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Similitude
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| Posted 1/3/2012 12:27 PM (GMT -6) |   | |
There are a lot of good links in the article. But the bottom line is this: if there is no libertarian free-will, we can't really know anything can we? Because at bare minimum, TO know entails finite temporal duration of directed action that is directed TO knowledge. IOW, any temporally-enduring action that is directed is only categorically conceivable in terms of design (because directionality is only conceivable in terms of foresight) --which requires, as a corrollary, a FINAL cause.
In short, the relation of design is fundamental to the very INTELLIGIBILITY of ordered action of any kind. To be ordered IS to be designed/directed. The minute we say ordered action is what it is independent of foresight/design, we have to account for how we know we have actually remembered to know we've ever experienced ordered action. To believe we experience memory is, AGAIN, to believe in the very ordered/directed temporally-enduring action that is only intelligible in terms of design/foresight.
This is what I mean when I say it is inconceivable that there is no benevolent/competent Designer. Our very beliefs entail the category of design for their very intelligible conception once we analyze them all the way down. Thus, benevolent theism is the given entailed in human normativity. The rest is an argument between VERSIONS of benevolent theism.
Atheism is a no-starter. For the atheist, all belief is blind and arbitrary. It is no wonder atheists don't even care whether moral accountability is real as they nod in approval to the jailing of others they can not know to be "wrong."
Post Edited (Similitude) : 1/3/2012 11:39:00 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/4/2012 1:01 PM (GMT -6) | | I'd ask this question in light of the Scott Bolzan phenomenon. Forget whether or not free will exists. Let's just assume it does. Let's ask the next question:
WHO is the user of the free will that exists?
Let's take you, "Jeff". Are your the user of your free will? Is your habitual self-experiential memory of being "Jeff" stored within your brain and used by the brain's ego functioning the locus of your brain's conscious concentration and the use of your focused selection of attention? I wouldn't think so. With enough blood flow blocked to the front of your brain, you would no longer be "Jeff"; you'd be an entirely different identity pattern all together. So "who" would be the locus of strategic allocation of attention? Certainly not "Jeff". So, then who? Who would be the "soul" using your human incorporeal/corporeal hypostatic unity? Who does the freedom BELONG to?
To me, this is a much larger issue: personal identity given what we know about the brain. And this issue stands, whether one take free will strictly neurologically or otherwise.
What's the use of affirming human free will...and then separating it from any particular personality amalgam as it's ground? It still means that NO personality amalgam is the "WHO" who really runs things. If anything, our emotional attachment to our personality amalgams are what CONSTRAINS our source of free choice.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 1/4/2012 12:10:36 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 1/4/2012 2:01 PM (GMT -6) | | |
I say the who is the self or ego. IOW, it's that being called "I." Memories depend upon associations and brain states. It's the disturbance of the latter that can render association impotent for certain memories. But all that means to me is that the "I" that has lost access to his/her memories is now required of in terms of what is yet given to him/her. Suppose I forget everything about the specifics of my personal history in one hour from now and never recover those memories. Does that mean in the resurrection there will be two Jeff's resurrected to account for that? I don't see how. It seems to me one Jeff will be resurrected and be held accountable for one whole life. The only thing that changes after the amnesia event is that my accountability for actions done thereafter is no longer conditioned by my prior history. Thereafter, I'm only accountable for what I can actually know and do WITHOUT those memories.
But I've always believed that God will restore the relevant memories for our accountability in the resurrection judgment. I don't think we'll be ignorant of WHY He's holding us accountable. Indeed, I think this is a necessary condition for God to "stop" "every mouth."
Post Edited (Similitude) : 1/4/2012 2:50:10 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/4/2012 4:05 PM (GMT -6) | | From the article...
True "free will," then, would require us to somehow step outside of our brain's structure and modify how it works. Science hasn't shown any way we can do this because "we" are simply constructs of our brain. We can't impose a nebulous "will" on the inputs to our brain that can affect its output of decisions and actions, any more than a programmed computer can somehow reach inside itself and change its program.
Two words: Penfield. Loder. 
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Jeff:
I say the who is the self or ego. IOW, it's that being called "I." Memories depend upon associations and brain states. It's the disturbance of the latter that can render association impotent for certain memories. But all that means to me is that the "I" that has lost access to his/her memories is now required of in terms of what is yet given to him/her. Suppose I forget everything about the specifics of my personal history in one hour from now and never recover those memories. Does that mean in the resurrection there will be two Jeff's resurrected to account for that? I don't see how. It seems to me one Jeff will be resurrected and be held accountable for one whole life. The only thing that changes after the amnesia event is that my accountability for actions done thereafter is no longer conditioned by my prior history. Thereafter, I'm only accountable for what I can actually know and do WITHOUT those memories.
So, then the grounding force of the "I" and the personality amalgam "Jeff" are NOT the same thing, are they? And one can easily exist without the other. And that goes for any subsequent personality amalgam that may emerge from any type of retrograde amnesia. The only thing that can be accountable is the "I" that's is the SPIRITUAL presence that USES the personality amalgam "Jeff". But, this means that your self-experience as "Jeff" CANNOT be your non-corporeal spiritual power, too. Your "Jeff-ness" is specifically related to the state of your brain, NOT your non-corporeal aspect, not your "I". I think this is VERY DIFFERENT from how many Christians see themselves. I know that I used to directly associate my personality ("Dwayne Polk" ) with my spiritual, non-corporeal essence, such that if my soul was separated from my body that all of my memories would somehow be in the soul: "Dwayne" would just be disembodied, not non-existent. USED TO, mind you... I don't believe that anymore.
The only reason we don't catch this is because much of the time, our "I" and personality amalgams act together so seamlessly that we effectively believe they are one and the same, making the personality amalgam currently used by the human ego into the center of our existence.
Wanna think of a doozy? Jesus was fully human with a fully human brain like ours, right? What if the adult Jesus, prior to actualizing his mission, would have hit his head on a rock while going somewhere and ended up with retrograde amnesia? Would the incarnation have ceased to exist? Would redemption have still be actualized? Would "Jesus" still have been the Messiah?
Interesting implications...
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 1/4/2012 3:17:53 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/4/2012 4:20 PM (GMT -6) | | Oh. And quick question, Jeff...
What separates your "I" in Texas from my "I" in Minnesota, if 1) our "I" does indeed transcend matter (our unique brains) and 2) God Himself is the continual ground of our mutually immaterial "I"?
"..."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 1/4/2012 3:25:04 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/4/2012 4:26 PM (GMT -6) | | And you know what's crazy?
This is EXACTLY what Buddhism says about the "no-self". See this about skandas.
The "Awakened One" is the human being who can see the TRUTH of the no-thingness of what he thinks makes up illusory self-centered existence....and see human dependence and interdependence. The "Free One" is the person that can USE the human ego process and emergent personality (which entails socialization, etc) rather than be RULED by it.
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In Buddhism, the term anattā (Pāli) or anātman (Sanskrit: अनात्मन्) refers to the notion of "not-self." In the early texts, the Buddha commonly uses the word in the context of teaching that all things perceived by the senses (including the mental sense) are not really "I" or "mine," and for this reason one should not cling to them.
In the same vein, the Pali suttas (and parallel āgamas, both referred to collectively below as the nikāyas), categorize the phenomena experienced by a being into five groups ("khandhas") that serve as the objects of clinging and as the basis for a sense of self. In the Nikāyas, the Buddha repeatedly emphasizes not only that the five khandhas of living beings are "not-self", i.e. not "I" or "mine", but also that clinging to them as if they were "I" or "mine" gives rise to unhappiness.
According to the early texts, while on the path, one should develop oneself in healthy and liberating ways, only letting go of the attempt to improve the self as it becomes unnecessary.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 1/4/2012 4:17:06 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/4/2012 4:39 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/4/2012 5:19 PM (GMT -6) | | I believe this describes what we are talking about here...
ahaṃkāra - the empirical ego
Ahaṃkāra tattva is the first seat of subjectivity. Ahaṃ means "I" and kāra means "to do", thus, ahaṃkāra - the instrument of Ahaṃ (the Spirit), the principle of individuation, acting as an independent conscious entity within the impure reality - yet, it does not have consciousness of its own. ahaṃkāra is a receptacle of Cit śakti, its consciousness is but a small spark from Cit, the universal consciousness. Its operating mode is assuming authorship of all the actions of buddhi, manas, the senses and organs of action.
Ahaṃkāra lives in the sphere of duality, in a state of identification with the physical body, its needs and desires. In ahaṃkāra predominates rajas guna (agitation). Because it identifies only with a small part of the creation (the body) and rejects everything else as "not me", it becomes subject to a series of afflictions such as: pride, egoism, competitiveness, hate and jealousy.
On the other hand, with ahaṃkāra tattva appears, for the first time, individual will, determination, a sense of morality and ethics and it is thus the first step on the spiritual path. Without a sufficiently harmonious and powerful ahaṃkāra (personality) it is impossible to exert the level of effort required to accede to a higher spiritual level.
The position of ahaṃkāra and buddhi are sometimes presented in reversed order because, as the principle of "I-ness", ahaṃkāra is allowed control over the manas (sensorial mind) and buddhi (superior intellect, intuition). Yet, buddhi is a superior tattva, and ahaṃkāra is only allowed from a functional point of view a superior position to buddhi. From an absolute point of view, ahaṃkāra is created by buddhi and thus subordinated to it.
buddhi - the intellect
Buddhi tattva represents the intuitive understanding, the superior mind, which can rise above ego and the sensorial. It does value judgments, discriminates between possibilities, decides and determines, based on the information presented from the lower tattvas. In buddhi tattva there is a predominance of sattva guna (purity) and the energy of jñāna śakti - the energy of knowledge.
The name buddhi contains the Sanskrit radical dhi, meaning reflection, intuitive penetration and higher awareness. Other notable terms containing dhi are samādhi (yogic ecstasy) and dhyana (meditation). One of the prescribed ways of developing buddhi is the study of sacred texts. In Kashmiri Shaivism, Bauddha Jñāna (the intuitive and conceptual understanding) is considered the foundation of illumination because once profoundly understood, something is always accessible, while the second type of knowledge, Paurusha Jñāna (to know through direct experience) is limited only to the moments of inspiration.
I said before that I think that power of "buddhi" is analogous for what the Christian would call the power of "nous". I also think that "Ahamkara" is basically bi-polar assymetrical relational unity between the the "buddhi" reality and the ego activity of a human brain. Human personality would be stored in the "manas."
In short, our human freedom, creativity, and identity lies in our "noetic", spiritual reality that is in continual relationship with the Uncreated spiritual reality.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 1/4/2012 4:29:11 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/4/2012 6:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
The self needs to exist uninterrupted between death and resurrection for Christian hope to have any meaning, IMO.
Agreed. The "I" (manas, buddhi, ahamkara) of a particular human hypostatic relational unity must be THE continuity between death and after-death. So my question to you, Jeff: is this "I" identical to the current personality amalgam being used by the ego functioning activity of your currently-structured brain right now allowing for your "Jeff-ness"? If not, does it TRANSCEND your current personality amalgam? I think you'd say yes. Transcends, yet irreducibly includes it. But we both see how very fragile any particular personality amalgam is. It would seem better to identify with the personality amalgamation process than it would to identify with any PARTICULAR personality amalgmation.
Do you get what I'm asking? Think about it for a bit.
REpost...
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Just good quotes....
The personality is always composed of a small fraction of the total range of our potentials. It contains imitations of the real, more expansive qualities of our Essential nature which include joy, love, peace, compassion, strength, understanding, and many other priceless qualities. Moreover, our Essence awakens us to the beauty all around us—to the gifts of nature and the miracle of other people. In every moment, there are treasures and sources of delight, if we could only open to them. In the world of personality, we are too filled with our own projects and preoccupations, worries and hopes to notice the exquisite pleasure of being alive and the astounding variety of life.
But as we expand more fully into our Essential nature, our senses are awakened—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, intuiting. The world is more immediate and has a deeper impact on us; everything becomes more vivid and alive. We have all had moments in which a veil seems to have been removed so that the enchantment of even the smallest things touches us deeply. We experience the world once again with the innocence of a child, with all of the awe and mystery of life restored.
When we are functioning in personality, however, to varying degrees, our attention is caught up in imagination and is looking to the future or toward the past. Personality is always in some kind of reaction to the present moment. When we are functioning in Essence, we are grounded, present, and receptive to the moment. We see precisely what is necessary, and with exquisite economy, we are able to do it without unnecessary effort or resistance. We are capable, substantial, and real.
Further, because it is not what is real in us, but merely a construct in our minds, personality does not have any authority or power in itself. When we are lost in personality, it is not surprising that we often feel powerless, confused, and unsafe because we are basing our identity on an artificial construct. (If we are identified with something that is not real, then many things are going to be extremely threatening.) Our entire identity structure has been built up in our memory and imagination, whereas our true power and authority comes from our Essence, from our contact with the Divine. And yet, ironically, we fear and resist opening to that which is most real in us. When we trust in the process and give ourselves over to it, however, our authentic self comes forth. The result is real integrity, love, authenticity, creativity, understanding, guidance, joy, power, and serenity—all of the qualities we are forever demanding that personality supply.
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In other words, the ground of our identity and transcendence is NOT our habituated center of self-oriented, self-experiential memory and imagination stored in our neural pathways...it is our spiritual nature which is a natural place of relationship with the Divine. Our spiritual--relational, intrapersonal, transpersonal, interpersonal--realities should be expressed through our ego's use of personality. Instead, people have truncated their personal existences through the egocentric identification with a particularly-constructed, historically-held personality matrix...effectively constraining the free, choosing self by the boundaries of "world composition" allowable by continuity with one's habitual self-experiential memory/imagination stored within the brain and used by the brain's ego functioning. This is how most people become little more than walking, talking billboards for their family, culture, nation, religion, etc.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 1/4/2012 5:31:25 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 1/4/2012 9:43 PM (GMT -6) | | I agree with what I think you're saying. But I would add that our denial/hardening/desensitization processes also cause us to forget how we become so conditioned, even though we might have realized we were being desensitized at the time. The amnesia studies are powerful testimonies to just how profound associative solidification can be, behaviorally, mentally and sentiently.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 1/4/2012 8:52:38 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/5/2012 6:26 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 1/6/2012 1:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Some thoughts…
1) I agree there is something, some state of affairs, some relational matrix (between God and each of us) that accounts for the continuity of a live over its career, even if that person has amnesia. If Hitler bumped his head after the Holocaust and had everything wiped clean, he’d still be held accountable. Like Jeff said, God restores the memories, whatever, to make judgment CLEAR. That’s the loving thing to do. I can’t see that a bump on the head dissolves accountability.
I’d probably identify that unchanging spiritual ‘thing’ that you, D, want to say is the undivided abiding personal center of a human being as being responsible. In other words, the person responsible for Hitler’s actions would not be—to use D’s words—Hitler per se, but rather the abiding spiritual ordinal center of relationality that acted in Hitler’s name. See what I mean? Get a bump on the head and you start a new life. Sure. But the spiritual entity that grounds any further experience is the same. Bumps on the head don’t render THAT obsolete.
So we have one fundamental entity acting throughout its career in usual circumstances under a single constructed ego, but under rare occasions under two or more constructed egos.
2) I don’t think my “I” and Jeff’s “I” are the same “I.” That’s impossible. Not even the divine I’s are one and the same. It’s one thing to say we’re all inseparable and implicated in all. I’m all for that. It’s another thing to suggest that there’s only one created “I” to speak of.
3) I agree that our ‘freedom’ lies in the noetic, spiritual reality that’s continuously connect to God. But just because it’s continuously connected, it’s continuous through its career whatever ego-construct it’s brain and social surrounding comes up with (or forgets).
4) D: It would seem better to identify with the personality amalgamation process than it would to identify with any PARTICULAR personality amalgmation.
Tom: Yes. That’s how I see it.
5) My big question is what about faith commitments and amnesia? So Billy Graham has a seizure and forgets everything. In the last months of his life he espouses atheism. What’s God do? Does he deal with people in judgment on the basis of the sum total of the whole process through its career however many egos? How in the world does that work out?
Here’s why this is the question for me. In Romans Paul says nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ—not sword, famine, etc. But here we seem to be saying that a bump on the head CAN separate us from that love, unless all Paul means is that God unfailingly loves us regardless of the ego-construct we employ. Really? That’s it? That doesn’t seem to be his point in Romans.
Tom
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg Boyd | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/6/2012 2:28 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
My big question is what about faith commitments and amnesia? So Billy Graham has a seizure and forgets everything. In the last months of his life he espouses atheism. What’s God do? Does he deal with people in judgment on the basis of the sum total of the whole process through its career however many egos? How in the world does that work out?
Here’s why this is the question for me. In Romans Paul says nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ—not sword, famine, etc. But here we seem to be saying that a bump on the head CAN separate us from that love, unless all Paul means is that God unfailingly loves us regardless of the ego-construct we employ. Really? That’s it? That doesn’t seem to be his point in Romans.
Some things:
1)This is where we have to take things wholistically. I'm willing to bet that Paul didn't know anything about neurology, ego defense mechanisms, and split-brain research. I'm also willing to bet that he--like others in his time-- had the concept that the immaterial aspect of himself was basically his personality amalgam: in other words, to him, a deceased body would mean a incorporeal "Paul" existed somewhere. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, right? Whenever Paul said "I, not I, but Christ", he was obviously directly associating his "I" with his "Paul-ness". But what else would we expect? So let's just put that out there: Paul had NO WAY to make the kind of discriminations that we are making between the "I" and the personality amalgam. We have 2000+ years of understanding the human body on Paul. That has to be factored into what he said...and how WE take it now.
2) How could God judge the "I" of the human being who grew up as "Billy Graham" based upon "Billy's" actions...or any OTHER personality amalgam taken on? That would be like criticizing a person based upon their activities while being under a hypnotic trance or something. (And that's basically what's happening: we are entranced by our ego operations, subjective experience, and personality amalgams.) Whether someone killed another person or helped another person while under hypnosis, we would NOT hold the entranced person fully responsible for their actions. Why do that with any "I" entranced by a particular personality amalgam?
3) Say a Christian got retrograde amnesia at age 11 and lived unto age 67 as another (atheistic) identity. Is God supposed to just "wipe away" the 56 years that the "I" spent as a self-understood atheist persona...just because the human was a Christian in his "past life" pre-age-11? I'm sure no one would say that if the 56 years had been spent as a Christian after an 11 year old atheist getting retrograde amnesia. We'd probably try to say something like God will take everything into account...or that God did the boy a favor. But that seems pretty one-sided.
4) I think the concern is simple: Many people have, by an large, identified the core of themselves with there self-experiential memory and habitual personality patterns encoded in neural pathways...and identified THAT with the incorporeal "center" of themselves. THAT "center" is what has been believed to be weighed and judged by God to receive rewards or punishments; the "center" of WHO is morally responsible. Again, I once believed this too! Once we say that the actual "center" is NOT what we think it is, then that throws a monkey wrench into WHO is morally accountable and why. And I know that will make people a bit nervous. Particularly evangelicals.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 1/6/2012 1:39:24 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 1/6/2012 3:00 PM (GMT -6) | | | Right. But as we said on the phone, the "core" spiritual reality is only concrete (concretely expressed, instantiated) via SOME process of socialized world-composition. So, I'm not reducible to an particular expression (black, white, male, female), but there's also no identifying the "I" that I am apart from some concretization of the process. Right? The whole inward and outward moments--BOTH of which constitute the create person. The inward is the moment at which I ground who I fundamentally am in the Person of Christ and NOTHING outside that. But the second moment FORMS this fundamental unity concretely in the world.
Maybe I'm just emphasizing the diversity. But I totally agree...nothing in the world can tell you WHO you are. Only Christ can do that, and he does it by stripping us of dependence for our identities of every reference to created things. That's D's point, right?...i.e., that we not reference created entities in expressing our core/true identity in Christ.
Tom
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg BoydPost Edited (Tom) : 1/6/2012 2:12:04 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 1/6/2012 3:03 PM (GMT -6) | | Agreed, D. I don't see how belief-states endure apart from the conscious embracing of content.
The concept remain, Jeff, but the act of believing/trusting isn't a concept.
Tom
One Love said...Jeff: At this time, I'd have to posit that a believer would not permanently lose belief any more than my change of attention renders me in unbelief. I'm not sure amnesia ever results in a loss of concepts, anyway. So there may some sense in which such a heart believed thought construct could remain intact apart from an exception to the regularities of nature. Hmmm...I say that we should take Scott Bolzan and his family at their word. If they say that the man who was Scott Bolzan didn't remember who Jesus was...AND his wife had to REINTRODUCE Bolzan to Christianity...AND saw himself as trying to "live someone's life"... I would think there is plenty of reason to believe that at such point, he is a non-believer by definition.
"The aesthetic value the world has for God is in expressing, not constituting, the aesthetic value God eternally finds within Godself." Greg Boyd | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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| Posted 1/6/2012 3:05 PM (GMT -6) | | That's why I added
"At minimum I would think for regularities to hold, someone would have to re-associate Christ's name with the plural-person-godhead conception, though, in some amnesia cases. But God can provide that providentially simply enough."
If God is the great hound of heaven for mere servants, how much more so of His sons/daughters.
As for identifying with the amalgam, we ARE identified with the responsibility entailed in exercising self-discipline respecting those natural impulses and fears. There's no getting around the fact that our amalgam IS what we are contending with in our spiritual growth. So it's not irrelevant at all.
Moreover, Paul doesn't say "TO be absent from the body is TO be present with the Lord." He is saying there that he preferred to be out of THIS body and IN the heavenly one--which would render him "home." Thus, death itself was probably perceived by many a Jew to be the absence of the amalgam. After all, according to Ecclesiastes, death results in the dissolution of the body and the return of the human spirit to God. But other Hebrew scriptures say the soul (the self) goes to hades/sheol. Thus, I have no reason to believe all Hebrews believed death was a natural state of consciousness. That souls experienced consciousness post-mortem doesn't prove that was their natural post-mortem state any more than the fact that medical drugs can render me seemingly ABSOLUTELY unconscious proves unconsciousness is the natural pre-mortem state for humans.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 1/6/2012 2:09:29 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 1/6/2012 3:09 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Right. But as we said on the phone, the "core" spiritual reality is only concrete (concretely expressed, instantiated) via SOME process of socialized world-composition. So, I'm not reducible to an particular expression (black, white, male, female), but there's no identifying the "I" that I am apart from some concretization of the process. Right?
Yep. As they said on the Enneagram Institute, personality is necessary to expression of spiritual reality in human beings; there is a relationship between "essence/spirit" and "personality. At the same time, they would note that freedom doesn't lie in the personality, only in the essence. And when a human being believes their personality IS their essence--and the center of their freedom and identity---, then all decisions are inherently MISCONCEIVED...making fully actualized freedom of choice and unmitigated accountability-holding impossible.
I'm assuming that God KNOWS this.
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