On Jerry Coyne's free will stance, part 1

Since Dr. Coyne's article on free will appeared in USA today, I am sure many of people (Christian or otherwise) have written about it.  So naturally, I'll have to throw in my two cents about it.

In this article, Dr. Coyne argues that we do not have free will.  Because we are biological organisms, we are subject to the laws of physics, and thus everything that we do is pre-determined by our molecular make-up and the interactions that we have with the world around us.  We "chose" to eat dessert tonight because of some chemical reaction that occurred in our brain, not because it was really a choice that we made.

Dr. Coyne further grounds his point of view in the fields of psychology and neuroscience, saying that researchers are finding out that "the experience of will itself could be an illusion that evolution has given us". In other words, every time you make a choice, you just think you're making a choice. It is an illusion.

He goes on to talk about what the philosophical repercussions are for us, once we all realize that we do not have free will.  These repercussions include becoming kinder people, since we now know we cannot judge others (eg, criminals really had no choice but to commit those crimes), abandoning our Christian faith (since we really don't put our faith in Jesus Christ; we just had to do it because of our brain chemistry), and "realizing the great wonder and mystery of our evolved brains".

The astute reader will, at this point, realize that Dr. Coyne's stance on free will is entirely self-defeating. Meaning, if his position is correct, then it creates a contradiction within itself.  Or, to put it another way, if Dr. Coyne is right, he's right for the wrong reasons; he's only lucky, and he did not arrive at his conclusion based on his scientific or rational approach.

I promise to defend my statement in a later post, but for now let me just rant.  Dr. Coyne is a respected evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago.  He has a very popular blog called "why evolution is true" and is a prominent speaker and writer.  This is evident in the fact that one of his opinion articles can get published in the USA today.  So my two big questions are (1) why does such a brilliant, esteemed person not realize how philosophically bankrupt his position is, and (2) why does the USA today and other media outlets swallow (hook, line, and sinker as it were) the opinion of someone like Dr. Coyne in a field outside of his own expertise just because he is a professor at a prestigious university?

In regards to question 1, I find it very interesting that he even claims to be in touch with philosophy.  In his article, he says:

The debate about free will, long the purview of philosophers alone, has been given new life by scientists, especially neuroscientists studying how the brain works. And what they're finding supports the idea that free will is a complete illusion.

The issue of whether we have of free will is not an arcane academic debate about philosophy, but a critical question whose answer affects us in many ways: how we assign moral responsibility, how we punish criminals, how we feel about our religion, and, most important, how we see ourselves — as autonomous or automatons.

That just blows my mind.  In essence, he is saying that no matter what debates or critical thinking has happened in the past in philosophy, the incredibly non-quantitative and soft fields of psychology and neuroscience have proven that we don't have free will?  How in the world does a neuroscience experiment prove that logic doesn't work? What I mean is, if the conclusions of the neuroscientists are correct, then they are completely self-contradictory (as I stated above but have not defended; again, please be patient until next time).  Therefore, to adopt the stance that Dr. Coyne is, based on the results of these soft sciences, you must abandon the laws of logic (the very foundations of philosophy and all of reason for that matter)! Very curious indeed.

In regards to question 2, well, I guess this is just another case of what we've been seeing all over the place from the new atheist movement.  Richard Dawkins, with his non-sequitur arguments, Steven Hawking with his grand pronouncements about metaphysics, etc.  It's really difficult to go up against these giants who have very little argument to stand on, but who can completely change the minds of many just based on their credentials alone.  Credentials, I might add, that do not have anything to do with the subject on which they are speaking.  (Yes, I am a hypocrite.  I am not trained in logic or philosophy either.)

But it really just underscores something that has become more and more clear to me as I take a close look at the new atheist movement.  There is absolutely no substance to their arguments.  It is almost all -- to put it less-than-politely -- drivel.  (And by the way, I am not the only one to realize this.  Take a look here.)  Classical philosophers such as Hume and Kant were the real giants in their fields.  If you really want to argue against Christianity, take a look not at the bold pronouncements that biologists make about philosophy and theology, you need to look at the philosophers themselves!  (Again, a hypocrite am I, since I have not bothered to read these either.)

So, in my next post, I do promise to actually defend my take on Dr. Coyne's free will stance.

What do we care?

A couple of posts ago, I ended with the question "and what do we care?" This was in regard to whether and how much God has (supernaturally) intervened in the history of the universe to get the events to unfold according to His plan. For example, why in the end should we care whether God had to override the laws of physics to get the solar system to form where it is (ie, in the just-right location in the just-right galaxy) with the composition it has (ie, made of the just-right abundances of elements), etc, or whether the unfolding of the universe under the natural laws He set up at the beginning conspired to make this unlikely place form "naturally"?

I think this is certainly a good point to discuss. It isn't likely that we'll ever know how God did it. Although if we could show that the laws of physics were violated over and over, it would be a good apologetic. But philosophically, who can tell the difference between these two types of miraculous events? The formation of the moon was a miracle, in that it was highly unlikely. The advent of man was a miracle, in that it was an even less likely event. Do either violate the laws of physics? Even that's a difficult question to answer, as statistical thermodynamics, and even more so quantum mechanics, imply that anything can happen, even the most unlikely thing. It is within the laws of physics for all the air in the room you're sitting in to suddenly move to the other side of the room, instantly suffocating you. Its likelihood is on the order of 10^{-25} (or probably less), but it's not impossible. (I'll try to discuss this in a later post, because I'm not doing this justice here.)

Instead, I argue that the question we should be asking is therefore not whether the laws of physics are broken, but instead whether the unfolding of the history of the universe, including the history of life on planet earth, seems to bespeak the supernatural superintent of a creator, i.e., a mind. This is not just a question about probabilities. Rather, it is a question regarding whether the universe's history reflects the expressly-stated purposes of a creator. Sure, regarding evolution, we can try to go and test whether God specially intervened at points, but these would again be based on probability arguments. (For example, the likelihood that whales would evolve from a land mammal given their large body size, low fecundity, and long generation time, is extremely small.)

No, what I am arguing here is that the unfolding of history is following a divine plan. We live in a just right location at the just right time. The history of life on earth followed a just-right trajectory such that we could be here today. The evolution of stars and galaxies prior to the formation of our solar system occurred in a just-right way. In essence, these are all fine-tuning arguments, but they're subtly more than that, I think. It appears that the fine-tuning is no coincidence. It appears that it is following a plan.

And I think this argument demands to be developed further. For now, it's only in its infancy.

Fully gifted creation

One of the hot button topics these days, at least in terms of Christianity and science, is evolution. Most of the time, the debate/discussion is artificially polarized/caricatured into two camps: creationism and evolution. If you're a Christian, you believe in creation, and if you're smart, you believe in evolution. (Whatever "believe in evolution" means.)

Some refuse to be part of that partisianship. Prominent scientists like Ken Miller and Francis Collins (both authors as well) ascribe to a view commonly called "theistic evolution", which loosely means they affirm both God's existence (both would accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and savior), yet also naturalistic evolution. That is, both would deny that God had a hand in creating any of the life by fiat miracle, as many creationists would state.

Howard van Till calls this point of view "fully gifted creation", in that God, when He created the universe, did it in such a perfect way, with the just-right initial conditions, such that everything would unfold according to His plan.

What is interesting about this point of view is that it isn't just a concession to mainstream science, as some creationists claim, but indeed it demonstrates the existence of an Intelligent Designer. If the universe unfolding this way is according to God's plan, then life's history on earth does have a purpose, even if it can be fully explained by "mere" naturalistic forces. In other words, even in a theistic evoltionary worldview, we would expect to see design and fine-tuning in life's history. It is an inevitable consequence of believing in a God "who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will (Eph 1:11)."

I'd really like to hear someone's (anyone's?) thoughts on this topic.