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"Is God a Taoist?" from The Tao is silent by Raymond M. Smullyan. © 1977 by Raymond M. Smullyan. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.
MORTAL: And therefore, O God, I pray thee, if thou hast one ounce of mercy for this thy suffering creature, absolve me of having to have free will!
GOD: You reject the greatest gift I have given thee?
MORTAL: How can you call that which was forced on me a gift? I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!
GOD: Why would you wish not to have free will?
MORTAL: Because free will means moral responsibility, and moral responsibility is more than I can bear!
GOD: Why do you find moral responsibility so unbearable?
MORTAL: Why? I honestly can't analyze why; all I know is that I do.
GOD: All right, in that case suppose I absolve you from all moral responsibility but leave you still with free will. Will this be satisfactory?
MORTAL (after a pause): No, I am afraid not.
GOD: Ah, just as I thought! So moral responsibility is not the only aspect of free will to which you object. What else about free will is bothering you?
MORTAL: With free will I am capable of sinning, and I don't want to sin!
GOD: If you don't want to sin, then why do you?
MORTAL: Good God! I don't know why I sin, I just do! Evil temptations come along, and try as I can, I cannot resist them.
GOD: If it is really true that you cannot resist them, then you are not sinning of your own free will and hence (at least according to me) not sinning at all.
MORTAL: No, no! I keep feeling that if only I tried harder I could avoid sinning. I understand that the will is infinite. If one wholeheartedly wills not to sin, then one won't.
GOD: Well now, you should know. Do you try as hard as you can to avoid sinning or don't you?
MORTAL: I honestly don't know! At the time, I feel I am trying as hard as I can, but in retrospect, I am worried that maybe I didn't!
GOD: So in other words, you don't really know whether or not you have been sinning. So the possibility is open that you haven't been sinning at all!
MORTAL: Of course this possibility is open, but maybe I have been sinning, and this thought is what so frightens me!
GOD: Why does the thought of your sinning frighten you?
MORTAL: I don't know why! For one thing, you do have a reputation for meting out rather gruesome punishments in the afterlife!
GOD: Oh, that's what's bothering you! Why didn't you say so in the first place instead of all this peripheral talk about free will and responsibility? Why didn't you simply request me not to punish you for any of your sins?
MORTAL: I think I am realistic enough to know that you would hardly grant such a request!
GOD: You don't say! You have a realistic knowledge of what requests I will grant, eh? Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do! I will grant you a very, very special dispensation to sin as much as you like, and I give you my divine word of honor that I will never punish you for it in the least. Agreed?
MORTAL (in great terror): No, no, don't do that!
GOD: Why not? Don't you trust my divine word?
MORTAL: Of course I do! But don't you see, I don't want to sin! I have an utter abhorrence of sinning, quite apart from any punishments it may entail.
GOD: In that case, I'll go you one better. I'll remove your abhorrence of sinning. Here is a magic pill! Just swallow it, and you will lose all abhorrence of sinning. You will joyfully and merrily sin away, you will have no regrets, no abhorrence and I still promise you will never be punished by me, or yourself, or by any source whatever. You will be blissful for all eternity. So here is the pill!
MORTAL: No, no!
GOD: Are you not being irrational? I am even removing your abhorrence of sin, which is your last obstacle.
MORTAL: I still won't take it!
GOD: Why not?
MORTAL: I believe that the pill will indeed remove my future abhorrence for sin, but my present abhorrence is enough to prevent me from being willing to take it.
GOD: I command you to take it! '
MORTAL: I refuse!
GOD: What, you refuse of your own free will?
MORTAL: Yes!
GOD: So it seems that your free will comes in pretty handy, doesn't it?
MORTAL: I don't understand!
GOD: Are you not glad now that you have the free will to refuse such a ghastly offer? How would you like it if I forced you to take this pill, whether you wanted it or not?
MORTAL: No, no! Please don't!
GOD: Of course I won't; I'm just trying to illustrate a point. All right, let me put it this way. Instead of forcing you to take the pill, suppose I grant your original prayer of removing your free will--but with the understanding that the moment you are no longer free, then you will take the pill.
MORTAL: Once my will is gone, how could I possibly choose to take the pill?
GOD: I did not say you would choose it; I merely said you would take it. You would act, let us say, according to purely deterministic laws which are such that you would as a matter of fact take it.
MORTAL: I still refuse.
GOD: So you refuse my offer to remove your free will. This is rather different from your original prayer, isn't it?
MORTAL: Now I see what you are up to. Your argument is ingenious, but I'm not sure it is really correct. There are some points we will have to go over again.
GOD: Certainly.
MORTAL: There are two things you said which seem contradictory to me. First you said that one cannot sin unless one does so of one's own free will. But then you said you would give me a pill which would deprive me of my own free will, and then I could sin as much as I liked. But if I no longer had free will, then, according to your first statement, how could I be capable of sinning?
GOD: You are confusing two separate parts of our conversation. I never said the pill would deprive you of your free will, but only that it would remove your abhorrence of sinning.
MORTAL: I'm afraid I'm a bit confused.
GOD: All right, then let us make a fresh start. Suppose I agree to remove your free will, but with the understanding that you will then commit an enormous number of acts which you now regard as sinful. Technically speaking, you will not then be sinning since you will not be doing these acts of your own free will. And these acts will carry no moral responsibility, nor moral culpability, nor any punishment whatsoever. Nevertheless, these acts will all be of the type which you presently regard as sinful; they will all have this quality which you presently feel as abhorrent, but your abhorrence will disappear; so you will not then feel abhorrence toward the acts.
MORTAL: No, but I have present abhorrence toward the acts, and this present abhorrence is sufficient to prevent me from accepting your proposal.
GOD: Hm! So let me get this absolutely straight. I take it you no longer wish me to remove your free will.
MORTAL (reluctantly): No, I guess not.
GOD: All right, I agree not to. But I am still not exactly clear as to why you now no longer wish to be rid of your free will. Please tell me again.
MORTAL: Because, as you have told me, without free will I would sin even more than I do now.
GOD: But I have already told you that without free will you cannot sin.
MORTAL: But if I choose now to be rid of free will, then all my subsequent evil actions will be sins, not of the future, but of the present moment in which I choose not to have free will.
GOD: Sounds like you are pretty badly trapped, doesn't it?
MORTAL: Of course I am trapped! You have placed me in a hideous double bind! Now whatever I do is wrong. If I retain free will, I will continue to sin, and if I abandon free will (with your help, of course) I will now be sinning in so doing.
GOD: But by the same token, you place me in a double bind. I am willing to leave you free will or remove it as you choose, but neither alternative satisfies you. I wish to help you, but it seems I cannot.
MORTAL: True!
GOD: But since it is not my fault, why are you still angry with me?
MORTAL: For having placed me in such a horrible predicament in first place!
GOD: But, according to you, there is nothing satisfactory I could have done.
MORTAL: You mean there is nothing satisfactory you can now do, that does not mean that there is nothing you could have done.
GOD: Why? What could I have done?
MORTAL: Obviously you should never have given me free will in the first place. Now that you have given it to me, it is too late--anything I do will be bad. But you should never have given it to me in the first place.
GOD: Oh, that's it! Why would it have been better had I never given it to you?
MORTAL: Because then I never would have been capable of sinning at all.
GOD: Well, I'm always glad to learn from my mistakes.
MORTAL: What!
GOD: I know, that sounds sort of self-blasphemous, doesn't it? It almost involves a logical paradox! On the one hand, as you have been taught, it is morally wrong for any sentient being to claim that I am capable of making mistakes. On the other hand, I have the right to do anything. But I am also a sentient being. So the question is, Do, I or do I not have the right to claim that I am capable of making mistakes?
