…and this is a 
We “naive” atheists
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: September 24, 2007 9:59 AM, by PZ Myers
It's bad enough everyone is using this "New Atheists" label: various critics keep inventing new ones. Some letter writer to the Independent has decided to call us "Naive Atheists" because we are unaware of the implications of atheism.
However, let's forget about the unfortunate history of atheism for a moment and concentrate instead on its philosophical implications.
Two of the big consequences are that once you ditch belief in God you must also, logically, ditch belief in free will and in objective morality.
What a silly, silly man. If anyone is naive here, it's someone who thinks atheists must all be amoral robots, and that unpleasant consequences mean you should reject the truth value of a claim. But now he's going to tell us he's got evidence for his argument, straight from the mouth of an atheist.
But don't take my word for it, take the word of some of the most distinguished atheists of the last hundred years.
Take Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helix. In one of his last books, 'The Astonishing Hypothesis', he flatly denied the existence of free will with these words: "The Astonishing Hypothesis is that you -- your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules".
Have you got that now? What Crick is saying is that nothing you do is freely chosen.
Your 'decision' to read this column is the result of chemical reactions in your brain.
Your love for your spouse is only a chemical reaction.
Your love for your children is only a chemical reaction.
Your beliefs, whether you are an atheist or a religious believer for example, are the result of a chemical reaction. None of these things are freely chosen.
When you ditch belief in God you are left with the idea that matter and energy are all that exist. Everything you do is the result of your genes reacting with the environment.
First of all, Crick is not quite saying what he thinks he's saying. That our minds are the product of electrochemical activity in our brain in our brain is not the same thing as saying there is no free will. What it says is that this magnificent product of evolutionary refinement residing in our cranium is a biological machine of immense sophistication capable of making complex choices and generating complex responses. The brain, in other words, is a choice-making machine. It is also not deterministic. It takes in a multitude of inputs, including lots of noise, filters them on the basis of deep personal history, and generates interesting internal states and elaborate responses. There's no "only" about it.
My love for my spouse is the outcome of long association. I got to respect her in third grade as the smart kid in class, and as she got older, she was the va-va-va-voom girl in high school (yes, there was all kinds of interesting internal chemistry going on), and when we started dating, I enjoyed her personality and her outlook — my rational brain, my emotional responses, and my hormones were all engaged. At every step of the way, I can say that only natural processes were involved, and that's just beautiful to me. No ghosts required, no extraterrestrial magic, no cherubs armed with enchanted arrows, just two smart animals nuzzling each other in those intensely human ways.
When some shallow git on the internet claims that is "only a chemical reaction," I have to say that he seems to be deeply ignorant about how powerful chemistry and biology can be … and that he seems to be overlooking the fact that if we're right, "only" chemistry produced Shakespeare, Bach, and Baryshnikov. Does it diminish Mozart that he was made of meat, that he used a chamberpot and got sick and fueled himself with food and drink?
Secondly, if we materialists are right (and of course, I think we are), then it doesn't matter if the writer believes he's an ephemeral puppet whose strings are being tugged by invisible vapor — he's made of meat, too, and all of his most cherished feelings are the result of tuggings by a chemistry he chooses to ignore. Similarly, if he were right (and no, he isn't!) and I had some magical non-corporeal spirit diddling my synapses, my disbelief wouldn't change that fact, either.
Remember when you were five years old, and your best friend was hysterically concerned for you because you didn't believe in Santa Claus? "You won't get any presents," he cried, "and Christmas won't happen!" But of course Christmas did happen, and you got presents, and that you had replaced an imaginary obese elf with real, live, physical parents who loved you was an improvement on the damned stupid fairy tale.
That's what runs through my mind on traces of ions guided by miniscule pipes of lipid, triggering slight sprays of neurotransmitters in orderly patterns, when some theistic lightweight protests that I won't feel love if I believe in the beauty and elegance of chemistry. I love my chemistry.
Politics
Comments
Beatifully said!
Posted by: nemo ramjet | September 24, 2007 10:08 AM
People who believe that you need religion in order to have a morality scare me. Apparently the only thing that is holding them back from committing all sorts of crimes is their belief that a diety will notice it and punish them.
Posted by: Moenen | September 24, 2007 10:09 AM
Two of the big consequences are that once you ditch belief in God you must also, logically, ditch belief in free will and in objective morality.
John Calvin would disagree with this guy about free will in Christianity.
Posted by: Bob L | September 24, 2007 10:11 AM
The temperature argument against Penrose's quantum microtubles works for every other biochemical process - unless it can be shown to be sufficiently well insulated. Since there's no evidence that any structure in the brain has the insulation necessary to preserve quantum entanglement, there's no known source of non-determinism. It's true that unsolved problems like protein folding, the bewildering complexity of the brain's internal structure, and the sheer number neurons (presently ...) prevent mere humans from modeling the brain deterministically, but that is due to limitations in understanding and processing power, not due to any known source of non-determinism in the brain.
Posted by: llewelly | September 24, 2007 10:14 AM
If one's actions are guided by fear of punishment in an unseeable afterlife, that is not morality it is fear.
If one chooses to do or not do certain things because one seeks great rewards in an eternal life, that is not morality it is greed.
If the reasons for ones actions are the potential harm or good that those actions will bring to other people, THAT is morality.
Posted by: dcwp | September 24, 2007 10:14 AM
What Crick is saying is that nothing you do is freely chosen.
You don't need to be an atheist to get that. Look at Calvin and Predestination. God determines your life's outcome before you're born. You don't have free will, it's all decided by God - you don't even have a say in whether you end up in hell or not.
Posted by: RM | September 24, 2007 10:14 AM
For crying out loud, neurontransmitters are just ways neurons use to communicate - they're not information-processing devices.
Emotions aren't 'chemical reactions'. They're not chemicals. They're the end result of certain kinds of information processing.
This twit fails to grasp atheism, neurochemistry, AND information processing.
Posted by: Caledonian | September 24, 2007 10:14 AM
Whenever I read something like that, I always wonder what these people think our oversized brains are for. If some disembodied soul or other mindstuff is doing the work, making uncaused choices and so on, why do we waste so much energy supporting and protecting the organ in our heads?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | September 24, 2007 10:17 AM
PZ, whenever I encounter this sort of argument, I just point out that the person making the argument is confusing 'mores' with 'morality.' Science in general (and evolution in particular) does confound traditional beliefs, as I'm sure you'd be the first to affirm; it doesn't confound the capacity for developing ethical systems of conduct, with or without God. In fact, as with the other mental faculties, ethical systems seem to be a product of evolution.
Besides, an atheist could in principle could be aware of, and agree with the 'neutered morality' take if it suits him or her's personal lifestyle---so there's no justification for describing their atheism as 'naive', either.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | September 24, 2007 10:17 AM
Two of the big consequences are that once you ditch belief in God you must also, logically, ditch belief in free will and in objective morality. One has to acquire (read: be infected with) belief in god first. That should be telling everyone something. To listen to this is to believe unsupported the hypothesis that the members of the National Academy of Sciences are all master criminals. Or maybe pirates. Arrrrr!
Posted by: Randy | September 24, 2007 10:18 AM
I'd rather be the product of billions of years of evolution and 10^40 chemical reactions (made that fig. up) than be created in a day 6000 years ago.
Of course, the main reason for choosing atheism is because it's true. Whether it makes you feel any better about the universe is a little beside the point.
Posted by: Christian Burnham | September 24, 2007 10:19 AM
Hooray for the Cognitive Revolution! To paraphrase a certain quote, now we atheists can be intellectually fulfilled non-determinists!
...sort of.
John Lynch would skewer me on the spot, but I still think we're basically automatons when it comes down to it. Unless you want to get all quantum, but even then, whence free will? Call it random will if you'd like, but I'll take Dennett's stance: the illusion of free will is the interesting part. Causality can go take a hike.
Posted by: Mike P | September 24, 2007 10:23 AM
At the same level of sophistication, an omniscient god already knows what you will do or choose. There's no free will there, only a series of continuous surprises as you learn of your own actions in real time.
As for the morality issue, it seems fascinating to me that so many civilizations sprang up outside the influence of the Abrahamic god that are no less moral than our own. The golden rule and the basics of the cherished 10C existed in other civilizations prior to their incorporation in Jewish literature. Considering how atheistic Europe is at this point, it's a wonder our SuperChristians in the US aren't protesting European led war in Iraq. After all, those atheists can't resist immoral acts right?
Posted by: Ray S | September 24, 2007 10:25 AM
BTW, free will is one of the few things which I think it's OK to believe in without any evidence whatsoever (except subjective perception).
Yes it's probably an illusion- but it's a pretty good one and it helps not to be too fatalistic about life.
Of course, it's a little paradoxical- if you don't have free will, then you don't have any choice in the matter of whether to believe in it or not.
Posted by: Christian Burnham | September 24, 2007 10:26 AM
I disagree with the aesthetic premise.
Personally I think "The New Atheists" sounds cool, and kind of gives the image that we want, that the "New" part is that people are fed up with keeping quiet about it, or allowing the religious to dominate discussion etc. It doesn't sound like we've found new 'reasons' to be atheists, just that there's something new about our approach.
And there is.
So, I wouldn't dispute "The New Atheists" as a nickname (even if it does sound like a college town band).
Posted by: El Cid | September 24, 2007 10:31 AM
I personally do not believe in free will, in the sense that you can take some action that is not completely dependent on the history of the universe up to the point of action. But I also believe that a world without free will is indistinguishable from a world with free will---the factors that influence any given action are so numerous, interdependent, and complex that we will perceive them to be the product of free will. So whether we believe free will exists or not, it shouldn't have any influence on the way we interact with people and live our lives.
Posted by: lylebot | September 24, 2007 10:32 AM
Daniel Dennett wrote a remarkable book about free will:
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the question of free will.
Posted by: Jeff Alexander | September 24, 2007 10:34 AM
If morality is as objective and absolute as the god-botherers would like to believe, then why has it changed so much over the course of human history? Slavery and the treatment of women are two clear examples of this.
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | September 24, 2007 10:38 AM
I like the reference to "objective morality." Apparently the Christian version of morality is "objective" while the atheist version is not. So if you deconvert from Christianity to lack of belief then you are abandoning the "objective" version of morality.
Can someone explain this?
Posted by: Larry Moran | September 24, 2007 10:38 AM
So how do you feel about Cornell biologist Provine?
http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/darwin/Archives/1998ProvineAbstract.htm
He argues:
BobL and RM
By the way if you think Calvin (or Calvinism) denies the free will, then you don't know jack about Calvin (or Calvinism). Arguing on the basis of simpleminded caricatures, the way most commenters on Pharyngula argue, is no way to go through life. There is a great deal of literature about free will in light of predestination. I'd suggest reading Jonathan Edwards on the subject.
Posted by: heddle | September 24, 2007 10:39 AM
That was fucking great. I'm still rolling. "Diddling my synapses"...priceless.
Posted by: John Danley | September 24, 2007 10:41 AM
And what's this "unfortunate history of atheism" nonsense? The only thing unfortunate about the history of atheism is that god belief, along with its stone-age mentality, has held on this long.
Posted by: chuko | September 24, 2007 10:43 AM
There's a sense in which you can't have objective morality without God. Having God doesn't help. In that strong sense, there just is not objective morality.
There'a a sense in which you can't have free will without God, and the same story applies.
Moral platonism and libertarian free will are just so unlikely, in any event ... and belief in God doesn't help. Still, this shows up what we're up against: the believers will tend support a package of ideas that includes all these ideas, plus others such as metaphysical dualism. It seems to have some psychological attraction for many people, but there's no reason to believe any of it.
Posted by: Russell Blackford | September 24, 2007 10:44 AM
What Crick is saying is that nothing you do is freely chosen.
Religion can't work (or rather, it becomes very uninteresting!) without a notion of "free will." Never mind that free will remains as elusive as the diety, they have to believe in it, otherwise all the sin and redemption and whatnot goes overboard and we're just meat robots getting jerked around by the Divine Plan(tm).
I've found that it's amazingly fun to engage the faithful on this topic because they think it's going to be easy and don't take the usual fall-back woo touchy-feely position until you start chewing them up. They almost invariably fall back on quantum intdeterminacy, which is a great big ole trap since you can corner them into the position that the hand of god (THOG) is hidden in quantum indeterminacy - which lets you slam their fingers in the door of divine 50/50 randomness.
Aaaah... I was at a wedding this weekend and got to have the free will debate with a californian new ager. What fun!
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | September 24, 2007 10:44 AM
I hate that silly 'everything is just chemicals' stuff. Sure, it's technically true in a way, but then, New York is 'just' a collection of buildings, doesn't really do the subject justice.
Posted by: Peter | September 24, 2007 10:46 AM
Russel Blackford writes:
There'a a sense in which you can't have free will without God, and the same story applies.
How can you have free will with god? If god "gives" you free will, then the chain of causality begins with god - an entity outside of you, and after that physical determinism and quantum randomness take over. Unfortunately, if the universe is deterministic there's no room for free will. And if quantum randomess is what you anchor free will on, I find it hard to see how a photon going one direction or another 50% of the time gives you the ability to break out of a deterministic universe. After all, the photon isn't you and if it's tossing dice for you, you're not really participating in a 'decision' are you?
Here's a fun trap: show me you have free will.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | September 24, 2007 10:49 AM
Peter writes:
I hate that silly 'everything is just chemicals' stuff.
Yeah. It's all atoms, even the chemicals. Saying "everything is just chemicals" isn't simplified far enough. :)
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | September 24, 2007 10:51 AM
Posted by: Curt Cameron | September 24, 2007 10:53 AM
If it were to be accepted that free will does not exist, then what happens to personal responsibility, law etc.? This would be a shattering worldview with what consequences?
Posted by: Shelley | September 24, 2007 10:54 AM
Those aren't philosophical implications of atheism, though. They're unsolved philosophical problems that have been around for thousands of years; some atheists just reject some of the standard theological attempts to sweep them under a God-shaped rug. (Others don't, because atheism has no scripture and isn't monolithic.)
Perhaps a better way of putting it is: a more rigorous approach to philosophy leads to questioning free will and objective morality *and* also leads to atheism. But it isn't the only form of atheism.
Posted by: Chris | September 24, 2007 10:59 AM
Larry:
Christian morality is founded on the Ten Commandments. They were inscribed on stone tablets - objects. Therefor, Christian morality is objective.
By contrast, atheist morality is discussed on the internet - a hotbed of porn, materialism, and immorality. Therefor, atheist morality is pornographic.
Posted by: llewelly | September 24, 2007 11:00 AM
"Objective morality?" Oh please, has this poor man ever read his bible objectively? The god of the bible is anything BUT moral, let alone objective! This Christian follows a god who is a serial murderer, an instigator of gang rape, one who lies and promotes deception to accomlish his purposes. The list of immoral acts goes on ad infinitum and finally ends with eternal damnation and the lake of fire for those who not in agreement....Hitler was more just.
Posted by: Lee Salisbury | September 24, 2007 11:00 AM
By the way if you think Calvin (or Calvinism) denies the free will,
Hedde,
Oh sure I've read that. I understand were it is coming from; you just can't let the "sinners" get off with a "I'm just the way God made me" argument. That would deny the Chosen Elect™ their fun when they were tormenting the sinners.
Posted by: Bob L | September 24, 2007 11:05 AM
Hitler was more just.
Brilliant!! And you're right. Simple argument: Hitler's actions were limited to the here and now. "God"'s cruelty and immorality is alleged to be eternal. Hitler may have killed innocent children but "God" sends some of them to eternal torment because of the "sins" of their parents. What a dick.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | September 24, 2007 11:06 AM
Is he though? We know for a fact that he's wrong all over the place - eg even just about what Francis Crick meant! However, is that wrongness definitively because he's stupid (and ignorant), or could there be a contributory component of dishonesty to his claims?
Posted by: SEF | September 24, 2007 11:09 AM
Well, he's right on one matter. There is no such thing as objective morality. Morality is social construct, and as such is entirely subjective in nature. It only appears objective to some because so many of us share a common subjective morality. Of course, I don't understand why he says that like it's a bad thing. As far as I'm concerned, the "objective" morality as described in the Bible isn't all that "moral" in many cases.
Posted by: Paul | September 24, 2007 11:11 AM
Those people who say they're not made of meat?
">They're Made of Meat.
Posted by: Ken Cope | September 24, 2007 11:12 AM
Let's try that tag again, shall we?
They're Made of Meat
Posted by: Ken Cope | September 24, 2007 11:15 AM
Yes, we all know "objective morality" is shorthand for "what I claim to be the only moral position is, objectively, the only moral position". As for "free will", that means whatever the hell it's claimed to mean by whoever is making the argument. Saying "atheism" implies a lack of free will is an argument I've seen in the past year, but "free will" is only a property that exists in a vacuum of incomplete understanding.
The Calvinist argument (sorry Hedde, I'm getting this from www.fathnet.org.uk) is that, because of the sovereignty of God's will, there is nothing existence that happens other than from God willing it to happen. Now I know a lot of theologists have made a lot of hay by conjuring up a lot of jibba jabba to obscure this logical relationship, but it seems at least as consistent as any other theological argument (and more so than most). Everything this critic blames on "chemistry" has, in the past, been blamed on "God's will".
Neither argument is terribly interesting to me, but it should be noticed that claiming "free will" is a property unique to, and somehow characteristic of, theistic thinking is a ludicrous position to have, when literally centuries of theists cannot resolve for their own selves exactly what "free will" is supposed to be.
If you take "free will" to be an emotional state, then it's absolutely true that it depends in no way on any theistic claim. In which case the entire argument seems a bit silly.
Posted by: RickD | September 24, 2007 11:22 AM
PZ, may I pay you the compliment of calling you Dawkinsesque in your ability to convey the passion, wonder and beauty that an understanding of science adds to a human life.
Posted by: Midwestern Gent | September 24, 2007 11:23 AM
Do people who believe in free-will believe it to be a uniquely Homosapien thing, or do they think animals have it too?
Those animals with monogamous pair bonding with their mate and offspring is strictly chemical, but our human bonding is special.
Special indeed! It's called "special pleading".
Posted by: Dug-Less | September 24, 2007 11:23 AM
Completely off-topic, but I'm loving your use of Comic Sans to denote inane drivel.
Posted by: MissPrism | September 24, 2007 11:23 AM
Sorry, this all strikes me as funny this morning. I'd just finished writing (and blogging about) an article in last month's Natural History Magazine about altruism among amoebas. Seems to me that a lot of those "moral" values Christians love to accuse atheists of lacking are not only independent of the existence or belief in a god, but are relatively simplistic and exist in organisms that they would never "lower themselves" to comparison to.
Altruistic amoebas don't die for the reproductive success of their local groups or 'families' because some long ago amoeba died on a stalk after asking them to follow Him. Rather altruistic behavior is a feature of fitness
What is it about the religious that makes them want to think they have something special or different that makes them superior in some ways to other animals?
Posted by: dorid | September 24, 2007 11:26 AM
Arguing about the moral and free will consequences of atheism is a logical fallacy end-to-end. It is simply irrelevant. It does not affect the truth or falsity of atheism whether it makes people run up their credit cards and kill cute bunnies or fund charitable foundations and feed the homeless. It is like arguing that gravity is false because it would mean people die when they fall off cliffs. And this affects the truth of gravity how?
It is no coincidence that for many years the best online list of logical fallacies was found on various atheism connected web sites. For some reason, theists consistently engage in logical fallacy. ;)
Posted by: Benjamin Franz | September 24, 2007 11:29 AM
Poor heddle.
Posted by: mk | September 24, 2007 11:30 AM
Wrong! Old Testament or Jewish morality is based on the Ten Commandments. Christian morality should according to Jesus be based on the saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (King James Bible Matt. 22:39) a precept that would appear to give a good basis for morality without having to bring any sort of god into the equation.
Posted by: Thony C. | September 24, 2007 11:31 AM
In one of his last books, 'The Astonishing Hypothesis', he flatly denied the existence of free will with these words: "The Astonishing Hypothesis is that you -- your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules".
The author only seems to have bothered to read the introduction to Crick's book and not the complete work. Had he at least browsed to the post script, he would have noticed a more complete and detailed explanation of Crick's view on Free Will. One that is vastly superior to the Christian version where an omniscient deity already knows what the future holds and those deluded in believing in this deity can't honestly say that they believe in "Free Will" -not when his son is due back any day now.
Ultimately, Crick writes in "The Astonishing Hypothesis" that Free Will is the culmination of both conscious plans and unconscious processes and computations and what causes us to act on a given plan over another is subject to common limitations -but the conditions that cause a given decision may not always be clear. The outcome, he says, is "the appearance of Free Will."
Posted by: Yenald Looshi | September 24, 2007 11:33 AM
I have to agree with some of the other commenters -- what free will? It's all really deterministic unless you believe there's some magical ghost in the machine. Of course, whether we have free will or not, it sure feels like it.
I would even go so far as to argue that without a belief in free will, we should be even more compassionate toward and understanding of our fellow men. After all, they are a product of their genes, their experiences, and their circumstances, just like you.
Posted by: Brock Tice | September 24, 2007 11:37 AM
This is typical of apologist tripe. No one and I mean no one posts more addle minded stuff than heddle and yet he insults what I see as the most consistently intelligent commentary of any blog I visit.
As mentioned above freewill essentially has to be some form of illusion simply due to the fact we are the sum of parts guided by forces we don't control. This was a great post PZ.
Posted by: JimC | September 24, 2007 11:37 AM
On a similar note, I'd love to see some kind tally of Fundamentalist preachers to determine in what proportion they actually quote the sayings of Jesus (or, at least, those attributed to him) compared to Leviticus and similar.
I'd be willing to bet that Jesus would barely get a look in ;)
Posted by: DrFrank | September 24, 2007 11:43 AM
Coming soon from the same author:
"Francis Crick Converted On His Deathbed, Too"
Posted by: Rey Fox | September 24, 2007 11:44 AM
To my mind it degrades Mozart and Beethoven and any person really to imply that any "thing" had a hand in helping them create their masterworks. They are just smart animals... and in some cases spectacularly smart and talented.
And as others pointed up, it denigrates all people to think that the only thing that keeps us moral is fear of retribution from an angry "god".
Besides which, those ten commandments aren't all that creative, frankly. Seeing as how most of them are just a guide for how to live in a society and a society increases my fitness... wonder where all those morals came from.
YAY for morals.
Posted by: Nutmeg | September 24, 2007 11:46 AM
"Does it diminish Mozart that he was made of meat..."
Your whole family is made out of meat!
http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000484.html
Posted by: Courtney | September 24, 2007 11:46 AM
"As mentioned above freewill essentially has to be some form of illusion simply due to the fact we are the sum of parts guided by forces we don't control."
But how does this impact personal responsibility and decisions in law? I'm curious about the end result.
Posted by: Shelley | September 24, 2007 11:46 AM
I will exercise my free will in awaiting an observable definition of "free will".
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | September 24, 2007 11:51 AM
PZ said: "What a silly, silly man. If anyone is naive here, it's someone who thinks atheists must all be amoral robots, and that unpleasant consequences mean you should reject the truth value of a claim."
He is a silly man, for all the reasons PZ and the comments have stated, but the above is also a tad silly. The letter-writer is correct that atheists can't have an "objective morality", but he never claims that this would necessarily make humans amoral, as PZ retorts with his "amoral robots" quip.
The battle to refute the drivel spouted by the godly shouldn't be undermined by us resorting to Straw Man argumentation, for what should be obvious reasons, in that the atheist position is founded in reason, not rhetoric.
Posted by: Quinn | September 24, 2007 11:55 AM
Who are all you bastards claiming to feel like you free will? If I had free will, I wouldn't have eaten that Ben and Jerry's last night. If I had free will, I would be jogging right now. If I had free will, my hair wouldn't be thinning, and I wouldn't need glasses. I have no more control over my brain, and the thoughts it produces, than I do over my hair.
The fun thing about thoughts, though, is that I can always make more of them, and I can identify with some and not others. So it's a hall of mirrors, and I can pick which reflections of nothing I like best.
Nobody's picked up Shelley's question -- what about personal responsibility? -- so I'll briefly address it here, and put the fears of anarchy and gang rape to rest. WIthout free will, society still has an interest in enforcing order, and that means punishing inappropriate behavior. You don't have free will and you couldn't stop yourself from robbing that store? Too bad; society needs to make robbing stores less appealing, so off to jail you go.
Secondly, enlightened socieities do look at environmental causes of things like crime (poverty, lack of education, culture, etc.) and attempt to address them. Free will freaks, like Christians, simply blame the individual and do fuck-all to prevent the problem except to make the victims/perpetrators feel like total shit. Witness the high rates of teen pregnancy in bible-belt states compared to lower rates in amoral atheists states.
"Free-will," or the pereception of how people make choices, is really the nub of two hugely divergent world views.
Posted by: inkadu | September 24, 2007 11:58 AM
Also, I know what PZ's talking about.
Just enjoy the ride folks. It will all be over soon.
Posted by: inkadu | September 24, 2007 12:00 PM
I like this game! Can I play?
"If you ditch belief in the Muses you must also, logically, ditch belief in the value of art."
Yipiiiee!
And on the morality question: if founding your actions on fear of a punishment or hope of a reward is morality, then trained dogs are moral beings.
Posted by: Andrés | September 24, 2007 12:01 PM
Hi,
Just to say, I'm an Irish Atheist, and I've written a number of letters on the subject to the Irish Independent - I do find it very tiresome to keep up with all the rebuttal that I should do (the letter PZ refers to draws on a letter I wrote, published Sept. 3 - see http://sjbrophy.blogspot.com), but rest assured, there are plenty of Atheists, humanists and freethinkers in Ireland (www.humanism.ie)
I'm sjbrophy, and my email address is that @gmail if anyone wants to discuss Irish atheism or similar - I can't promise that I'll keep up to date with this thread...
Posted by: Stephen | September 24, 2007 12:04 PM
Inkadu,
From a practical point of view, society locking people up for disapproved behaviors works, but logically, it lacks.
But you are absolutely correct about fundamentalists reducing all choices to "free will" and neglecting to address causes that lead to these poor choices.
Posted by: Shelley | September 24, 2007 12:06 PM
What is really missing from the atheist's arsenal is the ability to blame their actions/situation on someone or something else. We can't say the devil tempted me or god is testing me. Nope, we're responsible for our actions and situations.
Free will be damned, I want an excuse!
Posted by: Onkel Bob | September 24, 2007 12:07 PM
Nuggets from the "most consistently intelligent commentary of any blog:"
1) Free will is an illusion
2) OK, but how does that impact personal responsibility and law? (fair question.)
3) You don't have free will and you couldn't stop yourself from robbing that store? Too bad; society needs to make robbing stores less appealing, so off to jail you go.
But, but, but, isn't making it less appealing based on the notion that people will then be less likely to *gasp* choose?... Oh never mind. Let's stick with Cognitive Dissonance for $2000, Alex.
Posted by: heddle | September 24, 2007 12:12 PM
So can someone please send this guy a copy of Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves. Seems to me that would bring down his strawman quite quickly.
Posted by: AlanWCan | September 24, 2007 12:16 PM
I think those are personality integration issues, not theological issues. ;-)
If we allow ourselves to cast aside any and all sophisticated philosophical, theological, and biochemical arguments for a moment, I think we'll see one simple fact emerge: A hell of a lot of people can't bear to face (let alone embrace) a reality that doesn't include some sort of magical sky parent who guides, protects, and lays down the rules.
The existence of the sky parent relieves us of all manner of responsibilities and cares. It's very seductive, but so is heroin.
Religion is like our parents' basement. Many choose to live their entire lives there. Others prefer to grow up, move out, and make their own way. Someday I'll have children of my own, and what I'll want most of all is for them to grow up happy, healthy and independent - more to the point, non-dependent on their parents. I ask you: What parents with their salt would want anything less?
All the philosophical acrobatics required to integrate Free Will and Predestination is little more than the intellectual pursuit of dung. It's rationalization of an arbitrarily conceived theology based on other arbitrarily conceived theologies. It's a smoke and mirrors trick performed to justify the notion that we're all free to choose whether or not to believe in a sky daddy who will cast us away and condemn us to suffer eternal agonies if we do not. And if I slip a silver dollar and a slice of goat liver under the bed each night, the bogeyman beneath will not eat me in my sleep.
Posted by: Kseniya | September 24, 2007 12:19 PM
Why do you think the brain is not deterministic?
The brain itself can't be deterministic because it is not a closed system.
Even the universe itself, which is arguably deterministic and which our brains are a part of, is only deterministic on a crude and gross scale, comparitively speaking.
Posted by: Graculus | September 24, 2007 12:26 PM
Posted by: Chris | September 24, 2007 12:26 PM
Santa Claus brings me freewill every year at Christmas.
Posted by: Drake | September 24, 2007 12:29 PM
But, but, but, isn't making it less appealing based on the notion that people will then be less likely to *gasp* choose?
No, it's based on appealing to their natures, which in this case would constitute the sum of their experiences, environment, and genetics. A person's nature is changeable, but that doesn't really matter. If you know from past experience that a) breaking social rules leads to going to jail, and b) going to jail is unpleasant, and c) you don't like unpleasant experiences, chances are, you'll behave in an avoidant manner. This is standard, Skinneresque operant conditioning stuff.
I don't really believe in free will, because of the following thought experiment: If you somehow created a hundred copies of me frozen and dropped them in a hundred copies of exactly the same situation, would I behave in the same way every time? Yes. I'm a product of my experiences, environment, and biochemistry, which means that stimuli go in and responses come out. However, what gives the appearance of free will is that there are always more variables in any situation than human beings can (presently) account for, so it looks like we're "choosing" rather than just "responding."
I really fail to see why free will is a big deal anyway. Here's a question: Why do you care so much about whether you're actually choosing, or whether you just seem to be? What difference does it make, since obviously one or other or both of us can't tell the illusion from the reality anyhow?
Posted by: Interrobang | September 24, 2007 12:31 PM
Your whole family is made out of meat!
I'm not! I'm made of Soylent Green!
{whisper from offstage>}
Really? Oh, sorry. Carry on
Posted by: Arakasi | September 24, 2007 12:32 PM
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | September 24, 2007 12:32 PM
For a great book on free will, and the total incoherence of it in all of its forms, check out "The Problem of the Soul" by Owen Flanagan.
Posted by: Zak | September 24, 2007 12:33 PM
Nobody doubts that human beings have intentions and goals; the only question is whether those intentions and goals are products of some mystical "free will", or whether they're a more complex version of the behaviors common to related species. Do chimps have free will? Do they *choose* to strip the bark off twigs and insert them into termite mounds in order to pull out the termites and eat them? Does a dog choose to bark when strangers enter its territory? Does a tree choose to grow towards light?
Posted by: Chris | September 24, 2007 12:36 PM
Heddle --
Heh heh.
This is fun.
It all depends on how you look at it. If you don't believe in free will, then punishment is just another environmental factor determining the probability of an outcome.
In a world where people acknowledge there is no free will, there is still plenty of justification for continuing to do things pretty much the same way we've been doing them. Some things would change, but it seems that a lot of people have these ideas of complete and total anarchy that just don't hold water. It's pretty much the same nightmare scenario, in fact, they believe will come about if people stop believing in God.
Shelley -- I'm not sure what your point is. Seems to me if society wants to prevent stolen cars, locking up people who steal cars is perfectly logical. If you have a point to make, make it.
Posted by: inkadu | September 24, 2007 12:40 PM
Although the original article began with name-calling, "naïve atheists", I find it unproductive to reciprocate - no matter how warranted it may seem. In my opinion, referring to the original author as "silly" or a "shallow git", takes away from the discussion.
With that said, I found the arguments in this article to be unconvincing. One premise of the article is that the brain takes in input and returns an output (choice) that is not deterministic. How was this idea supported?
Two examples are discussed, falling in love and producing art. Although I agree that both of these processes are complex and that given the input, I would not be able to determine whether the author would have been in love or how Bach would write his next symphony, neither support the claim that our complex brains make "choices". These anecdotes, while pleasing to read in a blog, simply reaffirmed that the brain is complex. Does the complexity automatically imply the capability of choice? And how do we know that "no ghosts" were required for the above processes?
In short, the article seems to draw conclusions based on aesthetic preferences with little evidence.
If the author were raised by abusive, unloving parents who never provided, would he prefer the idea of spiritual beings who may exact retribution in the afterlife?
Posted by: Danny | September 24, 2007 12:43 PM
Free will is just a weird concept. That it has been bestowed on us is just silly.
That version of free will is bizarre and requires religion.
The reality that most of us have morals and laws we follow and choose whether we follow them is obvious. The notion that it would go away, if religion did, is assinine.
Posted by: Steve_C | September 24, 2007 12:49 PM
I Blame Clinton for everything.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 24, 2007 12:49 PM
Kseniya --
Oh, but it is all about free will. I like to think of people in environmental context, and I sometimes flatter myself with my ballsy atheist skeptic ways, but I probably don't have any more choice in the matter than my sister, who is an evangelical baby-machine. For whatever reason, I value different things, and that has driven my behaviors and decisions from a very young age. Maybe she felt more the presence of God during her church services, where I was just bored and restless. This led her to embrace religion, and led me to begin questioning it. My father is a skeptic Catholic hater, and I identified with him. My mother is religious, and my sister identified more with her. It's hard to say that any of us "choose" anything in a significant way, since the ground on which we are doing the choosing is so rigged one way or the other.
Does this mean, for instance, there's no point in arguing with people about religion? Maybe whatever cognitive-cultural tides that allowed me to be an atheist will eventually sweep them up as well. Maybe there'll be an undertow that drags everyone back into religiosity. Who knows. It's still fun to argue, though.
Chris -- Thanks for explaining my "appealing," word choice. I knew it would get me into trouble, but couldn't think of anything conversational enough to get across the behaviorist element. Ah! Maybe "aversive."
Posted by: inkadu | September 24, 2007 12:53 PM