Daily Excerpt: How to Argue with an Atheist (TL Brink) - Step #5. Accept that you have free will.
Excerpt from How to Argue with an Atheist, by Professor TL Brink
STEP #5: Accept that You Have Free Will
STUDENT: Dr. Brink?
BRINK: Come on in, right on time.
STUDENT: I don't know if I can go onto the next step.
BRINK: Is there any difficulty with the four previous steps?
STUDENT: No, not really. I agree that humans are values-oriented, that reason and science have their limits, and that there are different kinds of values.
BRINK: Then you are ready for the next step.
STUDENT: No, you see, when you talked about values last time, and how we ought to choose to have a relationship with God, I realized that I just could not.
BRINK: You mean you think that God would not be interested in having a relationship with you?
STUDENT: No, that's not it. The problem is on my side of the relationship.
BRINK: Your side of the relationship? In other words, you are just not interested in a relationship with God?
STUDENT: I would be if I could just believe in Him.
BRINK: I thought we agreed back on step three not to use the word "belief," that it was all a matter of commitment.
STUDENT: Yeh, but is commitment really implied by choice or decision?
BRINK: Yes. A decision which does not involve a commitment of resources is not really a decision. It's like on the Millionaire
Game on TV: until it’s the final answer, there is no commitment, or a move in chess in which you still keep your hand on the piece, you can still take it back. You have to make a decision that you back up with a commitment.
STUDENT: That's the problem, I can't bring myself to commit to follow God unless I first convince myself that He is really there.
BRINK: It sounds like you are still functioning in the realm of intellectual belief instead of volitional commitment.
STUDENT: Maybe I am, but I found an atheist website that seems to make the same point. It says that we do not choose to believe or disbelieve in God. Rational people believe propositions on the weight of the evidence.
BRINK: "Rational" people? Remember the limits of reason, step two. The weight of the "evidence"? What kind of evidence? Empirical evidence? Remember the limits of science, step three.
STUDENT: I know, you have already covered those points, but I just can't make myself believe in God ... OK, I'll find a better phrase: I just can't convince myself that God is there, no matter how much I may want Him to be there. That would seem to me to be like childish fantasy thinking. I would like to have a relationship with God, but I cannot bring myself to think that He exists.
BRINK: Now I know that you are ready for step five.
STUDENT: No, we have to deal with this block first.
BRINK: That block is step five: acknowledging that you have free will.
STUDENT: Alright, I guess it does boil down to that.
BRINK: If you do not have free will, then you cannot really choose to have a relationship with God (or anyone else for that matter). Then your religious activity, like any other behavior could be reduced to the mere effects produced by causes beyond your control.
STUDENT: Is that what is called reductionism?
BRINK: Yes, and let me say up front that I find it to be a most limiting view of human nature. I reject the idea that any causal analysis of human behavior can explain away human freedom. The activities of the mind are not determined by cause and effect. Inference about causal sequences are determined by the activities of the mind. Indeed, it is because humans have an understanding of causality that they can stand outside of the process, and use it to achieve their intentions. They are no longer pawns of the causal sequence, but its masters, manipulating the specific links as means in order to achieve human ends.
When we acknowledge human freedom, we see that the effect pulls the cause. Look at the effect as an end, a future state that we desire to attain. Look at the cause as a present means that we can formulate. The desire for the end motivates the formulation of the means. Humans live in a world of values that are freely chosen, not behaviors that are end-of-the-line outcomes beyond our control. By contrast, reductionism is an over-commitment to a cognitive meaning that poses the danger of eroding our commitments to relevance.
There are several different varieties of reductionism. Remember hedonism? In the 18th century Bentham reduced everything to the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
STUDENT: I remember him from last time, and that we covered the limits of hedonistic thought.
BRINK: I hope that today we can emphasize the internal logical fallacy of hedonism and other determinisms.
STUDENT: How so?
BRINK: Bentham's hedonism says that people choose the most pleasurable / least painful alternative presented to them. That is what they invariable do, they will do, they must do, so it is a delusion to think that people can really choose freely. A person is no more free to "choose" than an inanimate object, such as a piece of iron, is free to choose whether or not to go to a magnet.
STUDENT: Yeh, that kind of hedonistic reductionism really would preclude free choice.
BRINK: So, if everything that a person does or says is just the product of his pursuit of pleasure and his avoidance of pain, what would hedonists say about a person's decision to seek a relationship with God?
STUDENT: They would say that such a decision is no proof for God's existence, but merely reflects a person's desires to lessen his own pain on earth, or have a more pleasant afterlife.
BRINK: Precisely. And so, would a hedonist take seriously any claims that anyone else might make about God?
STUDENT: No, such claims about God would be dismissed as being the mere verbal justifications of someone driven to promote his own pleasure.
BRINK: Right, but now how should I regard the hedonist's own claims about human nature: that all people merely seek pleasure and avoid pain in all that they do?
STUDENT: I don't get your question.
BRINK: Look for the internal contradiction of that position.
STUDENT: Now I see. If the hedonist says that everything people do or say is merely the product of striving to attain pleasure and avoid pain, and therefore need not be taken seriously, then the hedonist's own statements need not be taken seriously. The hedonist's own statements have no transcendent truth claim, because his utterances are merely his own attempts to assuage his pain or maximize his pleasure.
BRINK: Exactly. Hedonism is a self-limiting position.
STUDENT: Dr. Brink, how do you respond to hedonism?
BRINK: I am a defender of free will: the idea that people always have a choice in whatever matter. The hedonists say that people are confronted by the prospects of pleasure and pain and always choose to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. I agree that people perceive opportunities for pleasure and threats of pain, and that people are tempted to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. People can choose to seek the pleasant and people can choose to avoid the painful. In most cases, people should make these choices. That is the essence of utilitarian relevance.
I part company with the hedonists in that I deny that people are compelled to choose the pleasant and avoid the painful. I recognize that people do not always remain on the level of utilitarian relevance. Many of my patients are stuck at the lower level of ulterior relevance. They are not (yet) able bring themselves to choose the pleasant things in life because they are limited by the delusions of depression, phobia, or obsessive-compulsive disorders. These patients end up ruminating on the most painful thoughts of hopelessness and helplessness.
I also contend that people have the capacity to choose to ignore the temptations of pleasure and the fears of pain by opting to move in the realm of ultimate relevance. People can foreswear the instrumental values of utilitarian relevance for the intrinsic values of ultimate relevance. For example, in the Roman Catholic denomination, anyone who seeks to enter the Church as a priest, monk, or nun must make certain sacrifices, vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. You are supposed to give up some of the freedoms and pleasures of the material world in order to live a life more devoted to the ultimate relevance offered in the Church.
STUDENT: Do other denominations ask for such sacrifices?
BRINK: Not in the form of celibacy. Let me give another example. One of the best students I ever had in my world religions class was a football player. He must have been close to three hundred pounds, but it was muscle, not flab. He had been a star for the Redlands High football team, and then came to Crafton to get his first couple of years of college. His goal was to transfer to Brigham Young University and play football there.
STUDENT: So, was he Mormon?
BRINK: Yes, and very devoted to his religion. At the end of the semester he told me that he would not be seeing me for a while because he would be going on a two year mission for his church. I asked if he would still have time for football. He said that he would probably not have time even to work out, given the highly structured twelve to fourteen hour days that LDS missionaries commit to. He had to make a choice at an important point in his life, and that he chose religious duty over the fun of football.
STUDENT: Is hedonism the main form of reductionism?
BRINK: It was prior to the 20th century. A second, and related kind of reductionism comes from behavioristic psychology: conditioning.
STUDENT: That's right, Watson and Skinner, the Behaviorists, were reductionistic. They tried to reduce all behavior (human and animal) to conditioning: stimulus and response.
BRINK: Do you remember the limitations to that approach?
STUDENT: Yes. It could not account for either instinctive behaviors in animals or complex cognitive processes in humans.
BRINK: That is correct. But now for the sake of argument, I want you to imagine that Behaviorism could account for all human behaviors, that the Behaviorist could reduce any human action or mental process to a series of environmental stimuli forming a repertoire of experience for the individual organism. What would the Behaviorist position say about religion?
STUDENT: Well, I know that Skinner was an atheist. Didn't he once claim to produce religion in a pigeon?
BRINK: That's what he claimed. All he did was to use random reinforcement. The pigeon happened to be hopping on one foot when the reinforcing food pellet arrived from the dispenser. The pigeon kept on hopping in hopes of more food, and eventually more food came (in a random sequence unrelated to the hopping). Skinner claimed that he had made the pigeon superstitious, making the pigeon believe that its hopping caused the food to appear. Skinner then equated superstition with religious ritual, arguing that sacrificial propitiations were eventually followed by rainfall or other desired results.
STUDENT: I can see the logic behind that.
BRINK: It may explain why the Aztecs had such massive human sacrifices. Mexican agriculture is centered around corn. Even today, the corn crop relies upon rainfall. If the rain does not come by April it is hard to reap two harvests. So, each year the Aztecs would have human sacrifices to placate the rain gods. If the rains came on time, that was seen as verification that the right number had been sacrificed. If the rains came late, that was seen as proof that not enough people had been sacrificed, so the numbers would be larger the following year. Soon, there were dozens of victims, then hundreds, then thousands. Eventually, the Aztecs had to go to war with other tribes to capture prisoners so that they would have enough people to sacrifice. In order to ensure that these military campaigns would be successful, they had to sacrifice people to the war god, and to get enough victims for these sacrifices, they had to fight more wars, and ...
STUDENT: Sounds like a vicious circle.
BRINK: It certainly was. The neighboring tribes were glad when the Spaniards came and were eager to help them topple the Aztecs. So, I do not dispute the model of conditioning in explaining some religious behavior, especially that which is, from my point of view, pathological. But, how would the Behaviorists explain a religion like Christianity, where the sacrifice is not of humans for God, but of God by God for humans?
STUDENT: I really could not put that one together.
BRINK: Even when Behaviorists are not certain of the exact sequence of stimuli resulting in a given behavior, they remain certain that all behavior is the result of stimuli, it is just that they have not yet figured out which stimuli resulted in that particular behavior.
STUDENT: I guess they would always hope that some future experiment might be able to identify just the right schedule of reinforcement.
BRINK: Correct, that is the assumption of Behaviorism. Do you see a contradiction within Behaviorism, similar to the internal inconsistency you found in hedonism?
STUDENT: Let's see, the Behaviorist says that whatever people do is a result of conditioning (stimulus and response).
BRINK: And remember, for the Behaviorist, what a person says, thinks, or feels is just another form of behavior.
STUDENT: OK, so the Behaviorist rejects all aspects of religion (rituals, thoughts about God, theological arguments, sentiments, ethics) because these are just the results of conditioning, nothing more.
BRINK: Right, but now look for the internal contradiction.
STUDENT: How so?
BRINK: The Behaviorist's own view of human nature.
STUDENT: OK, I got it. The Behaviorist does not take religious claims seriously because he dismisses them as the results of conditioning, but the Behaviorist's own claim that all behavior is conditioned is itself merely the result of his own previous conditioning, so we do not have to take that statement seriously either.
BRINK: Well done, another reductionistic system bites the dust, due to an internal contradiction!
STUDENT: Dr. Brink, what is your view on Behaviorism? You seemed to portray it pretty objectively in class.
BRINK: Watson and Skinner were great researchers. Their scientific data and theories have led to powerful technologies for controlling behavior. I have used some of the resulting behavior modification techniques. In one case I used a non-reinforcement technique for reducing paranoid behaviors of a woman in the early stages of dementia. In industrial psychology, reinforcement increases worker productivity and safety behavior. In consumer behavior, conditioning makes for more effective advertising. I do not deny the mechanism of stimulus and response. What I deny is the simplistic concept that human thought, emotion, and behavior is solely determined by the cumulative weight of the stimuli of the environment. Response is the way that an organism feels or behaves. Causally speaking, a response may be influenced by a stimulus, but it is also a means to an end. I acknowledge that people have the capacity to choose to overcome their conditioning. It may not always be easy, not always successful.
STUDENT: Like in the case of an addict?
BRINK: Good example. Let's take the case of gambling, which can become a very powerful addiction.
STUDENT: Gambling is an example of variable ratio scheduling of reinforcement.
BRINK: Right, and that is what makes it so addictive. The gambler does not expect to win every time. His previous losing streaks have taught him that eventually he will hit the jackpot, and eventually he does (but he may go broke first).
STUDENT: I am always amazed that with organizations like Gamblers Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, they always speak of themselves as "recovering" addicts.
BRINK: Yes, and that is testimony to the power of the addiction, the reinforcement, and that it will be a lifelong struggle of will power against the addiction.
STUDENT: Don't they also speak of a higher power to help them because they perceive themselves as powerless in the face of their addictions?
BRINK: Right. That is why religion is so relevant. One of the best ways to break the power of an addiction is to stay focused on God: intrinsic values instead of inhibitory values.
STUDENT: So much for the reductionism of Behaviorism. Are there any other reductionistic systems?
BRINK: Staying within psychology, we could mention Freud.
STUDENT: Psychoanalytic reductionism? Let's see, that would reduce all human behavior to unconscious forces of sex and aggression.
BRINK: That's a good summation of Freud. Now, how do you think he would view religion?
STUDENT: That it is somehow tied into sex and aggression?
BRINK: Correct. Specifically, he thought of religion as society's attempt to control sex and aggression.
STUDENT: Then it acted sort of like the superego, the conscience?
BRINK: Exactly. Just as the developing child internalizes the parents' prohibition against sexual activity into the superego, so the individual internalizes society's prohibitions against sex (thou shalt not commit adultery) and aggression (thou shalt not kill) into religion.
STUDENT: That would explain the ethical dimension of religion, but what about ritual?
BRINK: Even before he developed a comprehensive theory of religion, Freud noticed similarities between religious ritual and obsessive-compulsive disorders. He lived in Catholic Vienna, and saw the repetitive aspects of structured prayers and the mass.
STUDENT: Was Freud himself Catholic?
BRINK: No. Although he was born to a Jewish family, he regarded himself as an atheist.
STUDENT: So, how did he explain God?
BRINK: God, the Father in Heaven, was but a projection of the earthly father.
STUDENT: Did that relate to Freud's theory of the Oedipus Complex?
BRINK: Everything that Freud said related back to the Oedipus
Complex. He even used this to explain aspects of tribal religion, such as totem and taboo. He saw totemism as using an animal symbol of a clan leader (father) who had been killed in a primal parricide. He saw taboo as a generalization of the fear of incest. Although he agreed that these repressive social controls were necessary for the eventual development of civilization, Freud argued that such repression occurs at a great price: the bottled up frustrations that lead to neurosis.
STUDENT: What did Freud think about modern religion?
BRINK: He figured that it would die out. Although he granted that it had served a useful social function throughout history (i.e., the control of sex and aggression) he thought that religion would no longer be needed in that role.
STUDENT: What did he think would replace religion?
BRINK: Science, or more specifically, his brand of psychotherapy: psychoanalysis. He thought that he had invented a more effective technique for the control of people's unconscious urges, without the heavy price exacted by repression.
STUDENT: I don't think that has happened.
BRINK: No, religion has survived. If anything, psychoanalysis seems to be more rare today than it was forty years ago, being replaced by other forms of psychotherapy (e.g., cognitive) and psychiatry's reliance upon medication.
STUDENT: Dr. Brink, what do you think about Freud's view of religion?
BRINK: When I was younger, I was very much oriented to humanistic approaches within psychology, so I dismissed Freud's emphasis on sexual and aggressive drives. The older I get, the more I accept that humans have a great capacity for evil: those drives may be stronger than I wanted to admit. I agree with Freud that religion is a potent force for the control of sex and aggression. My main disagreement is with his determinism, trying to reduce everything to unconscious forces beyond the capacity of conscious choice. Although I am not part of the psychoanalytic movement, I know that many contemporaries within psychoanalysis emphasize the role of the ego and consciousness. The goal, even for Freud, was not to liberate sex and aggression, but to control them by the ego: to consciously suppress rather than unconsciously repress. This is similar to the hedonist position: the sexual and aggressive drives are like the temptations of pleasures, and the individual must consciously choose other values. I see religion having a part in that.
STUDENT: So, contemporary psychoanalysis is compatible with free will.
BRINK: I think it has gone in that direction. An extreme version that reduced everything to unconscious forces beyond our control would suffer the same internal contradictions that we found with Behaviorism and hedonism.
STUDENT: How so?
BRINK: Try summarizing the psychoanalytic rejection of religious claims for the existence of God.
STUDENT: Freud would say, since everything is merely the result of our unconscious drives for sex and aggression (or the attempts to control those drives), when a religious person claims that God exists, those claims are not to be taken seriously, since they are nothing more than repressed frustrations.
BRINK: Right. Now, look for the internal inconsistency. Turn the argument back on Freud.
STUDENT: OK, I'll try. When Freud says that everything that people come up with is just the result of their sexual frustrations, we should not have to take Freud seriously, since what he came up with was just the result of his own internal sexual frustrations. Like everybody else, what he said about religion was just determined by his own Oedipal conflict.
BRINK: Well done, but I am not a reductionist. I am not going to dismiss the value of his ideas by merely citing the possible influences upon his thinking. I hold that the standard for evaluating any idea, whether it be the acceptance of the concept of the Oedipus Complex or the acceptance of the concept of God, is the usefulness, the value, of that idea for us today, not the origins of that idea.
STUDENT: Proof by vindication, not reduction to causation.
BRINK: Well said.
STUDENT: Are there any other systems of reductionism?
BRINK: Another powerful system within the social sciences has been the dialectical materialism of Marx.
STUDENT: Is that where everything is reduced to the dynamics of the class struggle?
BRINK: Yes. Marx said that the foundation of society was economic: how the means of production were organized. If one class owned the means of production, then that society had to be built upon the oppression of another class. So, in a society built upon slavery, the slave owners would be the oppressors (and the slaves would be oppressed). In the feudal societies of medieval times, the key means of production was the land, so the land barons were the oppressors, and the serfs would the oppressed. In modern capitalist times, the exploiters are the factory owners, bankers, and stock traders, while the workers are the oppressed proletariat.
STUDENT: And religion fits in as the opiate of the people.
BRINK: Precisely. Marx would say that every aspect of a society's culture, from government to art is but a tool for oppression, for keeping the rich rich and the poor poor. Religion also has this role: to distract the oppressed from their sufferings so that they do not rise up in rebellion.
STUDENT: I remember some of your refutation of Marxism from last time, but do you think that it has an internal contradiction similar to those we found in other reductionistic systems.
BRINK: Let's look for one. Summarize how a Marxist would refute claims made for the existence of God.
STUDENT: Since people are mere products of their social class, and all ideologies, including religion, are limited views of reality conditioned by the experience of social class, we do not have to take religious claims seriously.
BRINK: Now turn the argument back on Marx.
STUDENT: Since people are products of their social class, and all ideologies are limited views of reality conditioned by experience of social class, we do not have to take the claims of Marxism seriously, because it too is nothing more than an ideology reflecting the oppression of those who created it.
BRINK: Well said.
STUDENT: But do you think that social class can have some impact on a person's religion?
BRINK: Agreed. All aspects of a person's environment, from specific reinforcements, to parental relations, to ethnicity, to socio-economic class are influences in every area of a person's life: powerful influences, but not absolute determinants. Social class is one predictor of denominational affiliation. I would not say that it is the only predictor, or even the most important. Ethnicity probably has a higher correlation with denominational affiliation. For example, go across the farm country of Nebraska, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin. You see a lot of Lutheran churches because that's where German and Scandinavian immigrants headed. I grew up in San Jose when most of the people there associated with agriculture were of Mexican, Italian, Slovenian, or Portuguese background. Since these countries were Catholic, the largest religion in San Jose was Catholic.
When I say that social class is a predictor of religious affiliation, I mean that there is a correlation between one's socio-economic level and one's denomination. There are certain large denominations with people from every level of society: Catholics and Baptists for example. You can find rich and poor (but mostly middle class) among their ranks. There are some denominations where the correlation is stronger. The average socio-economic level of Episcopalians is pretty high. Methodists and Presbyterians are pretty solidly middle class. Pentecostals are more likely to draw from the working class, and Jehovah's Witnesses from the poor. Even among these denominations there are exceptions, so the correlations are not strong.
STUDENT: Is the correlation due to the fact that people are drawn to a denomination compatible with their class views?
BRINK: That may be a partial explanation. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses might be attracted to the idea that the poverty of this world will soon be replaced by a new millennial kingdom of abundance. Around the slums of Lima, Peru, Pentecostalism is growing rapidly because it promises miracle healings and financial blessings. However, there may be another explanation of this correlation. Max Weber suggested that one's religion might also have an impact on one's economic activities.
STUDENT: The Protestant ethic and spirit of capitalism.
BRINK: Once again, this is but one of many influences on a person's life, but religion can have an impact.
STUDENT: You mean that a person changes his religion and then may go up or down the socio-economic order?
BRINK: Yes. Mexico is a very fertile ground for the growth of Mormonism. Mexican culture has traditionally encouraged drinking as a way of consoling a man's sorrows, and tends to be more tolerant of drunken behavior. Many women see conversion to Mormonism as a solution to male alcohol centered social life. The men may agree to the Mormon conversion because they like the idea of an obedient family. So, the family converts to the LDS church, the husband no longer spends time with his drinking buddies, but focuses on his job, and the family prospers. There may be a ten percent tithe to the church, but that is nothing in comparison to the newfound prosperity that this re-focusing of values has brought. Not only did religious conversion bring about a new focus on the intrinsic values of religion, but it broke the ties to the inhibitory values of alcohol, and allowed a new pursuit of the instrumental values of work. I do not want to suggest that everyone in Mexico who converted to Mormonism fits this alcohol pattern, but it can be a powerful motive in certain cases. In others, individuals may have been motivated predominantly by the doctrines or rituals of Mormonism.
STUDENT: Different people may convert for different reasons.
BRINK: Exactly. As a psychologist interested in assessment, I know that individuals differ and the task of psychology is to try to understand those differences. Even if we say that there is one basic problem afflicting every human on the face of this planet each person (as a separate creature) has the task of fashioning a completely different and unique solution to that problem. People differ in their behaviors and chosen values, even if those people come from the same socio-economic or family background. The experiences a person finds himself in will not completely determine the type of person who results. Indeed, the type of person who has the experience determines how he responds to it. The same boiling water that hardens an egg softens a potato.
STUDENT: Does this tie in with the concept of Locus of Control?
BRINK: Yes, and that has been one of the most popular topics within psychology over the last forty years. The cognitive psychology revolution has emphasized that psychologically healthy persons do not see themselves as passive pawns of the environment. For example, have you ever gotten carsick?
STUDENT: When I was little and we drove up to Big Bear, the mountain roads made me sick, but since I started driving myself, I have had no problems, even on those same mountain roads.
BRINK: The difference is one of perceived control. When you are driving, you can foresee the curves, and you decide to turn. Some pilots who enjoy stunt flying get sick on carnival rides. The explanation cannot be that their sense of equilibrium is any weaker. It is all a matter of control. When they are piloting their planes, they are in control, but not when they are passive passengers in the carnival rides.
STUDENT: Yes, that makes sense. I also remember that I got seasick once on the boat going over to Catalina. But now I love to ride around on jet skis, going over wakes of boats. I am in control, and don't get seasick.
BRINK: Notice what a difference your perceived control makes. Originally you were at the mercy of forces outside of your control, but when you are functionally in control, there is no motion sickness.
STUDENT: So our origins are not as important as the freedom and control we have in the present.
BRINK: A consideration of something's structure or origin is mere description, and is entirely within the realm of conceptual meaning. Unless we can observe or infer something about its intrinsic value or functional utility, we are not in the realm of relevance.
STUDENT: Is this like a gap between stimulus and response?
BRINK: It is much greater than a gap. Think of the brain as a router capable of choosing from among different responses for the same stimulus, or trigger the same response from various stimuli.
STUDENT: If behavior is not reducible entirely to environmental stimuli, what else could have an impact on behavior?
BRINK: Certainly, inherited temperament and childhood environment are important factors in the development of the personality in childhood. But later on, the personality has some functional autonomy: the capacity to participate in its own development. A person's own choices impact his ongoing development. At age five, you are told by society that you must go to school. Your parents select the other children with which you will play. By age twelve, you are selected your own peers. After high school you choose whether to join the military, whether to go on to college, which classes to take. Eventually, you will choose a career and perhaps a spouse, and your choices will determine how many children you parent, and how you parent those children. All of these parts of your life influence the ongoing development of who you are. You become your choices.
STUDENT: I thought of one more type of reductionism, and this is the one I tend to agree with most. It all goes back to biology, chemistry, genetics. Take most species, from amoebas to cats, what determines most of what they are and do is heredity.
BRINK: I agree, the evidence is certainly there for the impact of genetics on behavior. But I hesitate to apply it to religion. If a person's religious behaviors and values were but the product of immutable heredity, pre-determined from the moment the sperm penetrates the egg, then this whole discourse is irrelevant, since neither you nor I can alter our genes and change our religion. Dialogue requires that we both have free will, the capacity to employ reason, and the patience to show tolerance. If either you or I missed those genes, the dialog is not going very far.
STUDENT: Couldn't genetics explain broad religious patterns?
BRINK: Are Jews Jews, not because of cultural influences, but because there is a Jewish gene? Are atheists born with some sort of genetic defect? How do we explain someone from a long line of Baptists on both sides who converts to Mormonism?
STUDENT: I have often wondered about myself. Other people from my background, and my entire family, seem to relate to religion pretty well. Maybe I have a recessive gene that skipped a few generations, and now it appears again in me, and that's why I have had such little religious sentiment.
BRINK: Let's look for some empirical evidence to confirm this theory. Have you even seen any survey data which suggests such a recessive pattern of genetics when it comes to religion?
STUDENT: No, I was just advancing a hypothesis.
BRINK: Of course the best way to test a causal hypothesis is by experimentation: the manipulation of an independent variable.
STUDENT: How could it be done in this case?
BRINK: Selective breeding would be most difficult to accomplish with human subjects. But the assumption of genetic influence on human behavior is that it works through the mechanism of anatomical or metabolic differences. A genetic predisposition to mental disorder leads to bipolar or schizophrenia if and when the individual develops metabolic imbalances.
STUDENT: How can that be confirmed by an experiment?
BRINK: We experiment in such cases by manipulating the variable of the metabolism. This is done pharmacologically, via medication. An experimental group is placed on a mood stabilizing medication and four weeks later it is noted that these patients are doing significantly better than the control group on a placebo.
STUDENT: So, how could we apply this to religion?
BRINK: In the absence of pharmacological experimentation showing that religious sentiments can be induced by medication, I have no basis for concluding that atheism is the product of a metabolic imbalance. Until I see evidence to the contrary, I shall assume that’s most atheists are of normal metabolism, of sound mind.
STUDENT: Then how do we explain why some people are atheists?
BRINK: Atheism is not a logical conclusion as to what is, but a choice, an emotional choice about what to do. Atheism is the decision to live one's life as if God does not exist. One's individual choice does not have the power to ban Him from existence, just to sever communications with Him.
Atheists have chosen not to pursue ultimate relevance. We cannot explain away their behavior by any reductionistic cause and effect dynamic: hedonism, stimulus-response, unconscious forces, social class, or genetics.
STUDENT: What about agnostics?
BRINK: They pretend to be able to decide not to decide. Agnosticism becomes a most untenable position after adolescence, because as the moratorium between childhood and adulthood ends, life choices must be made. If you claim to be an agnostic, you ignore the fact that you cannot be an adolescent forever. Life will demand decisions.
STUDENT: But why do some people choose to become atheists? Can't we say that they are compelled to do so by their commitment to reason?
BRINK: I have heard that argument made before, but I do not buy it. I recall one atheist cited some famous dialogue by Lewis Carroll. This is where Alice and the Queen were talking about the Queen's age. She tells Alice that she is over a hundred years old. Alice says that she finds that impossible to believe. The Queen tells Alice to try harder to believe it, but Alice says that she cannot believe things that are impossible. The Queen responds that believing impossible things is all a matter of practice.
STUDENT: That's my point. I just can't make myself believe about God.
BRINK: But Alice has missed the Queen's point. This dialog is not about empirical meaning. The Queen doesn't want to go down that road. If so, she could call upon witnesses, or offer some form of documentation, such as a birth certificate or history book. The Queen casts this discussion in the realm of relevance. It is not so much that Alice must believe (i.e., accept as empirically verified) that the Queen has a certain age .
STUDENT: What is the difference between belief and acceptance?
BRINK: I have confined my use of the term "belief" to empirical verification of facts. I say that religious doctrines are to be accepted (or rejected) on the basis of their relevance, their ability to express ultimate relevance. Acceptance deals with relationship and commitment. What the Queen was really asking Alice to do was to accept Her Royal Majesty as old and treat her with that degree of respect reserved for elders. In order to have a relationship with God, we must accept Him as all powerful, all knowing and all loving, even though we cannot empirically verify these points. Relationships boil down to choice, not belief. Alice refused to accept the Queen's attempt to define herself as old, and this put an obstacle in the development of the relationship. Alice's refusal was the result of her own choice.
STUDENT: So, if Alice wanted a deeper relationship with the Queen, Alice had to act as if the Queen were a hundred years old, and if I want a deeper relationship with God, I must act as if He is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and He exists.
BRINK: Exactly. It is all in the choice. The debate about God cannot be confined to, based on, or resolved in the conceptual domain. The real debate lies more in the affective and volitional spheres of human endeavor. It is not so much a question of what to think, but what to do. It cannot be reduced to the merely rational, but must expand to the trans-rational. Man cannot resolve this is by deduction, but only by decision.
STUDENT: But, take the existence of this chair in this room. It either exists or it does not exist, regardless of what I choose.
BRINK: Yes, but there is one important similarity, and one important difference between the chair and God. The similarity is that you must choose to act as if the thing exists or to act as if it does not exist.
STUDENT: So if I choose to act as if the chair does not exist, I risk bumping into it.
BRINK: You've figured out the similarity, now here is the difference. The chair is a physical object that can be studied empirically. We can verify its existence by objective, joint observation. God is not a physical object, and His existence cannot be verified by objective, joint observation. The chair is subject to empirical confirmation; God is not. With God, we just have to make the decision.
STUDENT: But with the chair, if I choose to act as if it is there, and it is not in fact there, then I could hurt myself when I try to sit down.
BRINK: We are getting back to Pascal's wager. If you accept God, and He is not really there for you, maybe you have lost out on some sinful pleasures. If you do not accept God, and He was there, what have you missed out on? That seems like a powerful argument in His favor.
STUDENT: Any way you look at it, it comes back to the necessity of making a decision: one way or the other.
BRINK: You can deny that you have the free will to decide, but you still do: that very denial is an exercise of your free will. The fact that I can choose to accept determinism shows that I have free will.
STUDENT: Yeh, that's like Mr. Douglas calling a cow's tail a leg, it didn't make the tail a leg. But tell me, why do people reject the concept of free will?
BRINK: I call it the loser's lament. People whose performance falls short of success, or who make the wrong decisions, want to absolve themselves of blame. So often, I have heard young women describe an unintended pregnancy by saying "It just happened" when it was she who decided to have sex, and it was she who decided not to use effective contraception. So often, when a relationship broke up, or when someone lost a job, I heard the person say "It wasn't meant to be" when the job or relationship was lost as a direct result of the person's irresponsible behavior. At some murder trials, the defendant whines "I don't know why I did it" or "The gun just went off." All of these passive phraseologies depict an attempt to shift blame. People would rather be passive and helpless than guilty of having made a wrong choice. Winners usually take responsibility for their behavior, attributing their success to their wise decisions and valiant efforts. It is the whining loser who needs an excuse.
STUDENT: Is this something like Adler's theory of inferiority?
BRINK: Yes. People paradoxically try to deny their inferior behavior by saying it was not their fault, because one is merely the product of the environment and/or heredity. Unfortunately, that statement proves the charge of inferiority beyond all doubt, for it is a concession that one had been inferior to the external forces that brought one down. The superior individual accepts free will and the responsibility for making wise decisions.
STUDENT: Determinists view free will as a delusion.
BRINK: Because they, themselves are in denial.
STUDENT: But can we prove free will as reality?
BRINK: We cannot scientifically verify the existence or the absence of free will, but since the concept of free will is relevant to human hopes and goals, we are called upon to commit ourselves to the notion of free will (acting as if we were free). Even if all of man's acts are predetermined, this does not relieve man of the necessity of confronting situations that require a choice on his part, or of living out the situation occasioned by his decision. Man must act as if he had free choice. The bottom line of free will is choice and decision making. We select an option, a course of action (but not where the road comes from, or where it is headed). Everyday we make a decision to behave as if we have free will, or to behave as if we do not have free will. Likewise, we must decide every day to behave as if God exists, or as if God does not exist.
STUDENT: Could determinism explain the popularity of the paranormal?
BRINK: Especially astrology! The escape from responsibility is what draws people to astrology (“the stars made me do it”). It would also explain the popularity of reincarnation (“karma from my previous life constrains my conditions”).
STUDENT: Are there any limits on human freedom?
BRINK: One such limit would be time. Time is one of the limits of man's finitude, a limitation upon his freedom of choice.
STUDENT: Does time even limit God?
BRINK: God transcends time. Indeed, He created it. So, God precedes time and may end time. Because He transcends time, only He can save us from the unidirectional chain linking our painful present and future with our past sins of commission and omission.
STUDENT: How do you understand sin?
BRINK: In the Old Testament, sin was comprised by committing evil acts. Think of the "thou shalt nots" of the ten commandments, individual bad acts motivated by bad intensions (usually selfish) and having bad results (for the community). In the New Testament, sin was comprised by a failure to commit (to God). A person's great sin was holding back from the absolute commitment to God.
STUDENT: Does God constrain human freedom?
BRINK: Not as much as He could. Man is free. God is sovereign. Man is not sovereign. So, man may act willfully in disobedience to God, but he cannot escape the consequences of his sin. Christian doctrine is that only God's sovereignty through the redemptive and atoning act of Christ can protect man from the consequences of sin.
STUDENT: So, you don't see the sovereignty of God, or the need to commit to Him to be a constraint on human freedom?
BRINK: No. A commitment is not a constraint on personal freedom, but a decision to use freedom in the pursuit of a worthwhile goal. It is only a constraint insofar as it may divert certain limited resources away from other worthwhile goals. Commitment is essential for success, and the distinctive trait of the truly happy.
STUDENT: After all this, I realize that I can still be an atheist. I have that right, that option, to accept that alternative. However, I cannot call it a "belief" determined by an objective analysis of the facts. I must admit that I am making a decision, a choice, by exercising my own free will. I can choose not to pursue a relationship with God or any church..
BRINK: That's right. It is a choice. Perhaps the Muslims have framed this question most clearly: God is so great and powerful, that a relationship with Him can only be conceived as surrender. It is not whether or not one "believes" in God, but whether or not one submits to God.
Remember how you began this conversation in doubt just a few weeks ago?
STUDENT: Doubts about God?
BRINK: When Descartes began to doubt his own existence, he did not prove that his doubts were right, but that the doubter existed. When we doubt that God exists, we do not prove that our doubts are right, but that God has given us a free will that may be employed as a capacity to doubt.
STUDENT: Before I go, I do have one more question. Although I agree that people have free will, and must make choices, suppose I had not agreed with you on that point. Would that have made religion irrelevant?
BRINK: No, but it would have an impact on which theological doctrines would be relevant.
STUDENT: How so?
BRINK: There are some Christian theologians who take the position that the sovereignty of God is so great that it necessarily constrains the freedom of man. John Calvin argued for predestination: that man was so fallen (depraved was his word) that he could not, on his own, muster the "faith" (the decision or the commitment) to call upon God for salvation.
STUDENT: So how did Calvin explain those persons who came to God?
BRINK: Since those people were too fallen, too weak, too depraved to decide to come to God on their own, their decision and commitment to accept Him must be attributed to His power. In His mercy, He has decided to save some people.
STUDENT: Only some people get saved? not all?
BRINK: According to Calvinist theology, only some, those whom God has predestinated from the beginning of time. We do not know whom has been saved or even how many have been saved.
STUDENT: Doesn't predestination may make man less than man (by stripping him of his free will), and God less than God (by stripping him of His mercy)?
BRINK: Let me respond by reiterating that I am not a Calvinist. I accept the position of Aquinas and the Jesuit theologians of the Roman Catholic Church that the salvation of man requires the active participation of human will, and that the intension of God is that all men be saved and brought back into relationship with Him, that any lack of salvation is the willful disobedience of man, not the predestination of God. But in defense of Calvinism, let me say that it does not deny God's mercy. Calvinism views all men as fallen, depraved sinners who in their natural state have no relationship with God, and have therefore merited eternal hell. It makes God merciful that He, in his great mercy, has chosen to predestinate some for salvation.
STUDENT: Is there anything good about the Calvinist position?
BRINK: One very appealing doctrine is that of secured salvation.
Catholics and Methodists say that even after I am baptized, if I use my free will to turn against God, and decide to reject Him, I can lose my salvation. Calvin says that my salvation is entirely God's decision, and there is nothing I can do to resist His Grace: once saved, always saved.
STUDENT: What about people who are members of the church, and then go and commit obvious and heinous sins. Are they still saved by God?
BRINK: Calvin would say that they never were saved, but just pretended to be. God knew them to be fakers who would eventually reveal their true selves with bad behavior.
STUDENT: So, can I observe a man’s bad behavior and infer that he is not going to heaven?
BRINK: I’m not sure it’s that simple of an inference. Remember: only God knows for sure whom He has predestinated.
STUDENT: So, I would have to decide whether to become a Calvinist or a Catholic?
BRINK: Or belong to some other church. But in the debate between Catholic and Calvinist over whether Salvation is to be considered "secured" by God or dependent upon our own free will, it would be better to emphasize the great area of agreement between these two theological positions, instead of the murky area of misunderstanding. Even from the Catholic perspective I could say that my salvation is "secured" in the sense that God is unwaveringly open to receive my repentance and return to the fold. So, both the Calvinist and Catholic agree as to God's position in the relationship. As to my role in the process, the Calvinist says that it is for no other man to know whether or not I am to be saved, while the Catholic would say that it is for no other man to decide.
STUDENT: OK, can we meet again next week?
BRINK: Certainly, if we both choose to come.
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