Denying our Freewill and Culpability and its Costs

In 1871, Thomas Huxley, a zealous advocate of Charles Darwin, claimed that “Mind is a function of 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!

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:

• 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 wrong. 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. Strobel writes:

• 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.

DFC is also 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.

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 in the shadows of the lie.

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 trap ourselves in narrow, dysfunctional boxes, which effectively narrow our estimation of self and of life? One DFC friend explained to me the great relief he had experienced once he rejected freewill. 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! But what will he say to his wife who has caught him cheating? “I couldn’t do otherwise?” This will not work long in the real world.

More commonly, in our multi-cultural world, any basis for true, objective culpability has been eliminated, whether by moral relativism or the pre-determining forces of nurture and nature, a close relative of DFC. Consequently, we cannot judge, since no one is culpable. What then is left to positively influence our neighbor and our children? The mantra, “Love conquers all!” The idea is this – if we just love enough, we can overcome all hate, anger, and criminality.

Consequently, the Jews failed to love the Nazis enough, and the beheaded, kidnapped, and raped Christians failed to love ISIS and Boko Haram enough. It’s just another way of rewarding the bully and of blaming the victim.

Instead, the thriving society needs both the carrot and the stick, both positive and negative reinforcement. Our elected officials and institutions must be held to account. Our employees need to be monitored. Kindness is often not enough. While some will learn through love and kindness, others require severity. We need police and prison. Just look at what happens when the police go on strike – Bedlam!

The innocent need protected and the guilty need punished. As soon as we reject this distinction, we condemn society and those we had wanted to love.

How then do we deal with our crippling feelings of guilt and shame? It doesn’t seem that we can meaningfully forgive ourselves. Instead, we need the assurances that Christ Himself has forgiven us and has separated us from our sins and moral failures, as heaven is separated from earth. It is only with this assurance that we can move on, without denying the truths of our freewill and culpability.

The Folly of Denying Freewill

With the rejection of the Christian faith, another faith is becoming increasingly attractive – the denial of freewill and human culpability. One freewill denier (FD) wrote:

• What are some of the benefits of understanding that free will is a myth?... More love, humility, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, gratitude, understanding, cooperation; less blame, hatred, depression, anger, anger, embarrassment, anxiety, guilt resentment, hurt, jealousy, arrogance, aggression, violence, revenge.

For this FD, the belief in freewill is a psychological burden. There are also other reasons to deny freewill. Even as far back as 1871, Thomas Huxley, a zealous advocate of Charles Darwin, advocated for this position for another reason:

• Mind is a function of matter [and nothing beyond that], when that matter has attained a certain degree of organization.

Similarly, in his recent book, “Free Will,” atheist Sam Harris writes, “Free will is an illusion.” What feels like freewill is nothing more than chemical processes.

However, there are many problems with the conclusion of the FDs:

A denial of freewill 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 sense that I even exist!  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’ thinking.

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

The extent of freewill differs among people. However, one FD writes that there exist no freewill distinctions among us, since freewill is entirely absent:

• 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 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.

Conversely, Christians report that, in Christ, they have come to enjoy a greater measure of freedom. They are not as constrained by their psychological needs for approval and success as they had been, because they are convinced that they have God’s approval.

If these observations of relative freedom are true, then the narrow, unvarying materialistic view denying any area of freewill is invalidated. From the perspective of the FD, everyone is equally and completely controlled by brain chemistry. Consequently, there can be no room for varying degrees of freewill – the very thing we find!

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. Strobel writes:

• 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 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.

If our brain chemistry compels all of our choices, then we cannot truly be culpable and responsible moral agents. This idea of non-existence of freewill 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.

The FD might agree that their view of freewill seriously diminishes our estimation of humanity. However, he often retorts, “I’m more interested in truth than in what feels good.”

However, the denial of freewill goes far beyond the question of a lower estimation of humanity. This denial 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 determined to do has no room for virtue of any form.

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.

The denial of freewill poses a threat to civilization, and FDs recognize this. Consequently, they are scrambling to resurrect the concept of moral responsibility, which they have undermined. Professor of Philosophy, Chad Meister, writes about Harris’s muddled scrambling:

• While in Harris’s view we lack free will and moral culpability for our actions, he nonetheless believes that we can still be “blameworthy” for our actions. How so? “Because,” he says, “what we do subsequent to conscious planning tends to most fully reflect the global properties of the our minds” (Christian Research Journal, Volume 35, Number 4, 59)

 

Oddly, Harris claims that we can be “blameworthy” without being morally culpable and that society can punish us even though we couldn’t have done otherwise! This is a blatant contradiction. If our “conscious planning” and what we do subsequently are strictly the products of brain chemistry, then there is no basis for either “blameworthiness” or moral culpability. They die a common death with the denial of freewill.

Some FDs are candid enough to admit that this is a real problem for their worldview. However, they will bring charges against the burglar. In this, their actions contradict their worldview. While they seek justice, they admit that they lack any just basis for this concept in their pre-determined chemical world.

The denial of freewill seems to also constitute a denial of any meaningful thought. All brain chemistry is subject to the laws of nature and conformable to their formulas. However, formulas and laws produce repeated and predictable patterns, not the nuances of thought. Clearly, the books that we write and the discoveries we make don’t reflect repeated, formulaic, hard-wired, unvarying processes. Instead, these creations reflect something greater – reasoning, the weighing of evidence for and against various paradigms. All of this requires something beyond what chemistry can offer. It requires the subtle and gloriously nuanced ability to freely choose among various thoughts and ideas.

Why are people FDs? Why do we trap ourselves in narrow boxes, which effectively narrow our estimation of self and of life? One FD friend explained to me the great relief he had experienced once he rejected freewill. He was no longer responsible for his behavior, and his sense of guilt became greatly diminished. With his diminished estimation of humanity, he no longer had to blame himself for not living up to his moral ideas. Who can blame him! But what will he say to his wife who has caught him cheating? “I couldn’t do otherwise?” This will not work in the real world.

While I can sympathize with the FD, Christ offers a better way – a way to not only diminish guilt but to obliterate it. Besides, Christ obliterates our guilt in a way that doesn’t infringe upon moral responsibility and true accountability. His forgiveness replaces guilt with gratitude, denial with delight, moral flight with moral responsibility, and the denigration of self with human dignity. We are more than simply a sophisticated computer!

FDs have embraced a religion that might provide temporary comfort, but one which does not correspond with reality. Consequently, it will prove costly.

Bradley Monton: The Hated Atheist and ID Sympathizer

Many hate atheist professor of philosophy, Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design, and even want to see him fired. He explains:

• The degree to which I have been attacked is actually pretty ludicrous. I gave a public lecture on intelligent design here at the University of Colorado, and a number of the school’s biology professors demanded that I be fired.

Perhaps such intolerance should become grounds for their own firing. However, in this present politically correct climate, this is not likely.  Instead, PC enables intolerance of a different nature. Monton explains that:

• Some atheists exhibit a fundamentalism that prevents them from even imagining that someone reasonable, rational and intelligent could hold views different from their own.

• I find the arguments of the opponents of ID too emotionally driven and not as intellectually robust as one would hope. I get upset with my fellow atheists who present bad arguments against intelligent design and then expect everyone to believe that they have somehow resolved the debate with these bad arguments.

No wonder he is hated by the PC crowd! This brings to mind the many dogmatic, atheistic assertions that evolution is a proven fact, beyond discussion, or that the multiverse is an adequate explanation for the fine-tuning of the cosmos. Meanwhile, Monton maintains that the theories of:

• Infinite universes are insufficient when it comes to explaining away the apparent design of our own universe.

Monton was recently asked, in an interview conducted by Salvo Magazine, what type of evidence would lead him to fully embrace intelligent design. He responded:

• Now, if it is found that [a non-material] mind plays a role in our brain processes alone, that by itself wouldn’t make me believe in God, though it would certainly make me more open to the idea. But if we were to discover that mind is interviewing in other places in the world besides our brain processes, then that would pretty much be the smoking gun. (Salvo Supplement, Fall 2013, 50)

Monton wants evidence that a non-material mind is interacting with a material, neurally wired brain, and I think that such evidence is available.

The late neuroscientist, Wilder Penfield, was a dualist. He found evidence for the brain-mind distinction. He would electrically stimulate the brain but noted that there were responses that seemed to be extra-physical:

• Penfield would stimulate electrically the proper motor cortex of the conscious patents 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. (Dinesh D’Souza, Life After Death: The Evidence, 108)

Penfield found that his patients could distinguish between responses that had been electrically stimulated from those self-stimulated:

• Invariably the patient would respond, by saying, “I didn’t do that. You did…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.” That’s because those functions originate in the conscious self, not the brain. A lot of subsequent research has validated this. When Roger Sperry and his team studied the differences between the brain’s right and left hemispheres, they discovered the mind has a causal power independent of the brain’s activities. This led Sperry to conclude materialism and false. (J.P. Moreland, interviewed by Lee Strobel, Case for the Creator, 258)

If the brain is entirely a physical entity, we should expect that every type of mental activity could be stimulated, but this isn’t the case. While researchers have been able to stimulate a vast array of neural reactions, they haven’t been able to stimulate thoughts or beliefs.

Also, the very notion of freewill contradicts strict materialism. It affirms the fact that our choices aren’t totally determined by chemical-electrical responses, suggesting that there must be another reality present in order to explain it

The freewill problem is so daunting for the materialist - one who believes that everything is matter and energy. His narrow worldview leaves no room for freewill, something self-initiated, and therefore, many opt to deny its reality. Biologist E.O. Wilson writes:

• The hidden preparation of mental activity gives the illusion of free will.

Illusion? If freewill is an illusion, we are merely dialoguing with sophisticated but morally non-responsible bio-chemical machines. (Jokingly, I tell such people that I don’t talk to machines – a reasonable choice, I think!)

Materialism requires the denial of dualism – the mind-brain distinction. It also requires the denial of near-death-experiences (NDEs), which strongly suggest the existence of a body-independent mind.

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 who have claimed extra-body experiences.

Our sense of having an unchanging personal identity, despite that fact that almost all of our molecules are replaced every several years, and our bodies undergo vast changes over the years, seems to suggest that we also possess something unchanging – a non-material soul. Even if we suddenly loose both of our legs, we still regard ourselves as the same person.

Meanwhile, it seems that a mind-brain distinction would best explain all of the above evidences.