Naturalism.org

A neuroscientist's views of free will and determinism

In the increasingly heated debate over teaching intelligent design (ID) in public school science classes, a central bone of contention is the nature of science itself. Those pushing ID say that those who rule out the design hypothesis as non-scientific are just wrong about the nature of true science. Writing in the Wichita Eagle, John Calvert, managing director of the Intelligent Design Network, describes the difference between true, objective science, and false, biased science:

Some of those sympathetic to intelligent design (ID) argue that science as it’s currently taught assumes naturalism, and further that science tries to rule out ID as unscientific on the grounds that ID invokes the supernatural. [1] But science makes no claims about naturalism. Scientists simply propose explanations which are accepted or rejected on the basis of their scientific merit.

If you’re not seriously scared by the current prognosis for climate change you haven’t been paying attention. As Paul Krugman put it in the New York Times (7/13/09):

It’s been my experience that most folks strongly dislike the idea that their character and actions might be determined, shaped entirely by the cause and effect relationships we observe in nature. They like the idea that they can cause things to happen, but if you suggest that they themselves are fully caused,[1] they often bristle. Determinism seems to put them in a fatalistic box.

The most common complaint against the New Atheists concerns their tone: contemptuous, dismissive, arrogant, sometimes vitriolic. How you perceive their discourse depends somewhat on which side of the debate you’re on, since no matter how diplomatic the debunkers of the supernatural, religionists don’t like to hear that their beliefs are unjustified. This is especially true if religion is central to one’s identity, as it often is among fundamentalist Christians and Muslims.

The Myth of the Self-Made Self

If you want to start a revolution, you can rally the troops by pointing out some manifest injustice perpetrated by the powers that be. You publicize a central flaw or contradiction in the reigning ideology which, by rationalizing the injustice, serves the ruling party’s agenda. Having stripped away the pretense and bad faith, the revolution institutes a just regime based on truth, and a new day dawns.

When we think about what’s real, physical objects are at or near the top of the list. Virtually no one doubts the existence of their own bodies, or those of others, or the myriads of material things that crowd around us. A 3-D physical object sitting out there where everyone can see it – my new coffee maker, for instance – can’t be written off as a collective hallucination, or at least not easily. True, a good sophist could probably convince you it doesn’t exist, but let’s set such considerations aside.

Introduction