What is Beautiful about Determinism?

The beauty of determinism is hidden in the tragedy and injustice of freewill. I don’t believe in freewill (but I do believe it is one word). More importantly than that, I don’t see ‘no freewill’ (“determinism”) as a miserable or stale thing. The implicit assumption (and explicit in the full question asked: “God gave us…

A Model Dependent Realist defence of Freewill

Model Dependent Realism, as articulated by Hawking and Mlodinow (2010) and Carroll (2016), is the idea that a specific and explanatory model represents a ‘reality’ and is ‘true’ if it can both account for extant data and is predictive. I have used this philosophy before to contest that determinism is the explanatory model that best…

Another take on Freewill

A good philosophy has considerable reach. By this, I mean that a certain philosophy may have been expressed in some esoteric and academic area, but it can be applied in other specific disciplines as well as in broader contexts. Notice, this is more than just saying ‘a good philosophy is always true’. Instead, this is…

Can God Stop Evil without Ending our Freewill?

The problem of evil is ubiquitous. However, this argument only works against certain definitions of a god. If you believe in a particular God that is incompatible with the nature of suffering then you should throw out the definition of God. Normally this is not what happens. People either cut their definitions of God or…

Does God Value our Freewill?

In my last post I explored the idea that it made sense humans would be free to act negatively towards each other, if God cares about our freewill. The main idea was that if you act on me and I will you not to then we live in a moment where you violate my will and…

Am I Free to Believe?

  I assume I am not the only person who a religious person has told words to the effect of “I can’t make you believe, you have to choose to believe”. What does that mean? I cannot think of a single belief I hold about anything, big or small, that I have chosen to believe. No,…

Could God Stop Human-Caused Suffering?

In an earlier post I outlined the standard 'problem of suffering' argument against the normal definitions of God and explained why the normal theistic defence defines God as less-than-omnipotent (which is my point, not theirs). I know you can get around some of the suffering in this world by putting it down to human freewill, but…

A Game of Many Realities: play along with me

If you go outside on a clear, crisp, cold night and look up at the sky you will see a few hundred stars. If you get out of the city, where the light pollution is less, you may even see a couple of thousand stars. Each star out there is, was, or will be a…

Freewill and Crime and Punishment

In my last post I explained my position that freewill does not exist. It is merely the illusion that appears when our imagination plays ‘what if?’. If I do believe this to be the case, and the idea that at any moment we could do something different from what it is we actually did is…

Freewill: the neurological weather pattern

I am a causal determinist. What this means I don’t believe you have freewill. Don’t take that too personally; I don’t believe I have freewill either. In fact, I think all atheists (in a broader sense of the word) should reject free will. Let me first state and explain my broader definition of atheism: one…