Quick questions on Free will, determinism and predestination - WJEC A-Level Religious Studies

If hard determinism is true, praise, blame, reward and punishment must be rethought, since holding people responsible for what they could not avoid seems unjust; some advocate reform-based rather than desert-based punishment.

Libertarianism fits the strong sense we have of deliberating and choosing, and it underwrites moral responsibility. Its difficulty is explaining how an undetermined choice is not merely random, and reconciling free will with the causal order described by science.

Compatibilism preserves moral responsibility within a causal world, which is its strength. Critics object that it redefines freedom too cheaply: if my desires are themselves determined, I am not ultimately free, and "acting on my desires" is not the deep freedom the debate is really about.

The conflict between predestination and moral responsibility turns on whether divine determination is a kind of coercion. If God has unconditionally decreed each person's eternal destiny before they act, it can look as though human choices are mere theatre, and the justice of damning the non-elect for sins they were never free to avoid becomes hard to defend, which is the heart of the objection. The strongest reply is compatibilist: responsibility does not require that an action be uncaused, only that it flows from the agent's own will without external compulsion, and the Calvinist insists that the elect and the reprobate both act willingly, according to their own nature, so they own their actions even though God ordains the outcome.

What does hard determinism conclude about moral responsibility? [2 marks]

How does compatibilism define freedom? [2 marks]

Evaluate the view that human beings are not truly free. [20 marks]