Free Will

Victor Stenger is a physicist, and a grand old intellect in the scientific and atheist communities. I don't generally pay much attention to the ongoing scientific/atheist dialogue, but Victor is occasionally published in the Huffpost. He often discusses what he sees as a conflict between science and religion. I always enjoy his columns. In his latest, he confronts the idea of free will.

Stenger argues, taking a cue from Sam Harris' recent book, that free will is an illusion, that scans show, all the decisions we make have antecedent material action in the brain, implying all our decisions originate in the unconscious, and so our conscious selves are not truly responsible for our actions. If that sounds a little odd, it is more or less in keeping with the idea of the ego. Victor is going a little further, suggesting the ego doesn't have any say in what we do or how we act. He ends the piece by suggesting that because we are not entirely aware of the origin of our actions, our justice system needs to change: “Given that we don't have libertarian free will that sets us above causal laws, it would seem that our largely retributive moral and justice systems need to be re-evaluated, and maybe even drastically revamped.” If that sounds like an honest but tortured argument to you, it is entirely in keeping with logic. Logic being not necessarily on unfriendly terms with torture. If you don't believe that, then you don't know anything about the battle between determinism and indeterminism.

If that battle has a ring of fascism to it, well, you might then wonder too, about the vision of Sam Harris and Victor Stenger. Not that they are fascists, not at all. Good men, I have no doubt. But their vision orphans us in a very cold, hard, empty universe, and not only that, it makes us hapless actors directed by unknowable forces, and not just unknowable forces, entirely material (as if it wasn't bad enough when the gods controlled our actions.) And if you know anything about science, then maybe you know, as science as an institution teaches, this material universe originated accidentally, for no reason, without meaning. And so, material is basically dead matter, open to manipulation. And then you just might ask yourself, if that is the case, then that would make this culture one vast manipulation, wouldn't it? People capitalizing on the manipulation of consumers...unto...ecological...oblivion.

As if it wasn't bad enough that science separated mind from body, now they've gone and separated us even from mind (with no spirit to cling to). It's like the final preparation for total enslavement. The lobotomy before the final fall; to become gristle, for techno-fascist mills.

If it seems like I'm being a little harsh on Victor Stenger, and Sam Harris, it's only that I don't see much of a difference between scientific atheism and religion, both equally separating us from our bodies, and the earth we inhabit. As if we are only mind, or spirit, as if the body hardly mattered. That, and reading Sam, I can't help feel like he embraces Hobbes conception of the brutality of nature, and the mythology of Progress without question, and so he is blind to how well science and institutional religion, and fiat currency and empire and militarism, have co-existed. And I have the sense that Scientists have betrayed quantum physics, not being able to conceive of the true implications, and so dismissing them.

Quantum physics has taught us many things, but most of what it has to offer, after one hundred years, has not yet trickled down to the general consciousness. Imagine for a moment: the atoms that are the fundamental structure of your bones, making them as hard as they are – if you inflated one of the quadrillions of atoms in your bones, to the size of an apple, the next bone-atom closest to it, would be a couple of city blocks away. Everything in between is empty space – as is most of the interior of the atom. We conceive of matter as dense. Matter is energy, at it's core. Quantum physics tells us, the void, empty space, is denser energetically than matter, by an infinitude. Ponder that for a moment - energy vastly denser than what you are, flowing through you now, in every moment...and now read Victor Stenger's conception of the quantum interaction at the core of your being: “It is easy to demonstrate quantitatively that quantum effects in the brain are not significant.” If that has a ring of autocratic command and control, you would not be mistaken.

Science has not yet accounted for angular momentum. Which is to say, we do not know why the earth spins, or the sun, or the motion of the earth and all the planets revolving around the sun, or the galaxy spinning, or any of the spiral phenomena throughout the universe. Circles, spirals, a fundamental construct of cosmic, material forces - look to the DNA! - and science cannot account for it, effectively dismissing it as unimportant. That is the square world you live in.

You are profoundly more energetic than either science or religion as institutions dictating, would allow. Because science, and religion, as institutions, depend on debt bondage and wage slavery to exist. A truly free people, alive and awake to the world they inhabit, would put up with neither. So I guess the question is, how can we keep hold of what science has wrought, that we might live well on this earth, without putting up with institutional debt bondage and wage slavery? As for religion as an institution, I could pretty well dispense with it. Monotheism especially is inherently tyrannical. Call it extinct.

P.S. You know you've struck a chord, when this comment on Huffpost, on Stenger's article,

Victor,

With due respect to you and Sam Harris, your vision leaves us orphaned in a cold, hard, dead universe, and not only that, hapless actors defined by unconscious forces, entirely material. Existential, fertile thought, for the devious actors you allude to. And, if what you say is true, then that would make this culture fundamentally manipulated. People capitalizing on the manipulation of consumers...unto...ecological...oblivion.

results in this:

SecularAdvocate

Search "The God Trick" on youtube

"With due respect" always precedes an insult, don't you find?

And with due respect to you, William, if you cannot contemplate the spiritual thrill of the understanding of the truth and would rather marinade yourself in a sad little saccharine of lies, do us all a favour and keep your poisonous views to yourself. Don't try and infect other people with the dysfunction that's eroding your spiritual nature. It's not nice, it's not big, and when you make every effort to make it look clever by weaving a lot of big words in to your little injection of poison to the zeitgeist, it's not just not clever, it's a little bit evil. [the emphasis in italics is mine]