In the Speech & Reasoning class at the Living Faith Bible Institute, students are required to write an argumentative essay from a selection of philosophical topics. We’ve chosen a handful of these essays to share as blog posts and hope they serve as helpful resources in this modern age.
“I hope to convince you that free will is an illusion... And worse than an illusion, it is a totally incoherent idea. This can change the way we view morality and the conception of Justice.”
In 2012, Sam Harris used these words as an introduction as he took the stage as a keynote speaker during the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series, a series highlighting the frontiers of science and those who were exploring them. His topic was simply two words: Free Will. He’d written a book on the subject with the same title earlier that year, adding to his collection of works which started back in 2004 with “The End of Faith.” This was only one of many speaking series, articles, podcasts, and even blogs that this man was featured in as a proponent of “rational and scientific” thought. He’d started as a neuroscientist, but now he was put forth as a philosopher in many scientific arguments and discussions. This particular speaking engagement was focused on promoting his most recent book, but it shared the same goal with every idea that he defended for the previous 12 years: redefining the boundaries of morality through the lens of newfound scientific discoveries. This paragon of secular thought acknowledged that one of his personal goals was to destabilize the ideas behind religion as a whole, with Christianity as one of his largest targets. Biblically, Sam Harris was taking up the mantle as the champion of “science falsely so called” described in 1 Timothy 6:20. Like so many of his other arguments, I hope to address how this attempt to bend the concept of free will to his moral agenda falls short.
I want to invite you to think along with me throughout these ideas. Your opinions and thoughts on the words I type alone are stronger arguments for free will than any I could generate personally. Do you agree with the words and arguments you are reading here? Do you disagree? Are you forced into that opinion, or are you able to ponder and make decisions in response to ideas and Biblical truths that are discussed? By simply presenting ideas in order to convince an audience of a specific rationale, Harris inherently acknowledges the ability of the audience to hear and respond according to their best understanding. Subtly, this is an example of free will to listen and form opinions. It would be silly to attempt to convince your small dog that a leash does not exist, but, as he continues to run away from you in the midst of your explanation, you hook a leash to his collar to help him understand the lack of its existence. The dog, and owner, would both be comically confused. Before even looking at my further arguments, monitor your thought process to see if you truly have no ability to “decide” anything.
I also would like to note that this viewpoint from Sam Harris is new. Conceptually, free will has been accepted throughout the entirety of human history and only recently have scientific arguments sought to explain away that inherent observation. Historically, no arguments on this have been propagated widely in academic thought until century number 21. In our moral foundation, which is the Word of God, we see example after example of free will and the ability to choose between good and evil. Only recently has this argument against such even existed, and it is amazing how quickly Harris and his contemporaries seek to label arguments for free will as just another religious attempt to overthrow science. The positions held in this essay are the positions held by all of humanity for all of human history. With that said, we will also take the time to address some specific arguments we see in the book and the media push that surrounded it, and dissect why we should use our free will to decide against them.
For our specific response, the most common approach Sam Harris uses to argue against free will is to address two regularly accepted assumptions and seek to prove them incompatible with modern science and philosophy. We will look at them both here. The first
assumption Harris disapproves of is that we are free to behave differently than we did in the past, and we could have behaved differently in the past itself. The second is the assumption that we are the conscious decision makers in our lives. To illustrate this, the example that Sam Harris gives is that one can choose to become a policeman and not a fireman. If one were to go back to that point in time, they could have made the decision to be a fireman, or even a doctor, roofer, accountant and so on. Harris posits that this choice, and every one like it, is simply an illusion. Not only that, but your ability to agree or disagree with him is also an illusion. Harris does acknowledge that this is not an idea that comes quickly or naturally without explanation. The philosophical statement that choice is actually an illusion accounts for a great deal of the books, essays, podcasts and hours of Harris’ life. It requires so much time because all of us can recall choosing between two options, and the thought process that finally brought us to a decision.
The position that Harris holds is that we were not free to make those decisions, but rather they are a result of environmental and chemical reactions in the brain that end up with us behaving a certain way. Consider a Venus flytrap, which will close if certain hair-like nerves are triggered by a fly. Harris posits that human beings will live our lives based on triggers that occur in the past and subconscious present. Most of us are familiar with the “nature vs nurture” concept, and this expands the nature versus nurture argument into a biological nature and experiential nature. In this matrix, the only part of decision making that bears no responsibility for the outcome is the individual doing the action. It is the predictable next step the secular world has to take in order to completely absolve themselves from any moral responsibility laid out in the Bible.
Our response to this idea, apart from the fallacy of the reader using free will to consider it, is rooted in a rational and Biblical viewpoint. While in no way does this argument by Harris
prove that humanity does not have free will, there is use in recognizing the seed of truth that allows this idea to gain a following. It is absolutely certain that there are external factors that can impact decision making. It would be silly to say otherwise. However this grain of truth does not disqualify the existence of Biblical free will, and in fact the Bible supports the idea that there are different factors that impact the decision-making of every human. Look at Ephesians 2:
This passage outlines three particular influences on a human being. The world around us, the Devil (called here the “prince of the power of the air”), and the flesh. We have our flesh, which is the natural, tangible part of us. The chemical makeup that we walk around in does impact our decisions, and we can see examples of this regularly. Not everyone has the same body, not everyone has the same propensity to feel strongly about things, and not everyone finds maturity in specific areas easily obtainable. Our physical nature not only impacts our decision-making, but the world we live in as well. If we were brought up in a home that teaches biblical values and responsibility, we are much more likely to adhere to that lifestyle than someone who comes from a background of violence and crime. The existence of those factors does not cause our free will to cease existing. The consequences of taking these factors as the entirety of the will would result in legal and societal absolution of responsibility across the board.
The second assumption that Harris seeks to overthrow is that we are the “conscious decider” in these decisions. Harris illustrates this by asking an open-ended prompt (ie: think of a city), and then pointing out all of the options that didn’t enter into your mind to be considered (ie: why didn’t you think of Cairo?). See, he states, you don’t have free will because you didn’t even have the correct city enter into your consciousness to be considered. Once again, Harris has done the legwork to lay out how there are factors in a decision. He is correct in that we are not omnipotent or omniscient, and that we do not have unfettered ability to make decisions free of any kind of constraint. However, the gap still exists between the existence of limitation and the utter removal of decision making as a concept.
All that Harris has proved with this argument is that different people have different obstacles and different challenges to overcome in life. In order to prove that humanity has no free will, one would have to establish that these building blocks of experience and chemical makeup not only account for part of the decisions that are made, but they prevent a soul or free will from being a part of those decisions. Harris does not make this logical leap anywhere. It’s a gaping hole in the argument which seeks to overthrow a previously accepted assumption. Stating choice is an illusion and then not addressing how factors replace the will does not adequately back this up. This argument falls flat of disproving free will, as all it does is clearly define factors and then through clever wording attempts to elevate those to replace personal decision making.
The clear truth is that we have a biblical foundation of morality that we all must be held to account for. There are right and wrong decisions, and we have the ability to make them or miss them. Our hand is not forced, and we are not disembodied spectators of an autopilot driving our decisions. No quasi-scientific argument on decision factors or limitations should prevent us from
acknowledging this. Harris fails that logical test, and I’d invite any reader to consider and decide for themselves, with their blatant free will, that choices do indeed exist.
Andrew Best is a leader in the C&YA and children’s ministries at Midtown Baptist Temple where he serves alongside his wife, René.