Is God an Anarchist?

His gift of free will requires CONSENT (DN: 4.XZ)

I am working behind the scenes on some important future installments of The Distributed Nation. As such, I have not had the time to write a proper chapter installment for today. However, I would like to share pertinent portions of a conversation I have been having with

HumblyMyBrain

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In an ongoing response to my philosophical-spiritual Note about perfection, HumblyMyBrain said, “God operates through persuasion”

This is a point which I feel must be noted and amplified, for it must be true. If God were to coerce and oppress, He would be a tyrant. And He is surely not a tyrant.

I replied,

One of my main theories is that the top-level dichotomy among humans is whether they coerce or persuade. Take or make. Steal or trade. Parasitize or produce. So it is really important to note that God is a persuader. It says something crucial about which human strategy is good and which is not.

Humbly’s response was fodder for a thousand discussions, and the whole thing is worth your attention. For my purposes here, I will just call attention to the first portion:

Depending on what doctrine you look at, there is the theory that God’s greatest gift to us is moral agency, the right to choose good and evil, right and wrong, life or death, His will or ours/another’s, etc. For one, how can we be truly tested if we are not given the liberty to act for ourselves, rather than to be acted upon? This also aligns with the theory of the Law of Liberty (or Perfect Law of Liberty), which is mentioned in the Bible. An individual cannot truly develop individual virtues without the liberty to choose between virtues and vice. As we are given the responsibility to choose our path, we are also blessed with the consequences, be they good or bad. Through our choices, we can also develop good judgement, which is necessary to obtain wisdom.

Humbly’s theological take has important correlations with the work I am doing. In short, if consent is a necessary condition for respect of free will, and if God gave us the gift of free will even knowing the risks, then God expects consent to be respected.

After a quick compliment on Humbly’s food for profound thought, I noted as much in a somewhat jumbled early-morning reply:

I have long deeply believed that the first part—about God’s greatest gift—is THE theodicy answer. Having free will is so important that God is willing to give it to us even knowing the risks of us going wrong, as Lewis and Chesterton point out.

In fact (and maybe this strays too far into process theology for your liking, but) I believe that our free will is the answer to the koan “Can God create a rock so heavy He cannot lift it?”

Our free will must be that rock. He could deceive us (though He wouldn’t) or un-create our free will, but He cannot choose for us. No one can. Whatever each person’s free will is, it is his and his alone.

“An individual cannot truly develop individual virtues without the liberty to choose between virtues and vice. As we are given the responsibility to choose our path, we are also blessed with the consequences, be they good or bad. Through our choices, we can also develop good judgement, which is necessary to obtain wisdom.”

That is really well said. There are so many reasons why free will is central, and those are a part of the picture, for sure.

For me, each individual’s personal control over his thoughts, actions and choices (free will) is what grants to him dispositive decision-making authority over his own body, life, and being (self-ownership). I don’t usually involve theological arguments in my work, but I would say that even God cannot own us. We might “belong” to him, but that would be in the same way that, as parents, our children are “ours.” We don’t own them. And certainly no human can or may own another.

I have been working towards a principle that I believe may be higher in moral importance than the nonaggression principle. It’s a long story and I will be writing about it in a few weeks, but basically, the NAP fails on two fronts: 1) Some things that are clearly force are not moral wrongs when they are consented to (sex, martial arts sparring, John borrowing a tool from out of Jim’s garage, etc.). 2) Some things that are clearly wrong are hard to define as force (fraud, brainwashing, nonviolent theft, accidental damage to property, etc.). This makes the NAP problematic as a top-level libertarian commandment.

But what I have come to realize is that consent is the key. You can trespass on my property if I consent. You can borrow my cordless drill if I consent. Initiating coercive force is part of the equation, but it is not the whole equation.

Stated in commandment form, then, this would be something like

Thou shalt not trespass the person, property, or liberty of another.

Stated with a bit more information,

(In the absence of voluntary, explicit, transparent, informed, and revocable consent), thou shalt not trespass (damage, steal, encroach, subjugate, or initiate coercive force upon) the person, property, or liberty of another.

I am still working on it, but that is where I am so far.

How this relates to your comment is simple, really. Consent is rooted in free will. (Personal control over thoughts, actions and choices —> dispositive decision-making authority over body, life, and being —> nothing may rightly be done to another that violates that dispositive decision-making authority.) And if God thought that free will was THAT important, then consent seems like it would be the fundamental unit of moral concern.

I mean, in a sense, God’s gift of freedom/free will seems to rank higher than love. You are free not to love, which means freedom is that important. And so, to violate another’s free will may even be a greater sin than to fail to love them.

I suppose that last bit strays into theological territory I might not want to touch, but the rest is, I believe, on very solid ground.

Sorry if this rambles a bit. I usually answer comments straight out of bed in the morning, and yours was the first 🤣

In the coming weeks, I will be formalizing this argument, and the wording of this “commandment,” into a case for a principled position we might call consentism. (The same as voluntaryism, really, but without the risk of confusion with “volunteerism.”) In the course of that case, I will explain why consent must be voluntary, explicit, transparent, informed, and revocable in order to be real.

But first, I want to cover some other ground, and get your opinions and feedback…

This concept is a refinement (and I did promise there would be refinements along the way!) of a previous installment on the subject. In that installment, I proposed an early version of a “first protocol” (one commandment, prime directive, call it what you will) that could sum up the ethos by which we operate. I then proceeded to list a series of moral MUST NOTS—crimes that are forbidden under any just about interpretation of natural law.

I decided this morning to do a test. I wanted to see if the breakout of trespass into damage, steal, encroach, subjugate, and initiate coercive force upon could match up with the targets of trespass—person, property, and liberty—to produce all of the aforementioned “crimes” under natural law. And the way to do that was to make a chart. So that’s what I did.

It was a rush job, but it is good enough to start out any discussion. Please let me know what you think, and I will take your feedback into account in future refinements.

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 | 1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10 I 2.11 | 2.12 | 2.13 | 2.14 | 2.15 | 2.16 | 2.17 | 2.XX | 2.18 | 2.19 | 2.20 | 2.21 | | Where: 3.0 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4 | 3.5 | 3.6 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 3.10 | 3.11 | 3.12 | 3.13 || Who: 4.0 | 4.1 | 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.4 | 4.5 | 4.XX | 4.XY | 4.6 | 4.7 | 4.8 | 4.9 | 4.10 | 4.11 | 4.12 | 4.XZ