Scientific Justification for Free Will?

[Divine Insight]

Is there any scientific justification for the notion of Free Will?

Question #1. If you believe their is, can you please state your scientific evidence for the existence of Free Will.

Question #2. If you believe there is no scientific justification for the notion of Free Will, then please explain how we can have any scientific justification for holding anyone responsible for their actions. In fact, wouldn't the very notion of personal responsibility be scientifically unsupportable?

[Divine Insight]

That's correct, if we can't fix a malfunctioning computer we dispose of it but we don't personally blame it for malfunctioning as if it had the "free will" to do otherwise. We're basically very complex biological computers. Some can be repaired and some cannot.

I'm with you on that. This is how we should view humans in a purely secular world. And I also agree that this is doable. And may even be reality. But like Otseng points out, then it also follows that those of us who do "good" things or achieve fantastic feats shouldn't be praised anymore than a computer that runs good programs.

When I asked why most humans tend to be benevolent, you offer:

It's called empathy. Most humans are programmed for it because overall it results in better species survival. A shorter answer would be Evolution.

With this I agree as well. And again, this would emphasize Otseng's point that even our empathy would merely be a result of preconditioned programming and not something that we could be given praise for.

I've also thought about this in terms of evolution. My conclusion is that it wouldn't be due merely to evolution, but actually this kind of thing would have been affected in-large-part due to the fact that human reproduction is so fragile.

Humans typically only give birth to one baby at a time, two or more are certainly possibly, but the overwhelming average is one baby at a time. And that single baby requires much care to time bring it to a viable age of maturity. So empathy would be beneficial to survival for humans, thus humans could easily evolve to become highly empathetic and thus appear to act in fairly benevolent ways especially with respect to other humans.

However, this would not be a trait of "evolution" in general necessarily. If another species that gave birth to large quantities of offspring were to evolve to sentient intelligence, the survival of that species may not be so heavily dependent upon empathy. And so, in a purely secular world, that species may also not behave in a way that humans would consider to be benevolent or empathetic.

So empathy and benevolence would not come out of "evolution" automatically. It would only appear when empathy is beneficial to survival.

We may indeed live in a purely secular world. But what a strange world that would be.

But then again, I guess any world would be strange.

Life is strange be it secular or spiritual or mystical or whatever.

This is one thing they all have in common. Any philosophy of life is indeed quite strange.

[olavisjo]

.

You keep confusing the ability to make a choice with "free will". We make choices all the time but "free will" implies that we can somehow choose what we choose. Sometimes I describe it as the ability to make a choice that we didn't make. It seems to me that "free will" would require a separate "soul or free agent" to somehow watch over choices and countermand the bad ones. It's no wonder that theists insist they have free will.

Then a person like Adolph Hitler was not evil, he simply did the only thing he could have done, he did not have the ability to make the choices that he didn't make.

Welcome to the world of atheism, where there is, at bottom, no choice, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

[help3434]

[Replying to post 52 by olavisjo]

What makes you think that their is free will in theism?

[keithprosser3]

Welcome to the world of atheism, where there is, at bottom, no choice, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

Let me modify that quote but slightly:

Welcome to the world, where there is, at bottom, no choice, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

If there is choice, design, purpose and meaning then it is because we - human beings - put them there. If we did not act then kids would starve in africa - and they do starve when we don't act, because there is no God to act in our stead when we fail them.

The world is a cruel and heartless place except where we - not the non-existent gods -make it better. We don't do enough. But the gods do nothing at all. At least the gods have an excuse - they don't exist. What is our excuse?

[Philbert]

If there is choice, design, purpose and meaning then it is because we - human beings - put them there.

How could we possibly know such a thing?

Isn't the assertion that there is no meaning outside the human mind just as speculative as an assertion that there is meaning outside the human mind?

Only 100 years ago I could have asserted that there was only one galaxy, based on a lack of evidence for additional galaxies. And I would have been completely wrong, missing 99%+ of reality in my analysis.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to state that we don't know if there is a meaning outside the human mind?

Why should we accept your preferred answer as the default, simply because you personally prefer it?

[woodpen]

Welcome to the world of atheism, where there is, at bottom, no choice, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

Let me modify that quote but slightly:

Welcome to the world, where there is, at bottom, no choice, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

If there is choice, design, purpose and meaning then it is because we - human beings - put them there. If we did not act then kids would starve in africa - and they do starve when we don't act, because there is no God to act in our stead when we fail them.

The world is a cruel and heartless place except where we - not the non-existent gods -make it better. We don't do enough. But the gods do nothing at all. At least the gods have an excuse - they don't exist. What is our excuse?

The sooner we, humanity, start taking responsibility and stop believing some imaginary sky daddy will solve our problems. That is our job, we need to start believing in us as keith has said.

[keithprosser3]

Why should we accept your preferred answer as the default, simply because you personally prefer it?

I offer my preferred answer as an option which people can take or leave as they see fit. Naturally I think my views are correct - and being correct is a good reason for other people to adopt my view.

I think you tend to - I am sure in the spirit of sheer playfulness - not recognise that while nothing is totally certain, there are degrees of certainty. That we - not gods - are responsible for the world is much more likely than the converse. So much more likely that only the former needs to be considered if you want to do anything useful. Making trivial and well-worn points about certainty and scepticism is fun for a while but it goes nowhere.

A degree of scepticism is wise, but too much is just wiseguy.

[Philbert]

The sooner we, humanity, start taking responsibility and stop believing some imaginary sky daddy will solve our problems. That is our job, we need to start believing in us as keith has said.

This might be an interesting experiment....

I'm creating a free publishing network that will donate all ad income to charity.

I couldn't find a single Christian or Catholic interested in this concept. All they want to do is talk the talk. When presented with the idea of using the talking of the talk to also walk the walk (as example, raise money for Catholic Charities), they vanish.

I wonder if atheists would be any different? Or is it just more talking of the talk that makes us feel superior etc?

[Philbert]

I offer my preferred answer as an option which people can take or leave as they see fit.

No complaint there.

I think you tend to - I am sure in the spirit of sheer playfulness - not recognise that while nothing is totally certain, there are degrees of certainty.

This is the standard atheist tactical retreat. Your views are not stated as uncertain speculation, but as The Truth. It's only when challenged that atheists retreat to the more defendable position.

That we - not gods - are responsible for the world is much more likely than the converse.

Only if we first assume as a matter of faith that our human reason is qualified to address questions of such enormous scale.

It's just like theism. If we start with an unexamined unchallenged faith based assumption that the Bible is the word of God, then obviously Bible passages are very relevant.

What I see is that atheists reasonably question the authority of the Bible, but are rarely if ever willing to challenge their own chosen authority, human reason.

Reason is not challenging only other people's authorities, that's ideology. Reason is challenging all authorities.

A degree of scepticism is wise, but too much is just wiseguy.

TRANSLATION: Don't rock our carefully constructed cozy group consensus, because it's key to our self flattering personal identity.

No different than theism.

[otseng]

A shorter answer would be Evolution.

For secularists, ultimately everything would boil down to evolution. So, the ultimate law would be the law of natural selection. Would you agree that there is no law higher than this?