Transcript
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I think one of the problems that people
have with the whole discussion of Free
Will versus fate is that if indeed God
is orchestrating everything then how is
their moral accountability God made me
do it I think it's helpful to be able to
separate two concepts which become
conflated with each other and that is
that there can be moral accountability
without causation in other words there
can be something you didn't actually
cause but you're still morally
accountable I'll give an example there
was the mgrm experiment where they
wanted to see if people would follow
orders what they did is they set it up
where volunteers I think it was at Yale
so on campus they would come in and all
they would be told is that we're going
to test whether or not administering an
electric shock will cause people to
answer questions more accurately they
have one person sitting there with the
control panel with a dial and a button
supposedly administering an electric
shock and they ask questions from
another person who they don't see who's
in another room and they can hear over a
radio they asked the question if the
person answered wrong they would be told
push the button administering the shock
most people were sort of hesitant to do
it but if there was any hesitancy the
one administering the test would say
it's very important for the purposes of
this experiment that you push the button
and then they would push the button now
the next time there was a wrong answer
they would be told turn up the dial and
push the button again turning up the
dial meant to make a stronger shock and
they would do it and if they resisted or
they hesitated the one administering the
experiment would say it's very important
for the purposes of the experiment to
follow the instructions and basically
everybody did it and at the end they
revealed that the person on the other
side of the wall was just an actor there
was no electric shock nobody was being
hurt at all it was just a science
experiment to see if you were willing to
do it so imagine that you were the
subject of this experiment and you find
out later that you weren't really
shocking anyone nobody was getting
shocked does that change your opinion of
yourself meaning if you could extract
the cause and effect you weren't really
causing anything to happen but morally
does that really change the
accountability after all you are willing
to do it so imagine like this
everything's orchestrated by God
everything's happening because he's
causing it to happen not you yet the
fact that you are the Willing volunteer
to be the conduit or the messenger for
that negative thing to be delivered of
somebody else's life so even if God's in
control and you're not causing it but
you are willing to be the vehicle for
that to happen and therefore that itself
is caused for remorse and sou searching
and introspection so that you can become
a better person the kind of person that
will not be the Willing messenger for
that negative experience the point is
that God can be in control of everything
and at the same time we are accountable
for our choice even if we're not the
cause God is the cause but our
willingness to be Messengers that is
what we're morally accountable for
