Free Will And Conscience Essay, Research Paper

"We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of

inevitability." (King, p. 160) Robert Blatchford would argue differently

about this statement, because he would say that progress is pre-determined. As

he would say, progress will happen only if it is meant to happen. Are things in

life such as progress inevitable or are they based upon decisions we make of our

own free will? Do we as individuals possess free will, or are the events in our

lives bound to happen? Are the events and actions of our lives pre-determined,

or do we have the ability to change the course of events as we deem necessary? I

believe that the decisions that we make for the future will be made of our own

free will to choose. Although heredity and environment have a constant presence

in our lives, we are as individuals ultimately responsible for our own actions.

Hard Determinism holds that every event has a cause, but regardless of this fact

it has nothing to do with free will. Human beings should never be held

responsible from a moral point of view, because a human being cannot possibly do

anything different from what they already do. They can’t possibly be held

accountable for these actions either, because they are doing only what they are

capable of doing. Blatchford would hold all of these principles to be true,

however Martin Luther King, Jr. would strongly disagree. Although Blatchford

never argued that a person makes choices, he did argue that they were freely

making those choices. King wrote about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on

Calvary’s Hill in which he said, "?on Calvary’s Hill, three men were

crucified. Two were extremists for immorality, and thusly fell below their

environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and

goodness, and thereby rose above his environment." (King p. 161) Blatchford

would argue that there is no way that a man can rise above or fall below one’s

environment, for it is one’s environment and/or their heredity that causes one

to act in the first place. The men on Calvary’s Hill could not help being the

type of people that they were, Blatchford would argue. If this is true, then how

would you explain the one man’s repentance to Christ and the other man’s

rejection of the saint? I believe it was a choice made of the man’s free will.

To believe in hard determinism as Robert Blatchford did, you would have to

believe that everything you do, or that anyone else does for that matter is

pre-determined. Therefore, every decision you make or conclusion that you come

up with has been determined before you even committed to the act of resolution.

Robert Blatchford held that our choices are reflective of either our heredity or

our environment or a combination of both. However, King, as noted above, stated

that a person is able to rise above their environment. Your environment is your

surroundings, your conditions or your circumstances. It is what you know around

you at all times, at all hours of the day and night throughout your life. Martin

Luther King, Jr., like most black people living during the days of segregation,

was subject to laws and attitudes contrary to the equality given to white men

and women in America at that time. Although the attitude toward blacks in the

time of segregation was hostile, there were individual blacks throughout the

United States that began to protest what they felt was an injustice. They felt

that segregation was a prejudiced law, and that as United States citizens, they

deserved the same respect and treatment as given to the white community. Many

blacks out of fear stayed silent and tolerated the bigotry. However, there were

those who defied the laws, and in so doing also defied the government.

Blatchford wrote that heredity and environment make a person what the are;

however, if this is true, how would he explain the fact that there were black

people who protested segregation, which was a part of the every day existence in

society then. If blacks were part of an environment in which they were seen as

not equal to whites, then how do you explain their will to break the law and go

against their environment? Blacks were taught to respect and uphold the law as

well as white citizens in society, and yet there were those who outwardly

rejected it. How can you explain Rosa Parks decision not to move to the back of

a bus to allow a white person to sit down as her environment would have had her

do? For years, King and other black Americans tolerated racial discrimination,

and they did so partly because they were accustomed to this way of living in

those times. As King puts it, "There comes a time when the cup of endurance

runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of

injustice.""(King p. 158) David Thoreau in his essay Civil

Disobedience stated, "All men recognize the right of revolution; that is,

the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government. When its

inefficiency are great and unendurable." (Thoreau, p.2) If a person is no

longer willing to accept the customary attitudes of society, are they not

exercising their will freely in order to change their environment. Complete

defiance against the natural elements is a free will act. What role does the

conscience play in one’s will? The Conscience is your awareness of what is right

or wrong as it pertains to your own actions. As Blatchford states, "the

free will party will claim that conscience is an unerring guide." (Blatchford,

p. 243) If the conscience is our guide, then surely we are making a choice to

either follow our belief system of right and wrong or to do the exact opposite

and go against our conscience. This in and of itself shows that we choose to do

one or the other, but is it a free will act? Blatchford argues,

"?conscience does not and cannot tell us what is right and what is wrong;

it only reminds us of the lessons we have learnt as to right and wrong." (Blatchford,

p. 243) I feel that some things are instinctive in all of us, and although we

may be taught to be good, we may act out in an evil way. Serial killers are not

always raised in a dysfunctional environment, but they are certainly

dysfunctional human beings. These killers choose to murder other human beings

regardless of their environment or in spite of it. I do not pretend to know the

answer to the age-old question of whether there is or is not a God. I can tell

you that I am a believer in God and a believer in the will to think and choose

freely. My common sense tells me that no one person or object created its own

self, and therefore, there must have been an original creator of the universe

and of the people and things in existence in the universe. This original

creator, or what we know as God, would have willed us into being and willed us

to use our minds to make opinions and decisions freely. This certainly seems to

explain the idea that we were created in the image of God. Here are some

problems as I see them with Blatchford’s theory. If we do not possess free will,

then why do people continue to engage in destructive behavior when they

presumably know better? Where do new ideas come from? Here is an example of my

point against Blatchford’s theory on environment and heredity. I know of two

brothers raised in the same environment, one is in prison for murder, the other

is a law school graduate. This is a true story, so how would Blatchford explain

this? If two people are raised by the same parents in the same household and are

the same age, then how did one choose to be so different? Certainly it wasn’t

heredity and environment! Blatchford wrote the following, "Now if Williams

had been Robinson, that is to say if his heredity and his environment had been

exactly like Robinson’s, he would have done exactly as Robinson did." (Blatchford,

p. 245) Blatchford was writing about two friends, Robinson and Williams, who met

to have a drink, but his point is clear, if their environment and heredity are

the same they would choose the exact same way. It is as though Blatchford feels

we are nothing more than computers, scripted to do only as we are programmed.

Blatchford makes the case that if Williams and Robinson’s heredity and

environment had been the same, as in my example, the two men would have done

exactly the same thing. I believe Blatchford just disproved his own theory. In

conclusion, my opinion is that the will is free because if it were not free

there could be no such thing as progress. Progress cannot exist without new

ideas, and without a free will new ideas could not be contrived. Furthermore, as

individuals we choose to go against our instincts every day. We are constantly

making choices that change the course of our lives and of the lives of those

around us. King once wrote, "My friends, I must say to you that we have not

made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent

pressure." (King, p. 157) Without our will we could not hope to gain

anything at all, because without the will to change, we would remain complacent

and, therefore, never wanting more out of life.