First we shape evolutionary theory.
Then it shapes us.
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First we shape evolutionary theory. |
RELEASES
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For more information: March 8, 2008 Is Darwinism the New Calvinism? How many times can you get suckered by the same scam? How many times are we going to let a self-selected “elite” persuade us they’re the Chosen Ones and the rest of us have to do believe whatever they tell us? It happened with Calvinism. The Calvinist establishment claimed God had chosen them and them alone to do His will, which turned out to be making the rest of us believe whatever they told us. If you challenged their claim to be the Chosen Ones they accused you of being a heretic, a disciple of the Devil. And nobody wanted to be accused of that! Now it’s happening with Darwinism. A Darwinist establishment claims only they have the judgment to discern ultimate truth. And that truth is, that the rest of us don’t—don’t have the judgment that leads to truth. And, because we don’t have that judgment, we have to believe what they tell us. I’m talking about scientific determinism. The claim is, you and I don’t have what used to be called “free will.” So we have to believe what “science”—what Darwinists—tell us. If you challenge their claim to be the Chosen Ones they accuse you of being a heretic, or as that’s called now, a Creationist! And nobody wants to be accused of that! Without anyone making a big announcement, “free will” has been relegated to the supernatural. If you speak up for free will you’re accused of wanting to reintroduce the supernatural into science. It’s a surprisingly seductive claim, until you start to wonder, how come Darwinists can come to rational conclusions, and preach them and publish them, and the rest of us can’t? How come they seem to have free will, but we don’t? It’s that same old scam. It’s that same old claim to superior wisdom. Here’s that “superior” wisdom. According to science, only something physical can make anything physical happen. Free will isn’t physical, so it can’t make anything physical happen. Since it can’t make anything physical happen it can’t affect our behavior—it can’t make a difference in how we adapt to the environment. So natural selection can’t select for it. So it can’t have evolved. Therefore free will can’t exist. It’s an illusion. Consciousness, now that’s different. Consciousness does exist. But it has nothing to do with free will. Consciousness is simply how brain chemistry shows up in conscious experience. What the rest of us experience as “free will” is simply our awareness of decisions already made in brain chemistry. And brain chemistry, like any chemistry, is determined. So what we like to think of as conscious judgment is really nothing but pre-determined brain chemistry. Except for the Chosen Ones! Only they escape being zombies. Only their thinking escapes being determined by chemistry. Only they have the free will to weigh alternatives and arrive at “the truth.” Smell a rat here? Let’s unravel this scam. Start with science itself. Can science exist without free will? No. Science consists of discerning an unknown, coming up with alternative hypotheses to account for it, figuring out some way to distinguish between them, devising experiments to make that distinction, coming to conclusions, and deciding how to publish them. Free will at every step. So the process of science implies—no, demands—free will. If it didn’t, if it was just chemistry like dissolving a metal in acid, if its outcome was as determined as that, who would pay any attention to it? No one in his or her right mind! What scientists can do, the rest of us can do. If they have the ability to judge between alternatives and come up with rational judgments, so do we. Whatever it is that allows them to do that, we’ve got too. Call it free will, call it volitional consciousness, call it the rational exercise of choice, call it whatever you want, we exercise the same control over the physical world through conscious deliberation that they do. Now it gets interesting. Let’s agree that we evolved, I’ll go along with science there. Then free will did evolve. To be selected for, free will must have affected how we adapted to the environment. Therefore free will can act on matter. Therefore… Therefore science, with its denial of free will, is (to say the least) incomplete. And natural selection too becomes suspect. In a world where free will exists, in us at least, who’s to say it isn’t involved in the process of evolution itself? The creaky mechanics of natural selection may not be telling us the whole story of how and where we came from. Human nature may not be anything like the picture of it painted for us by science and Darwinism. Let’s start off by agreeing, being critical of Darwinism should no longer be a badge of shame. It should no longer automatically lump us in with the creationists. There’s a scam to be exposed, let’s not leave that to someone else. Let’s do the cleaning up ourselves. I’ve used the word “scam” several times. I’ve said someone’s claiming superior authority and wisdom in order to increase their own power and influence. Am I accusing scientists of planning a scam? Not all of them. I’m talking about a small group of agitators who I see perverting science to help them impose their world view on the rest of us. It’s a major scandal, and everyone with a true love of science should be concerned and work to put it right. The scandal is, limitations in how science works are being claimed to be truths about the world itself. The methods of science don’t work on something that isn’t determined, so science can’t “discover” anything about free will. But no one in their right mind thinks that means free will doesn’t exist. Except for those with an axe to grind. And the axe is—scientific determinism relabeled as “Naturalism” and harnessed to fight Christianity. The Victorian skirmish around the Church of England’s monopoly over entry to the universities and the professions is over. The need to need to invoke Darwinism in that skirmish is a part of long-ago history. The “Darwin’s bulldogs” unleashed in that skirmish, it’s time to call them in. And it’s time to rethink Darwinism. The passions it arouses are the best proof we have that free will exists. Free will did evolve. It is not supernatural. A purely physics-and-chemistry mechanism may not be sufficient to account for it. The search for how free will could evolve need not necessarily involve the supernatural. We may need a new kind of science. And a new kind of science education in the classroom. Let’s start by calling off the bulldogs. END |