Posted on 10/28/2010 10:49:08 AM PDT by betty boop
An Open Letter to My Physicist Friend RE: Darwinism and the Problem of Free Will
By Jean F. Drew
Dear A —
Regarding the discussion of “free will” at www.naturalism.org, you wrote: “I am surprised to find a ‘scientific naturalism’ so similar to the utmost banality, shallowness and false superficiality of the ‘scientific materialism’ that I [had] to learn in … school [during] the communist regime.”
I think this is a very striking statement; and I understand what you mean. I read in your Book of the Living Universe long ago that you were aware of the problem of “tampering” with human consciousness, by people and institutions with social and/or political agendas to be carried out, usually without consideration of what is good and true in the real world of human experience.
Once upon a time, the natural sciences were understood to be above all else engaged in the search for the truth of reality. Nowadays, it seems people don’t want to do such searches anymore, they just want to protect and defend their personal investments in this or that ideological orthodoxy….
Speaking of a powerful orthodoxy, it seems pretty clear to me that Darwin’s theory, as it has come to be widely understood and accepted, is entirely premised on the doctrine of “scientific materialism.” As such, I regard it as an epistemological and ontological nightmare!!!
Moreover, the account of “free will” at naturalism.org can be true only if Darwin’s theory is true. But I believe it is not. For it holds that everything in biology “supervenes on the physical”; everything that happens is “determined” on the basis of Newtonian mechanics. There is only matter in the universe, nothing else; only that which is directly observed/measured is real. [Already such a view casts doubt on the reality of the universal laws of nature, which are never directly observed: They are “non-phenomenal,” intangible, immaterial. Not to mention that so is all of mathematics, logic, reasoning.] And this non-living, dumb matter, via an evolutionary process driven by random mutation and natural selection, somehow manages to become alive and — more — to develop some form of psyche.
But HOW does one get to this result by means of a random process??? In only ~14 or so billion years?
How does low algorithmic complexity (i.e., of the physical laws) generate the astonishing complexity of living systems, not to mention of the universe at large? My “trial” answer: It doesn’t; and can’t.
Darwinism, moreover, doesn’t even have an explanation of what life IS. All of it is, to me, a “just-so” story, a myth. It is riddled with self-contradictions. Not a word of its fundamental tenets can be tested by means of real-world investigations/experiments, let alone “proved.” It is an “historical” science, like archeology, not a “hard” science, like physics. It seeks to tell us what life does, but cannot tell us what life is.
But how can we be sure that our impressions of what life does are truthful, if we don’t know what life is? Don’t we have to understand what life is, first — before we can produce a reliable understanding of the how and why of its behavior? It’s like saying, “Birds fly” without bothering to elucidate what a bird is….
But the “Cartesian split” is manifestly being defended by most Darwinists nowadays. To them, the “purity” of science somehow depends on its sticking to the “objective” physical, material, phenomenal. Thus they prohibit any discussion of, for instance, final causes in nature — even though the very term “survival of the fittest” necessarily implies a final cause: “fitness” for survival! (As do all biological functions, by the way.) Yet the Darwinist says “survival of the fittest” is the very goal and purpose of evolution! But you cannot “call a spade a spade” and say that this is a final cause; it’s just an illusion…. It only “looks like” a final cause, but it isn’t really one. Such equivocation is, to me, indefensible.
But let’s look at what the article at naturalism.org has to say. “As strictly physical beings, we don’t exist as immaterial selves, either mental or spiritual, that control behavior. Thought, desires, intentions, feelings, and actions all arise on their own without the benefit of a supervisory self, and they are all the products of a physical system, the brain and the body. The self is constituted by more or less consistent sets of personal characteristics, beliefs, and actions; it doesn’t exist apart from those complex physical processes that make up the individual. It may strongly seem as if there is a self sitting behind experience, witnessing it, and behind behavior, controlling it, but this impression is strongly disconfirmed by a scientific understanding of human behavior.”
What “scientific understanding of human behavior???” I don’t see any understanding here at all! Just the deliberate elimination of certain kinds of intractable, non-conforming evidence….
If “science can’t address the problem, then there is no problem” seems to be the motto of the day.
In short, the “self” must be a fiction; it is really only an epiphenomenon of physical processes proceeding more or less in a random, linear, irreversible (past to present to future) manner that itself has no “objective” reality (or purpose of goal) and thus cannot serve as a cause of anything in the physical world. That is, the self has zero ontological status: It is simply defined away as not really existing.
Instead, we find that the cause of human willing is simply what “arises out of the interaction between individuals and their environment, not from a freely willing self that produces behavior independently of causal connections…. Therefore individuals don’t bear ultimate originative responsibility for their actions, in the sense of being their first cause. Given the circumstances both inside and outside the body, they couldn’t have done other than what they did.” [So human beings just can’t help what they do; their behavior is utterly determined. I.e., they are programmable robots and nothing more.]
So it seems rather cruel (and unjust) that under this set of circumstances, “Nevertheless, we must still hold individuals responsible, in the sense of applying rewards and sanctions, so that their behavior stays more or less within the range of what we deem acceptable. This is, partially, how people learn to act ethically.”
Question: Who is this “we” in the above statement?
Another question: If individuals don’t bear “ultimate originative responsibility for their actions,” then what is the cause of suicide? Does brain function and/or the “environment” cause this ultimate act of self-destruction? If so, then why aren’t there more suicides? Or how about acts of heroism, where a person puts his own physical survival at risk to come to the aid of another person in danger? What is the “naturalist” explanation of a man who throws his body onto a live grenade, so to spare his fellow soldiers from being blown to smithereens, well knowing that his own death would be the likely price of his decision? Did not his self-sacrifice “cause” (or at least permit) his mates to continue living, when otherwise they may likely all have been killed?
Then there is this pièce de résistence [with my comments in brackets]:
The source of value: Because naturalism doubts the existence of ultimate purposes either inherent in nature or imposed by a creator [final causes either way], values derive from human needs and desires [oh, for instance the desire to kill one’s self, which desire must arise in nature/environment according to Darwinist theory, as in the above?], not supernatural absolutes. Basic human values are widely shared by virtue of being rooted in our common evolved nature. [That wipes out all individuality right there.] We need not appeal to a supernatural standard of ethical conduct to know that in general it’s wrong to lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder, torture, or otherwise treat people in ways we’d rather not be treated [Oh? HOW do we know this? As I said earlier, Darwinist orthodoxy is an epistemological nightmare!]. Our naturally endowed empathetic concern for others [as alleged —in face of the fact that people frequently choose to conduct themselves evilly towards others — and if that is not “naturally endowed,” then where did that come from?] and our hard-wired penchant for cooperation and reciprocity [how did that get to be “hard-wired???”] get us what we most want as social creatures: to flourish as individuals within a community. [Tell that to the person who intends to commit suicide! He could care less for “flourishing as an individual,” let alone in a community]. Naturalism may show the ultimate contingency of some values, in that human nature might have evolved differently and human societies and political arrangements might have turned out otherwise. [Well they might have; but what’s the point? Reality is what we have. All else is pure speculation.] But, given who and what we are as natural creatures [please define “natural creatures” — the statement seems oxymoronic to me], we necessarily [???] find ourselves with shared basic values [??? — which ones? And tell me how did they become “shared” when Darwinist theory itself is premised on conflict and competition for the available finite environmental resources necessary for survival?] which serve as the criteria for assessing moral dilemmas, even if these assessments are sometimes fiercely contested and in some cases never quite resolved. [The very fact that there can be conflict, contestation, suggests that the uniformity of “natural creatures” that we would expect to see on Darwin’s theory is a total fiction, something simply not borne out by the facts on the ground of real experience, as contrasted with the reductionist abstractions of naturalistic evolution theory.]
It seems to me that Darwinist orthodoxy really doesn’t explain very much. The problem seems to be its utter rejection, in principle, of any immaterial component of reality. Although might I point out that a “principle” is itself “immaterial?” Even the concept of Reality is immaterial. These people routinely, blithely shoot themselves in the foot; and then blithely pretend that it didn’t happen.
In any case, we’re NOT supposed to notice this. Indeed, to notice this is “forbidden.”
Shades of Karl Marx here — and also I imagine your school experience back in the day of Soviet domination of your country. Marx absolutely forbade all questions about his “system.” You either bought it whole cloth, or you didn’t. What you couldn’t do was question it in any way. But if you didn’t buy it, then you were probably some kind of “enemy”….
Is seems to me the biological sciences need a restoration of sanity! Today, all the truly interesting work on life problems is being done by physicists (like you, dear friend!) and mathematicians….
The other day I came across some highly interesting passages in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library [by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler, editor; 1987, Phanes Press] that go straight to the point of what I believe is needed for science to renew itself, to rededicate itself to its ancient mission, the quest for Truth. What is principally involved is the “healing” of the artificial and unnatural “Cartesian split”:
Pythagoras, no doubt, would have disapproved of the radical split which occurred between the sciences and philosophy during the 17th century “enlightenment” and which haunts the intellectual and social fabric of Western civilization to this day. In retrospect perhaps we can see that man is most happily at home in the universe as long as he can relate his experiences to both the universal and the particular, the eternal and temporal levels of being.
Natural science takes an Aristotelian approach to the universe, delighting in the multiplicity of the phenomenal web. It is concerned with the individual parts as opposed to the whole, and its method is one of particularizing the universal. Natural science attempts to quantify the universal, through the reduction of living form and qualitative relations to mathematical and statistical formulations based on the classification of material artifacts.
By contrast, natural philosophy is primarily Platonic in that it is concerned with the whole as opposed to the part. Realizing that all things are essentially related to certain eternal forms and principles, the approach of the natural philosopher strives to understand the relation that the particular has with the universal. Through the language of natural philosophy, and through the Pythagorean approach to whole systems, it is possible to relate the temporal with the eternal and to know the organic relation between multiplicity and unity.
If the scientific spirit is seen as a desire to study the universe in its totality, it will be seen that both approaches are complementary and necessary in scientific inquiry, for an inclusive cosmology must be equally at home in dealing with the part or the whole. The great scientists of Western civilization — Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, and those before and after — were able to combine both approaches in a valuable and fruitful way.
It is interesting that the split between science and philosophy coincides roughly with the industrial revolution — for once freed from the philosophical element, which anchors scientific inquiry to the whole of life and human values, science ceases to be science in a traditional sense, and is transformed into a servile nursemaid of technology, the development and employment of mechanization. Now machines are quite useful as long as they are subservient to human good, in all the ramifications of that word — but as it turned out, the industrial revolution also coincided with a mechanistic conceptualization of the natural order, which sought to increase material profit at the expense of the human spirit….
Today, in many circles, to a large part fueled by the desire for economic reward, science has nearly become confused with and subservient to technology, and from this perspective it might be said that the ideal of a universal or inclusive science has been lost…. [p. 43f]
Still I know that you have not lost this ideal! Yours is an “integrative science” approach, integrating not only the natural sciences themselves, but also integrating them with the natural philosophy approach; i.e., of whole systems.
You wrote:
“I realized the importance of our mail exchange about God and the Universe. Indeed, … free will is not explained by present day science, not by physics, of course. As far as I understand it, it is not explained by the mechanical application of the biological principle. It requires more: a deeper understanding of the biological principle, and even more, a deeper understanding of the Universe as a whole. I wrote you that even the laws and principles of Nature can have a ‘soul-like’, animate aspect. Ultimately, our free will dwells in ‘the Universe as a whole’, and as such, [is] omnipresent, as far as I understand it. If so, the question of free will is a deep question, going beyond the present conceptual framework of science. Free will is rooted in the animate and animating biological principle, in [the] eternal Life of the Universe.”
Oh, A — I so agree!!!
And I’m so looking forward to reading your new article, “The Logic of Reality: a model-independent approach towards the self-contained logic of the Universe”!
May God ever bless you, dear friend, and your labors!
©2010 by Jean F. Drew.
Regarding the words "... the maxim begs the questions of what is the “reality” that is capable of being “recognized” (Being)? And how it is recognized (Knowing)?" ... I was reminded of my catechism-day saying that "God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and the next"; and the phrase "to know" in there is telling. It requires a deep and abiding faith.
I admire that, and I help the nuns that brought it to me.
Old Navy: It would be interesting to know how you define truth. The best definition I’ve heard is that truth is the recognition of reality.
Spirited: Truth as defined by Jay Budzishevski (a student of the great thinker, CS Lewis) is everything that we “can’t help but know is true.”
In this category are mind, conscience, and free will, for we can’t help but know that we think, reason, theorize, imagine, dream, feel guilt, and make choices on a daily basis. By extension of this truth, we know that we really do know that monism, whether pantheist or materialist, is not true because monism denies the reality of individual mind, conscience, and free will.
We really do know that among the higher order of creatures and even of plant-life that there are but two sexes, male and female. We know this is true by the reality of male-female distinctivess, by simply looking at nature, by what works and what does not, and by the consequences we incur when our actions are in denial of these truths.
For instance, horticulturalists know that both male and female plants and trees are necessary for good results. Breeders of animals know that they cannot expect to increase herd size by “pairing” two males or two females.
All men know that truth exists by the lies they tell. We know that reality exists by the fact of our longing to escape it by way of daydreams, fantasy, fiction, etc.
What we really can’t help but know is true turns out to be common sense.
Well put.
THx for the ping.
To add to your discussion of probability, universal truths, how the finite could ever know a universal, and how there could even be such a thing as universal laws of thought (logic) in a materialist universe, I add the following:
"Faith is the evidence of things unseen"What kind of statement is that? How could faith itself be evidence of something unseen? The statement seems backwards, or even circular, doesn't it? Faith is typically characterized as belief in something in the absence of evidence, or in spite of it.
Following is an extended quote, but I think it is worth reading because it shows that faith is not belief in something in the absence of evidence, it is the precondition of reasoning itself:
"...And fourthly, many hearers need to disabuse themselves of an old canard that goes something like this: "Faith is believing what you know ain't true. Or faith takes over where reason leaves off." Faith is not something that stands over against reason, whether above reason or contrary to reason or however you wish to put it. Rather reasoning itself rest upon the presupposition of faith and collapses arbitrary without it. Now to make this point I have chosen to look not to what committed Christians have reasoned or said which you might feel is too easy and partisan on my behalf. But rather to have us consider what our hostile opponents have pointed out about a central problem in philosophy. We'll look at an issue treated by David Hume, the eighteenth century Scottish skeptic, and also by Bertrand Russell, twentieth century English philosopher. Both of these men wrote in strong opposition to religious faith and especially to Christianity. The problem we're going to look at for a few moments here is the problem of induction.Among the expectations through which we encounter experience and encounter the world is the expectation that uniformity can be found between the diverse events, things, or experiences in the world. This expectation may in some cases be quite explicit and self-conscious but it need not be. For instance when we learned to drive a car or speak a foreign language we usually pay close attention to what is the regular function of certain parts of the car, or of the grammatical rules and ordinary word usages of the language. But we eventually come to do these things more automatically or more habitually and we no longer consciously think about the expected uniformity in our use of cars or our use of language. Our learning and reasoning tacitly assumes that the universe is such that uniformities are expected and exhibited in similar things even though they are separated by time and space - that the way things happen can be viewed as instances of general laws and what has occurred in the past is a reliable guide for predicting and thus adjusting to the future.
Now this can be described in an elaborate and abstract way, but not many of you are philosophy majors and would not want me to do that. The fact is each of us is very familiar with what I'm talking about from personal experience. We're all quite acquainted with the process of moving from particular facts in our experience to general truths which are exhibited by those particular experiences. For instance, children don't merely conclude from their pain that a particular case of flame is burning them, they usually project that fire in general, or if you will, all fire, any fire, will burn as well. From observed regularities or associations, we infer universal regularity even in the unobserved cases or yet future cases. In popular parlance we say we assume the uniformity of nature. The method of generalizing from observed cases to all cases of the same kind is called induction. The basic guiding principle here is that future cases will be like past cases - that similar things will behave similarly.
So for instance, if certain conditions and events bring about a certain effect today, the same factors will cause a similar effect later. I'll give you a down-to-earth example: Why do we expect toothpaste to spurt from the tube when we squeeze it? You might call this the toothpaste proof of God's existence, okay? We support that expectation in terms of two things: One, our past experience with toothpaste tubes, and two, the belief that nature is uniform - that the future is like the past. Without that second belief, we would not be able to learn from experience. We will not be able to use language, we will not be able to rely on memory, or advanced science. All of which involve observing similarities and projecting them into the future.
Moreover our belief about uniformity or the inductive principle is a very firmly entrenched belief. When scientists found that there were deviations in the expected orbit of Uranus they did not draw the conclusion, "Okay nature is not uniform after all, " that just impelled them to start looking for another factor as yet unknown that was influencing the orbit of Uranus. They did not give up the inductive principle, but rather hypothesized the body which by the way we now know to be the planet Neptune. And so from toothpaste to the planets we believe in reason in terms of the inductive principle. Now David Hume's question was this, and I quote: " What is the nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter-of-fact beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory?" By what logical right, he was asking, do we claim to know that some empirical generalizations are true? What, asked Hume, are we warranted in asserting on the basis of our experiences? And he said to be very strict in his empiricism, "Only that in the past or in the cases so far observed such and such has been the case."
But Hume said we have no basis for projecting that into the future. And I quote him again: "If you insist that the inferences made by a chain of reasoning I desire you to produce that reasoning." Now of course many people make the mistake of responding to Hume saying, "Hey listen. We all assume the future will be like the past." Hume said that he understood that, there is no question that in practice we act that way, but as he said and I quote him again: "I want to learn the foundation of this inference." And then there are people who say, "Well we know it's very probable although it may not be very certain. "But that misses Hume's point as well. Hume knew very well that we don't have certainty about all matters of science. His point is that we have no logical right to affirm on the basis of our past experiences that even probability is true of the natural order. And so that the principle of induction is left without a foundation.
Bertrand Russell, the 20th century philosopher, said that we cannot justify our belief in induction on the basis of the past success we've had in believing that the inductive principle is true because that too assumes that what happened in the past is going to be like the future. Let me quote Russell here: "The inductive principle is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience. Experience might conceivably confirm the inductive principle as regards to the cases that have been already examined but as regards unexamined cases it is the inductive principle alone that can justify any inference from what has been examined to what has not been examined. All arguments which on the basis of experience argue as to the future or the unexperienced parts of the past or present assume the inductive principle. Hence we can never use experience to prove the inductive principle without begging the question."
So now do we have reason for believing the inductive principle? We need to set the Christian worldview, the theistic world view side by side with the atheist world view and ask which one comports with the inductive principle and thus provides the preconditions for science, language, learning, and any intelligible human experience. And I will say it's certainly not atheism. Atheism's view of reality and historical eventuation cannot provide a cogent reason for what all of our reasoning takes for granted. It is debunked by its philosophical arbitrariness at just this point as even men like Hume and Bertrand Russell realize. Accordingly, it is most reasonable to believe in God and entirely unreasonable not believe in God, for God's existence is the precondition of all reasoning whatsoever."
Greg Bahnsen
Cordially,
But I am not capable of doing that; i.e., of standing outside Truth; for I believe that it constitutes the fundamental structure of Reality that includes me “as part and participant.”
Only God knows objective truth. Only He speaks it.
When God says something, it is. It is because He says it.
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard. – Psalms 19:1-3
Well put.
Thx for the ping.
Oh dearest sister in Christ, this is the Truth — the Logos, the Word of God spoken in the Beginning:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. — John 1–3Also, God's Name is I AM. He is the ultimate foundation that unifies being and knowing: For "In him was life, and the life was the light of men."
Meditating on the Names of God can be highly instructive.
Thank you ever so much for your beautiful essay/post — and for your kind words!
Amen!
Thought your beautiful observation warranted repeating, dear sister in Christ!
Thank you so much for writing!
Meditating on the Names of God can be highly instructive.
Thank you so much for your insights and encouragements, dearest sister in Christ!
Oh what a lovely, gracious, truthful, and just essay/post, dear brother in Christ!
You touch my heart. Thank you oh so very much for writing!
Conventionality (leaving aside that this begs the question how conventionality is obtained) stipulates that justice demands responsibility for one’s actions. Without Free Will, the concept of justice is irrelevant, nonexistent even (as is the concept of responsibility). Not so much as a subject to be brought up, or an issue to be raised.
Taking, for a moment, the other side of this controversy, we may observe that many of the most desolately miserable cultures on this earth deny the remotest possibility of Free Will, yet impose unbelievably savage punishments on individuals for actions they are helpless to avoid. Somewhat more comprehensible is the level of sympathy for criminality displayed by those elements of Western Civilization who have chosen to substitute a theology of ‘Science’ for the Judeo-Christian Tradition so long prevalent in Western Civilization. It’s inhumane, after all, to condemn people for actions they cannot avoid committing. Yet, this standard is not applied uniformly. Conservatives are condemned for their beliefs far in excess to the moral condemnation heaped upon criminals for their actions (one is tempted to think that Conservatives would be herded into concentration camps if it were not for it being a step too far to be attempted at present).
I wish that I possessed more sophistication in Science and Philosophy than I do, but I appreciate your willingness to include me just the same. I can attest from my own experience to the human misery produced by the denial of justice, as can, I think, we all.
And spirited irish, allow me to thank you for your post #122. One of the more illuminating expositions I’ve had the privilege of viewing in quite some time.
Thank you so very much for your insights, dear YHAOS!
So very true, dear YHAOS! Indeed as you say neither justice nor personal responsibility has any meaning absent Free Will. (Yet it seems cruel and irrational to impose a punishment on someone who was powerless to choose to do other than what he did.) Which may account for the fact that irresponsible and unjust people like to dispose of Free Will by simply calling it an illusion — just another "ghost in the machine." It has no basis in Darwin's theory [see essay at the top]. So it must be a fiction.
The history of Justice in the West goes back to ancient Greece, and quite likely further back to antecedents in Egypt and the Middle East. The Greeks called it Dike — meaning not only Justice, but order, law, right. Moreoever it seems the Greeks also believed in the divine judgment of souls on the basis of personal responsibility. [See The Pamphyllian Myth, "The Myth of Er," in Plato's Republic.]
Until quite recently, Justice has been understood as the universal moral order of the world, physical and human. As David Fideler has written:
The simple fact remains that the scales of justice are inexorable — it is a principle of Nature, and not merely of human morals, that each should receive its due. If we poison our rivers, we poison ourselves; if we act in stupidity, it is only appropriate that we suffer the consequences. If there is a moral to the story it is simply that individuals and societies are far less likely to run into trouble should they possess an awareness of these principles and relationships. —The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, 1987, p. 45The constructors of Second Realties know the best way to destroy First Reality is to deny its foundation in truth and justice, and to convince us that Free Will does not exist....
'Tis a tad depressing....
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear YHAOS!
Truman, Churchill, and Stalin meet for the third time to sort out their differences. Again, no progress. After two frustrating days, Stalin says, "Comrades! We know that cats hate mustard. Whoever can induce a cat to eat some mustard will have his way." Challenge accepted. Truman, ever the straight shooter, takes the cat, takes a jar of mustard, and pours the latter into the mouth of the former. The cat spits out every last drop. Churchill, having watched this fiasco, prepares a sumptuous plate of liver, fish, and other cat's delights, with the tiniest drop of mustard in the center. The cat licks clean the entire plate — until he gets to the drop of mustard in the center. Stalin shakes his head with mock sympathy. "Bring me a pound of mustard and watch!" With that, Stalin takes the mustard and smears all of it over the rear end of the cat. The animal frantically chases its tail and licks the area clean to the last drop.A nice inversion of meaning suitable for an upside-down world....A triumphant Stalin exclaims, "And, as you see, he did it of his own free will!"
And, more particularly, the concept of "sin" must necessarily disappear from religious discussion.....
Be that as it may, if we accept as axiomatic that there is no free will, it has an interesting corollary: when all is said and done, the universe must have a specified "direction." It seems that this leads to difficulties with some of the arguments regarding randomness vs. truth.
LOL.
Indeed, dear r9etb. And what would that "direction" be?
I think (hope!) I'm following you here: If there is no free will in the universe, then everything that exists must be utterly determined. Which begs the question of who or what is doing the "determining," or as you say providing the "direction" of events, the sum total of which is the Universe at any "point" of its evolution.
Again that slippery word "random" rears its ugly head. How can a "random" process produce, not only the diversity that we see all around us, but also the unity and order of all things — which I think we also can see all around us, provided we have the eyes to "look" and see, and the minds to understand what we observe.
There are theological implications to the idea of a determined universe. A Calvinist is put into the position of having to blame God directly for all the suffering in the world — which is to conceive of God as a monster.... (At least I read this line of reasoning somewhere recently.)
Another famous determinist had a different problem. Sir Isaac Newton conceived of God as "the Lord of Life with His creatures," the cause that eternally determines everything that happens in the natural world, including the world of men. Newton's monotheist conception of divine action in the world is facilitated via the sensorium Deum, a sort of field-like interface between the divine and natural orders.
There is no evident support for the doctrine of free will in Newton's mechanistic, deterministic science, to put it mildly. What we have instead is a remarkably beautiful, intellectually satisfying formalism; i.e., something entirely abstracted away from the world of phenomena.
Case in point: the Newtonian "particle" is a perfect abstraction, a purely formal (mathematical) entity. Newton's theory doesn't regard whether the "particle" in question is a subatomic particle, an atom, a planet, a star, or a galaxy. All problems of scale are irrelevant to the operation of Newton's Laws. And evidently, these Laws are the expressions of divine will and thus cannot be evaded in Nature.
But then along came relativity and quantum theory. And the problem of "free will" became highly topical again, as summed up in "the observer problem" implicit in both the relativistic and quantum theories.
What Calvin and Newton agree about is that the universe is lawful. That is, whatever its fundamental nature, Nature is definitely not "random." Ontologically, it is persistently the way it is, and not some other way. Its order cannot be the "accident" of random causes on logical grounds.
On the other hand, neither is the Universe in any way "static." It is constantly involved in the flux of change which we denote by the term "evolution."
And this flux of change constantly introduces new elements into the world. Still, these "new elements" are subject to "direction." Or to put it another way, to universal "guides to the system" that did not arise from within the system.
Truth is built into the very foundation of the world. It utterly transcends the world — but at the same time it is immanent within it, lawfully "informing" (in multiple senses) its development.
At least, this is my belief FWIW.
Your last really set me off into "wool-gathering mode." :^) Thank you so very much for writing, dear r9etb! I hope my reply was in some way responsive to the issues you raised....
It is.
Speaking as one who believes in God, I have no difficulty in saying that the universe has a "direction." And speaking as a Christian, I have no difficulty in saying what that direction might be.
I do have a problem with what is usually called "Calvinism," which is perhaps just a particular type of the more general idea of predestination. The case for free will is not only simple, it's quite a bit stronger than the rather contrived explanations for why free will does not exist .... and, of course, the need to create those explanations, and the ability to do so, makes it that much harder to sell the case against free will.
Religious or scientific debates about free will tend to focus on the big stuff -- it's so much more tractable and, as such, so much more easily used to construct strawmen. But really, free will is nothing more or less than the freedom to recognize options and make choices ... chocolate vs. vanilla; turn right or left; take the harder trail, or the easier one ... even fashions, whether clothing or the way we decorate a kitchen, are examples of free will. It's pretty difficult to create a scientific or theological explanation for Avacado or Harvest Gold, that doesn't include free will....
But your mention of Newton brings to mind another line of thought, that's evident in this thread. There seems to be a tendency among all of us, to posit math and science as the only real means available to understand reality. Certainly they're very good ways .... but are they really the only standard by which we can properly address the questions of truth and reality?
Absolutely NOT, dear r9etb! Certainly science and math are not the only, let alone the ultimate tests of Reality. But it seems to me they are among its firstborn, especially mathematics and logic.
The point being that they are tests of Reality that human beings can directly, reliably apply to their own experience. And they are "truthful" tests in that they take their own order from One divine source. There is nothing else that they can stand on, and continue to be what they are, over time.
That is, they are universals. Which means they transcend space and time. That is, they do not at all depend on location in any space- or time-frame; they are not dependent on any human observer for the authentication of their Truth.
Nowadays much of what passes for elite science presumes its own future depends on explaining the universe without reference to God or Truth.
Good luck to "elite science!" It cannot even explain its own logical basis, if it denies God and Truth.
You wrote:
...free will is nothing more or less than the freedom to recognize options and make choices ... chocolate vs. vanilla; turn right or left; take the harder trail, or the easier one ... even fashions, whether clothing or the way we decorate a kitchen, are examples of free will. It's pretty difficult to create a scientific or theological explanation for Avacado or Harvest Gold, that doesn't include free will....This seems to plant us "deep into the weeds" of human experience. In the bigger picture, however, it seems to me that free will essentially boils down to one single question: Do I choose, or reject, God?
I speak as one who identifies God with Life, Love, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Justice. And so it's difficult for me to understand why a free human person would freely choose not to be identified with Him.
You wrote
...there seems to be a tendency among all of us, to posit math and science as the only real means available to understand reality....I was actually shocked and surprised to read the other day (in Guthrie's The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library) that Pythagoras himself (~600 B.C., major founder of number and geometrical theory) can be "blamed" for the inception of one of the greatest errors in all of science: That that which is "quantifiable" is somehow more "real" than other things.
And yet most of the problems of the human condition really cannot be "quantified" at all. The problems of the human condition mainly involve problems of quality.... And of choice. That is, free will.
Thank you ever so very much, dear r9etb, for your splendid essay/post!
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