is the meaning of our existence in the universe.
Are “purpose” and “meaning” the same? Possibly not. Meaning indicates “what makes sense”, purpose indicates “what for”, “what to do now”, or “what is expected from us” – any one such statement related to the others.
Purpose is related to objectives and results. The earlier religious expectations of another world to come, the later scientific perceptions seeing phases of development in nature, and, lately, the theory presented by some believers of ongoing Creation (“Intelligent Design”) led some people to concepts of direction, objectives, or purpose in human existence on Earth. But the ultimate end of the universe has now become understood by modern science – in either a number of Black Holes, with their ultimate dissolution in radiation, or in a total cosmic collapse, the Big Crunch. Therefore, it became visible to us that there is no permanent objective in Creation or possible result thereof. This leaves existence and its evolution only as a purpose in itself.
In individual human terms, this indicates the meaning of existence not only as being here and now as one came to exist, but also to participate in evolution while it lasts. The purpose of personal existence is a mandate to utilize the given opportunities, to fulfill personal existence, and to contribute toward the world’s development in our phase of human values with all our nature-given capabilities and human values and in accordance with opportunities.
One must mention the limits of opportunities, because Creation is moving on a large scale, with unevenness in detail. While Creation grows and develops in general, large sections of Creation have always been given over to oblivion, without continuity, indicating no other meaning than to have once existed. Large segments of our Earth have been destroyed by natural disasters, human communities or families have been wiped out by plagues, all kinds of living beings have been run over senselessly by trucks, children have died in accidents. Many, if not most, human individuals have lived in constrained circumstances and have not found fulfillment in the full use of their gifts. But are we to judge God? We can only search for peace of heart by giving ourselves to existence as it is, by accepting and by struggling to the best of our capabilities for the time given to us in existence.
Can this interpretation of the purpose of existence lead to an understanding of a Transcendental Formative Essence of Existence, God? All one can say is that this essence, God, wants the flower to bloom, the tree to grow high and strong, the lion to kill for food. God must also be seen as wanting diversity, with room in Creation for an infinite variety of existences, from the tender flower to the powerful beast. When one realizes that nothing in Creation remains static, that everything changes in time, ages and disappears, then one must see existence, God, as wanting development. God must have wanted the realization of the phase of Creation comprising human values – within the Darwinian world and within the world of inanimate celestial mechanics.
Mankind is leading nature’s development on Earth to abstract dimensions: Thought, ingenuity, moral values, decision-making, responsibility, compassion, aesthetics, humor, joy, and the building of cultures. Therefore, one can see God as wanting us to fulfill our existence by realizing this unique potential course. We must survive, and, being part of nature, we must keep strong through struggle. Human advance implies struggle. But, with diversity in nature, there is room for both, the weak and the strong. Each individual can or must choose his or her own path from a variety of possible approaches to existence, reaching from the tender and humble to the powerful and pioneering, each one developing initiative to using his or her given capabilities to the fullest.
Should we now work twenty hours every day to implement the results of our thoughts and to transform the world in accordance with our values? Earlier phases of our civilization, especially the last century, were filled with such ideals. Now, we are more critical. We want to conserve the environment (and most species) and historical places. We see too much development as negative. But we all want to have a car and a computer and fly to distant places for vacation. We want to help third-world countries reach our level of well-being. We do want more development, but of the “right” kind. The meaning and purpose of human existence – the human opportunity – is not quantitatively defined, it is qualitative. It is value-related.