... on Freewill

Video commented on

The Evolution of Morality (5-5)
AronRa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTJiWgFBrKU

Comment previously published

08:52 - 09:03 "it is inherent in our nature that we value one another and to various degrees we instinctually feel for one another. That is why we" ... Did I hear correctly "can't"? ... "be liars and murderers and thieves and why most people don't even want to be."

OK, such and such a thing is inherent in our nature, but on evolutionary views we share a common ancestor with scorpions and have not ceased to evolve.

The "can't" is really not a question of ability and possibility. Of course we "can" if that means "being able to."

The only "can't" about it is about "not being authorised to". Here it is one's human nature which authorises, so far so good, we Catholics believe God is its author.

Or perhaps not totally, since experience shows how very easy it is without grace to slip from a natural to a clearly subnatural state. On a societal as well as on an individual plane.

Especially this appeal to human nature - which is of its own "backbone" so to speak good but does after the fall very clearly slip towards the worse than natural, in various different ways, each as obviously inacceptable as the other to those who get corrupted any other way. Especlially, as said, this appeal to human nature, while correct so far, is suspect in someone involved in breaking and remaking it, as atheism is.

It is part of human nature to adore God - and atheism denies us that. It is - as you said yourself - part of human nature to trust our fathers as well as our children.

Denial of traditional stories being real (such as Flood and Arc of Noah and such as Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ) undermines our trust in the fathers. A certain responsabilism, which considers children as immature for longer and longer (even way past physical childhood) is undermining in this untraditional world the trust in the children.

"This is how morality evolves in higher animals" ...

Well, no. Morality presupposes freewill. Even higher animals have none such.

Denying freewill in a criminal by stamping his behaviour as "pathological" instead of as "unjust" makes hysterical shrinks the newest susbtitute for a judge who determines for how long someone has proportionally to his crime deserved to be in prison. You have just emptied the metaphysical category of desert by reduing it to the displeasure of surroundings in community. And therefore you have also emptied a criminals reasonable hope to get back in society as normally once he has done his time. Which is in its turn bound to backfire through bitterness reaching high levels of hatred, believe me, I know what I am talking about.

09:09 "because society can't function without it"

A Christian very much agrees society can't function without morality. Even Luther and Calvin preaching our total depravity after the fall had to admit some kind of merely societal righteousness, because society cannot function without it (thereby starting a trend of divorcing "societal righteousness" from the "righteousness before God" and thus from Christian morality).

But stating this case as the evolutionary origin of morality is really extending the claims of morality (as such, righteousness) to any fad to which an evolutionary expert can attach a label "society can't function without it".

09:16 "and we can't function without it"

Well, St Anthony of Alexandria could, as well as St Paul the First Hermit who fled into the Egyptian desert while Decius persecuted Christians.

Christian society has its exceptional level of freedom from not wanting to function without the men who could function without society or with only God for society.

Your conclusion is a recipe for slavery, for each man being a slave of his society.

(not clapping hands)

Debate

begins here:

njintau

+Hans-Georg Lundahl "That is why we" ... Did I hear correctly "can't"? ... "be liars and murderers and thieves and why most people don't even want to be.""

Aron actually says "we can't ALL be liars..." which is the point. The vast majority of humans are good, and are incapable of being liars and thieves etc mainly due to the fact that in an instinctual level we recognize that being altruistic allows for everyone to coexist. Of course there are outliers and yes human morality is not as cut and dry as Aron's illustration, but it does serve as a fair representation of the idea behind the evolution of morality.

"It is part of human nature to adore God - and atheism denies us that."

evidence?

"Well, no. Morality presupposes freewill. Even higher animals have none such."

Once, again evidence?

I sense a false dichotomy here between free will as defined by your holy book and no free will. The answer is somewhere in between. While we are bound by external pressures, that in turn affect our behavior, there are differences between each individual that can be construed as free will.

I fail to understand how the denial of your god, leads to the elimination of free will. Furthermore, I don't understand how man can possess free will when there is an omnipotent deity capable of knowing every decision that has been and will be made.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

+njintau "Aron actually says "we can't ALL be liars..." which is the point. The vast majority of humans are good, and are incapable of being liars and thieves etc mainly due to the fact that in an instinctual level we recognize that being altruistic allows for everyone to coexist."

Have no sound on this computer. Will check later.

Not being a liar and being altruistic are two different things. Not being a liar is more basic. Unless you mean by altruistic "altruistic on this occasion" or "in this respect".

Now, we cannot all be judges either, but that does not mean it is wrong to be a judge. We cannot be all be bakers either (who would buy the bread?) but that does not mean it is wrong to be a baker.

You said an important thing.

"in an instinctual level we recognize"

Instincts and recognising are not always at odds, but are not always one either. And we disagree about WHAT it is we recognise on an instinctual level.

Is it that "being altruistic helps out everyone" (often but not always myself and those I care about)? Or is it rather "lying is a shameful thing"?

I would say the latter. So would almost everyone else on earth, on a popular level. Reducing the taboo against lying to a rational preference for altruism is a very learned and roundabout way of dealing with these issues.

It is also open to totalitarian abuse. Some lies would be altruistic. If you feel sure such a fellow would make an unpleasant scene if told something, and suffer himself, then lying would be altruistic. It would not be right. But appealing to altruism is very open to shift the values about what shall and what shall not be done. Hitler and Stalin both did it. When Lenin attacked Kulaks or Hitler attacked Jews, it was because they could point out some lack of altruism. And these two did not just in general complain about Jews or Kulaks being selfish, they attacked them in pretty bloody and gruesome ways.

- It is part of human nature to adore God - and atheism denies us that.
- evidence?
- Observation of human behaviour all over the globe. The intro to each video on "discovering religion" is pretty good evidence that it is part of human behaviour to adore God. Unless you prefer the Hindoo interpretation, that it is part of human nature to adore the gods. There is about one half of humanity for each of the interpretations (2 billion Christians and 1 billion Muslims = half humanity, roughly, other half more often Mahayana Buddhist or Hindoo or Shintoist or Animist between them all than strictly Mencian Confucian or strictly Theravada Buddhist or Western Agnostic/Atheist).

+njintau "I sense a false dichotomy here between free will as defined by your holy book and no free will. The answer is somewhere in between. While we are bound by external pressures, that in turn affect our behavior, there are differences between each individual that can be construed as free will."

Supposing you were right. Supposing all men were determined and all men were different. Supposing freewill was an illusion.

One consequence would be that someone realising this could not believe in an objective morality.

If there are perfectly realistic deterministic explanations why some men go liars or totalitarian (which often involves lying too, but in ways that avoid getting caught) and indeed have to, exactly as there are perfectly realistic deterministic explanations why I like pistaccio, how could one possibly be justified to condemn lying or bullying any more than liking pistaccio?

One man or even one set can feel "I or we can't really justify morality, but want it anyway, at least in others, and even in ourselves a bit if that will help getting the others along". But they will say - like you - that morality as a public standard is formed by social pressures. So they will want to increase social pressures (as long as they are not against themselves). But these social pressures (which I agree do exist, I only do not agree they take away our freewill) are usually in place through equally social prejudice, if you will call it that, in favour of us having free will and a real title to praise or blame according to as how we use it. So, ultimately, his kind of person or set can only get what they want by keeping others more - in their own opinion - ignorant than they feel they are themselves. Or at least less sophisticated than they about what they know.

Before becoming part of such a cynic set, or dupes of them, I prefer to see if free will can actually be upheld as rational belief.

The evidence for free will actualy existing is that given by a monk more than one thousand years ago:

"You may be unable to not desire that woman if you look at her, but you are able to look down and so not see her".

Or that given about one hundred years ago by Pope St Pius X:

"Q : How do you know you have free will?
A : I know I have free will, because when I lie I know I could have spoken otherwise and told the truth or I could have not spoken."

A kind of reflection we see no animals - as in beasts - making.

+njintau
Let me enlighten you on two points:

"I fail to understand how the denial of your god, leads to the elimination of free will."

As said, no brute beasts have the kind of consideration which show in us that we have free will. It is not denial of our God which both directly and per se leads to denial of freewill, but the particular Evolutionist type of denial claims we are just beasts that have evolved differently and that logically leads to free will being an illusion. As you showed yourself by saying that differences between individuals can be construed as free will.

"Furthermore, I don't understand how man can possess free will when there is an omnipotent deity capable of knowing every decision that has been and will be made."

Now we are talking about my God more directly. Not just omnipotent, but also omniscient. He is not just capable of knowing but even incapable of not knowing every decision you and I have ever taken or will ever take.

How would this awareness on God's side from all eternity take free will from us? It does not. God has eternally used his omnipotence so that our free choices shall be really free. He also has a dislike for lying. That is our ultimate rationale for saying that lying is wrong. And if he had withheld freewill from us while making us believe we had such, he would have been lying. Therefore we accept that He has indeed not lied by giving us the impression that we do indeed have freewill. I am not able not to like pistaccio ice cream, but I am able on occasions not to go for the pistaccio ice cream even if it is available.

njintau

+Hans-Georg Lundahl "As said, no brute beasts have the kind of consideration which show in us that we have free will. It is not denial of our God which both directly and per se leads to denial of freewill, but the particular Evolutionist type of denial claims we are just beasts that have evolved differently and that logically leads to free will being an illusion. As you showed yourself by saying that differences between individuals can be construed as free will."

And what exactly is wrong with this again? True free will does not exist, but that doesn't mean the alternative is that we are all mindless beasts. Within certain parameters, there is thought, which leads to logic and reason and thus to science.

I find the last paragraph laughable, the mental gymnastics you go through to justify your god is staggering. Whether your god chooses to share with us our actions is irrelevant. The fact that he is capable of knowing all of your decisions by itself negates free will. Its like saying that since you've never been shot, you are invulnerable to being shot, which is incorrect.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"The fact that he is capable of knowing all of your decisions by itself negates free will"

No.

njintau

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Ha! And how would it not?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

If I watch what you are doing, I cannot help knowing it. This does not make me a controller of your doings. I cannot help seeing if you stand up or sit down, but it is you, not I who decide, in such a case whichever of them you do.

When we say that God knows everything beforehand we mean God has His existence simultaneously, His seing what you do tomorrow is to Him simultaneous with His foreknowing it today. He is not in the sense "foreknowing" it as you would only foreknow what you control completely.

His being completely in control does not either mean He is forcing anyone to make any decision He does not want, or is making anyone make the decisions that are bad.

njintau

+Hans-Georg Lundahl The difference between you and God is that you are not omniscient or omnipotent. A part of freewill is that an individual's thoughts and actions are entirely his/her own and cannot be predicted or known (I'm talking about true freewill.) When you are watching me, you cannot truly know what I'm going to do in the next second or a decade from now unless you study me and find a pattern, which will only tell you that my actions and decisions are not truly free but are based on this pattern. But the ultimate nature of freewill lies in the fact that our behaviors and actions can lead to complex outcomes that are not entirely predictable.

But your God CAN know and predict every possible action. Theoretically, he can create a script of my actions in my past, present and future and give it to me as a book. If I try to deviate from the life-script in this book, this God would have been able to account for this deviation and add it in this book since he is omniscient. Therefore, no matter how I try to change my behavior, I would not be able to do so since this God already knows what I'm about to do. This fact doesn't change even if I read the book in its entirety and try to change my behavior because God would already know that I would do this and add that into the book. This leads to an internal paradox created from my attempts to deviate from this book but not being able to do so because the book already had these attempts logged in because God already knew I was about to do it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"When you are watching me, you cannot truly know what I'm going to do in the next second or a decade from now unless you study me and find a pattern, which will only tell you that my actions and decisions are not truly free but are based on this pattern."

My point was, once again, that God's foreknowledge of our actions and thoughts are not that kind of foreknowledge, but are the same kind of knowledge as I can have of your present actions but not your future actions, nor even your present thoughts.

God's foreknowledge is not based on calculations like human prognoses, it is not even fore-knowledge to God, to Him it is simply knowledge, since He is not in time.

Also a randomness that would make foreknowledge by calculation impossible is not a requisite for a will being really free. It need not be undetermined, as long as it is self-determined.

So, you are technically wrong both on comparing God's foreknowledge to our prognoses, and on the nature of freedom.

njintau

+Hans-Georg Lundahl "My point was, once again, that God's foreknowledge of our actions and thoughts are not that kind of foreknowledge, but are the same kind of knowledge as I can have of your present actions but not your future actions, nor even your present thoughts."

What? Sooo....you're saying that your God knows all of time the way you know the present? So...doesn't that mean he will know everything you have done and will do...thus proving my point?

"God's foreknowledge is not based on calculations like human prognoses, it is not even fore-knowledge to God, to Him it is simply knowledge, since He is not in time."

Not based on calculations...as opposed to what? Divination? What matters is that he has the knowledge. It doesn't matter if its fore-knowledge or just knowledge. The fact that he knows what you will do in the future directly negates free will.

"Also a randomness that would make foreknowledge by calculation impossible is not a requisite for a will being really free. It need not be undetermined, as long as it is self-determined."

How?

If your God knows everything you have done and will do, that means that the choices you made, leading to your behavior were not a direct product of your will but predetermined (since your god already knows, then it must have already happened at some point in the future.) Predetermination negates free will. If you dismiss predetermination, then it must be possible for choices and actions to arise that have not yet been determined and thus not known to your god, which means he is not omniscient.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Sooo....you're saying that your God knows all of time the way you know the present?"

I do mean that, yes.

[He knows ALL of it as a whole and at the same eternity that way, not just each successive present as we do.]

"So...doesn't that mean he will know everything you have done and will do...thus proving my point?"

It does not prove your point, since such omniscience about your choices or mine would only deprive us of freedom if they were the kind of knowledge that you have of future unfree "actions".

"Not based on calculations...as opposed to what? Divination? What matters is that he has the knowledge. It doesn't matter if its fore-knowledge or just knowledge. The fact that he knows what you will do in the future directly negates free will."

Again, no. That would only be the case of His knowledge were based on the kind of things that make a man foreseeable.

As said, God's total knowledge of ALL time as we see and know the present does not deprive actors acting in time from the freedom any more than my seeing you act your choices would make your choices mine because I see you.

"If your God knows everything you have done and will do, that means that the choices you made, leading to your behavior were not a direct product of your will but predetermined (since your god already knows, then it must have already happened at some point in the future.)"

It is future to us, hence we are free.

It has already happened to God, hence He is omniscient.

No contradiction at all.

"Predetermination negates free will. If you dismiss predetermination, then it must be possible for choices and actions to arise that have not yet been determined and thus not known to your god, which means he is not omniscient."

Me seeing you does not make me the predetermin[at]or of your choices. There are choices that have not yet been determined as far as our acting the story is concerned, but that does not mean they are unknown either to its author or to someone who has already read all of the book. And God is in both positions. But His authoring is not such as to deprive us of the dignity of coauthors, since free willed.

njintau

"It does not prove your point, since such omniscience about your choices or mine would only deprive us of freedom if they were the kind of knowledge that you have of future unfree "actions"."

That is some excellent mental geriatrics, kudos.

I think you're misunderstanding my point here, let me explain it with an analogy. You're walking through a corridor and come across six doors. Each door is unremarkable and doesn't give you any information on what's on the side. You have no idea where you are and where you're going so there is no reason for you to choose one door over the other. So the choice is based solely on probability, thus the probability of choosing door 1 is 1/6, same as the other doors. If there was a God looking down on you, he already knows what door you will pick, ie a choice was already made before you made it. Thus the probability would no longer be 1/6 but 1, ie you now have one choice, the choice you made in the future. Thus, you have no free will because the choices were already made before you made them.

I think I should go ahead and ask this question now since I didn't do it before all this nonsense: How do I know that any of these traits ascribed by you to your god is correct? What evidence do you possess or capable of acquiring that will serve as a proof to your claims? Until a god such as the one described here is verified to exist, we might as well be discussing the mating behaviors of Big Foot.

[Not really, since hat is not of even theoretical consequence for our freedom.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"You have no idea where you are and where you're going so there is no reason for you to choose one door over the other. So the choice is based solely on probability, thus the probability of choosing door 1 is 1/6, same as the other doors. If there was a God looking down on you, he already knows what door you will pick, ie a choice was already made before you made it."

First of all, you miss, once again, that the choice really is future for us. Therefore really contingent. It is not a necessity now of one choice, but the future contingent choice that God is watching precisely as I could watch your actions in the present.

Of course you could say "if God is watching it, it is impossible for it not to happen, so it is necessary, not free". But that is as intelligent as saying "if I am watching you sit down, it is impossible that you are not sitting down while I see you do so". It is a complete no brainer about what impossible and chance mean in different contexts.

machetero221

No, actually you didn't hear it right. "That why we can't all be liars and murderers and thieves and why most people don't even want to be."

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Was already pointed out by njintau: "Aron actually says 'we can't ALL be liars...' which is the point. "

machetero221

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Ah, [expletive] ... Deleting then.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Don't damn, enjoy the previous thread!

James Toupin

Hans. With all due respect, your argument for the free will of an individual while at the same time stating that god is omniscient in the way an author of a book is simply semantic gymnastics that prove only one thing: that you have obviously never authored any kind of writing with characters in them. If you had you would no that characters in a story have no free will. Their actions, thoughts, emotions, drives are all determined by the author to further the plot. Hence your analogy is a baseless one.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Authors who have done pretty successful writing say their characters have been surprising them and not behaving like puppets, though.

If between author and novel characters, that element of freewill is as imaginary as the rest, nevertheless between God and creatures, it is as real as the rest.

Difference between God's creating and novelists' "subcreating" as Tolkien put it.

James Toupin

Hans. I just have to say that I am an author and play write. I can tell you that having done both, the characters within a play or screenplay are the strongest and truest characters that you can write. As with a story in novel or short story you are primarily interested in telling a good yarn first and study of humanity second. In a play your primary motivation is to bring to "life" real characters and then take them on a journey. There comes a point in writing either form where as an author you have to make decisions about the direction characters will take and the method in which they make those decisions. A good author or play write at this point will be familiar enough with his characters to know what he can realistically say or do and must stick within the bounds of what he has written that character to be. That is what an author means when saying the characters take on a life of their own. It is a metaphor not a statement of fact. The characters still do not dictate their own actions. It only means as an author you have to find a way to make the characters act as you want then while not contradicting the core elements of the character created. No free will by the characters. The author decides what they will do and how to justify their actions as consistent with the characters he has written.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"A good author or play write at this point will be familiar enough with his characters to know what he can realistically say or do and must stick within the bounds of what he has written that character to be. That is what an author means when saying the characters take on a life of their own."

Agreed.

"It is a metaphor not a statement of fact. The characters still do not dictate their own actions."

What about the character so to say playing the scene in the author's head?

That is how it works for me, at the best moments (though my novel is NOT yet finished) and in a more intense way worked for Enid Blyton too.

Now, I can imagine such a scene and I can imagine the scenery.

The parallel with God is he can make the scenery real (it is called Heaven and Earth, or sometimes the Universe) and he can make the real choices of his characters real choices.

James Toupin

"What about the character so to say playing the scene in the author's head?"

So now you are saying that imagining conversations between our made up characters in our head are tantamount to reality?

"The parallel with God is he can make the scenery real (it is called Heaven and Earth, or sometimes the Universe) and he can make the real choices of his characters real choices."

There you make the mistake of forgetting god's omniscience. Foreknowledge is basically the equivalent of writing the complete storey and only when it is finished letting the "characters" play it out. That is still predetermination and hence man has no free will.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I was NOT saying imagining conversations between our made up characters in my head or yours is tantamount to reality. That is the difference between God who creates and we who only write.

And I was NOT forgetting God's omniscience, you only forgot my analysis thereof.

And God has NOT written the whole story without letting us play it out freely.

BUT He is still as knowledgable about all of His story as I or you about any of ours. And not even forgetful as we are.

James Toupin

If he has not written the entire story (including all the details of characters actions) than he is not omnipotent or omniscient.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Writing the entire story we do too.

However our little shade of omniscience or omnipotence does NOT precluse letting the characters play out their roles in our heads, and so God who can more than just imagine can omnipotently decide we get to play our roles with real and not just imaginary freedom.

Which is what we Catholics claim He does.

James Toupin

If he can "omnipotently decide we get to play our roles with real... freedom" then uncertainty has been introduced and he can not be omniscient.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

False.

KNOWING exactly what they choose is not choosing it for them.

Btw, in some ways a novel or romance is superior as a parallel for what we are discussing.

Author has his plans for the plot. In a novel he can respect the freedom - in ways I have intimated - of characters and still get the plot where he wants, because he can always create some character who being who he is freely chooses a part the story wants. Drama is limited in number of characters. Perhaps a reason why Athens had a cult of Delphic Apollo and Renaissance gave rise to Calvinism.

Nothing against Shakespear, he did not invent drama, Ben Johnson and a few others were already using it badly. He used it well.

James Toupin

I am sorry but I just simply can not except that foreknowledge is not determination. If he has foreknowledge than only one outcome is possible and free will is an illusion. So God punishes people for something that, in the end, they have no choice but to do.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

You seem to forget material already covered in the discussion.

[It seems I overlooked material he did not forget, see my answer to njintau]

A play author has, pretty strictly speaking foreknowledge of what the actors will be doing on stage. AND that is predetermination.

A novel author is NOT having foreknowledge of what his characters will be doing once the publisher makes them come alive - because the publisher doesn't, he only makes the text accessible.

And, the parallel with a novelist is that God is above all time as much as the novelist is above the characters' time.

Meaning God can watch us make our choices at least as much as Enid Blyton could watch George (and don't call her Georgina!) make hers.

Btw, C S Lewis who was a novelist has already covered the point, and if you are an author I am pretty sorry that you are not aware of that.

Or perhaps your main style is drama as in look Back in Anger?

James Toupin

Actually my main work is as a play-write and screenwriter. It is very much character driven but still is in some control by the author. I only say some because the actors, director, and film editor in the case of a screenplay all have a very crucial role in how the material is eventually presented. However, I have written short stories and long form stories (although I would not classify them as novels or even novellas) as well. The publisher makes the work available to an audience but the characters are still the authors to control. Of course the one thing that is beyond control of author, editor, or publisher is how that work will be interpreted by the audience. Each and every audience member (reader) will have their very individual interpretation of the world presented. Does this possibly mean that it is the individual creates their own reality? There are philosophical schools along those line. I am aware of C.S. Lewis' use of the analogy but I was never convinced by him either. Logical contradictions abound.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"The publisher makes the work available to an audience but the characters are still the authors to control."

God being ultimately in control is not the same thing as "writing the play before the actors get to play it".

God is in control with such a skill that He can give us free will and still get the story where He wants it.

As to the other logical contradictions, I think I have already adequately answered them.

James Toupin

You have answered them but I do not agree that you have answered them adequately. If god could indeed give us freewill to make our decisions and still know what decision we will ultimately make, then there is no freewill and the answer is predetermined. I can argue that our freewill is actually an illusion with out even invoking an omnipotent, omniscient god.

There is nothing in physics that actually supports our view that time in flowing from past to the future. According to physics, the past, present and future should all exist as real as this moment we are currently experiencing. In fact. with the precepts of General Relativity that is certainly the case. So in that way our futures are predetermined and unchangeable.

Quantum Mechanics throws a bit of a monkey wrench in the works because of the Uncertainty Principle. It is specifically due to the uncertainty in Quantum Mechanics that the theory of the Multiverse arises. It is a theory that basically states that every quantum possibility does happen and each time that happens a new universe with a different timeline is created. This would, in some sense allow for a form of freewill.

Now the problem for the theist would be either the need for multiple gods, one for each new universe or a god of all the multiverse. In that case "god" would have to know all the choices that one can make and then create a new universe for that choice to play out and then be omniscient of every detail of each universe including all quantum possibilities in each subsequent universe.

I am not saying that such a cosmic deity is impossible, only the least likely explanation of the problem.

Seriously we should have been looking at this from a scientific perspective from the beginning. Our little side trip into literature and semantics was rather pointless. Which I take as much responsibility for as you.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

You contradict yourself:

"If god could indeed give us freewill to make our decisions and still know what decision we will ultimately make, then there is no freewill and the answer is predetermined."

Since God can give us freewill to make our decisions and since his knowledge of them is eternally before time and not temporally before them within time, there is no predetermination of them and there is freewill.

Now here is an interesting point:

" I can argue that our freewill is actually an illusion with out even invoking an omnipotent, omniscient god."

As you say, your so called scientific world view is not supporting freewill.

Our Theistic, Christian, Trinitarian and Catholic view is.

Added next day, HGL too

+njintau I had not seen and answered this one:

"Theoretically, he can create a script of my actions in my past, present and future and give it to me as a book. If I try to deviate from the life-script in this book, this God would have been able to account for this deviation and add it in this book since he is omniscient. Therefore, no matter how I try to change my behavior, I would not be able to do so since this God already knows what I'm about to do. This fact doesn't change even if I read the book in its entirety and try to change my behavior because God would already know that I would do this and add that into the book. This leads to an internal paradox created from my attempts to deviate from this book but not being able to do so because the book already had these attempts logged in because God already knew I was about to do it."

Now, one piece by one:

"Theoretically, he can create a script of my actions in my past, present and future and give it to me as a book."

He could. But I do not think He would, precisely as the result in your mind would be to identify freedom of your choices with deviating from God's book.

Rather it is on the Judgement Day that you will get the book and see what choices were really and truly your own.

And how God did what He could [what you allowed Him to do] to preserve your freedom.

"If I try to deviate from the life-script in this book,"

That would not be the real definition of your freedom.

That would be the definition of being able to deviate from your real past - the part of the book that God already lets you peek into, through your memories.

Of course you can decide that you have lived badly in the past, and try to change that. AND that decision would be in God's book about your life.

BUT if that is a freedom, not having the past you really had is not.

And the real equivalent of "trying to deviate from God's book" would be trying to have been born somewhere else, trying to have gone through other religious or non religious convictions, having changed what you really stayed firm in, having stayed firm in what you really changed, and to be somewhere else than were you are right now, and to always be choosing the opposite of what you are choosing.

"this God would have been able to account for this deviation and add it in this book since he is omniscient."

Not only WOULD God have been able to account for all, but He DID account for all. Including, should there be such, a sense of identifying your freedom with denial of who you are.

"Therefore, no matter how I try to change my behavior, I would not be able to do so"

You can change - for the future - the behaviour of your past.

If God gives you the strength to do so if it was a behaviour you really do not like.

"since this God already knows what I'm about to do."

Not deviating from God's knowledge is not tantamount to being predetermined.

"This fact doesn't change even if I read the book in its entirety and try to change my behavior because God would already know that I would do this and add that into the book."

Of course, but does not change the fact you have a free will.

See my comments on the book being made available to you when you are being judged. [And not before.]

"This leads to an internal paradox created from my attempts to deviate from this book but not being able to do so because the book already had these attempts logged in because God already knew I was about to do it."

That internal paradox is what God spares you by not giving you the book to read before you are being judged.

You have at any time an incomplete knowledge of yourself so as to not get your freedom obstructed by such daunting paradoxes.