Part IV: Where Do We Go From Here, of Rules, Religion, and Free Will--and Cognitive Science

Where Do We Go From Here?
In this section I intend to examine free will in light of the new cognitive science that seems so at odds with it, and also to show in a new light what rules have to do with free will.

How, then, might we begin to talk about free will in view of scientific findings that intrude into its territory?  The answer, but only in part, is to be found in the second part of Kahneman's book title (Thinking, Fast and Slow): slow thinking.  To the extent that we can sometimes inhibit our instantaneous "intuitive" responses in those areas in which we are not experts, in favor of  the more laborious, fact-based "slow" thinking, our minds will be less a mechanism for "jumping to conclusions," as he puts it.  In other words, in many cases, we can make decisions less susceptible to control by extraneous factors to the extent we slow down and "Think!"

Fact-based?  Ah, there's the rub!  Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind) has reported on how rare truly exploratory thinking is--that is, thinking based on seeking the truth.  Most often we indulge in confirmatory thinking--that is, thinking oriented to confirm the correctness of what we already believe.  Only under very limited circumstances can we or will we seek the truth.

One reaction to the new cognitive psychology might be to declare the findings heretical, which is not unheard of in history; think "Galileo."  But it's not time for panic or drastic pronouncements.

Let's think about our predicament.  Let's think about our concept of free will as it now stands.

It's worth considering that, rather than free will's being some Platonic absolute existing in ideal form somewhere in the stratosphere, what we call "free will" may be a human concept--one that human thinkers came up with in the past to avoid the deterministic aspects of their theologies.  Later we had to contend with science as well as theology.  Now we're having to make some sense of yet further scientific developments.

Maybe what our concept of free will needs is adjustment in light of the new scientific findings.

For one thing, as Kahneman's comments and the rest of the preceding discussion of cognitive science suggests, free will encapsulates what "feels" to us to be our situation.  It feels as though we're making free choices.   But all we know is "System 2," which constitutes our conscious awareness--System 2 being that story we tell ourselves about ourselves, while System 1 largely runs the show outside the spotlight of conscious awareness.

To the extent we acknowledge that the story we tell ourselves about ourselves isn't the whole story but only part of it, we can consider the implications of that situation and how they require us to view free will differently.

It is at that point we come back to the fraught territory of rules--even the biblical ones.

Whether or not we believe the bible represents the literal words of God, is it possible at least to consider that the words of scripture represent a pinnacle of humankind's level of understanding and compilation of wisdom in the times in which those words were remembered and recorded?

The critics of rules in the "Hebrew Bible/Old Testament" are many.  Sometimes (as I discussed earlier, in the section on rules) they are Christians who are criticizing their Old Testament relative to their own "more enlightened" Testament (to use the words Stephen King put into the mouth of one of his characters in his novel Under the Dome).  Sometimes the critics are atheists wanting to show up the bible as violent and punitive.  And sometimes, too, the atheists can even be Jews who are steeped in the same culture as those other critics.

While professing a different religion from that of the biblical writers (or no religion), the modern critics of Levitical and other such biblical rules take the words at face value, that is, take the words literally, for the sake of argument.  Those critics all have in common the goal of hoisting the bible on its own petard, so to speak, which requires that they misconstrue it as literal, whether intentionally or not.  By literal, I mean their take on the apparent plain text meaning of the English translation of Leviticus we happen to have before us, without acknowledging that translation equals interpretation, or considering temporal or social contexts, or levels of understanding, or ongoing religious evolution.

If those rules aren't what the modern critics think, then the critics are attacking a straw man.

Imagine that those words partake of the language of promise and threat, as in contracts between ruler and ruled in the Mideast of a millennium and more BCE, because that is the way the people of that area--and not only the Israelites--thought back then.  Imagine that the words employ simple reward-punishment language, not to mention anthropomorphism, because that reflects on the limits and also the evolution of people's understanding, in layer after layer of tradition, from pre-biblical times to the final priestly spin in the seventh or sixth century BCE.

Leviticus is primarily a manual for priests.  While the Israelite way of life had heretofore been all about the land, the 6th century BCE exile and subsequent return, under the auspices of Cyrus and the Persians, tipped the balance away from monarchy toward theocracy.  The priests, being the final redactors, put their stamp on it, so it's largely the priestly feel that we later readers get.  Biblically speaking, theirs was the last layer.

Time has passed.  We are not stuck with those same limitations.  Our understanding has grown. 

Just as we understand that a parent may threaten a child with punishment if that child fails to follow some important safety rule, we also grasp that the parent wants all to go well with that child.  Even if that child--or today's critics--might misunderstand the parent as nothing but threatening or punitive, that's not the point of parental rules.

Nor were biblical rules there to give God an excuse to smite people for breaking rules.  That's a familiar claim one hears from critics.  And, no, the rules are not there so people who break them will go to Hell.  (The concept of Hell hadn't yet been invented when those rules were first rehearsed and then written down.)  Nor did the rules function to help an upper class suppress the people until Jesus arrived to free them from the law.  Those misconceptions serve certain underlying political and theological functions, such as claiming to have "the better way," or smearing religion in general.  Those sorts of misconceptions may take the rules out of their proper context, or they may be anachronistic, erroneously placing back in history current social situations that didn't exist back then.  Whatever, they are polemical readings of the text.

A corollary of that way of reading the text may be that Christians who are intending to confront "Old Testament thinking" by their criticism are also giving aid and succor to atheists.

I've been trying out the notion that the rules are there for people to follow and walk in God's way so that it will go well for them--and for God.  The rules are there to point people in the right direction, and, so that by concentrating on the rules, they will be focused on what would be recognized in biblical understanding as God's will.  The rules are there because we need headlights to see our way.

In terms of today's cognitive science, without such a discipline we are at the mercy of extraneous forces.

The critics seem to misconstrue biblical rules for the sake of criticizing them. Or maybe some of the critics are railing against biblical language, insisting that it should reflect views from the vantage point of today, or should be discarded because it is not better than it is--although those same critics may typically value creativity and freedom of speech and may not ordinarily be in the habit of suppressing other forms of literature or media.

The bible is in the language it is because it was written a very long time ago, and not only that, but because of how it happens to have been translated.

The critics likely have in mind, too, misuses to which they believe it has been put.

We ask again, then: what in the world are the rules for and what good are they?

I have been trying out the idea that they are there for the benefit of the discipline--and the light a discipline can shine on the way ahead.

The same Americans for whom the concept of "rules" is at first blush a negative concept are not averse to discipline, that is, self-discipline, for their children and for themselves.

Likewise, the same Americans for whom "rules" is a negative codeword also tend to admire the "nuns on the bus."  Although I'm speaking primarily of mainline liberal Protestants, not Catholics, they nevertheless often admire the cloistered religious orders in general, particularly if the order's aims are toward greater spirituality or mysticism, or if the brothers or nuns provide care for others at the cost of everyday selfish aims.  For example, not long ago I saw a notice in the paper announcing that "author, retreat leader, and Benedictine Sister Macrina Wiederkehr will talk about 'Finding your Monastic Heart: A Way to God,'" at a local Episcopal church.  What do monastic communities have, if not an order, a rule?  In other words, a discipline.

Then there's mindfulness, which is big nowadays--and what is mindfulness if not a form of discipline?

Yes, but, some people may say, the biblical rules are another story.  My answer is that that  negative perspective is largely in the eyes of the beholder, coming from the polemical habits of thinking about Judaism in Jesus' day with which they have been imbued, or, one might say, indoctrinated.

In the section on science I aimed to show there is no neutral territory; no automatic realm of free will or freedom from influence, either over our decisions or even our perceptions of how the world is.  Freedom may not be "just another word for nothing left to lose," but it's the case that there exists no rule-free, less arduous way to which we have access through a passive abandonment of effort.  No discipline (no rules) is a passive stance that entails giving in to our biological programming and our societal preconceptions: what Hannah Arendt, for example, seemed to believe was the abandonment of thinking--the passivity of falling head over heals into conventional ideology.  The freedom to choose that we do have is the freedom to use a discipline.

Before we can practice a discipline, we have to find a one, and before we can find a discipline, we have to decide where to look.  Choosing where to look means choosing what to open ourselves up to and what to neglect.  The world is full of stimuli.  Not choosing a disciplined approach does not mean the stimuli stop.  If we don't direct our attention according to a discipline, our attention will be directed by opinion makers du jour. Only via a discipline can we have some say in the matter, and therein lies such free will as we have.

Otherwise we're at the mercy of money and power, or whatever is the going ideology, which history tells us can be one that exploits others (for example, slavery) or even worse, even a murderous one.

A discipline requires practice.  What seems confining and unnatural becomes easy and natural, through practice.  Take learning to read, learning to drive, learning to swim, learning to play an instrument, or a sport, or becoming expert in one's field.

In their 1989 book Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon exhort Christians not to confuse the Church with the culture at large, but rather to be the Church.  By that, they mean to follow a way separate and distinct from the culture at large.   What they are describing is very close to following a discipline.

Hauerwas and Willimon waffle only at the point of confronting what are to be the rules.  They do enumerate several ethical rules.  Then, though, they talk about trusting Jesus and getting rid of the "false" baggage, by which I'm afraid they may have intended to refer to their conception of Jewish law or the like, and their vision of Jesus as having jettisoned it.  There's mention of sending out an army to convert people in a foreign country--a penetrating army, no less.  Then they go theologically vague.  They talk about the necessity of narrative (stories).  They talk of the virtues of adventure--revolution, communal life, patience, dependability, being linked to a true story--and trusting Jesus to give the rules--which, however, they never seem to get around to enumerating.

I fear that their apparent avoidance provides another example of Christians shying away from words about rules and discipline, because of their theological understanding of what is Christian and what is Jewish, but of course Christians do have rituals other than the ethical--attending church, for example, or taking communion, or serving others.  Christians used to observe their Sabbath although lately that too has seemingly fallen under the rubric of meaningless rules to be eschewed.

To be a people, as Hauerwas and Willimon advocate, living and on the march in the real world, is going to require rules to light the way.  Considering "rules" to be a dirty word is a problem.

I recommend we remember the good advice of the Sunday school guest teacher/seminary professor whom I quoted in the section on Rules: The conflict about rules really was never between Christianity and Judaism.  It was within Christianity.  That is easy to forget with "rules" having been almost institutionalized in the public imagination of many Christians as part of what sets Christianity apart from Judaism.

As a counter example to my criticism of Resident Aliens and to what I have said about Christians and rules, mention is due to a movement with which my husband was involved in his youth and which he has said saved Christianity for him: The Ecumenical Institute, later known as the Institute for Cultural Affairs.  That organization, begun within Methodism and supported by the World Council of Churches, had its heyday in the 1970s.  Its goal was not proselytizing but taking action in the world.  Its backbone was The Order Ecumenical, a covenant entered into by couples.  The organization saw itself as a family order.  It consisted of people following a rule, but out in the world, not in a cloistered setting.  Its strength was not in scriptural orientation, but in Christian liturgy and ritual centered especially around mealtime, with the goal of producing an intentional community.  The organization also conducted educational courses on their methodology, which my husband prevailed on his siblings as well as myself to sample, although none of us was affected at the deep level he was; he has characterized the invigorating and life-changing message of The Ecumenical Institute for him and others as, "Get up; pick up your bed and walk" (John 5:8).  The Order Ecumenical called itself out of existence in 1988, although ICAI lives on as a nonprofit organization.

In the matter of free will, in light of the new cognitive psychology, the fact we must face is that free will requires a discipline.  We need rules to focus attention, that is, to focus conscious awareness.  That focus determines what we pay attention to--what we see and where we go--and that is how it is like headlights. We have to choose our discipline or our choices will be somebody or something else' decision, if not randomly expended energy.  Sheer waste, in other words.  In fact, I'm tempted to use the biblical injunction against "spilling one's seed upon the ground" at this point, in the sense of wasted energy, wasted potential.   Under such a circumstance we cannot be said to be exercising free will except in the sense of abdicating it.

The priestly laws of Leviticus bestowed the freedom to focus on God and live in God's way.
That was the purpose of the rules; in other words, it was the way--halacha.

To summarize the essence of what rules do: If consciousness is attention, and we only see that to which we attend, then the purpose of our discipline is to illuminate our direction, using the spotlight of our consciousness to cut into the darkness, creating as we go.

To recapitulate, the biblical rules never were there to provide the chance for missteps and consequent punishment or as a way for "Jewish leaders" to suppress the people.  Christianity in some of its forms may have made hay with that characterization of rules, but it is a stance that also has backfired, contributing to internal dissension and fragmentation.  Meanwhile, within Judaism, times and rules may have evolved, but a discipline of how to live will always be involved.  The fact remains--no discipline, no freedom.  That is what it means to say the discipline constitutes the God-given laws of life.  Although biblical language is that of reward and punishment and also is God-centric, because that was the language people understood, we don't have to be fundamentalist about our theology.

When we contemplate illuminating not merely our own personal futures but the future of people, no one person and no one culture or tradition can do it alone, because that spotlight requires not just me and not just you, but all of us, so that we can strive, not toward some end that is already written, but creating as we go.  Only in that way we can truly do what Gandhi said: Be the change we want to see in the world.

Postscript
My inspiration for this writing on rules, religion, and free will began with my struggle with the findings of cognitive psychology regarding what consciousness is and regarding what is it that I consider "I." It was the reading of Daniel Kahneman's book that first got me thinking about free will and noticing how the scientific findings he was describing might relate to aspects of Judaism.  All the while I was being confronted with ordinary Christian beliefs and attitudes about Jews and rules, as those beliefs reverberate through society and also as they are expressed by particular individuals as well as in some preaching, too.  All this learning, stimulation, and confrontation from multiple sources and with and by different people became a fertile primeval soup of for the generation of ideas.  At first I thought the subject would be a short and simple one to write about, but it has grown on me.  I have to learn as I go, and have to try to state my ideas descriptively rather than with blame.

For those wanting more, I recommend Nikos Kazantzakis' The Saviors of God.  Here is what looks like a complete version.  It is subtitled Spiritual Exercises and consists largely of rules and story.  Even though it was written around 100 years ago and uses terms like "mankind" and "race" in ways we now consider outdated, I consider it a fantastic illustration of what I've been describing.

Needless to say, hopefully, is that I've been putting ideas and information together according to my own thinking, exploration and struggle, and not based on those of any group or denomination.

(The reader may click here to view Parts I - IV as one continuous post.)