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."

[link]

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.

So, where is this all going?

I set out to explain why I bother with religion and so far everyone is thinking the answer is "because only religious people are willing to put up with your endless babbling with nary a conclusion in sight."

I have observed that there are a number of points that Science is fundamentally by definition unable to deal with. I am left trying to resolve "everything has a cause" with "something came first" and can only conclude that "something somewhere happened for no reason". The problem now is that I have strayed beyond the white lines science has carefully painted around the playing field. These are not scientific questions. These are religious questions. At this point I suppose I could simply say that I bother with religion becase I find myself troubled by these religious questions. The End. As Lemony Snicket would say, you can stop reading now. But that's hardly a decent explanation for paying attention to an old man in a dress and bright red shoes. I'd better go further...

A Choice to make about Choice...

I tried to imagine in my head how free will might work in a purely physical world. At first sight, most of my choices seem to be based on the physical reality around me. For instance, if I am hungry I choose to eat. If I am thirsty I choose to drink. This is not free will though, free will doesn't mean automatically reacting to my physical situation. Free will means I can choose not to eat when I am hungry. But why would I? For other physical circumstances? Just randomly? Is free will just the rolling of a dice.

If my free choice is truly free and truly mine it can originate from nowhere but me and I can have no reason for choosing it but my own free will. It seems to me, that every time we make a free choice we break the chain of causality. We refuse to be enslaved to the physical order of doing something simply because of physical causes but make choices simply (to quote Billy) "because we want to"...

It seems to me that every truly free choice must be an act of creation on the part of the chooser. Physically speaking, it is a physical event without a physical cause. Think about it. If it has a physical cause, it is not free. Just bouncing like a ball.

So I have to choose.

If I have the ability to make free choices - free will, then there must be some part of me that exists in a non-physical sense. This is the only rational explanation I can think of to explain my ability to make truly free choices independently of physical causation. If this sounds like religious crazy talk, that's because it is. Religious crazy people call this non-physical part of me my "spirit" or my "soul".

But the alternative is worse. If I reject the existence of a "soul" then I must reject my ability to make free choices. If my every choice is determined by the laws of physics then I have no more choice than a bouncing ball. I would have to be crazy to convince myself that I cannot make free choices.

I'm going with option A. I have a soul.

Oh my God I'm starting to sound like a freaking religious person...