Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist

    Determinism has had so much religious influence that participants have lost their way in philosophical
    discussions. Determinism has grown to be a misunderstood notion that is used by all to prop up their
    theories, but then defended by few when push comes to shove. On the one hand, we’d like to think that,
    given sufficient information, we can predict certain events and trends insinuated by statistics or just plain
    intuition. On the other, we refuse to believe that the individual is bound by these rules and probabilities.

    The vision that comes to mind is a herd of buffalo stampeding towards a cliff. We concede that each bull
    and cow has free will, but we throw in a caveat that nevertheless an observer can predict the fate of the
    entire herd. The reason for this, so the argument goes, is that despite that a cow can choose to do her
    own thing, in retrospect she decided to follow the herd. Nobody likes to think that God pulls our strings,
    or really believes that individuals do not have the will to decide on their own whether to go left or right.
    This would shift all responsibility to God, and what would become of justice then? Therefore, the
    religionist has designed ludicrous arguments to show that determinism does not operate at the expense
    of free will, and continues to live at peace with both heaven and hell.

    There is, however, one sense in which the theist is correct: scientists tend to treat determinism and free
    will as antonyms. If I have the liberty to do what I want, then God should not be able to know what I am
    going to do next. In his debate with Sagan, when Mayr argues that Man is a remarkable coincidence, he is
    putting evolution in this context. He is tacitly referring to tactical free-will factors. He is saying that if
    something had occurred along the way, that if mitochondrial Eve (Gen. 2:22) had decided to go left
    instead of right one day, Man would not be here. Therefore, Man was not predictable.

    However, there is something troubling with tactical free will in the general framework of strategic
    determinism. It confuses an existing movie with what an actor may do during filming. Determinism does
    not necessarily contradict free will because it is not a predictable process in the usual sense in which we
    think of prediction. Determinism is ‘predictable’ only in retrospect. Again, the scientists and philosophers
    confuse predictions with explanations. Predict, we predict the future. Explain, we explain the past.
    Determinism, in the sense used by Mayr, has to do with the past. The problem is language. Mayr is not
    communicating his ideas rationally because he has stealthily and unwittingly amended the definition of
    this strategic word retroactively. He is not using the word 'predict' consistently (i.e., scientifically).

    Take, for example, a bucket full of water. If you keep it at below 0°C, at normal atmospheric pressure, for a
    certain length of time, you will eventually end up with ice.  This means that we can venture a prediction
    concerning a liter of ice that sits under such conditions. We are not predicting whether the temperature
    will decrease or whether man can prevent the ice from freezing (free will). I am merely saying that if an
    only if (IFF) we follow these instructions to the letter and all the assumptions hold, ice will inevitably form.
    Hence, before the temperature starts dropping I can predict the outcome of the experiment.

    However, a more important lesson to be learned, and one which seems to have escaped the
    establishment, arises from the retrospective perspective, the sense in which philosophers treat
    determinism in their circular debates. The lesson is that if I come across a chunk of ice, I should infer that
    the temperature dropped sufficiently for this volume of water to have changed its physical configuration.
    In other words, I can 'retroactively' explain the necessity of the ice and the reason for its presence by
    merely knowing the factors that go into making ice. The key to this insight is knowing exactly what factors
    cause water to turn into ice.

    Let me run that by again for those who didn't catch it. This time I'll use a less obvious example. An
    integrated circuit – popularly called a chip – takes a few weeks to be manufactured. All the engineers
    involved in the design and process write specifications that give operators guidelines on what to do at
    each step for the chip to come out right at the end of the cycle. Hence, these engineers can 'predict' that
    IFF we follow their instructions at each step, we will obtain a functional chip. This is what most scientists
    believe they understand by determinism. However, tactical, free will factors usually get in the way. No one
    can predict whether an operator will mis-process wafers at a given operation. What an operator may do at
    a particular moment is beyond our predictive powers. But again, this ‘free will’ factor doesn’t in the least
    affect the valuable lesson we just learned. The lesson is that if we happen to come across a functional
    chip, it is because the chip has successfully completed each step in the operation successfully.
    Determinism stealthily embodies this incongruous duality: forecasting the future and explaining the past.
    We cannot predict that a train will necessarily arrive at a given town, but if the train does arrive at the town
    it necessarily crossed the cities through which the tracks run.

    Now let’s extend this ‘train of thought’ one final time to the evolution of Man. If we have sufficient
    information of the steps necessary to produce a human being, we can predict that IFF this process is
    carried out faithfully, Adam will necessarily come out of the assembly line. This doesn't mean that we    
    can predict at the start of the operation whether a man will be produced, for surely God can mis-process
    His spitting image at any step along the way [as God did the first time He tried the experiment (free will)       
    (Gen 6:6)].  It means the reverse: that if we go to another planet and come across Man, we can be
    absolutely certain that this creature is a product of controlled process specifications (determinism).

    These misconceptions account for two of the problems in Mayr’s conclusions. On the one hand, he
    believes that he is predicting whether the object Man will come out of the assembly line when he is
    actually regurgitating history. Mayr is doing a thought experiment taking advantage of his familiarity with
    the past. He assumes that he is standing at the starting line of the Cambrian looking through the time
    tunnel towards the future. This is not true.  He is in fact looking through the tunnel from the opposite end!
    He has retraced the footsteps of Man 600 million years into the past like a detective re-enacting a crime.
    Mayr doesn’t realize that he already knows what he’s looking for. He also has a feel for some of the
    geological, environmental, and biological factors that molded Man. When he affirms that Man was a long
    shot, it is because he has already previewed some of the film clips, including the happy ending (Man). An
    impartial observer cannot make the same 'prediction' at the start of a movie he hasn’t seen because he
    doesn’t have all the information to know whether free will is going to upset his calculation somewhere
    along the route and because he doesn’t know how the movie is going to end.

    The reason Mayr says that he cannot guarantee the appearance of the most intelligent of hominids is that
    he believes that there are too many variables. He feels that he cannot remake this movie like the original
    one. He mixes determinism (in the sense of an explanation, i.e., retroactively) with free will (what a living
    entity can decide to do in the future). Free will can be raised only when determinism is discussed in the
    sense of prediction, if the future is unknown. When we know exactly what the future brings (i.e., Man) it is
    called the past, and free will has no relevance. There is no room for free will in the context of a
    consummated event. I will refer to explanatory determinism as ‘false determinism’ and to predictive
    determinism as ‘true determinism.’

    Free will means unpredictable behavior. Determinism means that we can predict objects and/or behavior.
    If Mayr is going to talk about a consummated event (the evolution of Man) it is irrational for him to invoke
    determinism in this sense. Mayr is doing nothing more than regurgitating a movie he has already seen. If
    Mayr is going to talk about predicting, he cannot invoke the object Man in his argument because this
    particular hominid is a done deal. Conversely, it makes no sense for him to invoke free will in the context
    of a consummated event. All the animals in the history of life on Earth enjoyed a certain level of free will.
    They used this gift for better or for worse and we can't undo what they did. It makes no sense to ask what
    if in retrospect because the film is already in post-production and we are here. What if type of questions
    have relevance only in the context of future developments. If instead, Mayr is going to talk about
    explaining the past, he cannot talk about determinism if by determinism he means predicting. Mayr can
    explain how man came to be and he can talk about the probability of Man arising from the set of millions of
    animals. But he can only do so if he knows exactly what factors went into the formation of Man. If he can't
    explain how Man came to be, he can't even give us an objective statistical analysis. All he has left is his
    opinion, which is worth squat.

    Now let's do the thought experiment the way we're supposed to.

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    Last modified 05/22/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008
They're all eating
grass. So I guess I'll
just eat grass too.
Analysts invoke both
free will and
determinism to justify
their theories


Herd mentality