Human Freedom vs Deterministic and Reductionist Views
Deterministic Perspectives
This section outlines five modalities, all suggesting that humans are not masters of themselves but victims of unseen forces:
- The practice of sorcery.
- A growing interest in horoscopes or astrology.
- Belief in reincarnation.
- Providential Passivity: The mistaken belief among some Christians that everything is fatally determined and imposed by God.
- Social Fatalism: Based on misconceptions about fundamental human equality leading to fatalism.
Psychological Reductionism
Human beings are reduced, ultimately, to their psyche.
- Some followers of Freud think the person is a victim of an essentially erotic instinct.
- Some disciples of Pavlov see humans as a bundle of conditioned reflexes.
In these views, humans lack freedom as they merely respond to mechanical stimuli.
Economistic Worldviews
- Consumerist Vision: Pays tribute to having more, potentially drowning individuals in an eagerness for unrestrained acquisition, consumption, and spending.
- Individualistic Vision: This perspective places the economy above human service, making humans serve the economy instead.
- Collectivist Vision: While claiming to defend majority interests, this view can crush human rights, such as the right to religious freedom.
Scientistic Viewpoint
The human vocation is seen as solely focused on the conquest of the universe. In this view, only what science can prove is recognized as true. Everything is justified in the name of science. Humans are reduced to what science can define them as.
Statist Perspectives
- Deification of the State: The state is viewed as a god-like entity capable of anything, to which anything can be demanded.
- Debasement of the State: Alarmed by the dangers of statism, some proceed to sell state enterprises, potentially without a rational plan.
Human Capacity for Understanding
Through our understanding, we are able to:
- Possess self-consciousness, realizing our own presence.
- Think and understand the order established by our Creator.
- Use intelligence to guide our search for truth.
- Know ourselves, others, and God.
- Hear the voice of God resounding in our hearts, recorded as law.
Human Capacity for Will
By our will, we are able to:
- Exercise self-determination: using our will to guide our search for good and achieve freedom.
- Choose to follow Christ to reach union with God.
- Align our actions with the moral law engraved in our hearts.
- Learn to live in true freedom.
- Responsibly make our own decisions and answer for them.
Human Capacity for Communion
Through our understanding and will, we can love and enter into communion:
- Engage in personal and intimate relationships: expressing, communicating, opening our hearts to give and receive.
- Listen, accept, and welcome others to build bonds of unity and community.
- Forgive when we are offended and apologize when we offend others.
- Love God and our neighbors, serving others and giving life.
We become more fully human as we freely choose the purpose for which we were created: to love. Endowed with a spiritual soul, intellect, and will, the human person is ordered towards God from conception and destined for eternal bliss.