On the issue of Free Will vs Determinism I am a type of Compatibilist, I reject hopeless Fatalism but also believe there are enough mitigating factors in the world to render no one truly ultimately fully responsible for their own actions.
My perspective on this has changed some but this is no complete reversal of any prior post I've made on the subject. This is somewhat true of me in the past but it's especially true going forward that when I seem to speaking as a pro Free Will person I'm speaking agaisnt Calvinist Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace or Augustinian Original Sin or the Reprobate Doctrine as it is taught by some Arminians. And I've also argued against Free Will being inherently incompatible with Universal Salvation.
However when I seem to be anti Free Will I am advocating a form of Determinism not Calvinist Predestination. Determinism is what any Atheist who says they reject Free Will is talking about, but it's not only Atheists, if you're any type of Materialist then you're also some type of Determinist.
Determinism has unfortunately become a contentious topic among many people it shouldn't be. Much of what I'm arguing in this post is controversial not just among my fellow Christians regardless of their politics but also among fellow Leftist regardless of their religious affiliation.
For example some Leftists think because we reject Scientific Racism and Eugenics then we should also reject any conception of "Biological Determinism" or inheritable traits. The specific claims of those pseudo sciences are both factually wrong and morally repugnant. But it's still true that we are the way we are in part because of how are brains are wired. And acknowledgment of those factors should be a cause for sympathy and understanding not a justification for hate and discrimination.
Here's one good YouTube video on Determinism, but it is by someone not as Left Wing as I am and probably not as Compatibilist either.
And all of that is just one aspect of Determinism, we Leftists also care about Historical Materialism, Material Conditions and Systemic Oppression and so on.
As a Christian Compatibilist it is my position that when people do good they are by the Grace of God acting in their own Free Will. But when they do Evil it is them falling victim to their conditions in some way. That is equally as true of both the morally best people who've ever lived as it is of the morally worst.
To many in the Ancient World including Socrates and I firmly believe every author of the New Testament, it was oxymoronic to even consider debating if a evil act someone committed was or wasn't committed by their own free will because they believed Humans are innately Good and so any Evil deed one commits is by definition a deviation of their true nature and not something they could have possibly done of their own free will.
To Socrates it seems it is chiefly Ignorance that is to Blame, and that can be supported by what Jesus said on The Cross "Father forgive them for they know not what they do". But also when Jesus called Matthew and some objected He said that Sinners are sick people who need a doctor not criminals who need punishment, so that implies other factors as well.
Mark 7:11 and John 8:31-36 talk about Jesus making us Free, as does Romans 8 verses 2 and 32 and Galatians 5. Grace is spoken of as a Free Gift by Paul because we don't have to pay anything for it, it is given to everyone, permission is not asked. The only NT verses that seem to truly speak of metaphysical Free Will are in Revelation 21-22 in the New Heaven and New Earth.
In Ancient Greek Gentile schools of Philosophy it is surprisingly only Atheist Determinism I can't find. The Epicureans were Atheist Existentialists and Objectivists, the Stoics were Compatibilists but often seen by their Platonist rivals as more Determinist, the only hard Determinist was Aristotle who basically invented Deism. And the Theistic Existentialists were the Middle Platonists like Plutarch who wrote against the Determinism of the Stoics.
In Josephus's descriptions of The Sects of First Century Judaism, the Essenes seem like Middle Platonists or Neopythagoreans on everything but their position on Fate vs Free Will, while the Sadducees seem like Aristotleans on everything but Fate vs Free Will. It looks like Greco-Roman era Jews for some reason swapped that one part of those two ways of thinking. However the Pharisees out of whom came the Zealots and Early Christians seemed to agree with the Stoics on both Fate vs Free Will and other metaphysical issues, the Stoics merely lacked knowledge of The Resurrection.
Pelagianism is a trend in Christianity that already existed before the person for whom it is named (in Early Arianism it's shown how the Arians were proto Pelagians). That trend is the bizarre notion that it's because Humans are innately Good being made in the Image of God and given Life by the Breath of God that we are supposed to believe in Absolute Free Will and that each human is personally responsible for their moral failings. It's actually absurd to believe those two things at the same time, but because Augustine normalized The Latin Church taking the exact opposite position on both those things Christians were conditioned to think they go together.
However I feel a lot of modern Internet SJWs are basically Secular Pelagians. They claim to believe in the innate goodness of Humanity at least when they're refuting the Authoritarian Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. But then turn around and are very against allowing "excuses" for the people they consider evil.
Like for example the notion that suggesting someone's Mental Illness or Trauma was even partly to blame for their wrongdoings is offensive to the people with the same issues who didn't do anything like similar. And I wish they could see how that same Logic is applied to Economics by the Right. Conservatives who keep thinking they can refute everything about how inherently unfair our current system is by pointing to "Rags to riches" stories of people who succeeded in-spite of their disadvantages. And we correctly explain how that probably had as much or more to do with Luck then it does Merit.
Instead of jumping to call it Ableist to suggest that Crimes are a result of Mental Illness we should start considering that there is no such thing as a person not Mentally Ill, we just haven't diagnosed all the illnesses we have yet.
But another factor is how many of them have the same Vengeful Emotional Desire for Retributive Justice that leads to Conservatives attacking Democrats for being Soft on Crime have, simply directed agaisnt "The Nazis". And make no mistake it is better to direct your desire for Righteous Vengeance agaisnt those with real Power, but at the end of the day it's still an unhealthy mindset.
We should be seeking to dismantle our current Criminal Justice System entirely, not redirect it.
Too many of the people who've figured out how Evil Capitalism is, are still buying into parts of it's justifying ideology. Meritocracy, Individualism and Personal Accountability are all vital fundamentally linked to each other pillars of neoliberal ideology, believing in one of them will always eventually lead to the others.
In Platonist Philosophy 80- BC to AD 250 by George Boys-Stones chapter 12 talks about how the Middle Platonists and Stoics disagreed on Free Will, it's not prefect as the author seems to be on the Platonist side in this chapter. He notes how the Platonists didn't even believe God is All Knowing, so even Bible Verses on God knowing the End from the Beginning (like Isaiah 46:9-11) make it more compatible with Stoicism then Platonism.
He says one of the problems with Stoicism is that it "removed moral responsibility" and doesn't explain why that's a problem, that conclusion is as an argument itself. It reminds me of In Praise of Shadow's YT video on Lovecraft, after an hour of basically utterly debunking the notion that Lovecraft had Free Will he suddenly asserts that "he chose" to be a Racist. Personal Moral Responsibility is such a given in our Capitalist Society that even many who say they oppose Capitalism refuse to question it.
Update April 2023: I've since learned that most Epicureans were not strictly Atheists but just as Deist as Aristotle. So the Sadducees can then be viewed as Jewish Epicureans.
The Essenes I think were ultimately more Pythagorean then Platonist and so that could explain why they had such a different position on Free Will from Middle Platonists.
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