HEEDING UNCLE BEN (via Mike Daley)

Free Will - Our Greatest Power (Rabbi Noah Weinberg, Aish.org)

What does it mean to be created in the image of God?

Unlike other creations, the human being has free will. Within this divine spark lies our potential to shape and change the world.

Proper use of free will beautifies and perfects. Misuse of free will plunders and destroys.

It is a uniquely human endeavor to learn how to use free will properly. [...]

FREE WILL SUMMARY

Level One: Don't be a sleepwalker. Make decisions actively.

Level Two: Don't be a puppet of society's goals, or a slave to your old decisions.

Level Three: Be aware of the conflict between the cravings of your body and the aspirations of your soul.

Level Four: Identify with your soul, not your body.

Level Five: Make your will God's will.

Secularism seems doomed by its desire to claim freedom but dodge responsibility and to deny the basis of both.

MORE:

When we regard a man as morally responsible for an act, we regard him as a legitimate object of moral praise or blame in respect of it. But it seems plain that a man cannot be a legitimate object of moral praise or blame for an act unless in willing the act he is in some
important sense a 'free' agent. Evidently free will in some sense, therefore, is a precondition of moral responsibility.

-C. Arthur Campbell, (In Defense of Free Will)

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 6, 2003 10:50 AM