FREE ESSAY ON FREE WILL, CONSCIENCE AND HARD DETERMINISM

FREE WILL, CONSCIENCE AND HARD DETERMINISM

Free Will, Conscience and Hard Determinism
 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.