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?

[olavisjo]

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

An omnipotent God giving us free will would not be a problem. So the question is "did he?"

Clearly science leaves no room for free will, Stephen Hawking writes in The Grand Design “It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law�, Sam Harris who writes in The Moral Landscape “no account of causality leaves room for free will� and Jerry Coyne in a USAToday column “The ineluctable scientific conclusion is that although we feel that we’re characters in the play of our lives, rewriting our parts as we go along, in reality we’re puppets performing scripted parts written by the laws of physics.�

So can we choose to be good, evil, lazy, kind, forgiving, judgmental, intolerant, merciful, industrious, conscientious etc. If we can choose these sort of things then God most likely exists.

I find it interesting that people who deny free will, still think that we should choose to make the world a better place, as we have to live in it. May the Universe be praised for giving us such noble thoughts.

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.

Can we choose to do that or must we wait for the Universe to make that choice for us?

[Philbert]

For secularists, ultimately everything would boil down to evolution.

I've never understood why evolution is sometimes considered a disproof of god. Very puzzling....

[olavisjo]

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I've never understood why evolution is sometimes considered a disproof of god. Very puzzling....

1. Miracles are proof of God
2. If humans are the product of evolution, that would be a miracle
3. Therefore, evolution is proof of God

[help3434]

[Replying to post 60 by otseng]

What does that even mean. I would think that most naturalists view the laws of physics being the underlining laws.

[Peter]

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?

20,000 years ago there was no higher law than natural selection. Today there's precious little natural selection so, no, natural selection isn't the highest law. What we have today is artificial selection and the technology to wipe out vast swaths of humanity in an instant. Today the least fit reproduce the most but also die the most. We have completely subverted natural evolutionary processes.

Explaining how we arrived here is fairly simple(Evolution) but projecting where we will be in another 20,000 years, or even if we will still exist, is quite complicated. Our brains have given us some superiority over natural forces but you can only fool mother nature for so long...

[Peter]

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.

Right, computer programs are not due any praise.

I've been somewhat disingenous in describing humans as simply complex biological computers. The truth, like most truths, lies somewhere between computers and completely free agents. We have the limited ability to reprogram ourselves and to that extent some praise is justified.

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.

Empathy isn't automatic. Not sure where you got that. Your analysis of birth rates affecting empathy is spot on.

[Peter]

For secularists, ultimately everything would boil down to evolution.

I've never understood why evolution is sometimes considered a disproof of god. Very puzzling....

Atheists, at least this atheist, don't consider Evolution to be a disproof of Gods but many theists seem outraged that science has, yet again, marginalized their irrational beliefs. You can't disprove imaginary concepts like gods but Evolution decisively and elegantly removed one very big reason to invent a creator.

[otseng]

I've never understood why evolution is sometimes considered a disproof of god. Very puzzling....

I agree. Even if evolution is proved to be true (which I believe is impossible), it still would not disprove God. At the most it would only disprove a literal reading of Genesis.

[otseng]

20,000 years ago there was no higher law than natural selection. Today there's precious little natural selection so, no, natural selection isn't the highest law. What we have today is artificial selection and the technology to wipe out vast swaths of humanity in an instant. Today the least fit reproduce the most but also die the most. We have completely subverted natural evolutionary processes.

So, humans are exempt from evolution because he has the ability kill a large number of people?

[otseng]

[Replying to post 60 by otseng]

What does that even mean. I would think that most naturalists view the laws of physics being the underlining laws.

I was speaking in the context of Peter's response:

Look at the crime rates for example. They are actually extremely low by comparison with the overall population. Less than about 1% of people commit violent crimes. Less than 10% commit even petty crimes.

This leaves 90% of the world's population being far more benevolent than evil.

How do we explain this in terms of a purely secular world?

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

Naturalists would explain empathy, free will, human behavior as a result of evolution.