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A Philosophical Look Into Religion And Freewill In The Light Of James William
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
There are two good things in life: freedom of thought and freedom of action[1]. In the whole world man is the only being that is condemned by its nature to be free as well as to be religious. So by nature man is endowed with the power of the will just as he is equally endowed with religious tendency.
Freewill in the simplest term means the freedom to make choice. Moreover, man in his own very nature cannot extricate himself from the bondage of making choice. In the same vein man is equally held bound by religious tie, so man cannot but be religious. For man to choose otherwise, is already a choice of its own and a religion of its own. That is why I maintain that man is condemned to be free and equally religious. No wonder Jean Paul Sartre asserts.
I am condemned to be free. This means no limit to my freedom can be found except freedom itself, or if you prefer, that we are not free to cease being free. 2
It seems unthinkable to imagine a world without freewill, that type of world should be devoid of punishment and reward. This is because in such a deterministic world, what ought to be will come to be, at the time it was destined to be, and through the agent it was destined to come through.
However this freedom man enjoys is not unconnected to the very fact that man is the only being endowed with a conscious thinking faculty. Ekwutosi has this to say: "that human act is the result of a complex process in which the decisive point is the will after a deliberation of the intellect…….. Specifically human action possesses the following constitutive qualities knowledge, voluntary/freedom. 3
This question of freewill is ontological to man. To talk of man without freewill, is to create a different kind of being which cannot occupy the “status quo†of man. So it is a contradictio in terminis to talk of man without freewill. No wonder the issue of freedom was given a prime position in the constitution of United States of America. In the first ten amendments known together as the bill of rights, it clearly stipulates such basic rights as the freedom of speech, of religion and of press. Deleuze said that: The doom of Europe is predicted because with the death of God and religion from their life and culture, a period of instability, aimlessness, emptiness and darkness sets in4.This goes to underscore the importance and inevitable role of religion in human life. No wonder Omoregbe asserts that:
religion is such a sticking and interesting phenomena to human life that it cannot be ignored even by sceptics, agnostics or the atheists. There is no phenomenon which moulds and controls man’s life as much as religion does. Men have given up not only their life but even their possessions for their religious beliefs- -- -- thus religion has such a powerful grip on man that it cannot be ignored in human society5
Here we are not going to give a detailed account of freewill and religion, but will do so in subsequent chapters. So let us have an insight into William James view.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 1 of 4
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