Free Will

I've just returned from a kersnooze, an evening out with a friend to watch a film up in Oxford.

A God is angry and will wipe the face of the earth flick, which had a great premise, a great cast, and a terrible director and script. So bad, in fact, that I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The highlight was the conversation I had with my friend in the windy parking lot after the movie.

Recently (the last couple months) I've been pondering the downside of not having free will. (Presupposing, for my devote atheist reader, a God who decided for rather than against free will. Hi John.)

Honestly, I can't find a downside. What if, at the point of a decision, people could identify the correct/best/right choice, and "choose" to make it every time? This would not eliminate hard choices, accidents, and from what I can see, curiosity, and the opportunity to play and explore within our world. Relationships, love, friendship, marriage even, could thrive. "Choose" a spouse, just choose the right one.

The up side would be the elimination of malicious behavior, and possibly, of guilt, greed, and hate. At the least these emotions would be reigned in, and certainly actions based on them would not be as destructive.

The downside, to present my most biased argument, would be no option for war, persecution, abuse, or all the other lovlies we "choose" to exercise as a species.

Which led me to the next question, if free will is such crap, why would God choose that for us? Is our life better for it in a way that I don;t understand, having such an experientially driven perspective?

This is what was in my head, and what I was venting in the parking lot this evening.

To which Jav responded with this argument:

If you have 2 children, (fancy that, I do,) and one grows to be a giving, loving, positive person, the other to a drug addled, angry, even destructive towards other people person, do you love one and not the other? I don't know that this example would have worked for me in the past, but it certainly does now. No, I would not cease to love either.

I might focus my love more towards the child that is hurting those around (pick a pronoun.)

How does this tie back to free will?

Well, if we are offspring of God, His image and whatnot, then free will would not be a choice to bestow on us, it would be a part of our makeup. No choice there for God to make, except possibly that of determining what sort of playground to set up for us. (The universe, laws of physics, our brand of logical linear thought, etc.) Which is an interesting shift from what we often assume, that free will was granted, rather than not taken away.

This answers some questions, and raises a whole lot more. (By answers, I don't mean conclusively, but based on the postulates. Again, for John's sake. :) ) Whether or not God knew how his children would turn out, that their descendants would ravage both the playground and each other, could he love them less? Would he have chosen not to have them? Would he restrict their essence, remove the option to turn out poorly?

Having children is a crap shoot. But I want the best for my kids, and have very little idea of what that means for them now. I may think I know more as they reveal themselves more over time, but who knows. But what stood out to me, and I thank Jav for this new thought, though it baffles me, is that love for our children is a prison. In some ways it is a forfeiture of our own free will.

Two trailing thoughts: 1) Obviously that isn't true for everyone, examples being the craptastic folk who made me want to strip them of their free will in the first place. 2) How is God's free will holding up? What have we done to Him?

The Zoo!

We got lost on the way, (no more iphone gps, working with a company blackberry. The usability difference makes me want to scream most of the time.) so fresh out of the car we all look a little zonked.

Annaliese's favorite part of the zoo, the water. The fountain and flowing water at the entrance, the pools and waterfalls in the animal enclosures, she couldn't get enough.
Caspian mostly liked spending the day with us. The new setting was nice, but not as interesting as the familiar smiling faces.



Lunch next to the Lions.

Another visit to the fountain before going to see the zebras.


Zebras!




Places to go, no time for a family photo.
Not pictured are the elephants, the huge rhino, many other animals we did see, and far more we got tired before getting to. Now that we have a family pass for the year though, (Thank you Natalie!) we're looking forward to coming back.

T'was really nice to spend the whole day toodling just the four of us. no work, no projects, just photo opportunities, and a quick stop at Whole Foods because, after a month of not being able to taste (through the holidays!!!) the antibiotics have kicked in, and the world is full of incredible mouth-watering tidbits.

A personal flash back over the last month or so.

A little picture bonanza, since the iphone has been filling the gap in the absence of our camera. (Lost the camera battery charger on our trip to VT last month, took us a month to bite the bullet and buy a new charger.)

A turned 27 last Friday. Here's a flashback to 2006, building a cabin in VT, pre-children, pre-MS living.

And look at her now. It's going well, don't you think?

Which all roles up into taking my girls and boy to the airport yesterday for A's annual trip back to VA to visit her family. I don;t mind sharing, I was getting very clingy by the time I had to watch A a and c walk away through security. Here's the little girl on the drive to the airport.

While packing and getting dressed for the trip, the two little ones had a little love fest. These are in chronological order, all in less than a minute.

We have a little family tradition of dance parties in the front hallway. Annaliese will ask for them, pull on our legs and do her little hand-waving asking for things to get us into the hall, point at the computer and jiggle until the music is turned on. Everyone participates.

That's right, that sexy lady is airborne. (I hope she doesn't mind me sharing, I'll find out soon enough. :) )

Little c has to ride along, but seems to love them just as much as his sister.

This little guy showed up on Friday night, after the birthday bash. After removing 2 pounds of matted fur, and killing several thousand fleas, he's getting quite comfortable around the house. He's getting shots and snipped tomorrow, and we'll see if we can find him a home, or maybe he'll stay with us. We're pondering. He's been incredibly easy, very sweet, at first he kept trying to run away, we finally let him go thinking he might have a home that he has left (yes, a home that must have treated him terribly) but after that one walkabout, he can go out by himself and comes right back to the door without supervision. Here he's commandeered my flannel shirt. That flannel shirt was made for my father by my mother. It has passed through almost everyone in the family before I snuck it south, and now both A and a periodically steal it from me.

Bought a dozen pairs of thermal Atlas Fit gloves to last me through the winter on the building, a decided to open the package and try them on.

Little poodle, we're calling him Hercules.

:)

A's birthday cake. If you look closely you will notice the bites missing from most of the chocolates. This was maybe 5 minutes after I brought the cake out. Made to order the night before, had to wait until that afternoon to frost it, because I ran out of butter. The frosting alone took 5 sticks. They ain't kidding when they say butter-cream.

Isn't she lovely?

Part of the birthday meal. I can't tell you how good the first bite was, it had been too long.

I know A put this on her blog, but I took it, and he's adorable.

A also complained about a baking day we had a couple weeks back. A photo I took that day. Missing are the molasses cookies, the two pumpkin pies, the cream pie, the lasagna, and the chicken soup. Oh, and a, who kept me company in the kitchen all afternoon, had some play dough. Great way to spend a rainy Sunday.

The last farmer's market of the year. A has effectively made the town on Saturdays, and after a great season, she put together an antique tractor show, potluck, music, and big vendor bash. She's done amazing things for our town.

a sat on every single tractor there, about a dozen. One of the beaming old farmers who had brought his tractor fired it up for her. She wasn't the biggest fan of that.

On our morning walk to the market. Our routine is we set the tent up on Friday night, A gets down there on Sat morning before 8 to get the vendors set up and put out the signs, and I get the kids ready and walk down a little later. It's been more fun since a has started refusing to ride, and trundles on her own.

It's been a long time since I had any pictures of the building. We started back on our respective projects after a summer focusing on the house and babies. A is back on book #3, and I'm back at the building. This was one of the last upstairs windows in the project to replace them all. This particular window had the extra issue of the neighbor's roof line, which used to be an alley until they threw a roof up, cutting across the window above the level of the sill. I had to raise the sill, and cut down the sash to just barely get enough incline on the sill to pull water away from the window and back onto the roof. All the windows are now new on the second floor, and we are weather tight for the first time since we bought the building.