Atheism and Free Will

Apologia Studios

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Let's start with the theory of knowledge and people having will, wills or making choices.

00:08

This is a really good clip and it is Richard Dawkins, the first part is Richard Dawkins, he's engaging on the issue of naturalism or materialism, talking about human will, are humans making choices or are we just a byproduct of a universe that didn't have us in mind?

00:25

Are the choices we make just the result of chemical responses and we can't help being what we are?

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Let's get into it. This is again Dr. Richard Dawkins. I suppose

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Dr. Dawkins I would ask this to you, is there a scientific basis for the concept of free will in human beings and if not, is there a biological evolutionary reason why all of us believe we have free will?

00:53

The late Christopher Hitchens when asked does he believe in free will replied,

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I have no choice. It's a question that I dread actually because I don't have a very well thought out view about it.

01:21

Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that moment of integrity and that moment of honesty from Dawkins.

01:28

I dread this question because I don't have a good answer. Yeah, at least he's honest for once. Yeah, you got to think about it.

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You might be saying like, well, why wouldn't he have a good answer? Doesn't he know he's a person who's making choices? Like when

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Dawkins is out with his wife, I believe he's married, yeah he is. When Dawkins is out with his wife and his wife is like, what are we going to eat tonight?

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And she's like, how about Chinese? And he's like, no, I'm thinking fish and chips. I'd rather have fish and chips, you know, or making a decision to go this way or that way.

01:55

I would think that Dawkins believes that, you know, that's a willing choice. He's making choices. He's not just the subject of biochemical responses that are firing in his brain, the laws of physics acting on matter.

02:06

I would think he understands like these are real choices I'm making. But it's interesting here because if you think about his perspective of the world, reality, here's the deal.

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If the man believes, and he does, that we're African apes, and he's very, very strong. Bonobos is the correct term he uses.

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He's very, very convinced of that himself, that we're just African apes, that we are just stardust. He's with Sagan and all the other guys that would say, you know, we're all just stardust in a universe that didn't have us in mind.

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If you take that perspective, one must ask, well, if that's what we are, if we're just a bunch of meatbags firing chemical responses in our brains, well then are we really making choices or are we just a slave to our biochemical responses?

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Are we just slaves to our own nature in terms of material, just stuff?

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I mean, is there any meaning in all this? Any real choices being made by us or can we just not help it?

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And that's where the joke comes from, by the way. Christopher Hitchens is an atheist and someone says, you know, do you believe in free will?

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And he says, well, I have no other choice. In other words, it's a deterministic perspective that because it's a material universe,

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I can't help it. I mean, this is just, it's a mixed conversation, but they don't really have an answer.

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And I do appreciate that he's honest enough to say, I dread this question. I understand why you do, because you don't have a worldview that can make sense of a human soul.

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You don't have a worldview that can make sense of something that actually transcends the material and is beyond just the matter, molecules and atoms that you have in front of you.

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I think that, I mean, I have a materialist view of the world. I think that things are determined in a rational way by antecedent events.

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And so that commits me to the view that when I think

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I have free will, when I think that I'm exercising free choice, I'm deluding myself.

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That I'm, my brain states are determined by physical events.

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And yet that seems to contradict, to go against the very powerful subjective impression that we all have, that we do have free will.

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I think all I can do is recommend the works of my colleague, Daniel Dennett, on the subject, which are fascinating.

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And there's a new book, another one of our colleagues, Sam Harrison, Free Will is coming out. But yes, I also have to agree that I think, well, this is an important area for them to start to delve into and to provide answers for, because if you take the premises that they give to you, given their worldview and the framework that they give to you, naturally, it's going to start to bring out the questions of the students.

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Well, if all this is true and it's just material, it's just a material universe, but then the choices that I'm making, are they really my choices?

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Like is these really choices that I'm, I, what's an I in that worldview in the first place that I am freely making?

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And of course, if you can follow Dawkins' worldview there, in terms of the thought processes, the decisions that he's making, first of all, he doesn't believe there's any ultimate moral ought above any of those decisions.

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They're just decisions, left, right, up, down, yes, no. I mean, that's essentially what we're boiling this down to.

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He says he follows a scientific or a materialistic perspective. There has to be a rational reason for getting to point

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A to point B, and then all events are because of antecedent events. What's he, all that, all that language, simply to say this, you have a cause and an effect relationship.

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Well, what's the cause of my thoughts? Well, it's the physical stuff that's right here. It's all the physical stuff.

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So if a decision was made, a movement was made this direction, I want to follow the causal chain that got me to that decision.

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And all I get here is a material universe with physical laws acting upon matter.

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That's what he said. So basically, the decisions he's making are just ultimately the result of physical, naturalistic processes upon the material nature, and you've just got stuff that's happening, okay?

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So now, let me move ahead here to this little clip here. This is Dr. Greg Bonson from a lecture that he gave on naturalism and the issue of free will.

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Here is Dr. Bonson. Let me talk about freedom in our thinking. If naturalism is true, that is, that all that exists is the natural order, and there isn't anything that goes beyond man's experience in time, if naturalism is true, then the naturalist has no reason to believe his naturalism.

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You write that down, and I'll explain why it's true. If naturalism is true, the naturalist has no reason to believe it, has no reason to believe it.

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Because, you see, naturalism says all of our thinking is just electrical chemical responses.

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All of our thinking is subject to the laws of chemistry and physics, which is to say all of our thinking is determined by the factors in the physical world or in the physical brain in the environment around us.

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All of our thinking is, in principle, predictable, then, because it's just following the laws of nature, usually, more sophisticatedly put, the laws of physics and biology and chemistry and so forth.

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But the point is, human thinking is just the species of the physical world and its operation.

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Human thinking is just, it's on the same order, but not the same level of sophistication as weeds growing.

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And so if naturalism is true, then the person who's propounding it is propounding it, why? Because his or her brain has required them by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology to say this sort of thing.

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It's not as though they have the freedom and self -awareness to think about different theories, evaluate evidence, and make a choice as to which is right or wrong.

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They just have to say whatever they have to say. And that's why the irony is that a naturalist would promote naturalism and try to tell people it's true, you should believe that, and not supernaturalism.

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The answer is, if naturalism is true, so that your brain is just working on the laws of physics, then you have no reason to believe naturalism is true, it's just the laws of physics requiring you to say that.

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Which is just to say, if naturalism is true, there's no reason to say that naturalism is true. And, kaboom!

08:50

An amazing polemic against naturalism, materialism, it's an internal critique of the system itself.

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You can hear here, watch, this is Bonson, I don't even know when this was, my goodness, this looks like it's like late 80s, maybe early 90s, something like that.

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Here we have about a 30 -year -old video, Dr. Greg Bonson, hero and giant of the faith. If you don't know him, you need to get to know him, please, and we'd love to help you do that.

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But here is a video, 30 years ago, internal critique of naturalism in terms of the idea of free will.

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Now, 30 years later -ish, you've got a video of Dawkins and Krauss, who is a local,

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Dawkins and Krauss talking about the issue, and Dawkins admitting, I don't like this.

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I don't like this question. Well, yeah, because if what you say is true about the world, then there's no reason to believe your theory!

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And what's the difference between picking one theory over another in the naturalistic mindset?

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You just got stuff happening in your brain, you're just a result of the forces that are acting upon the material, and the choices that you're making, and the theories that you're evaluating, one's not true over another, one's not ultimate, and there's no moral component to any of it, so why do you need to tell the truth about any of it when you're examining it?

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So, there's so many layers to this, materialism, naturalism, is easily refuted within its own framework, answer the fool according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own conceit.

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Proverbs, chapter 26, verse 4 and 5, take a look at that in terms of how to answer the fool.