Reflecting in “free Will’ during Holy Week, a time where I do reflect on what it means to be a human being and why. The term “free will” is a human term, just like “god” is a human term. What we are describing is a reality that we discover in our universes, ourselves, and our consciousness. We discover the reality around us. It is not like ‘god’ has a bottle of free will or an app for that matter that is dispensed at the appropriate time in life but is our awareness of what attributes comprise being human and the difference that makes.

Depending on what school of science you subscribe to we know there are at least 7 senses and maybe 21 that allow us and other creatures of the universe to discover ourselves, and the meaning of life. There were times I would swear my chocolate lab had ‘free will’ usually when he was just ignoring me. I subscribe to the thinking that what we call “free will” is incorporated in the evolutionary process.

At some point, because of knowledge gained through a multitude of senses, we give meaning to a particular ability and we call that ‘free will” just like we give meaning to the awareness and discovery of something greater than us, a significant other in the universe and we call that “god” or whatever our culture has attributed.

Regarding culture, I think our inheritance of a European culture and our educational system has suppressed many of our senses. We as humans are just beginning to understand the difference in being human and the difference it makes but we are nowhere near the finish line. I say all this mainly out of my awareness in my stage of life, trust me back in college/grad school in the late 60s and early 70s I would have never been thinking of this and most definitely not understanding it other than in an academic fashion.

Now think about your understanding of ‘free will” how much of that was learned(academic) knowledge vs experiential knowledge?