An Alternative To Determinism and Free Will

"Man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity..."
~ Søren Kierkegaard

The logic of Determinism is far from inscrutable. While it attempts to trace a conveniently linear chain of effects back, and back, through antecedent causes, it cannot account for an ultimate cause (a "causeless cause") in time and space, nor can it do otherwise than ignore the relationships which surround phenomena on all sides; and not merely in two directions.

Whether we view the universe as infinite or as having a point of origin, the matter is equally boggling for determinists. If it is infinite, there is no ultimate cause, and the so-called "effects" must be otherwise explained. If, on the other hand, it is finite, then the ultimate cause itself is not an effect, and the fundamental assumption of determinism falls flat. While our theory of the Big Bang may present a clear and consistent explanation for the unfolding of events through space-time, it can offer no explanation whatsoever for itself. It is the mystical core of our mechanistic worldview; the dirty little secret which materialists everywhere would like to keep hidden, even from themselves.

As for the second objection, that determinism denies the multidimensionality of relationships between phenomena, a simple analogy should suffice. When we identify a single direct cause for a particular effect, and another single indirect cause behind the first, it is as if we were to locate the source of a son in his father, and of the father in the grandfather, without accounting for the mother, the grandmother, or the social and organic orders which seemingly provide the innumerable conditions required for his appearance in the world.

At the heart of deterministic logic we find the most compelling contradiction of all. This universe of ours, say the determinists, is one, indivisible whole. The division of this whole into causes and effects, beginnings and endings, is a kind of optical illusion, adopted for convenience. It is not the whole truth, but the model which we construct for the sake of accomplishing our mortal aims, since we should be entirely lost if we could not imagine beginnings and endings, or make more-or-less permeable distinctions between phenomena. We may intellectually regard the world as a single, dynamic process, entirely composed of relationships, and not a collection of individual phenomena, or things, but, for the purposes of living, we must draw lines of demarcation. As Saint Paul writes, "I speak as a man." The problem is that we forget the whole altogether when we posit the motive force for a particular phenomenon outside of itself; in another phenomenon, or even in the whole of phenomena. We forget that the whole is not outside of the part, and that nothing whatsoever is outside of the whole.

The universe *must* be self-regulating, for there is nothing besides itself. And the individual, being a manifestation of the whole, must possess a kind of freedom, though not of a personal nature. If man has the power to choose, it is because the whole of creation conspires and agrees with his choice. His changing mind is the changing mind of the All. He does not determine it any more than it determines him, for they are one and the same.