Determined to Deny Your Freedom

Why determinism is one of the most ludicrous philosophical errors known to man

From the Rijksmuseum collection

I have seen Richard Dawkins’ name pop up again in the media recently. Apparently he is conducting posh cruises in which guests are wined and dined, oohing and aahing at the beauty of Greek islands and sunsets while hearing lectures on why there is no God, no spiritual soul, no ultimate meaning, but only selfish genes reducible to atoms and void. It would seem that Dawkins and his shipmates are being forced, by the ineluctable urgings of their genetic material, to go on cruises where they may seem to revel in seeming wonders of the world, enjoying seeming friendships and seeming conversations.

The self-contradictions abounding in materialism or materialist reductionism are legion. Today I should like to point out the reasons why determinism­ is false. Most broadly speaking, determinism is the theory that the history of the world — all events and their order of occurrence — is fixed and unitary, or, in short, there is only one possible history of the world down to every last detail. Determinism arises from a mistaken belief that modern science, especially physics, has proved that all reality is material and operates according to fixed laws of action and reaction within a closed or finite system; any event of any sort is fully explainable (and thus, in principle, predictable) by a preexisting chain of physical events necessitating it.

While “determinism” is not an everyday word, we feel the effects of this philosophical view every day, usually in the unspoken assumptions of popular “scientific” journalism. It is helpful to be aware of what it involves and why it is untenable, for, in a world where science has been elevated to the status of a quasi-religion and its spokesmen to the rank of high priests, we are bound to encounter people who hold determinism to be true (not recognizing, to begin with, that truth and falsehood are not attributes of matter). Since the attitude or frame of mind underlying determinism strikes at the root of religion as such, it impedes conversations about anything — God and the human soul, Christ and the Church, sin and grace, even good and evil — that is not strictly empirical or susceptible of laboratory analysis.

Here’s a promotional image used by Dawkins to entice customers to his Foundation for Reason & Science cruise

Science Explains It All…