Thoughts on Free Will, part 3
Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Stephen Kaufman, M.D., Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)

Thoughts on Free Will, part 3

I would like to consider some objections to the position I discussed last week. I argued that the decision-making process seemed to involve forces over which we have no control, and therefore it does not appear that we have free will.
 
One might argue that our choices are not controlled by predictable, determined physical laws and that chance plays a role in how material objects behave. This might be true, but chance doesn’t seem to open any doors to free will. It only suggests that human decisions can never be predicted with 100% certainty.
 
A better argument, in my opinion, relates to the materialistic theory about human decision making that I described last week. The theory posits that forces over which we have no control dictate our decisions, and this leads inexorably to the conclusion that we don’t have free will. Perhaps this theory about the decision-making process is faulty. I will consider that possibility next essay.

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Go on to: Thoughts on Free Will, part 4
Return to: Reflection on the Lectionary, Table of Contents

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