FREEWILL CAN ONLY BE CONSISTENTLY AFFIRMED BY THEISM

In 1871, Thomas Huxley, a zealous advocate of Charles Darwin, claimed that “Mind is nothing but matter,” and, of course, matter is exclusively under control of the laws of science. This leaves no room for freewill.

Similarly, in his recent book, “Free Will,” atheist Sam Harris writes, “Free will is an illusion.” Consequently, what feels like freewill is nothing more than chemical processes. This leaves no room for human culpability. If our thoughts and actions are entirely controlled by biochemical reactions, then we couldn’t have done otherwise. Hence, there is no basis for guilt and culpability.

However, this denial of freewill and culpability (DFC) is highly problematic for a number of reasons:

DFC goes against everything we intuitively know about ourselves and our lives. When I make any decision, like flipping through the TV channels, it seems that I am freely choosing one station over another. Of course, like anyone else, I am subject to powerful biological-genetic forces. Admittedly, I am biologically predisposed to not like loud and glitzy programming. Therefore, some will say, “Well, this proves you’re pre-programmed to make certain choices.”

Although there is truth in this claim, it falls far short of proving that pre-programming is the only factor involved in my choices.

Of course, Harris and the other atheists will respond, “Your experience of free choice is just an illusion.” However, if I can’t trust my sense that I am making freewill choices, then I can’t trust my senses that I even exist, that I am a person, or that I am culpable for my actions!  If something that I experience with such clarity is illusory, perhaps my very existence and the existence of this world are also illusory. Perhaps I’m just someone else’s consciousness. Perhaps, as some Buddhists claim, we are just part of one universal consciousness and lack any individual existence.

If our intuitions and perceptions are simply part of this great delusion, then science and all reason are also part of this same delusion, along with Harris’ DFC thinking.

In other words, if I apply such skepticism to my perceptions that, to some degree, I am making culpable, free choices, then I have to be skeptical about everything else in my life! I would even have to be skeptical about my skepticism.

To an extent, freewill and culpability differs among people. However, one DFC writes that there can exist no freewill distinctions among us, since freewill is entirely absent in each of us:

·       There are only two types of people in the world. Those who believe in free will and those who do not. There is no grey area or wiggle room… There is no such thing as a little freewill.

However, many recognize that we do possess differing degrees of freewill. The heroin addict is more constrained in his free choices than before he became addicted. He can think of little else besides his next fix.

And what about captives given a drug – LSD or truth serum - to control their behavior? Do not they have less freedom of choice and culpability than before? Or the comatose? Or when someone puts a gun to our head, forcing us to commit a crime? Should we not take these considerations into account?

If these observations of relative freedom are true, then the narrow, unvarying materialistic view denying any area of freewill and culpability is clearly mistaken. From the perspective of the DFC, everyone is equally and completely controlled by brain chemistry. Consequently, there can be no room for varying degrees of freewill and culpability – the very thing that our justice system and schools depend on!

We can perceive a distinction between purely chemical determination of our behavior and our relatively free responses. Wilder Penfield, the father of modern neurosurgery performed experiments demonstrating that brain activity doesn’t seem to account for all of our mental experience. Lee Edward Travis sums up his findings this way:

• Penfield would stimulate electrically the proper motor cortex of conscious patients and challenge them to keep one hand from moving when the current was applied. The patient would seize this hand with the other hand and struggle to hold it still. Thus one hand under the control of the electrical current and the other hand under the control of the patient’s mind fought against each other. Penfield risked the explanation that the patient had not only a physical brain that was stimulated to action but also a nonphysical reality that interacted with the brain. (The Mysterious Matter of the Mind, 95-96)

There appears to be a distinction between brain chemistry and a nonphysical reality – the home of freewill. J.P. Moreland commented on another interesting aspect of Penfield’s findings:

• No matter how much Penfield probed the cerebral cortex, he said, “There is no place…where electrical stimulation will cause a patient to believe or to decide.” (The Case for the Creator, Lee Strobel, 258)

If our mind is no more than a physical brain, then we should expect that electrical charges could stimulate every kind of response. However, this isn’t the case. It seems that our choices and beliefs cannot be entirely accounted for by the physical brain.

There seems to be a nonphysical basis for thinking. Raymond Moody published Life after Life in 1975 based upon 150 interviews with people who had claimed NDEs. Cardiologist and assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine, Michael Sabom, had been highly skeptical. However,

• Over a five year period he interviewed and compiled data on 116 persons who had had a close brush with death. Of these, 71 reported one form or another of near-death experience…Sabom conducted extended interviews with the ten who had detailed recollections, either of resuscitations or surgery. The results were astonishing. In every case, the accounts jibed with standard medical procedures; moreover, where medical records were available, the records of the procedures and the accounts of the patients perfectly matched. In all of these cases, [unconscious] patients observed details that they could not possibly have observed from their physical vantage point. (Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, 103-104)

Materialism also denies the testimonies of many indigenous cultures which have claimed extra-body experiences.

Journalist and former atheist, Lee Strobel, adds:

• In their journal article, Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, describe their study of sixty-three heart attack victims who were declared clinically dead but were later revived and interviewed. About ten percent reported having well-structured, lucid thought processes, with memory formation and reasoning, during the time that their brains were not functioning. The effects of oxygen starvation or drugs – objections commonly offered by skeptics – were ruled out as factors. (Strobel, 251)

This contradicts the atheistic narrative that thinking and choosing depend exclusively upon physical brain activity. In order to maintain their narrow materialistic worldview, the atheist is forced to discount this kind of study along with the many accounts of extra-body experiences.

In a related study, it was found that consciousness (and consequently, freewill) can exist apart from a functioning brain:

·       Of the 2,060 patients from Austria, the US and the UK interviewed for the study who had survived cardiac arrest, almost 40 per cent said that they recall some form of awareness after being pronounced clinically dead. http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/670781/There-IS-life-after-DEATH-Scientists-reveal-shock-findings-from-groundbreaking-study

·       Of those who said they had experienced some awareness, just two per cent said their experience was consistent with the feeling of an outer body experience – where one feels completely aware and can hear and see what’s going on around them after death. Almost half of the respondents said the experience was not of awareness, but rather of fear.

One man was able to recall the events in the hospital with “eerie accuracy” after he had “died temporarily.”

This finding has often been reported but also often ignored. Why? Perhaps Dr. Parnia’s response is illuminative:

·       “The detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events."

·       "This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions.”

Such findings are ignored, because they do not fit into the prevailing materialistic paradigm that nothing exists outside of the physical world. To suggest otherwise opens the door to considerations about the existence of God – an inconvenient truth.

The Costs of DFC

DFC is humanly demeaning. This is very significant because it will affect how we view ourselves, our fellow humans and also how we treat them. If humans are no more than sophisticated chemical machines, there is a greater likelihood that we will use them like machines and destroy them when they no longer serve our purposes.

DFC undermines everything upon which civilization is based – justice, right and wrong, reward and punishment. A world where we cannot do other than what we have been predetermined to do has no room for any consideration of virtue or vice. If biology alone made the rapist rape, then it is not just to punish him. After all, he could make no other choice. Consequently, no punishment is just and no reward is deserved. It’s just a matter of chemistry not morality.

DFC is a major threat to the existence and well-being of civilization. The deniers of FC, nevertheless, admit the need for punishment, but this is a punishment apart from truth and justice. Instead of “justice makes right,” it is only “might that makes right” – the might of the majority to protect their own interests. They will bring charges against the burglar, not because he deserves punishment but because he has violated the interests of the majority. Therefore, the burglar will be punished, not because he has done wrong or that he deserves punishment but because he is the rebel who has violated social norms in a biochemically predetermined world. And how can we be vigilant about justice, if we believe that justice is just a made-up concept?

What will the denier teach his son or the school system teach their students? That there is no right and wrong and they couldn’t have acted otherwise? They will naturally ask, “Why then am I being punished?” The answer cannot rise above, “You have violated our norms, and society must restrain you.” This can only breed cynicism.

DFC is the death to all meaningful relationships. When the DFC is caught having an affair, he can only say, “I couldn’t have acted otherwise, so don’t blame me!” Instead, resolution of such interpersonal conflicts requires the offender to say, “Please forgive me. I know I really hurt you terribly. I promise to not do this again!” However, biochemical machines cannot truthfully make such promises. They can only say, “If my biochemistry permits, I will not do this again” – hardly an adequate response. Consequently, the denier must live an irresponsible life.

DFC logically undermines itself. How? Because its very philosophy is no more than the product of a biochemistry, which would not allow the DFC to decide otherwise. Truth can play only a very diminished role in the world of materialistic determinism.

Why do intelligent people become DFCs? Why do we confine ourselves in narrow, dysfunctional boxes, which effectively constrict our estimation of self and of life? One DFC friend explained to me the great relief he had experienced once he rejected freewill. He felt that he was no longer responsible for his behavior, and his sense of guilt became greatly diminished. With this diminished estimation his humanity, he no longer had to blame himself for not living up to his moral ideas.

Who can blame him? His wife can when she has caught him cheating. What will he say? “I couldn’t do otherwise?” This will not work long in the real world. And what if he apologizes? But what is he to apologize for if he couldn’t do otherwise? And how long will his wife accept his apologies, knowing that he believes that he isn’t in control?

How then do we deal with our crippling feelings of guilt and shame? It doesn’t seem that we can meaningfully forgive ourselves. Self-forgiveness is no more than psychological masturbation, while forgiveness is necessarily relational. Instead, we need the assurances that Christ Himself has forgiven us and has removed our sins and moral failures. It is only with this assurance that we can move on, without denying the truths of our freewill and culpability.

How does our freewill provide evidence of God’s existence? From a materialistic perspective, freewill is not possible. As one atheist put it:

·       If our mind is purely material, then each atom and molecule is totally predetermined by the laws of science. This eliminates the possibility of freewill.

I think that there is a lot of merit to this. However, freewill strongly suggests that our minds are more than just materials. Instead, there seems to be an extra-material reality – the soul. If the soul exists, then there must be an uncreated Creator of souls.

The next chapters will expand on this theme.