Perhaps free will and determinism simultaeously exist as facts of material ontology. Yet spiritual transcendence of the material such as we find in some forms of secular-spirituality such as abstract thought may increase the ranges of freedom sufficiently to ovecome the mundane determinist realm of the material world or Universe.
The philosophical question regarding the free will of mankind is one of the oldest; ancient Babylonian astrologers thought the stars controlled the destiny of any individual pre-determining his or her course through life. Determinism is the belief that universal events pre-determine human free will. The belief that free will is only illusory is easy enough for many to believe if they consider the spirit of a human being to be of the same nature as the material element comprising the body. One can see how the oceans are moved in tides by the gravitational field of the moon for instance, and extrapolate that physical forces such as gravity also control the mass of any one too.
Mathematical development of algebra led to methods for constructing multi-dimensional matrices of sets and groups that can be taken to represent the dimensional configurations of the material world. Can abstrract,spiritual thought one day invent math models with moredimensions that that of the real world yet comprehensive of it? If such spiritual liberty iis actualized could it also moderate entirely naturally determined material systems for the good and bad? Is that a reason why God reduced mankind's status as 'little gods' into the original sinned mortal criteria of childbirth, labor death and such?
What would be the consquences of absolute free will without absolute wisdom and goodness such as good has? If evveryone alive became bright enought to create their own material ontology facts would the reconstructed Unniverse be torn in six billion seperate direction (at least freely?). Surpassing the natural limitis of deterministic materiality would present definite dangers for a culture sufficiently spiritually advanced-at least advanced in some forms of spirituality.
The mass, material nature of the human body can also serve the more irrationally inclined as a justification for belief in absolute free will. With all things being material and the mind meaninglessly isolated phenomenally in a universe of meaningless mass why shouldn't persona;l egoism be the self-determining fact in the ocean of anarchy? Free will is consciousness and spiritual able to transcend the physically determinate matter of existence to a significant extent-yet not entirely for to be, is to be as a physical being subject to physical laws that the body and even the mind must conform to a priori.
The mind must disconnect from consciousness and sleep nearly every day-that is pre-determined. The forces of nature including gravity-the strong force, electro-weak etc, hold sway over how a body exists and its relationships to other material things in the Universe-yet within a particular protocol the human spirit can freely direct the configuration of material things, and also direct its own thought development in large part selecting what sort of things to think upon. Human beings have limited freedom
- limited in order to allow it to exist amidst other things of the Universe. The true freedom for a human being to transcend the restrictions of the material is to have faith in Jesus Christ as transcending eternal God and personal saviour.
Freedom refers to unrestricted ranges of motion; human beings have degrees of freedom of motion and of self-determination, yet not absolute freedom- that could be thought of as reserved for God. We must drink water often enough and replenish quantities of oxygen and hydrogen-too much CO2 reduces intellect and life. Energy requires intake of food for the continuum of personal being, and aging is written into the human genome such that we know in advance that out days are numbered. To be, means that pre-determined elements exist in a being. The collapse of wave functions from the quantum world into space-time determines characteristics of super-positioned membrane end-points extruding into reality. Human lives are wave-form functions given determinate being temporally. Every point being-any particular being, has relationships to collateral beings in a given nexus. The position, form and character of the being is reciprocally determined relative to the other particulars and their location, role and function. To be a proton or neutron means that certain roles, valence, shell locations and quantum functions are pre-determined. In a unified field at a singularity of origin perhaps all such relationships and pluralism would be extinguished. The universal and universal forms have more freedom of motion in not being particularized. The more specialized a being is the more it is pre-determined to function in a given relational role and pre-determined context.
The neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus writing of the One and the issue of ideas and of everything else that would eventually comprise a Universe did not quite explain why the One should issue anything at all-even if He is perfect a priori without need of thought or to issue anything. That paradigm is a quandary for philosophers that still continues today; why should the perfect, omnipotent unmoved mover issue anything outside of His self and perfect eternal state? Wouldn't God too when issuing forms that become actualized be subject to laws of determined being...determined for having taken a particular form rather than remaining potential in the mind of God?
The -pre-determinism of being that becomes any existing thing collapses from a hypothetical wave-form in all possible places is a logical reason why the eternal One should not require any actualization beyond idea, or it would perhaps be a partial explanation of why God should choose to contain all without actualization if he was anything less than omniscient and omnipotent, for any form of actualization or extension of idea would still remain God. Perhaps such issues were considerations of the nature of Christ in the filoque controversy between the Catholic and Orthodox Church theologians of past millenia. We believe that the Son may be an example of the limited ranges of freedom inherent in taking an incarnate, determined form of being.
Jesus Christ as the Son was pre-determined to die on the cross, yet He was willing to fulfill the role that God had assigned Him. Jesus was God yet with the nature of a man and God simultaneously. He was free as God to show fulfill the will of God yet -predetermined in the existing state of being to become crucified for the original and subsequent sin of mankind as incarnate beings. The ranges of motion of Jesus Christ were pre-determined by the physical criterion of being,however as a spirit simultaneously aware of the transcending fact of the spiritual nature of reality implicit as matter is embedded within protocols of higher or deeper underlying emanations from the One not immediately apparent within the four dimensions of space-time or even accessible through synthetic a priori judgments about the empirical world cosmological theories Jesus Christ was free as the Author of spirit. The miracles of Christ exemplified the freedom from temporal criteria nature implicit in God.
The question of how the One can be Himself yet not be determined as a form of being even of a spiritual nature may have something to do with the absolutely transcendence of God; He is one and yet three persons with the capability, like no other, of being self and yet an other in fact. The omniscient nature is knowledge of self more or less without limit to temporal criteria that would be another determined form of being, or a phenomenal actualization of being.
The ranges of motion of freedom of human beings including that of thought are several. Some transcend particular determined aspects of being human while others are only potential; in trusting God and having faith in the Son Jesus Christ as one's personal savior transcending the criterion of being in the Universe with its original sin of waveform collapse into a determined condition, a human being may renormalize a relationship with the perfect will of eternal God. Freely doing the will of God is the best way to attain the maximum degrees of freedom.