Always look at the evidence
Blogged by James Preece on 7th November 2008
Richard Dawkins has, as I'm sure everybody knows by now, stepped down from his post as Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford (who knew) with plans to write a children's book.
"appeal to children to think for themselves; to look at the evidence. Always look at the evidence" - Richard Dawkins
What I continue to find fascinating is the way Richard Dawkins continuously makes appeals to our freedom to think freely. As far as I can see, our intellectual freedom is the most convincing evidence for spiritual reality that we have.
Richard Dawkins says...
"I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will. Indeed, I encourage people all the time to do it."
"...Free will is a very difficult philosophical question and it's not one that has anything to do with religion..."
"I'm not interested in free will."
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But I can only really see two options:
No Free Will - If there is no free will then we can't, as Dawkin's puts it "override biology with free will". Without free will we are simply highly evolved meat machines following the rules of biology. Under one set of physical conditions we will murder our wife, under another set we won't. It's out of our control. If a man does something "wrong" we can't blame him, it's not his fault. Physics did it.
Free Will - If there is free will then we can "override biology with free will". But think about what that means for a moment. Under one set of physical conditions we would have murdered our wife but we can choose not too, under another set we wouldn't have murdered out wife but we can choose to do so. Free will means that man has the power to defy the laws of physics. It means that man is more than a machine. It means that man is a miracle.
GK Chesterton says...
This is the real fact. You cannot live without dogmas about these things. You cannot act for twenty-four hours without deciding either to hold people responsible or not to hold them responsible. Theology is a product far more practical than chemistry.
[link]
It doesn't matter if we take a Newtonian deterministic view where the world is like a snooker table and if we know the position and speed of all the balls then we can predict what happens next (in which case, our minds are not free, they are as predictable as balls on a snooker table) or if you take a Quantum mechanical view where the world is a bit crazy and has apparently random phenomena (in which case, our minds are not free, our choices are random).
Even unknown unimaginable sci-fi scientific discoveries of the future - if they involve 'stuff' (particles, snooker balls, fields, whatever) that follows rules (e.g. if science can say anything about them) then that's not free will. That's stuff following rules.
Free will cannot be explained scientifically. Every act of free will requires some exemption from the laws of physics.
If free will isn't a natural biological phenomenon, what is it? A supernatural phenomenon? A spiritual phenomenon?
It has everything to do with religion.
Reader Comments
Mark Dobson said...
Do you have any idea what "Simonyi" means? I don't believe I've ever encountered it. It looks like a misprint for Simony, but that's pretty unlikely...
I agree that "man is a miracle", but I think that it could probably do with some more explanation here. It comes across as an assertion.
For many people, the supernatural (they tend to prefer "spiritual") is something that they're very happy with, but religion is quite another matter. I suppose even Dawkins might grant that free-will is supernatural (I'm not sufficiently familiar with him), but still deny any religious dimension to it.
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James said...
I agree that "man is a miracle", but I think that it could probably do with some more explanation here. It comes across as an assertion.
I'm open to suggestions...
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Francis said...
Charles Simonyi is the person who endowed the chair; it is named after him. Its existence affords Dawkins' anti-religious rantings a certain academic respectability, though I'm not sure if that was the original intention.
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Mary Magdalane said...
Jeez non-sequitur...
Free will does not mean the power to override physics. If one chooses instead to say that free will is a subjective feeling then it still allows for those feelings to be created deterministically.
The conclusion therefore that man is a miracle is truly a leap of faith rather than de facto reasoning.
All I have to thank the Catholic Church for is having my hands placed on our Padre's genitals inappropriately giving me some uncomfortable memories. This psuedo-science you push makes me shudder in a similar fashion.
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James said...
Hi Mary,
"if one chooses instead to say that free will is a subjective feeling"
You can "choose" to say whatever you like, but in reality "free" does not mean you subjectively feel differently about something whether you like it or not because of deterministic cause and effect or random chance. If that's what you believe, how can you ever hold anybody responsible for anything?
It does follow that for a person to be truly free to make their own choices then those choices must have their origin in the person and not in any kind of chain of causality. If the rules of cause and effect are broken, I'd call that a miracle.
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