December 1, 2024 • 40 mins
Apologist Vince Vitale did a review of a Free Will debate, see the link no 1 in the show notes. The original debate is at link 2. Matthew reviews Vince's review because there are some Christian justifications for free will that simply do not make any sense.
1)
https://www.premier.plus/unbelievable/podcasts/episodes/christian-philosopher-vince-vitale-stunned-by-free-will-showdown-alex-oconnor-vs-alex-carter
2)
https://www.premierunbelievable.com/unbelievable/free-will-vs-determinism-whos-really-in-controlalex-oconnor-vs-prof-alex-carter-hosted-by-ruth-jackson/18133.article
3) Foiling
https://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/the-beginners-guide-to-foil-surfing
4) EAAN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Episode 124 Christian Free Will is incoherent Apologist Vince
Vitale did a review of a free will debate.
See link number one in the show notes.
The original debate is at link 2.
I decided to review Vince's review because there are some
(00:29):
Christian justifications for free will that simply do not
make any sense. I'll skip the introduction and
jump right in at his first point.
So here's my first point. One of the themes of this show
was the thought that people are only responsible for their
actions in a moral sense if theyhave free will.
(00:52):
Any discussion of free will is going to have to address this
point. The conclusion one comes to will
generally hinge on how morality is viewed.
Those who view morality as an objective set of laws dictated
by God will tend to agree with this sentiment.
But those who recognise that morality is human construct and
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that our moral intuitions are a product of genetics and social
engineering will see that this simplistic approach doesn't
really address all of the issuesaround what we perceive as free
will and the social responsibility we should take
for our behaviour. Now, even without free will,
they might be responsible in some causal sense, like the way
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a hurricane might be responsiblefor knocking down a tree.
But you might think that to be morally responsible for an
action, in other words, deserving of either praise or
rebuke for that action, you musthave performed that action
freely. And if you take that view, you
were wrong. Receiving praise or rebuke for
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an action forms part of the social engineering that helps us
to make decisions. This is why children have
behavioural star charts. They are not yet mature enough
to comprehend the knock on consequences of their behaviour.
So we motivate them to do what we want them to do through
rewards. I do the same with my dogs and
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the result is dogs that behave by my standard of better.
Giving people praise for an action increases the chances of
them doing that action again, while rebuke lowers it.
Free will is not required. If I were to sort of trip
overcoming off this stage. And I and I.
(02:37):
Pushed Alex off the stage, but Isort of but fell into him, fell
off the stage, then that would be pretty bad, right?
But if I just got up and pushed him off the stage, that feels
different. And the thing that feels
different is that when I pushed him off the stage, I freely did
it of my own accord. And when I fell and tripped, I
didn't really do that. That wasn't my fault.
On a practical level, this is where it makes sense to say,
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well, as long as the action originates with me, we'll call
it free because this is really practical.
It means that I can hold somebody culpable for pushing
someone where I don't hold somebody culpable for tripping
up. That's fine.
So on a practical level, when itcomes to our laws, when it comes
to the way that we interact witheach other, we can use this free
will. And I think people do, they use
the term free will to describe something like that, something
like your actions coming from within you.
(03:18):
What Alex is essentially doing here is differentiating between
an accidental harm and an intentional harm.
A harm that we do intentionally or on purpose is different to
one that is accidental that we did not intend.
Let's hear what Vince has to sayabout this.
And if you accept that assumption, one line of argument
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you might make if you don't believe in free will is to argue
that because free will is an incoherent notion, or because
people don't have free will for whatever reason, you think
therefore people are not morallyresponsible for their actions.
No, for reasons I explained in aprevious comment.
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Now, you might still think thereshould be consequences for bad
actions. For example, you might think
there could still be justifications for prisons.
Yes. But they would be solely for the
purposes of deterrence and rehabilitation, not for
retribution. Rehabilitation, most certainly.
Retribution. No.
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Because again, the assumption isthat if we are not free, we are
also not morally responsible forour actions, and therefore we
should not be held morally responsible for our action.
No, no, and yet more no. Not having free will is not
equivalent to not having knowledge of consequences.
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Not having free will does not mean we don't have the ability
to morally diagnose an action. Vinces assertion of this
assumption is bogus and is typical Christian misframing of
viewpoints it doesn't like. It's clear so far.
Good. So the first point I want to
make is that for a Christian, the necessity of free will for
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moral responsibility may actually surface a different
line of argument. Because Christians take the
claims of the Bible seriously, they take the claims of the
Bible to be true, and the Bible seems very clear that people do
have moral responsibility for their action.
The Bible says it, so it must betrue.
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We seem to have these like moralintuitions that tell us not to
do that. So if you think about why the
legal system exists, why it was invented in the 1st place, and a
bunch of people going around murdering each other, and then
collectively as a society, we realized that society will be
much more stable if we had a legal system that tried to stop
people from doing that. That's why it got invented
before that happened. I think that biologically our
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genes sort of did the same thing, but they did it with
these things that we call moral intuitions.
So on an evolutionary trajectory, those societies,
those organisms which have some kind of inexplicable desire to
not murder each other, to not like when people murder each
other, that kind of thing. To have a very specific emotion
that that like makes you not, not like that kind of thing
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happening and therefore less likely to do it and more likely
to be angry when other people doit, will make that society more
stable. Organisms are more likely to
survive if they have some kind of rules against that kind of
stuff. And that's what gives you this
desire. Exactly.
A society that has no problem with murdering each other won't
survive to be productive, while a society that sees willful
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murder as harmful and therefore wrong will find itself
surviving. The result is that the trait to
find murder distasteful gets passed on in genes, while the
trait to wilfully murder dies out.
It is evolution in action. It is survival of the better.
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No religious text required. So if Christians believe
themselves to have biblical reason to affirm moral
responsibility, and if moral responsibility does indeed
require free will. It.
Doesn't then Christians may havea strong biblically based reason
for believing in free will. Sure, Christians do have a
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biblical reason for believing infree will.
It does not make them right though.
Here's one more way to think about it.
Two people might both think thatmoral responsibility requires
free will. Remember, Vince has only
asserted that moral responsibility requires free
will, yet he keeps on banging this drum as though it is true,
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and he's not going to give any thought at all to being wrong in
this way. He's only giving half a
viewpoint. In being true to Christianity,
he assumes he is right and completely ignores points that
oppose his view. One of those people might think
they have an argument against free will and therefore conclude
that there is no moral responsibility.
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Great straw man, Vince. Where's the person who denies
free will but affirms moral responsibility?
But the other person, if they are a Christian, might reason
that because the Bible affirms moral responsibility, there must
be such a thing as free will. That is.
Also a rational line of argument.
Sure, it can be rational, but only if you start with the
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foundation that the Bible is reliable, which isn't really
rational. And so, as a Christian, I need
to ask myself, am I more confident that there is a
successful philosophical argument against free will or in
the biblical affirmation of moral responsibility?
And confidence does not equate to truthfulness.
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But yeah, sure, go be confident if you really, really need to.
For many Christians, they're going to be much more confident
in what the Bible affirms than in any nuanced philosophical
argument against free will. And that, in summary, is
everything that is wrong with Christianity.
Confidence in what you believe, but no curiosity whatsoever in
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whether or not what you believe is actually true.
I mean, even many non theists find themselves with more
confidence in the reality of moral responsibility than in any
of the arguments against free will.
And there goes that drum again, equating free will with moral
responsibility. The two are not equivalent.
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Treat them as separate things ifyou want to have this
conversation in a way that. Exudes integrity point #2 that I
wanted to make. We are not that smart.
So often in philosophical discussions like this, there's
this underlying assumption that if we can't understand
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something, that must mean that it's not true or it doesn't
exist. Speak for yourself, Vince.
The people I pay attention to say that if we can't understand
something, then we should try asbest as we can to find ways to
understand it better. Because when we can't understand
something, anything we say aboutthat something is highly
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questionable and almost certainly false.
The only way we can have any confidence in what we say about
anything is if we make an effortto understand that something.
Well, why did you go to the gym?Why did you walk your dog this
morning? Because if I didn't, he wouldn't
have got walked. So what?
Yeah, I suppose I want to care for him.
You want to care for the dog, right?
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Like because you have this desire that your dog is in good
health, now you have a desire tonot walk your dog at 6:00 in the
morning, but you also have the desire that your dog be in good
health. Which of those desires was
stronger? The desire to look after him.
Why? Because I like my dog.
But like why? It's a good.
Question. It just was right.
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It was just stronger. And in fact, had the desire to
stay at home been stronger, thenthat's simply what you would
have done. So The thing is.
That was pretty strong, just to be clear.
Yeah, Yeah, No, I hope so. I hope so.
So, you know, if somebody wants to be healthy but they're
feeling a bit tired, do they go to the gym?
Well, what's a stronger desire? What do they want more?
To be healthy or to stay in bed that morning?
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Whichever one they happen to want more is what they'll do.
Now, often it's more complicatedbecause there are lots of
factors going to the gym. Maybe it's raining, you want to
stay dry, you want to stay in bed, you want to hang out with
your friend. Instead, there's all these
different competing desires. And so that means that even when
you do something that you don't want to do, it will be driven by
some kind of other desire, as a desire for something that makes
you do something you don't want to do so that you can get
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something you do want. With respect to the topic at
hand, free will, the assumption would be that if we can't come
up with a detailed description of how free will functions, that
must mean that free will doesn'texist.
Oh dude fuck off. Did you actually pay attention
to the clip you just played? Alex literally gave an
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explanation of the process by which we make decisions and why
they are not free. He did not in any way affirm the
idea that you not giving a coherent explanation means free
will does not exist. Instead he gave a coherent
explanation of why it doesn't. But instead of being
intellectually honest, you did the typical Christian apologist
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tactic of misrepresenting what has been said in order to make
your point. It puts an awful lot of
confidence in my intellectual abilities.
You you could even go so far as to say it sets me up as
omniscient or as the standard ofall truth, because all truth
claims wind up being judged according to my understanding.
In that case, why should I take seriously anything you have to
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say about it? If, by your own admission, you
have nothing coherent to say about it, then why should I
trust that anything that you sayis of any intellectual or
meaningful value? And what I found to be the most
refreshing moment of the debate,Alex O'Connor didn't make this
assumption at all. Now he grants that Alex didn't
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make that assumption. Well, Vince, who does?
I don't know who does. You've thrown the accusation out
in a very vague and misleading manner to a mostly Christian
audience, but provided no context or examples.
This is why Christian apologistsare very dangerous individuals.
They'll make statements and accusations like the one from
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Vince that I got colourful about, and Christians will aim
those at atheists as though that's what they actually
believe. Apologists like Vince harm
intellectual dialogue between Christians and atheists because
of the false impressions they give.
We could be totally wrong about this.
Yes, we could, and it is the only intellectually honest thing
to say. But it's Alex that said that,
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not the Christian. Ask a Christian to say openly.
Yes, I could be totally wrong about God, but I'm going to do
my best to actually try to find out if I am or not.
They don't do that because faith.
And, and on paper, it makes absolutely no sense that
consciousness exists. Makes none.
You know, just a bunch of atoms bumping into each other and
suddenly you've got first personconscious experience.
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No way, no way. It, it doesn't make sense, it
can't exist. It literally is completely
illogical. And yet there it is.
You're experiencing it and you know it exists because you
experience it. I'm just saying free will could
be something a bit like that, but it's something that doesn't
make any sense whatsoever on paper.
But maybe it does still exist. I'm not saying that is the case,
I'm just saying it's worth considering.
Even though he used his brain asbest he could to argue strongly
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against the existence of free will, there was this wonderfully
refreshing moment in the debate where he questioned his own
conclusion. And I absolutely love this for a
number of reasons. First, simply because he
admitted publicly and while being recorded that he could be
wrong. It's called intellectual
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humility. You should try it sometime, it's
wonderful. What?
Mind blown. When is the last time you heard
anyone do that? We desperately need more of that
intellectual humility in our public life.
Thank you, Alex. Second, I loved this moment.
Because by saying that we could be wrong, we leave room for
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reality to be bigger and more grand and more beautiful and
more awesome than merely what wecan figure out with our little
brains. Personally, I love surfing, my
favorite hobby. And in surfing there is
something called foiling, where the board actually lifts out of
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the water and looks like it is magically suspended in the air
as you ride. For a while it made no sense to
me, but then I experienced it first hand.
I still didn't understand how itworked, but I knew it was real
because I was seeing it with my own two eyes.
Many people would say something similar about free will and
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moral responsibility. They might be incredibly hard to
understand, they might make yourhead dizzy and even seem like
magic, but I've experienced themfirst hand.
And here we have another apologist tactic, the irrelevant
analogy. Take a cute story about
something real and bend it into an illustration about something
we are much less certain about. Foiling is real.
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We can explain it. See link 3.
Vince wants to fool us into believing that his experience of
foiling is equivalent to his experience of free will.
Go on, let's see an equivalent verification of why free will
works. You can't produce that, which is
why we can't take you seriously when you say you have
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experienced it. You can't tell the difference
between genuine free will and the illusion of free will, and
so you can't know that you've actually experienced free will.
And no, that's not me doing whatVince said earlier about the
assumption it doesn't exist if it can't be explained.
I'm expressing doubt about Vance's experience claim.
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I have different reasons for doubting free will exists.
And so perhaps in philosophy too, we need to allow room for
knowledge that is more experiential in nature, even if
we have trouble expressing that knowledge on a page in numbered
propositions. Which experiences do you want to
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lump in with that? OK, start with free will and
then what? Alien abductions?
Anal probing on an alien mother ship, Flying to the moon on the
winged horse? Walking on water?
How far do you really want to gowith this fence?
And finally, a third reason why I loved Alex's remarks on this
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point is because he made an enormously, to my mind, an
enormously helpful analogy between free will and
consciousness. And his argument went something
like this. He said we could be totally
wrong about free will. He said perhaps free will is
like consciousness, something which is real despite being very
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mysterious and extremely hard tomake sense of on paper.
Maybe it is, or maybe it isn't. Or maybe consciousness is also
an illusion and simply a featureof a highly functioning brain
that is processing multiple inputs simultaneously.
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Consciousness in this philosophical sense refers to
the fact that humans are not just aware of things, they are
also aware that they are aware. I not only interact with the
world, but I experience my interaction with the world.
I don't just have desires, but Iknow that I have them.
And knowing that has great evolutionary advantages because
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it creates intelligence, it creates the ability to think and
to analyse and to predict, whichgives evolutionary advantage of
humans over other species. Wonderful, but not necessarily
actually real. Could still be an illusion.
How do you tell the difference, Vince?
And I can self reflect on them. I'm not just a robot.
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I have an inner life. There's something that it is
like to be me. And the like.
To be you is entirely dependent on the physicality of your
brain. Change that through injury,
through drugs and the like. To be you changes too.
And this reality raises a whole host of mysterious questions.
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What is this me that experiencesthe world?
What is it about conglomerate ofmany 1,000,000 billions even of
brain cells and the memories that they've processed and the
experiences that they have processed that gives you the
absolute fucking arrogance to think that you're right?
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And where is this me located? A puree vas I don't know.
Alex's point was this. On paper, it makes absolutely no
sense that consciousness exists.And that is exactly why we
should try to come up with ways to determine whether it does or
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not. Us just feeling that it does, or
thinking that what we experienceis a genuine experience of
actual real consciousness, does not cut it.
We need to be be able to confirmor validate in order for our
conclusion to be true. It's just a bunch of atoms
bumping into one another in yourhead.
It's completely illogical to think somehow that would
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magically produce an inner thought life.
I mean, imagine if the atoms in a door in your house one day
just randomly arranged themselves in such a way that
the door started to think about itself.
What? Christians have such weird
imaginations? Talking of imagination, humans
are capable of imagining all sorts of stuff.
So if we don't test what we imagine, we can't tell the
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difference between what we want to believe and what is actually
true. Come on Vince, get there,
please. Bloody hell.
Intuitively, consciousness makesno sense.
I agree. And yet there it is.
Are you sure? Are you really sure you're not
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imagining it? You're experiencing it right
now. What I'm experiencing is my
eardrums being bombarded with a load of bullshit.
Free will is a is a is a complicated subject in many
ways, but it's also incredibly simple.
It's a bit like consciousness inthe fact that it's
simultaneously the most mysterious, mystifying thing in
the world, the greatest mystery that scientists and philosophers
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have been battling about for centuries and more, but at the
same time the most obvious and straightforward thing in the
world, because you interact withthe world through it.
Then Alex made his analogy. He said free will could be like
that. It could be like a
consciousness. Even if we have trouble making
sense of it on paper, it could still exist.
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Consciousness seems so much likeit should not exist when you try
to explain it in terms of atoms and physical brains, when you
try to give a purely scientific explanation of it.
And yet there it is. It's impossible to deny because
we are using it right now to even consider the possibility of
its falsity. Notice the tentativeness with
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Rich. Alex used the word could, Alex
said It could be like this, it could be like that.
And yet Vince went from that to the arrogance of it actually
exists. And you, yes you dear listener,
are experiencing it right now. This is the poisonous bullshit
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of Christianity. Misrepresentation and
overconfidence. I don't want us to miss this.
This is a very significant pointthat Alex O'Connor is making
because it has implications far beyond the specific question of
free will. So often when we approach deep
questions of life, we assume that if we can't conceive of how
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something works, then it probably doesn't exist.
We need to break ourselves of that intellectual habit.
What would you rather to be ableto confidently say something is
real even though no one can offer any confirmation of that
existence? Do you really think that is more
intellectually valid? It is this kind of thinking that
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leads people into believing miracles of statues drinking
milk, when in actual fact something more mundane and less
miraculous is happening. If we can't explain or
understand free will or consciousness, but we think
we're experiencing it, then the only honest option is to seek
ways of confirming our experience.
The harder something is to explain, then the greater risk
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there is of us being mistaken inour beliefs.
Validation of our beliefs is critical to intellectual
validity. Notice how Vince praises Alex
for saying he could be wrong, but Vince himself never once
affirms that he could be wrong. Vince is displaying typical
Christian arrogance in thinking himself the holder of truth and
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only recognizing the validity ofintellectual humility when
others express it. I mean, most people can't
conceive of how my smartphone works, and yet there it is.
Oh no, I am so stupid. I don't know the difference
between a smartphone and consciousness.
Oh dear fucking hell, what am I doing here?
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And to go one step further, if you're a Christian, I think you
have even more reason to deny the assumption that we should
only believe in what we can thoroughly understand, and to
embrace beliefs that are way beyond what we can understand.
Why would anyone want to believeunverifiable beliefs about
things that we can't understand?Vince's encouraging beliefs that
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are unverifiable, unconfirmable,and almost certainly wrong.
The only possible way to confirmthat your beliefs are true is by
validating them through a process that we can understand.
If you are a Christian and you really do agree with Vince, then
ask yourself this. How do you differentiate between
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beliefs that are wrong and beliefs that are correct?
If you have an answer, let us know at reasonpress@gmail.com.
As a Christian, I am deeply committed to this, first and
foremost because I believe in a God who is infinite and
limitless. In fact, if I could fully
conceive of how God works, that would actually be conclusive
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evidence that whatever I'm conceiving of, it's not God.
Wait, you want to believe in something that you can't
understand? Wow dude, get help.
And I believe God is omnipotent,so I believe he can make all
sorts of things true of reality that are well beyond my
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intellectual grasp, and perhaps consciousness and free will are
two of those things. God can bring into existence a
much wider range of things than a finite universe can.
Sure, if the Christian God exists, yeah, he can do all of
those things. But why would anyone want to
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believe that without any kind ofconfirming or confirmable
evidence or proof if you want touse that word?
And God might also have a particular interest in free will
because of the role that it seems to play in meaningful
relationships. So if you believe in God, I
would say that even if you find free will baffling, you might
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still have very good reason for being open to the reality of it.
Because even if we're not that smart, I believe that God.
If the question God exists, I can accept that he can do all
those things. And yet there is positive
evidence that free will does notexist and that consciousness is
a function of and inseparable from the brain.
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This in turns evidence against Vince's God and is why belief in
things we don't or can't understand is absolutely not the
way to a truthful or accurate conclusion.
On multiple occasions in this episode Vince criticized the
assumption of non existence of things that we can't understand
and then asserted that it was valid to believe without giving
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any reasonable justification. This is bullshit thinking and
just one example of why Christian belief is a poison to
intelligence and critical thinking.
While it is true that not being able to understand free will or
consciousness is not a good reason to declare that they
don't exist, it is a good reasonto hold any belief about them
loosely pending further information.
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But Vince never once suggested we should try to improve our
understanding. In his desire to create a
bogeyman out of the assumption of non existence when we can't
understand, he clean forgot thatthe assumption of belief in
things we can't understand is even more bogus.
My Third Point is about the relationship between whether or
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not free will exists and whetheror not God exists.
This theme did not take center stage in the debate between Alex
Carter and Alex O'Connor, but asa Christian, it's one of the
very first places that my mind goes.
What is the impact of whether ornot we believe in free will on
whether or not we should believein God?
All this talk of belief and not a single word about
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investigation or evidence. Christians are so disappointing.
If something is random, and by definition you're not in control
of it, but if some event is not random, what that means is that
something has determined it to be the case.
Something has made it so that this happened rather than that
happened. There is a semantic difference
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between being compelled to act and being freely acting.
You can look for scientific causes of my actions, and that's
absolutely fair enough that a scientific explanation of an
event is one type of explanation.
You can choose to do particular things, but when you choose to
do something particular, it willbe because you want to or
because you're forced to. If you're forced to, you're not
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in control. If you do it because you want
to, then given that you can't control your wants, you're not
in control of that either. Now, often it seems to be just
assumed that God's existence relies on the existence of free
will, that there's some sort of obvious logical implications
such that if free will does not exist, neither does God.
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It certainly throws a spanner inthe works of the standard
narrative that Christians use regarding the Garden of Eden and
the arrival of sin into the world.
I want to question this. I at least want to suggest that
the inference is not as obvious as we tend to assume.
Here's why. Alex O'Connor's position, like
many who argue against free will, is not just that we lack
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evidence for free will or that it is improbable, but rather
that it is a logical impossibility that there is no
logically coherent way to definethe term, to parse out what is
meant by an act being free. As he puts it in my position,
it's not just that free will doesn't exist, it's that it
cannot exist. But this claim of logical
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impossibility may surprisingly work in God's favor in at least
one sense. A famous argument against the
omnipotence or all powerfulness of God proceeds by asking the
following question. Can God make a stone that is too
heavy for him to lift? We're about to have another one
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of those who relevant analogies now, aren't we?
Stand by. Do you see the problem?
The question is supposed to backthe believer in God into a
corner. Either God can make such a
stone, or he can't. If God can't make such a stone,
there's something he can't do. He can't make the stone, and
therefore he is not all powerful.
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But if he can make such a stone,there's still something he can't
do. Then he can't lift the stone.
Either way, there's something God can't do, and therefore God
is lacking in power. It is generally accepted that
this is a bad argument, and the reason it is a bad argument is
because there's a hidden logicalinconsistency in the initial
(31:38):
question. God is by definition all
powerful, and so the question isreally asking can God make a
stone too heavy for a being witha limitless power to lift?
Which is really just a way of asking whether God can be both
limited and limitless at the same time.
Which then reveals that hidden amidst the cuteness of the
(32:02):
initial phrasing of the questionis the fact that what is really
being asked is whether God can bring about a logical
contradiction. I'm sure there are many
Christians who have thoughts on this, and there are probably
many Christians who disagree on this.
Personally, I don't give a shit.What I want to know is, is
belief in Vince's God of Christianity valid or worthwhile
(32:26):
to show me the evidence or fuck off out of here?
But this is supposed to be aboutfree will and maybe as an aside,
consciousness as well. Get on with it, Vince.
The problem with appealing to the old, you know, rejecting it
is just semantics, is that you're rejecting the very words
that we're using to utter the sentences that we're both using
right now. So there's a lovely line by 1
(32:47):
philosopher who says, yes, that's what free will means, but
it's not what free will is. And I said, but the problem is
you've just used the term free will twice.
You use the same term each time,and that's your problem.
You need to be able to explain that.
So I totally agree that we can use science to explain events,
but I also think there are some things which science can't
explain just because it's the wrong tool for that mode of
(33:09):
explanation. And how can you know that if you
don't allow science to have a goat trying?
So how does this all relate to free will?
Well, if Alex is right that freewill is actually a logical
impossibility, an incoherent notion, words that we can speak
but not actually something that can be coherently defined, then
(33:29):
free will is like a square circle.
Or God's making a stone that he cannot lift.
And then perhaps the believer inGod can give a parallel
response. Maybe she can say, look, if free
will is simply impossible, then it doesn't count against God
that he didn't make us we've with free will that that doesn't
count against his goodness, any more than him not being able to
(33:50):
make a square circle counts against his power.
And there's that irrelevant analogy again, because Alex
referred to free will being an illogical impossibility.
Vince is trying to make it equivalent to the incoherent
proposition of a square circle or a rock that God can't lift.
But the issue isn't in the presentation of free will.
The impossible rock is presentedwith intentional contradiction
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built in. This does not apply to free
will. We can imagine free will because
it does feel like we have it. It's logically impossible
because when you analyse the decisions we make, they are
always determined by the information we have and our
preferences at the time. This is why no choice is free.
Unlike the rock, free will is not designed to be a
(34:35):
contradiction. Its existence is not possible,
and what we feel is free will isactually our brain processing
multiple desires and preferencesand calculating which one is
strongest. It's not that God could have
made us with free will and chosenot to, it's just that when we
use the term free will, we thinkwe are signifying something when
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we are not, and therefore us nothaving free will does not count
against God's existence any morethan him not being able to make
a square circle or an unliftablestone.
And yet free will is the single most common reason given by
apologists when describing the fall of mankind and our need for
salvation. The Christian message can only
work if we really did rebel against God by free will, and
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then by free will choose to accept Jesus as our Saviour.
No free will means that the Christian God is no more than a
puppet master, a cruel and despicable being mistreating
it's creation for it's own amusement.
We readily recognise this injustice when Sid does it in
Toy Story, yet Vince fails to see it in the God that withholds
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free will. Because like every apologist
before him, no matter what the problem, free will or not free
will, he will bend an argument in order to make God his
conclusion. Such dishonesty to.
Summarize this point. It is often assumed that if free
will doesn't exist, neither doesGod, but that is significantly
(36:03):
less clear than you might think.Again, not really what people
say. If there is no free will, that
is a good case against the Christian God being a loving
God, and it is a good reason to reject worshipping a city
dictator. Acceptance of the existence of
God hinges on evidence, not the idea of free will.
(36:24):
OK, my 4th and last reflection on the excellent free will
debate between Alex O'Connor andAlex Carter, and I'll just raise
this point briefly as a questionfor further consideration.
If somebody wrongs you or does something bad to you, if you can
remind yourself that they might not have had control over the
determining factors that made them do that, it might make you
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into a more charitable and kind person.
Someone barges past you on the street or someone is cruel to
you, then remembering that they're not fully in control, at
least at least fully in control of the action that they
committed, will make you into a kind of person, a more forgiving
person that will help you to understand people better.
And I think that's a worthwhile thing to embody.
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If God does not exist and all oflife is determined by
materialistic or naturalistic causes, if that's the case, then
why should we trust any of the reasoning in this debate, or in
any debate for that matter? If our brains have developed
solely through the natural causes of a universe that at
(37:27):
bottom is random and unguided, then why should we trust that
what our brains recommend to us is actually reliable or true?
Holy fucktards he actually went there.
What Vince has just summarized is known as the evolutionary
argument against naturalism. See link 4.
The simple answer is we don't and we can't, which is why the
(37:51):
scientific method puts so much store into testing and
replicating. But go beyond that and look at
our legal system with its efforts to find truth through
evidence presentation and how eyewitness testimony is
notoriously unreliable. Our whole society works on the
premise that the human mind is fallible and prone to serious
error. It's only in the realm of
(38:13):
religion where thinking of bullshit and presenting it as
truth is admired. There is so much that we don't
know. If you draw 1 circle on a piece
of paper that represents the totality of all there is to be
known, and then draw another circle inside of it that
represents all that we know, the1st circle would absolutely
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dwarf the proportionally minuscule circle of our
knowledge. Exactly, which is why when
someone tells me God exists and he's experienced it, I am
skeptical because I know the mind can be deceived.
And on top of that, there are really complex debates about
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whether exclusively naturalisticcauses devoid of any
supernatural purpose would develop our brains to be aimed
at beliefs that are true, or rather at beliefs that are
merely conducive to our survival.
And those are two importantly different categories they.
Are, but they're not exclusive. The two can overlap quite
(39:21):
significantly, and it also reinforces the reason why
testing validation evidence, preferably objective, is very
important. Don't think up bullshit then
convince yourself that it's true.
And if our brains are aimed at survival rather than truth, then
is trusting our brains for truthactually a bit like stepping on
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a scale and expecting it to tellyou the time?
Weird analogy, but I guess it works.
What it does tell you is don't take people's word for it, test
them, seek validation. Quite a good way to live
actually. That debate will continue, along
with many others. And on that we do agree.
(40:17):
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Do you have a topic that you would like us to cover?
Please send all feedback to reasonpress@gmail.com.
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To hear more of her music, see the links in our show notes.
Episode 124 Christian Free Will is incoherent Apologist Vince
Vitale did a review of a free will debate.
See link number one in the show notes.
The original debate is at link 2.
I decided to review Vince's review because there are some
(00:29):
Christian justifications for free will that simply do not
make any sense. I'll skip the introduction and
jump right in at his first point.
So here's my first point. One of the themes of this show
was the thought that people are only responsible for their
actions in a moral sense if theyhave free will.
(00:52):
Any discussion of free will is going to have to address this
point. The conclusion one comes to will
generally hinge on how morality is viewed.
Those who view morality as an objective set of laws dictated
by God will tend to agree with this sentiment.
But those who recognise that morality is human construct and
(01:12):
that our moral intuitions are a product of genetics and social
engineering will see that this simplistic approach doesn't
really address all of the issuesaround what we perceive as free
will and the social responsibility we should take
for our behaviour. Now, even without free will,
they might be responsible in some causal sense, like the way
(01:32):
a hurricane might be responsiblefor knocking down a tree.
But you might think that to be morally responsible for an
action, in other words, deserving of either praise or
rebuke for that action, you musthave performed that action
freely. And if you take that view, you
were wrong. Receiving praise or rebuke for
(01:55):
an action forms part of the social engineering that helps us
to make decisions. This is why children have
behavioural star charts. They are not yet mature enough
to comprehend the knock on consequences of their behaviour.
So we motivate them to do what we want them to do through
rewards. I do the same with my dogs and
(02:16):
the result is dogs that behave by my standard of better.
Giving people praise for an action increases the chances of
them doing that action again, while rebuke lowers it.
Free will is not required. If I were to sort of trip
overcoming off this stage. And I and I.
(02:37):
Pushed Alex off the stage, but Isort of but fell into him, fell
off the stage, then that would be pretty bad, right?
But if I just got up and pushed him off the stage, that feels
different. And the thing that feels
different is that when I pushed him off the stage, I freely did
it of my own accord. And when I fell and tripped, I
didn't really do that. That wasn't my fault.
On a practical level, this is where it makes sense to say,
(02:57):
well, as long as the action originates with me, we'll call
it free because this is really practical.
It means that I can hold somebody culpable for pushing
someone where I don't hold somebody culpable for tripping
up. That's fine.
So on a practical level, when itcomes to our laws, when it comes
to the way that we interact witheach other, we can use this free
will. And I think people do, they use
the term free will to describe something like that, something
like your actions coming from within you.
(03:18):
What Alex is essentially doing here is differentiating between
an accidental harm and an intentional harm.
A harm that we do intentionally or on purpose is different to
one that is accidental that we did not intend.
Let's hear what Vince has to sayabout this.
And if you accept that assumption, one line of argument
(03:40):
you might make if you don't believe in free will is to argue
that because free will is an incoherent notion, or because
people don't have free will for whatever reason, you think
therefore people are not morallyresponsible for their actions.
No, for reasons I explained in aprevious comment.
(04:02):
Now, you might still think thereshould be consequences for bad
actions. For example, you might think
there could still be justifications for prisons.
Yes. But they would be solely for the
purposes of deterrence and rehabilitation, not for
retribution. Rehabilitation, most certainly.
Retribution. No.
(04:23):
Because again, the assumption isthat if we are not free, we are
also not morally responsible forour actions, and therefore we
should not be held morally responsible for our action.
No, no, and yet more no. Not having free will is not
equivalent to not having knowledge of consequences.
(04:46):
Not having free will does not mean we don't have the ability
to morally diagnose an action. Vinces assertion of this
assumption is bogus and is typical Christian misframing of
viewpoints it doesn't like. It's clear so far.
Good. So the first point I want to
make is that for a Christian, the necessity of free will for
(05:10):
moral responsibility may actually surface a different
line of argument. Because Christians take the
claims of the Bible seriously, they take the claims of the
Bible to be true, and the Bible seems very clear that people do
have moral responsibility for their action.
The Bible says it, so it must betrue.
(05:32):
We seem to have these like moralintuitions that tell us not to
do that. So if you think about why the
legal system exists, why it was invented in the 1st place, and a
bunch of people going around murdering each other, and then
collectively as a society, we realized that society will be
much more stable if we had a legal system that tried to stop
people from doing that. That's why it got invented
before that happened. I think that biologically our
(05:55):
genes sort of did the same thing, but they did it with
these things that we call moral intuitions.
So on an evolutionary trajectory, those societies,
those organisms which have some kind of inexplicable desire to
not murder each other, to not like when people murder each
other, that kind of thing. To have a very specific emotion
that that like makes you not, not like that kind of thing
(06:16):
happening and therefore less likely to do it and more likely
to be angry when other people doit, will make that society more
stable. Organisms are more likely to
survive if they have some kind of rules against that kind of
stuff. And that's what gives you this
desire. Exactly.
A society that has no problem with murdering each other won't
survive to be productive, while a society that sees willful
(06:39):
murder as harmful and therefore wrong will find itself
surviving. The result is that the trait to
find murder distasteful gets passed on in genes, while the
trait to wilfully murder dies out.
It is evolution in action. It is survival of the better.
(06:59):
No religious text required. So if Christians believe
themselves to have biblical reason to affirm moral
responsibility, and if moral responsibility does indeed
require free will. It.
Doesn't then Christians may havea strong biblically based reason
for believing in free will. Sure, Christians do have a
(07:22):
biblical reason for believing infree will.
It does not make them right though.
Here's one more way to think about it.
Two people might both think thatmoral responsibility requires
free will. Remember, Vince has only
asserted that moral responsibility requires free
will, yet he keeps on banging this drum as though it is true,
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and he's not going to give any thought at all to being wrong in
this way. He's only giving half a
viewpoint. In being true to Christianity,
he assumes he is right and completely ignores points that
oppose his view. One of those people might think
they have an argument against free will and therefore conclude
that there is no moral responsibility.
(08:05):
Great straw man, Vince. Where's the person who denies
free will but affirms moral responsibility?
But the other person, if they are a Christian, might reason
that because the Bible affirms moral responsibility, there must
be such a thing as free will. That is.
Also a rational line of argument.
Sure, it can be rational, but only if you start with the
(08:28):
foundation that the Bible is reliable, which isn't really
rational. And so, as a Christian, I need
to ask myself, am I more confident that there is a
successful philosophical argument against free will or in
the biblical affirmation of moral responsibility?
And confidence does not equate to truthfulness.
(08:52):
But yeah, sure, go be confident if you really, really need to.
For many Christians, they're going to be much more confident
in what the Bible affirms than in any nuanced philosophical
argument against free will. And that, in summary, is
everything that is wrong with Christianity.
Confidence in what you believe, but no curiosity whatsoever in
(09:17):
whether or not what you believe is actually true.
I mean, even many non theists find themselves with more
confidence in the reality of moral responsibility than in any
of the arguments against free will.
And there goes that drum again, equating free will with moral
responsibility. The two are not equivalent.
(09:38):
Treat them as separate things ifyou want to have this
conversation in a way that. Exudes integrity point #2 that I
wanted to make. We are not that smart.
So often in philosophical discussions like this, there's
this underlying assumption that if we can't understand
(09:59):
something, that must mean that it's not true or it doesn't
exist. Speak for yourself, Vince.
The people I pay attention to say that if we can't understand
something, then we should try asbest as we can to find ways to
understand it better. Because when we can't understand
something, anything we say aboutthat something is highly
(10:21):
questionable and almost certainly false.
The only way we can have any confidence in what we say about
anything is if we make an effortto understand that something.
Well, why did you go to the gym?Why did you walk your dog this
morning? Because if I didn't, he wouldn't
have got walked. So what?
Yeah, I suppose I want to care for him.
You want to care for the dog, right?
(10:42):
Like because you have this desire that your dog is in good
health, now you have a desire tonot walk your dog at 6:00 in the
morning, but you also have the desire that your dog be in good
health. Which of those desires was
stronger? The desire to look after him.
Why? Because I like my dog.
But like why? It's a good.
Question. It just was right.
(11:03):
It was just stronger. And in fact, had the desire to
stay at home been stronger, thenthat's simply what you would
have done. So The thing is.
That was pretty strong, just to be clear.
Yeah, Yeah, No, I hope so. I hope so.
So, you know, if somebody wants to be healthy but they're
feeling a bit tired, do they go to the gym?
Well, what's a stronger desire? What do they want more?
To be healthy or to stay in bed that morning?
(11:23):
Whichever one they happen to want more is what they'll do.
Now, often it's more complicatedbecause there are lots of
factors going to the gym. Maybe it's raining, you want to
stay dry, you want to stay in bed, you want to hang out with
your friend. Instead, there's all these
different competing desires. And so that means that even when
you do something that you don't want to do, it will be driven by
some kind of other desire, as a desire for something that makes
you do something you don't want to do so that you can get
(11:44):
something you do want. With respect to the topic at
hand, free will, the assumption would be that if we can't come
up with a detailed description of how free will functions, that
must mean that free will doesn'texist.
Oh dude fuck off. Did you actually pay attention
to the clip you just played? Alex literally gave an
(12:04):
explanation of the process by which we make decisions and why
they are not free. He did not in any way affirm the
idea that you not giving a coherent explanation means free
will does not exist. Instead he gave a coherent
explanation of why it doesn't. But instead of being
intellectually honest, you did the typical Christian apologist
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tactic of misrepresenting what has been said in order to make
your point. It puts an awful lot of
confidence in my intellectual abilities.
You you could even go so far as to say it sets me up as
omniscient or as the standard ofall truth, because all truth
claims wind up being judged according to my understanding.
In that case, why should I take seriously anything you have to
(12:48):
say about it? If, by your own admission, you
have nothing coherent to say about it, then why should I
trust that anything that you sayis of any intellectual or
meaningful value? And what I found to be the most
refreshing moment of the debate,Alex O'Connor didn't make this
assumption at all. Now he grants that Alex didn't
(13:08):
make that assumption. Well, Vince, who does?
I don't know who does. You've thrown the accusation out
in a very vague and misleading manner to a mostly Christian
audience, but provided no context or examples.
This is why Christian apologistsare very dangerous individuals.
They'll make statements and accusations like the one from
(13:29):
Vince that I got colourful about, and Christians will aim
those at atheists as though that's what they actually
believe. Apologists like Vince harm
intellectual dialogue between Christians and atheists because
of the false impressions they give.
We could be totally wrong about this.
Yes, we could, and it is the only intellectually honest thing
to say. But it's Alex that said that,
(13:52):
not the Christian. Ask a Christian to say openly.
Yes, I could be totally wrong about God, but I'm going to do
my best to actually try to find out if I am or not.
They don't do that because faith.
And, and on paper, it makes absolutely no sense that
consciousness exists. Makes none.
You know, just a bunch of atoms bumping into each other and
suddenly you've got first personconscious experience.
(14:13):
No way, no way. It, it doesn't make sense, it
can't exist. It literally is completely
illogical. And yet there it is.
You're experiencing it and you know it exists because you
experience it. I'm just saying free will could
be something a bit like that, but it's something that doesn't
make any sense whatsoever on paper.
But maybe it does still exist. I'm not saying that is the case,
I'm just saying it's worth considering.
Even though he used his brain asbest he could to argue strongly
(14:37):
against the existence of free will, there was this wonderfully
refreshing moment in the debate where he questioned his own
conclusion. And I absolutely love this for a
number of reasons. First, simply because he
admitted publicly and while being recorded that he could be
wrong. It's called intellectual
(14:57):
humility. You should try it sometime, it's
wonderful. What?
Mind blown. When is the last time you heard
anyone do that? We desperately need more of that
intellectual humility in our public life.
Thank you, Alex. Second, I loved this moment.
Because by saying that we could be wrong, we leave room for
(15:19):
reality to be bigger and more grand and more beautiful and
more awesome than merely what wecan figure out with our little
brains. Personally, I love surfing, my
favorite hobby. And in surfing there is
something called foiling, where the board actually lifts out of
(15:39):
the water and looks like it is magically suspended in the air
as you ride. For a while it made no sense to
me, but then I experienced it first hand.
I still didn't understand how itworked, but I knew it was real
because I was seeing it with my own two eyes.
Many people would say something similar about free will and
(16:02):
moral responsibility. They might be incredibly hard to
understand, they might make yourhead dizzy and even seem like
magic, but I've experienced themfirst hand.
And here we have another apologist tactic, the irrelevant
analogy. Take a cute story about
something real and bend it into an illustration about something
we are much less certain about. Foiling is real.
(16:26):
We can explain it. See link 3.
Vince wants to fool us into believing that his experience of
foiling is equivalent to his experience of free will.
Go on, let's see an equivalent verification of why free will
works. You can't produce that, which is
why we can't take you seriously when you say you have
(16:46):
experienced it. You can't tell the difference
between genuine free will and the illusion of free will, and
so you can't know that you've actually experienced free will.
And no, that's not me doing whatVince said earlier about the
assumption it doesn't exist if it can't be explained.
I'm expressing doubt about Vance's experience claim.
(17:08):
I have different reasons for doubting free will exists.
And so perhaps in philosophy too, we need to allow room for
knowledge that is more experiential in nature, even if
we have trouble expressing that knowledge on a page in numbered
propositions. Which experiences do you want to
(17:29):
lump in with that? OK, start with free will and
then what? Alien abductions?
Anal probing on an alien mother ship, Flying to the moon on the
winged horse? Walking on water?
How far do you really want to gowith this fence?
And finally, a third reason why I loved Alex's remarks on this
(17:50):
point is because he made an enormously, to my mind, an
enormously helpful analogy between free will and
consciousness. And his argument went something
like this. He said we could be totally
wrong about free will. He said perhaps free will is
like consciousness, something which is real despite being very
(18:15):
mysterious and extremely hard tomake sense of on paper.
Maybe it is, or maybe it isn't. Or maybe consciousness is also
an illusion and simply a featureof a highly functioning brain
that is processing multiple inputs simultaneously.
(18:36):
Consciousness in this philosophical sense refers to
the fact that humans are not just aware of things, they are
also aware that they are aware. I not only interact with the
world, but I experience my interaction with the world.
I don't just have desires, but Iknow that I have them.
And knowing that has great evolutionary advantages because
(18:58):
it creates intelligence, it creates the ability to think and
to analyse and to predict, whichgives evolutionary advantage of
humans over other species. Wonderful, but not necessarily
actually real. Could still be an illusion.
How do you tell the difference, Vince?
And I can self reflect on them. I'm not just a robot.
(19:20):
I have an inner life. There's something that it is
like to be me. And the like.
To be you is entirely dependent on the physicality of your
brain. Change that through injury,
through drugs and the like. To be you changes too.
And this reality raises a whole host of mysterious questions.
(19:44):
What is this me that experiencesthe world?
What is it about conglomerate ofmany 1,000,000 billions even of
brain cells and the memories that they've processed and the
experiences that they have processed that gives you the
absolute fucking arrogance to think that you're right?
(20:05):
And where is this me located? A puree vas I don't know.
Alex's point was this. On paper, it makes absolutely no
sense that consciousness exists.And that is exactly why we
should try to come up with ways to determine whether it does or
(20:25):
not. Us just feeling that it does, or
thinking that what we experienceis a genuine experience of
actual real consciousness, does not cut it.
We need to be be able to confirmor validate in order for our
conclusion to be true. It's just a bunch of atoms
bumping into one another in yourhead.
It's completely illogical to think somehow that would
(20:46):
magically produce an inner thought life.
I mean, imagine if the atoms in a door in your house one day
just randomly arranged themselves in such a way that
the door started to think about itself.
What? Christians have such weird
imaginations? Talking of imagination, humans
are capable of imagining all sorts of stuff.
So if we don't test what we imagine, we can't tell the
(21:09):
difference between what we want to believe and what is actually
true. Come on Vince, get there,
please. Bloody hell.
Intuitively, consciousness makesno sense.
I agree. And yet there it is.
Are you sure? Are you really sure you're not
(21:31):
imagining it? You're experiencing it right
now. What I'm experiencing is my
eardrums being bombarded with a load of bullshit.
Free will is a is a is a complicated subject in many
ways, but it's also incredibly simple.
It's a bit like consciousness inthe fact that it's
simultaneously the most mysterious, mystifying thing in
the world, the greatest mystery that scientists and philosophers
(21:53):
have been battling about for centuries and more, but at the
same time the most obvious and straightforward thing in the
world, because you interact withthe world through it.
Then Alex made his analogy. He said free will could be like
that. It could be like a
consciousness. Even if we have trouble making
sense of it on paper, it could still exist.
(22:16):
Consciousness seems so much likeit should not exist when you try
to explain it in terms of atoms and physical brains, when you
try to give a purely scientific explanation of it.
And yet there it is. It's impossible to deny because
we are using it right now to even consider the possibility of
its falsity. Notice the tentativeness with
(22:37):
Rich. Alex used the word could, Alex
said It could be like this, it could be like that.
And yet Vince went from that to the arrogance of it actually
exists. And you, yes you dear listener,
are experiencing it right now. This is the poisonous bullshit
(22:57):
of Christianity. Misrepresentation and
overconfidence. I don't want us to miss this.
This is a very significant pointthat Alex O'Connor is making
because it has implications far beyond the specific question of
free will. So often when we approach deep
questions of life, we assume that if we can't conceive of how
(23:20):
something works, then it probably doesn't exist.
We need to break ourselves of that intellectual habit.
What would you rather to be ableto confidently say something is
real even though no one can offer any confirmation of that
existence? Do you really think that is more
intellectually valid? It is this kind of thinking that
(23:40):
leads people into believing miracles of statues drinking
milk, when in actual fact something more mundane and less
miraculous is happening. If we can't explain or
understand free will or consciousness, but we think
we're experiencing it, then the only honest option is to seek
ways of confirming our experience.
The harder something is to explain, then the greater risk
(24:02):
there is of us being mistaken inour beliefs.
Validation of our beliefs is critical to intellectual
validity. Notice how Vince praises Alex
for saying he could be wrong, but Vince himself never once
affirms that he could be wrong. Vince is displaying typical
Christian arrogance in thinking himself the holder of truth and
(24:23):
only recognizing the validity ofintellectual humility when
others express it. I mean, most people can't
conceive of how my smartphone works, and yet there it is.
Oh no, I am so stupid. I don't know the difference
between a smartphone and consciousness.
Oh dear fucking hell, what am I doing here?
(24:43):
And to go one step further, if you're a Christian, I think you
have even more reason to deny the assumption that we should
only believe in what we can thoroughly understand, and to
embrace beliefs that are way beyond what we can understand.
Why would anyone want to believeunverifiable beliefs about
things that we can't understand?Vince's encouraging beliefs that
(25:05):
are unverifiable, unconfirmable,and almost certainly wrong.
The only possible way to confirmthat your beliefs are true is by
validating them through a process that we can understand.
If you are a Christian and you really do agree with Vince, then
ask yourself this. How do you differentiate between
(25:26):
beliefs that are wrong and beliefs that are correct?
If you have an answer, let us know at reasonpress@gmail.com.
As a Christian, I am deeply committed to this, first and
foremost because I believe in a God who is infinite and
limitless. In fact, if I could fully
conceive of how God works, that would actually be conclusive
(25:47):
evidence that whatever I'm conceiving of, it's not God.
Wait, you want to believe in something that you can't
understand? Wow dude, get help.
And I believe God is omnipotent,so I believe he can make all
sorts of things true of reality that are well beyond my
(26:08):
intellectual grasp, and perhaps consciousness and free will are
two of those things. God can bring into existence a
much wider range of things than a finite universe can.
Sure, if the Christian God exists, yeah, he can do all of
those things. But why would anyone want to
(26:29):
believe that without any kind ofconfirming or confirmable
evidence or proof if you want touse that word?
And God might also have a particular interest in free will
because of the role that it seems to play in meaningful
relationships. So if you believe in God, I
would say that even if you find free will baffling, you might
(26:52):
still have very good reason for being open to the reality of it.
Because even if we're not that smart, I believe that God.
If the question God exists, I can accept that he can do all
those things. And yet there is positive
evidence that free will does notexist and that consciousness is
a function of and inseparable from the brain.
(27:14):
This in turns evidence against Vince's God and is why belief in
things we don't or can't understand is absolutely not the
way to a truthful or accurate conclusion.
On multiple occasions in this episode Vince criticized the
assumption of non existence of things that we can't understand
and then asserted that it was valid to believe without giving
(27:35):
any reasonable justification. This is bullshit thinking and
just one example of why Christian belief is a poison to
intelligence and critical thinking.
While it is true that not being able to understand free will or
consciousness is not a good reason to declare that they
don't exist, it is a good reasonto hold any belief about them
loosely pending further information.
(27:57):
But Vince never once suggested we should try to improve our
understanding. In his desire to create a
bogeyman out of the assumption of non existence when we can't
understand, he clean forgot thatthe assumption of belief in
things we can't understand is even more bogus.
My Third Point is about the relationship between whether or
(28:19):
not free will exists and whetheror not God exists.
This theme did not take center stage in the debate between Alex
Carter and Alex O'Connor, but asa Christian, it's one of the
very first places that my mind goes.
What is the impact of whether ornot we believe in free will on
whether or not we should believein God?
All this talk of belief and not a single word about
(28:43):
investigation or evidence. Christians are so disappointing.
If something is random, and by definition you're not in control
of it, but if some event is not random, what that means is that
something has determined it to be the case.
Something has made it so that this happened rather than that
happened. There is a semantic difference
(29:04):
between being compelled to act and being freely acting.
You can look for scientific causes of my actions, and that's
absolutely fair enough that a scientific explanation of an
event is one type of explanation.
You can choose to do particular things, but when you choose to
do something particular, it willbe because you want to or
because you're forced to. If you're forced to, you're not
(29:24):
in control. If you do it because you want
to, then given that you can't control your wants, you're not
in control of that either. Now, often it seems to be just
assumed that God's existence relies on the existence of free
will, that there's some sort of obvious logical implications
such that if free will does not exist, neither does God.
(29:44):
It certainly throws a spanner inthe works of the standard
narrative that Christians use regarding the Garden of Eden and
the arrival of sin into the world.
I want to question this. I at least want to suggest that
the inference is not as obvious as we tend to assume.
Here's why. Alex O'Connor's position, like
many who argue against free will, is not just that we lack
(30:06):
evidence for free will or that it is improbable, but rather
that it is a logical impossibility that there is no
logically coherent way to definethe term, to parse out what is
meant by an act being free. As he puts it in my position,
it's not just that free will doesn't exist, it's that it
cannot exist. But this claim of logical
(30:31):
impossibility may surprisingly work in God's favor in at least
one sense. A famous argument against the
omnipotence or all powerfulness of God proceeds by asking the
following question. Can God make a stone that is too
heavy for him to lift? We're about to have another one
(30:54):
of those who relevant analogies now, aren't we?
Stand by. Do you see the problem?
The question is supposed to backthe believer in God into a
corner. Either God can make such a
stone, or he can't. If God can't make such a stone,
there's something he can't do. He can't make the stone, and
therefore he is not all powerful.
(31:15):
But if he can make such a stone,there's still something he can't
do. Then he can't lift the stone.
Either way, there's something God can't do, and therefore God
is lacking in power. It is generally accepted that
this is a bad argument, and the reason it is a bad argument is
because there's a hidden logicalinconsistency in the initial
(31:38):
question. God is by definition all
powerful, and so the question isreally asking can God make a
stone too heavy for a being witha limitless power to lift?
Which is really just a way of asking whether God can be both
limited and limitless at the same time.
Which then reveals that hidden amidst the cuteness of the
(32:02):
initial phrasing of the questionis the fact that what is really
being asked is whether God can bring about a logical
contradiction. I'm sure there are many
Christians who have thoughts on this, and there are probably
many Christians who disagree on this.
Personally, I don't give a shit.What I want to know is, is
belief in Vince's God of Christianity valid or worthwhile
(32:26):
to show me the evidence or fuck off out of here?
But this is supposed to be aboutfree will and maybe as an aside,
consciousness as well. Get on with it, Vince.
The problem with appealing to the old, you know, rejecting it
is just semantics, is that you're rejecting the very words
that we're using to utter the sentences that we're both using
right now. So there's a lovely line by 1
(32:47):
philosopher who says, yes, that's what free will means, but
it's not what free will is. And I said, but the problem is
you've just used the term free will twice.
You use the same term each time,and that's your problem.
You need to be able to explain that.
So I totally agree that we can use science to explain events,
but I also think there are some things which science can't
explain just because it's the wrong tool for that mode of
(33:09):
explanation. And how can you know that if you
don't allow science to have a goat trying?
So how does this all relate to free will?
Well, if Alex is right that freewill is actually a logical
impossibility, an incoherent notion, words that we can speak
but not actually something that can be coherently defined, then
(33:29):
free will is like a square circle.
Or God's making a stone that he cannot lift.
And then perhaps the believer inGod can give a parallel
response. Maybe she can say, look, if free
will is simply impossible, then it doesn't count against God
that he didn't make us we've with free will that that doesn't
count against his goodness, any more than him not being able to
(33:50):
make a square circle counts against his power.
And there's that irrelevant analogy again, because Alex
referred to free will being an illogical impossibility.
Vince is trying to make it equivalent to the incoherent
proposition of a square circle or a rock that God can't lift.
But the issue isn't in the presentation of free will.
The impossible rock is presentedwith intentional contradiction
(34:13):
built in. This does not apply to free
will. We can imagine free will because
it does feel like we have it. It's logically impossible
because when you analyse the decisions we make, they are
always determined by the information we have and our
preferences at the time. This is why no choice is free.
Unlike the rock, free will is not designed to be a
(34:35):
contradiction. Its existence is not possible,
and what we feel is free will isactually our brain processing
multiple desires and preferencesand calculating which one is
strongest. It's not that God could have
made us with free will and chosenot to, it's just that when we
use the term free will, we thinkwe are signifying something when
(34:55):
we are not, and therefore us nothaving free will does not count
against God's existence any morethan him not being able to make
a square circle or an unliftablestone.
And yet free will is the single most common reason given by
apologists when describing the fall of mankind and our need for
salvation. The Christian message can only
work if we really did rebel against God by free will, and
(35:19):
then by free will choose to accept Jesus as our Saviour.
No free will means that the Christian God is no more than a
puppet master, a cruel and despicable being mistreating
it's creation for it's own amusement.
We readily recognise this injustice when Sid does it in
Toy Story, yet Vince fails to see it in the God that withholds
(35:40):
free will. Because like every apologist
before him, no matter what the problem, free will or not free
will, he will bend an argument in order to make God his
conclusion. Such dishonesty to.
Summarize this point. It is often assumed that if free
will doesn't exist, neither doesGod, but that is significantly
(36:03):
less clear than you might think.Again, not really what people
say. If there is no free will, that
is a good case against the Christian God being a loving
God, and it is a good reason to reject worshipping a city
dictator. Acceptance of the existence of
God hinges on evidence, not the idea of free will.
(36:24):
OK, my 4th and last reflection on the excellent free will
debate between Alex O'Connor andAlex Carter, and I'll just raise
this point briefly as a questionfor further consideration.
If somebody wrongs you or does something bad to you, if you can
remind yourself that they might not have had control over the
determining factors that made them do that, it might make you
(36:44):
into a more charitable and kind person.
Someone barges past you on the street or someone is cruel to
you, then remembering that they're not fully in control, at
least at least fully in control of the action that they
committed, will make you into a kind of person, a more forgiving
person that will help you to understand people better.
And I think that's a worthwhile thing to embody.
(37:04):
If God does not exist and all oflife is determined by
materialistic or naturalistic causes, if that's the case, then
why should we trust any of the reasoning in this debate, or in
any debate for that matter? If our brains have developed
solely through the natural causes of a universe that at
(37:27):
bottom is random and unguided, then why should we trust that
what our brains recommend to us is actually reliable or true?
Holy fucktards he actually went there.
What Vince has just summarized is known as the evolutionary
argument against naturalism. See link 4.
The simple answer is we don't and we can't, which is why the
(37:51):
scientific method puts so much store into testing and
replicating. But go beyond that and look at
our legal system with its efforts to find truth through
evidence presentation and how eyewitness testimony is
notoriously unreliable. Our whole society works on the
premise that the human mind is fallible and prone to serious
error. It's only in the realm of
(38:13):
religion where thinking of bullshit and presenting it as
truth is admired. There is so much that we don't
know. If you draw 1 circle on a piece
of paper that represents the totality of all there is to be
known, and then draw another circle inside of it that
represents all that we know, the1st circle would absolutely
(38:37):
dwarf the proportionally minuscule circle of our
knowledge. Exactly, which is why when
someone tells me God exists and he's experienced it, I am
skeptical because I know the mind can be deceived.
And on top of that, there are really complex debates about
(38:57):
whether exclusively naturalisticcauses devoid of any
supernatural purpose would develop our brains to be aimed
at beliefs that are true, or rather at beliefs that are
merely conducive to our survival.
And those are two importantly different categories they.
Are, but they're not exclusive. The two can overlap quite
(39:21):
significantly, and it also reinforces the reason why
testing validation evidence, preferably objective, is very
important. Don't think up bullshit then
convince yourself that it's true.
And if our brains are aimed at survival rather than truth, then
is trusting our brains for truthactually a bit like stepping on
(39:44):
a scale and expecting it to tellyou the time?
Weird analogy, but I guess it works.
What it does tell you is don't take people's word for it, test
them, seek validation. Quite a good way to live
actually. That debate will continue, along
with many others. And on that we do agree.
(40:17):
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