Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant?: A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity

(Greg DeLong) #1

resist this idea. People don't get upset about the existence of trees. They don't get upset about the existence
of oxygen. They don't get upset about water. They know that insects serve a purpose. Yet people
instinctively (I use that word intentionally) reject the idea that they are completely predetermined, strictly
material robots. Even the people I know who believe in strict theological determinism don't ordinarily
talk as if they do; they say "maybe," "perhaps" and "fortunately" as much as everyone else.


There   is  an  intuition   that    is  difficult   to  shake.  I   refer   to  the deep    sense   that    human   behavior    is  not
entirely shaped by causal factors but is partially self-determining. It is an intuition that people hold
in practice even when they deny it intellectually. For example, we hold others responsible for their
actions.... We do not consider the fact that a person holds a different viewpoint than ours as
something they were predestined to do; and we exhort one another because we assume that people
can change their ways.

Clark   H.  Pinnock,    theologian  (2001)

But if people really had no free will, it wouldn't make sense for them to get upset about it. Their
robotness would be as natural to them as wood or dirt or cucumbers.


Peace,


Preston


Dear Preston,


Usually your responses have more depth than the last one. With this last note you have followed in the
tradition of philosophers who have never studied biology, raising issues that clearly reveal that fact. You
have made an incorrect assumption about my last note. It seems you think that I somehow do not
appreciate the im portance of environment. Please let me address that tedious issue, only because it seems
I wasn't clear enough in my last note.


The fact that I think we are extremely complex robots doesn't mean I ignore the importance of the
environment. By "environment" I mean all cultural and organismic, as well as physical, determining
influences on an organism's behavior. Even slight differences in experience can produce different
behaviors from identical twins. This begins from moment one. One of the twins is first out of the uterus.
The second twin's earliest experience of the world is the presence of another being who was there before
him or her. This has an effect on the developing neurons in the brain.


Every slight difference adds up to different personalities. But of course, the more closely related
genotypes possess more similar behaviors than distantly related ones. This subtlety I just pointed to is
commonly in the thoughts of biologists, but as you reveal, is met with incredulity or simple ignorance
from people who don't think about biology. The lack of consideration given to biology also is the reason
that so many people reject any notion that we might be robots. They have no idea what such a world
would look like since they can't imagine a robot that's as clever and complicated as a person.


I know that we who make such claims bear the burden to educate. But such an education is easier to
accomplish today than it was 100 years ago; more people would understand the explanation today. In 100
years it will be even easier to educate people on such a topic, because even more will be revealed from
neurobiology and behavior.

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