Reply to Free Will Deniers: Show Me

auto accident, behavior, Belief, brains, Chemistry, choice, Clarence Darrow, Culture & Ethics, Darwinian evolution, deterministic free will, faith, free will, free will deniers, ham sandwich, human beings, Jerry Coyne, LARPing, Ludwig Wittgenstein, materialists, Meaning, Neuroscience & Mind, parking lot, philosophers, physics, physiology, Politics, rain, Robert Sapolsky, Sam Harris, Stephen Cave, The Blue Book
If you carelessly dent a genuine free will denier’s car in a parking lot, he wouldn’t hold you responsible any more than he’d hold your car responsible. Source
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Freethinking Cannot Be Darwinized

1984, Ahmed Shaheed, antiracists, Bertrand Russell, Big Brother, C.S. Lewis, causation, clinical psychology, Darwinian evolution, Enlightenment, Evolution, free speech, free will, George Orwell, J.P. Moreland, Keith Stanovich, law enforcement, mental fertility, mental immunity, mental integrity, mental privacy, Miracles (book), neuropsychology, Neuroscience & Mind, Nicholas Caputo, North Korea, nudging, Simon McCarthy-Jones, The Conversation, The Design Inference, theists, thought police, thoughtspeech, Timothy Stratton, Trinity College Dublin, United Nations, William Dembski, William Provine, Winston Ewert, Woodrow Wilson
An otherwise good essay on the human right to freedom of thought falls into a Darwinian trap of illogical causation. Source
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Happy New Year! No. 1 Story of 2023: Joe Rogan and Stephen Meyer Talk Science and Faith

aliens, Bible, Brian Greene, Bryan Callen, determinism, Faith & Science, faith and science, free will, Intelligent Design, interviews, James Webb Space Telescope, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience, language, Michio Kaku, miracles, multiverse, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Podcasts, psychedelics, Return of the God Hypothesis, Richard Dawkins, Sean Carroll, Sir Roger Penrose, Spotify, Stephen Meyer, Summer Seminars on Intelligent Design, Time magazine, transcendence
For more than three hours, Rogan asked questions about the scientific argument for the reality of God, as well as Meyer’s reasons for believing the Bible. Source
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No. 6 Story of 2023: On Free Will, ChatGPT4 Blows Away Atheist Sam Harris

atheists, Being as Communion, Belief, brain, ChatGPT4, consciousness, Culture & Ethics, decision-making, determinism, free choice, free will, illusion, irony, Judgment, mind, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Persuasion, reality, Reasoning, Sam Harris, The Design Inference, Winston Ewert, YouTube videos
Yes, the irony here is palpable, and I’ve long been critical of Harris’s view of free will as an illusion. Source
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Why Free Will Denial Is Self-Refuting

action potentials, Alain Aspect, Anton Zeilinger, atheists, brain states, cellular metabolism, chance, Chemistry, Culture & Ethics, determinism, Evidence, fluid dynamics, free will, government, Jerry Coyne, John Clauser, John Stewart Bell, Justice, logic, Love, marriage, meat robot, molecules, morality, neurochemistry, neuroscience, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, relationships, spilled ink, truth
The only "scientific" basis for the denial of free will is determinism, the theory that every change in nature is determined prior to its occurrence. Source
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Why Did God Put That Tree in the Garden of Eden?

determinism, free will, free will theodicy, garden of eden, Problem of Evil, Problem of Hell, Punishment, rebellion, Theology and Christian Apologetics, tree of the knowledge of good and evil
God created humans in a state of sinless perfection, but all of that changed when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:15-17 ESV). So why did God put that tree in the Garden in the first place? Not only that, He put it right in the middle of the Garden! It wasn’t…
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Mind, Brain, Soul: What’s the Difference? Find Out at the 2023 Westminster Conference

brain, Center for Science and Culture, Darwin Day in America, Faith & Science, faith and science, free will, John West, materialists, Michael Denton, Michael Egnor, mind, Neuroscience & Mind, physiology, Redeeming Science, Sam Harris, sexuality, society, soul, Stony Brook University, The Miracle of Man, theology, Vern Poythress, Westminster Conference on Science and Faith, Westminster Theological Seminary
Sam Harris has said that “You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.” Source
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New Course on Evolution Challenges Group-Think with Scientific Skepticism

biological origins, biology, cell biology, DiscoveryU, Education, empirical science, Evidence, Evolution, fear, free will, God, group-think, heretics, Icons of Evolutions, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Wells, materialistic science, molecular biology, obedience, origin of life, Orthodoxy, religious studies, skepticism, spirit, The Design of Life, The Myth of Junk DNA, totalitarian science, UC Berkeley, Yale University
Consider spending the time — 40 lessons with accompanying quizzes to check your progress — to weigh the evidence for yourself. Source
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Sean Carroll: “How Could an Immaterial Mind Affect the Body?”

amino acids, analgesic, Aristotle, arthritis, biology, body, causation, chirality, Darvon, documentary, efficient cause, enantiomer, final cause, formal cause, Francis Bacon, free will, individuation, Johns Hopkins University, libertarian free will, material cause, matter, mind, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, penicillamine, philosophy, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, quantum mechanics, sculptor, sculpture, Sean Carroll, statue, trailer
Aristotle noted that when we think carefully about natural causes we see that there are four distinct ways that causes can lead to effects in nature. Source
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Can Animals Be Held Criminally Responsible?

American Philosophical Quarterly, animal rights, animals, bears, cannibalism, consciousness, crime, Culture & Ethics, defendants, Ed Simon, free will, human exceptionalism, humans, moral agency, moral capacity, morality, Neuroscience & Mind, Nonhuman Rights Project, plaintiffs, Psyche, Raegan Scharfetter, responsibility, science
While the idea is handled provocatively in philosophy literature, in practice, animals are envisioned as plaintiffs, not defendants, in animal rights cases. Source
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