The Topic is "Free Will"

Who actually decided the topic? Who is Will and what did he do wrong?

https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/freewillb

Creators and Guests

Host

Kirk Durston

Scientist, philosopher, clergyman, outdoorsman, husband to the Queen of Hearts and father to six young adults.

Host

Sheldon Kotyk 🇨🇦

Father and Husband. “Fantastic and terrible in equal measure.” Probably not being serious.

What is Quest with Kirk Durston?

Kirk is a philosopher, scientist, husband, and a legit Christian. His podcast is mostly about exploring assumptions and questions pertaining to God, philosophy, science and life that he ponders about, hence the name Quest with Kirk Durston.

Kirk wants you to join him on that Quest or perhaps you're on your own quest about such matters and you can explore together.

All right.

Hello, Kirk.

Hi, Sheldon.

How's things going with you today?

Things are going okay.

Dealing with some crabgrass issues,

though.

I'd rather deal with that than a stolen

van.

What?

You lost a van?

Or was that me?

No, I thought you got your van stolen.

Well, that was a while ago.

It's been replaced with a nice new car.

Oh, yeah.

Maybe I should put a sign out the

end of my driveway when my car gets

old.

Well,

they don't like that at the insurance

company.

If I'm inviting it to get stolen?

Yeah,

there's a clause in the insurance that

says that that's not allowed.

And who wants to steal an old beater

anyways?

Well, that's what I would think, but...

They took it from where I live to

Winnipeg and left it somewhere,

got towed and took a week for us

to find it.

And they ended up writing it off.

Well, I can see, you know,

if it's a van,

you can rob houses and load up your

van.

And that's a lot more practical.

Maybe, maybe.

You don't worry about whether it's a

beater or not.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

But interestingly,

we got way more money for it than

we thought we would from insurance.

But I guess they send it all to

China.

They have auctions here,

and then it all goes to China.

So they're able to make the money at

the auction that they settled for.

But it all goes overseas.

Yeah.

They probably crunch it up at a packer,

you know, but still,

they've got to ship that over.

I don't know, because it's like,

it's only worth like a thousand bucks in

metal.

But, yeah.

That's a mystery.

I don't know.

The question is,

did they decide to ship it to China

or not?

Well,

or did the people that stole the car

actually...

Think about it before they stole it.

Did they decide or did somebody else

decide for them?

Yeah,

because there's a lot of people who

believe that you don't actually make

decisions.

It was all programmed in from the origin

of the universe.

So it doesn't matter.

Or God made me do it.

That's true.

Or as Slip Wilson used to say,

the devil made me do it.

Yep.

But there are Bible verses that talk about

God hardened their hearts.

Yep.

We'll have to talk about that.

Yeah.

So, yeah, how are you doing?

What's going on in beautiful Ontario?

I think I'm doing great.

I can't complain.

The grass is growing faster than I can

mow it.

So that is some cause for concern.

But other than that, no, life is good.

I've got...

I've got a major projects I'm working on.

I love my work.

I'm not sick,

nor am I on the doorstep of eternity

as far as dying or anything,

although that might not be a bad idea

either.

That's a different topic, but yeah,

nothing to complain about.

And you took a tree down.

That's always exciting.

Yeah,

well the exciting part was missing my

solar array panels on the left and the

trampoline on the right and the house on

the other side and basically I only had

a narrow avenue to drop it in and

it was about, I pasted off afterwards,

I think it measured off to

You paced it off after?

After it was laying on the ground, yeah.

It's hard to pace it off when it's

still standing up to walk up that trunk

taking one meter paces, but I dropped it,

then I paced it,

and I think it was close to forty

feet or maybe, I don't know what,

it was, what,

Twelve, thirteen, maybe fifteen meters.

I can't remember exactly.

And it didn't hit anything on the way

down.

Nicely done.

I planted that tree.

I hate doing it.

But I made a mistake in planting it

too close to our septic tank.

And the roots were steadily but

systematically about to destroy my tank.

And then I'd be in deep trouble.

So it was the tree or the tank

and...

Since we all need to use septic facilities

once in a while but don't need the

tree as often, unless you're a dog,

then I decided to take the tree down.

So you took the tree down,

now you've got the stump.

Did you bring somebody in to destroy the

stump, or did you blow it up,

or what did you do?

No,

I haven't actually taken care of the stump

yet, but I do have a plan,

and it's my chainsaw.

So I'll just come in at ground level

and slope the end of the blade down

a little bit and sort of go around

the stump like this so that I have

this kind of concave shape.

cut that goes down below ground level

slightly.

And that way I can just mow right

on over the stump with no worries.

So you don't have any worry about roots

continuing to grow at all?

No, this particular tree, it's done.

There are trees that the roots will

explode, like an aspen for example.

I cut one of those down and then

the following year I had at least fifty

new aspens springing up from the roots.

and i mowed them and it took me

two years of mowing these aspen trees not

allowing them to get us you know so

eventually the roots run out of

nourishment if there's no photosynthesis

going on and after two years they finally

quit uh so that's that but this is

a maple and it doesn't do that it

may put up shoots right at the stump

but it doesn't put shoots out from the

roots

Good to know.

Good to know.

We live in the suburbs, so our trees,

I have two, one in the back,

one in the front,

one we planted in the back,

Japanese something, and beautiful pink,

not cherry blossoms,

but a similar type of thing.

And we get like four days of that

every year.

And then it's gone.

So I'm like,

every morning I'm looking outside,

is it going to bloom?

Like the leaves are there,

but will it bloom today?

It does bloom.

Okay, everybody, take time off work.

Lots of pictures.

Get your pictures.

And then they're gone.

That's the sad thing about blossom trees

of any description.

Although with the apple trees I have and

pear trees,

those blossoms convert into apples and

pears.

Well,

it does little tiny crab apple type

things.

It's a Japanese goliath something.

Yeah.

It's a weed tree.

It's red.

What's that?

They probably have pretty leaves.

Yeah, very, very nice.

And then, of course,

it litters every fall with its little hard

as rock things that the lawnmower loves to

spit around.

The rats might appreciate that, though.

We don't have them here.

We have cats.

There's cats in our house.

Take care of the rats.

And the songbirds.

Yeah, exactly.

But yeah,

our big issue right now is crabgrass,

so I'm dealing with that,

which is not good.

Oh, I know about that.

Having grown up in Manitoba,

I know about crabgrass.

Yeah.

So speaking of crabgrass, free will.

I do like that.

Yeah, nice segue there.

So you wrote an article.

I think I read this a while ago,

but I've got lots of questions.

And that's my job here on the podcast

is to ask you lots of questions because

you're the expert.

How does it work?

I'm your boss.

You're the expert.

I'm your boss.

But yeah,

so I ask questions and try and dumb

it down so that I can understand it.

So free will.

Yeah.

Now,

I've been through four years of Bible

school,

and I don't think we spent more than

an hour talking about free will in

philosophy class, maybe.

So, let's define it, first of all.

What is it?

Yeah, exactly.

Well,

I did a master's degree in philosophy,

and I focused in that program on the

problem of evil and the existence of God.

And of course,

if anybody's familiar with the problem of

evil,

like does the evil and injustice in this

world,

is it a good reason to not believe

in God?

And if not, then what do we do?

How do we explain that?

So Alvin Plantinga's famous free will

defense pretty much neutralized the

logical problem of evil,

although there's still probabilistic

problems of evil and so forth.

It all hinges on free will,

so it's a hot topic in philosophy,

or it's not,

maybe hot is the wrong word,

it's an important topic.

And so the philosophers have gotten

together and they argue about these things

to define what is free will.

And there's different possible

definitions,

but there is a mainstream kind of

commonly,

generally commonly granted free will

definition, and it goes like this.

Free will is the ability to make a

decision that satisfies two criteria.

Number one,

the decision must not be determined by any

antecedent conditions.

That is, there's nothing...

back there like the origin of the universe

the laws of physics or what you ate

for breakfast nothing back there that

determined that decision and number two

you could have decided otherwise those are

the two and only two criteria for to

define what a free will decision is and

if you can make decisions that satisfy

those criteria then you that's evidence

that you have free will or that you

you do have free will

Okay,

so let me ask some questions around this

just to make sure I understand.

So free will means nobody's making me do

it or nothing is making me do it

other than myself.

Correct.

And I could have had another choice.

yeah you could have decided to do the

opposite of what you actually decided on

now when you say nobody's making me do

this uh free will does totally acknowledge

the existence of influences coercion

manipulation uh physical influences like

but free will it has the free will

is the ability

to yes you're being heavily influenced

maybe somebody wants to rob you and

they're pointing something at your head

saying hand over your wallet now that's an

influence but you could just decide to

override that and say no shoot me instead

Uh, or, well, I would not recommend that.

I would say go pound salt or go,

go, um, no, sorry.

I'm yeah.

I'm busy right now.

I don't know.

Like,

I'm not sure my wallet is even loaded.

Yeah, or is it a real gun?

But anyways,

so there certainly are influences

involved.

You have people who've overridden the most

extreme influences,

like plenty of people have been executed

for things they firmly believed in and

refused to recant.

So that would be one example where there's

a fellow in Edmonton that tells a story,

but him and two of his friends became

sincere Christians in a particular town in

the Middle East.

And that became known and the three of

them were arrested.

And each,

I think it was each Friday after,

not for sure of the day,

everybody would gather in the town,

soccer field or whatever and they would

execute those one at one one per week

but they had an opportunity to recant to

turn and decide no i'm not going to

believe that jesus is god the creator of

the universe and offers us eternal life

and forgiveness of sin so he witnessed two

of his friends go to their death beheaded

in that case both of them were beheaded

because they refused

to recant so there and it's I mean

the pressure must be enormous when you

know these people are not bluffing last

week they terminated when my my friend

this week it's my turn and we know

they're not bluffing so it's a big

decision but they can override that and

that um

Could be an example.

It doesn't prove you have free will.

Proof is a very difficult thing.

It's a very high bar.

But if you do have it,

if you have it,

you can do stuff like that.

You can override the most extreme examples

of coercion, intimidation, and influence.

So does free will ever have exceptions?

I think of if there's,

it says in the Bible that God hardened

Pharaoh's heart numerous times because the

ten plagues needed to happen for Sunday

school lessons.

Yeah,

and for the whole world to find out

about.

Yeah.

Well, okay, that is a very good question.

And the first thing to remember is this.

It's logically possible that, you see,

free will is not something that arises

naturally.

The laws of nature do not produce free

will.

In fact, it's the opposite.

The laws of nature are deterministic.

They determine outcomes,

and any outcome they determine was

determined by nature, the laws of nature,

physics.

So you have to have something immaterial

The free will has to be an immaterial

thing.

You could call it a supernatural thing

where you define supernatural as something

that is not determined by the laws of

physics and nature and the origin of the

universe.

It is immaterial.

So you could define it that way.

And if it is immaterial,

it depends where you got it from.

So let's say if you...

I think the best explanation,

you need a mind if you're going to

make use of free will.

So there's a rock outside.

No point in giving that free will.

It can't even perform moral deliberations.

It's got no mind.

So A, you need a mind.

But what is an explanation?

What's the best explanation for the origin

of minds in this world?

Well, it's got to be something itself.

If it can't be natural laws,

it has to be something itself that is

immaterial.

And if we're talking about minds,

a good explanation for the origin of a

mind is another mind,

but maybe a superior one,

maybe one not bound by time and space.

So that mind could decide in theory that

at a particular date for a particular

period of time,

And for a particular series of decisions,

you're not gonna have free will.

You're not going to be able to freely

determine your decision.

It's going to be imposed on you.

And so, in theory, it's possible to,

to just say turn off free will for,

let's say, a week.

It's possible,

or at least turn off free will when

it comes to the following decision.

It's possible, logically speaking,

but it does not follow from that that

therefore Pharaoh never had free will.

In fact,

if you look at those incidents the first

few times,

it's Pharaoh who's hardening his heart.

He's doing it.

Then it reaches the point but the other

thing is it doesn't even follow that

because God hardened to Pharaoh's heart

that therefore he suspended Pharaoh's free

will because as I said you can bring

to bear influences on a person to Dispose

them to go one way or the other

for example Maybe maybe he can make Moses

real annoying

really annoying to Pharaoh.

He just hates to see when that guy

shows up.

And we all know that if you have

a really bad attitude towards someone,

you're less likely to grant their request.

Now,

that shouldn't have anything to do with it

if you're an ethical person.

But anybody who's running, you know,

slavery workforce probably has some

ethical issues and Pharaoh would be one of

those so yes that's a possibility but it

doesn't follow that he never had free will

and the other thing it doesn't even follow

that God suspended his free will it's just

that he brought to bear certain influences

and they could even be

An upset stomach.

You know, you're not feeling good today.

Here comes Moses.

Man, I hate seeing this guy.

And I feel like that liver and onions

I ate is just not being processed.

I want him out of here.

What do you want?

No, you can't have it.

Get out.

And then, you see,

we can influence one another.

And people who are very good at

manipulation and influence,

and that's an interesting thing.

There's a line between legitimate

influence and illegitimate manipulation.

And if humans can do that,

if they can harden someone else,

if they can give the other person a

bad attitude towards whatever this topic

is, then yeah,

you're not interfering with their free

will.

You're just imposing some manipulation and

influence and so forth.

They could override that,

but they're already,

as we see in Pharaoh's case,

predisposed on their own to hurting their

own heart.

So it wouldn't take much to keep that

ball rolling.

Okay, and so I have one more example.

In the setup and all the prophecies of

Jesus coming,

there's a villain in the story besides

Satan who says,

basically sells them out.

Now, Judas, there's something there.

There was a person that had to do

this because of prophecy.

It was prophesied.

So someone was born to do this.

How does that work?

Yeah, well, I mean,

there's actually a couple of good

questions there, Sheldon.

First of all,

just a general comment about prophecy.

So God says...

And just so everybody knows,

I did not tell Kirk I was going

to ask these questions.

Oh, no.

These are just for free.

No, if you've thought about these things,

you shouldn't need a heads up on what

you're going to get asked about.

And it's even more fun if you don't

know what the questions will be.

That's why if I knew it ahead of

time what all the questions would be,

it'd get boring.

So...

No, prophecy, but I've handled these,

not just me, I think we've all,

I mean,

I think you've probably thought through

this yourself, Sheldon, too,

but let's get this out on the table.

So prophecy, let's say God said, no,

let's say you got in a time machine

and you went ahead to the next election

in your country and you observed who gets

elected.

Now you come back in your own time,

which in the election now is in the

future relative to you.

But you know what's going to happen.

You can even write it down.

In such and such a year,

this party is going to be elected.

And you publicize that.

You put it in the newspapers.

Now the question is,

does that determine who gets elected?

Or does who gets elected determine the

information that you now have?

And in the time machine example,

it was who gets elected determines what

you know about the future when you come

back to the present.

So you have not determined the future,

rather the future has determined what you

now know in the present.

And so it's just a matter of observation

of God transcends time.

Then he actually exists according to

theory.

He actually exists at all points in time

simultaneously.

He knows,

he observes what your decision will be.

And that knowledge that God has as to

what you will decide is determined by what

you will decide, and he has observed that.

Now, you sitting back here say, well,

I'm gonna have to decide that now that

he's told me what I'm gonna decide.

No, I mean,

God doesn't usually tell you ahead of time

what you're gonna decide.

No, God's knowledge,

his foreknowledge means that he knows

about stuff that happens in the future and

that is contingent upon that stuff that he

sees.

Now it's not totally contingent on that

because God also has a plan.

And so when he prophesies about the

future, he may be prophesying,

like he knows all the contingencies.

Judas,

he might have selected him because we know

that Judas was pilfering from the pile of

money on a regular basis.

So we already know Judas had a problem.

But he might have really actually been

attracted to the teachings of Jesus.

But that's not good enough.

You might like a person.

You might want to follow that person.

But at the same time,

you have a big ethical problem.

You have a weak point, an Achilles heel.

So in the case of, first of all,

prophecy,

it's the free decisions in the future that

determine the knowledge of

Or it's the plan that God might have

in general for nature or whatever,

a historical plan that he orchestrates.

So a guy conducting an orchestra would be

an illustration here.

He's not determining what everybody's

going to blow.

I used to play in a stage band,

like a big one.

with about, I don't know,

thirty-five people.

I used to play the trombone.

I could blow a wrong note anytime,

I jolly well felt like it.

And contrary to what the conductor of the

orchestra wanted,

But the conductor of the orchestra still

somehow provided the leadership,

the direction for which part of the

orchestra gets louder,

when you get closer, softer,

when you start, all this kind of stuff.

So God is orchestrating history in that

way.

now i see kim h has to has

asked a question who determines the laws

of nature will that be different because

nature does not have free will uh it'd

be uh let's say you're gonna create a

a video game and you're gonna have certain

rules in that video game certain laws of

the video game like if you you get

to respawn so many times that kind of

stuff

It's the writer of the software who

determines the rules.

In the case of the universe,

it has software too.

We call that the laws of physics.

So God determines the laws of physics,

and that's the environment within which we

live.

Can you explain a few of those just

so that the audience can, like,

what are some of the laws of physics

that...

Yeah,

let's take one everybody's probably heard

of, the speed of light, okay?

The speed of light is a constant.

It's not like your car.

You can have that stopped or you can

have it going.

Although, okay, let's say the...

That was a bad choice because you could

slow down photons and so forth.

But still, the speed of light itself,

three times ten to the eighth meters per

second, that's a constant that you can't,

in other ways, we can use it.

But let's take a simpler one,

a simpler law of physics.

So an apple falls out of a tree.

And you notice that all the apples follow

exact same pattern.

That is they accelerate towards the ground

at a constant rate.

What is that constant rate?

I keep getting mixed up.

It's .

feet per second squared if you're going to

work in feet if it's meters what is

it nine point eight meters per second

squared or something like that um so that

seems to be a law it's not just

arbitrary how fast some don't speed up to

this twice the speed of sound when before

they hit some poor guy napping under the

tree no they all accelerate at exactly the

same rate that appears to be

So you have a thing you call acceleration,

but what velocity will it have when it

hits the ground?

Well,

the velocity is going to equal

acceleration times the amount of time it

was falling.

So if it's way up in the air,

it's going to have more time,

the velocity will be higher.

And that's the same.

Velocity equals acceleration times time.

That could be called a law of physics,

a law of nature.

Okay,

so when I'm sitting in physics class,

The laws of nature are the formulas that

are used to determine

answers to these questions in a way.

Not really.

The formulas,

or what we call those equations,

are merely descriptions of the laws of

nature.

In first year physics,

one of my professors in one of my

courses says,

we have no idea what these laws of

physics are, or where they are.

All we know is that we observe repeatable

patterns in how nature

behaves and we describe these patterns in

mathematical sentences you could say like

force equals mass times acceleration would

be an example velocity equals acceleration

times time so like looking at that force

one so the laws of nature are what

me what makes that formula actually useful

Yeah, it's because the formula,

the formula could always change if the law

wasn't there.

Well, if there were no laws,

that would be just a completely chaotic

world.

It would be an insane asylum.

But you couldn't even have one.

But it could change in theory.

If the laws of physics,

you woke up tomorrow and they were all

different,

that would be a serious problem because

even your own body functions according to

the laws.

And if those get messed up,

you might find yourself dead.

But yeah, they could in theory change,

but they don't seem to change the laws

of physics.

And if we do observe them change,

we realize, well,

we might have the description wrong here.

Let's say the mass actually appears to

increase as you get closer to the speed

of light.

Well, let's rework this,

and then you get Einstein's general theory

of relativity there,

which is a fuller understanding of the

laws of physics.

So the law of physics never changed there.

It was just our understanding of it.

Kim, did that answer your question?

I guess the question that is more there

is the who.

Who determines the laws of nature?

So if you don't have a mind that

created it, it came from somewhere.

And I think we've had a lot of

these conversations where it's like, okay,

where's that coming from then?

Yeah.

The laws of physics are really software.

Yeah.

They're very analogous to software and you

do need a mind to create software such

that the outcome is orderly and

predictable and all this kind of stuff.

As a software developer,

not having a good mind,

there's always bugs.

And so when you look at the laws

of nature, are there bugs?

yeah well depends who wrote the laws of

nature and if you have an omniscient mind

who creates nature in the first place he's

not just like you and me who write

software to run on a computer that

somebody else made he makes a thing from

ground up so uh it's not likely there

would be bugs in fact there's a

philosophical argument which we won't go

into today because that'd be a whole

episode but it's called the maximally

great being.

And logic dictates that if a maximally

great being,

which would be absolutely perfect,

create software, no bugs, for example,

if it exists in one possible world,

then it exists in all possible worlds.

It's a very powerful argument for the

existence of

supreme mind that is maximally great in

every in that degree of greatness beyond

which it's logically not possible to be

even greater still that's that's a

different topic okay we'll get into that

later so let's go

what would it look like?

I'm going through,

there's a article on your site,

kirkderson.com slash blog slash free will

be.

It's in the doc.

It's in the YouTube description as well.

You've got the contradictory life of a

materialist.

If you ask someone who does not believe

in free will,

why they made such and such a decision,

they are going to respond with,

So get into that a little bit,

because I think it's funny.

It is funny.

It's hilarious.

So one of the most absurd things I

ever saw in my life happened when I

posted a video in response to Sabina

Hossenfelder,

who is a theoretical physicist,

and she's arguing that we don't have free

will.

And so I said, well,

if you don't have free will,

you can't even think.

You can't even use propositions,

string them together and come to

conclusions.

and then a short was made from that

somebody uh well uh just a thirty second

short turns out that for that short it's

the most popular thing i ever put out

there since published what is it it's got

almost twenty four thousand views and but

the real funny part was the comments so

arguments broke out in the comments

section uh from people who believed very

firmly that we do not have free will

and cannot make free decisions,

but they're deciding to argue anyways.

And I pointed this out.

Now, are these Christians arguing this?

No.

So these are people that are saying the

laws of physics are making them.

Yeah, right.

These comments argue these comments.

They never had a decent response to that.

I mean,

they but it's like they believe that

everything they think,

do and see is completely determined by the

laws of physics.

And here comes Kirk Durston arguing we got

free will.

We can make decisions that are not

determined by the laws of physics,

but rather are made according to

immaterial axioms of logic or mathematics.

Well, they decided to dispute that.

And I use the word decided in their

case rather loosely because

They don't think they can decide anything.

But yet they decided to argue with me

and present rational arguments as to why

they think there's no such thing as

rationality.

And it was just bizarre.

It was like the law of non-contradiction

being violated left, right, and center.

But yet they didn't seem to really see

it.

It was just bizarre.

Is that because they couldn't see it?

Well, maybe, but they could have said,

well,

I don't see your point because it's been

determined that I don't see your point.

Well, that would be fine.

That's the question.

Like, what's the point of... Like,

this is one of those comment thread on

Reddit or YouTube or whatever.

Like,

what's the point of arguing this because

you're arguing with the Internet and the

Internet can't think?

Yeah, I know.

And unfortunately,

a lot of people refuse to think as

well.

Yes.

So it's...

Like, I can't go to bed now.

Somebody on the internet said something

wrong.

Well, now I argue with Chad GBT.

I just fell for it again a couple

of days ago and got in an argument

with him.

I won, by the way.

Did it complain?

No, it conceded that, yeah, I'd made it,

and then confessed and fell all over

itself, you know, apologizing.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

If anybody wants to know what I feel

about AI,

like when I do these YouTube videos,

You do the YouTube thumbnails.

I just go to AI.

I use mid journey and I just type

in free will and I just post whatever

it gives me.

So it's like usually some weird things,

but I actually ask AI what's the best

for what optimum search engine for search

engine optimization.

What title should I use?

That guy was telling me that's what I

should do.

The titles are usually very boring though.

Like they're just optimized to,

Yeah, I prefer to just make something up.

I like your titles, Sheldon.

They're better.

So how do we know if we have

free will?

Yeah,

how do we know if we have free

will?

I think the first step you would take

is to realize that to even ask the

question requires free will.

First, for example, nature,

lots of physics produce deterministic

outcomes.

And it will never produce, and the belief,

even the belief in free will is something

that will not arise from equations that

have mass, energy, time,

that sort of thing in it.

It will not arise from that.

So where does this, even the belief,

even the concept,

you don't even have to have the belief.

All you need to have pop into your

mind is the concept of free will.

And you have disproved determinism.

You cannot entertain.

A concept won't even emerge.

Because why would it?

If it's just the laws of physics that

are driving every decision that's made or

every action that's made because there's

no decisions.

Yeah.

Right?

That's right.

Why was that YouTube created?

video created by that person.

Like why would the laws of physics have

made that, that person do that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The moment that you,

the moment that that arises,

you see the laws of physics,

are always described mathematically with

variables that consist of variations of

mass or matter, space, time, and energy,

like all those things.

So if you look at the outcome,

let's say the outcome is Bill down the

road thought about free will.

That's an outcome.

Is it an outcome of space, time, matter,

and energy?

No matter,

even if you have really fancy equations

and lots of them,

they're all going to reduce to using,

utilizing variables that are variations of

space, time, matter, and energy.

Momentum, for example,

might be mass times velocity,

so you've got a few different variables

all encoded in momentum.

You will never get.

You're giving me high.

It's just thinking about those physics

classes right now.

So just think about those.

Another thing, though,

that's what we don't have.

I can't help it.

I cannot help it, Kirk.

Yeah, I know,

especially at three o'clock in the morning

when I'm supposed to be sleeping and one

of those infinite loop thoughts start

going in your brain.

Now,

the brain is very interesting in and of

itself because the brain

is a physical object so right now i

am reading a book it's not yet out

there it's by a newer surgeon mike eggnor

michael eggnor he has conducted thousands

of brain surgeries and i would highly

recommend this book when it comes out in

june in fact uh well i'm arranging for

him to come on this very live stream

right here we're going to have a good

discussion with this brain surgeon but he

had he started off as a materialist

and believing that science explains

everything.

But in the course of his brain surgeries,

he made observations and came to the

conclusion that we have a mind that's not

material and we also can make

decisions that are not determined by any

physical stimuli because they have ways of

stimulating the brain it's very important

aspect to brain surgery because you don't

want to be carving off stuff that's really

important so there he explains in his book

so we're going to have him on well

we're going to have a crazy time with

him because it's not just the existence of

the mind but free will at stake and

this mind seems to be immortal like it's

not contingent on whether your body's dead

or alive

So that's another way that you can,

by experimentation,

by let's say carving out huge chunks of

the brain,

or to see if that affects the person's

self-awareness,

or if it affects their ability to make

free decisions,

or by stimulating the brain,

like sometimes the person will say,

and this is one of the examples,

you can stimulate the brain and the

person's arm raises up.

But they do it live because they have

to have feedback from the individual to

make sure they're not going to cut into

something important here.

So the person's arm goes up.

So it's been done by the brain.

You've just supplied the electrical

stimuli.

And the person will say, ah,

my arm was, I didn't do that.

You made me do this.

But I, who's the I?

I did not decide to raise my arm.

That was you with your electrical stuff.

So there's different ways.

And there's a third way.

There's two other ways to decide whether

you have free will.

The third way is, can you think?

Using immaterial...

Basic principles like the law of

non-contradiction or logical causality

that if you have these premises,

they then are related to a conclusion.

That's logical causality.

You do it every day.

You may not use those terms,

but everybody thinks.

You can't even walk down the street

without thinking.

You can't get out of bed without deciding

to get out of bed.

So all of this stuff goes on.

So the question is,

can you think using immaterial principles

that themselves are not affected by the

laws of physics?

The law of non-contradiction, for example.

That's not affected by it.

You can go anywhere in the universe and

the law of non-contradiction would still

hold,

or the causal principle for the laws of

nature.

Laws of nature won't even work without an

a priori

basic principle we call the causal

principle.

There has to be some relationship between

the laws and what happens in this world.

Laws of nature would not be able to

affect how this world works without a

causal relationship between the laws and

space, time, matter, and energy.

rational thought is either, it's not,

if it's determined by physics,

then you can't decide anything.

And the principle logical rules mean

nothing.

And rational thought is a pipe dream.

So I have just a question.

So like you have these physicists,

incredibly brilliant people that didn't

decide to become physicists.

It just happened.

Yeah,

from the origin of the universe decided

it.

Who had to figure things out to train

their brain to be able to do this

job.

And all of that was determined at the

creation of the universe.

Yeah, at the origin of space, time,

matter, and energy, the laws of physics.

They obviously enjoy it because

otherwise... Yeah, except that too,

that enjoyment too would be completely

materialistic.

And there might be more to say for

enjoyment when you talk about endorphins

and chemical processes,

but it doesn't explain all enjoyment.

There is a satisfaction of the soul that

doesn't seem to have anything to do with

endorphins.

But you can't,

they couldn't have enjoyed it a hundred

percent of the time.

So why wouldn't they have stopped doing it

as soon as,

as soon as the negative reaction started

happening in it?

Like I just like the whole process just

seems off.

Oh, it's ridiculous.

Like,

why even worry about this if you think

you don't have free will?

But the problem is you thought you don't

have free will,

so automatically you thought.

Problem, the referee blows his whistle.

You can't do that because you got no

free will.

No thinking allowed here.

Because thinking is a necessary

requirement for free will.

You don't just random.

In fact, I should make a distinction here.

Some people propose that quantum mechanics

explains free will.

So wave function collapses,

it was unpredictable,

and you either went yes or no.

But unpredictability is not free will.

But who came up with that,

and how did they come up with that?

Why did the laws of physics make them

think that?

Oh, there's a lot of stuff there.

Like who even,

why even worry about quantum mechanics?

Like who's going to sit down if they

don't have a mind, if it's all determined,

but it's just chemical process,

who's going to sit down and say, Hey,

why don't we, this happened?

And why come when we measure the spin

of electrons,

we can't determine all that kind of stuff.

None of that's going to happen if it's

all nature would just plot on

deterministically doing what the laws of

physics determine it to do.

You'll never build up huge anomalies like

humans walking around inventing

spacecraft.

That'll never happen.

in nature.

It always goes to equilibrium,

to the lowest,

to the easiest achievable state.

It always runs down to that state.

Never massive intelligent anomalies

wondering why Kirk Durston published this

video talking about free will.

Okay,

and so I have a couple rapid-fire

questions.

We have a few minutes left,

but I'm going to leave predestination for

another day because that could be a long

discussion.

But I think it's resolvable.

Assuming we're made to have that

discussion, I can't guarantee that.

Well, that raises the question,

like we've just talked about laws of

physics determining your decisions,

and we did a little bit about God

determining it.

But how do we know that God has

given us free will?

And the basic response,

the quick response is, well,

we can make decisions he doesn't like.

For example, he quotes, he says,

ancient Israel was doing terrible things.

And there's a nice little quote here.

He said, where is this example here?

Predestination.

Oh, yeah, here it is.

He said, you're doing all this bad stuff.

But the thing is, he says,

and I quote,

they were offering their children as human

sacrifices to the Canaanite God, Moloch.

And he says, quote,

I had not commanded them,

nor had it entered my mind that they

should do this abomination.

So clearly God, an omniscient being,

saying this didn't come from me this

offering your kids up as human sacrifices

it's an abomination it's stuff i don't

like and so that would be an argument

if you can do things that god is

doesn't like and is going to reprove or

rebuke you for then you know that he

must not have determined that decision

because you would have a it's a very

low view of god to say that god

makes you do stuff he doesn't god decides

to make you do things he doesn't want

you to do

That's a violation of the law of

non-contradiction right there.

But you're saying God contradicts himself,

which is really a low view of God.

And you do see that in some systematic

theologies that they will argue you have

no free will.

And I have discussed this with Christians

who subscribe to, let's say,

certain types of reformed theology that

say, you don't have free will.

I had a paper in my office given

to me by one heavy duty subscriber to

that.

And in that paper,

this reformed theologian argues that God

is the first cause of all evil as

well as all good.

And he would be absolutely right if,

in fact,

you don't have free will.

But what kind of a God do you

get from that?

Certainly not the kind that in the

Bible... And what would be the point?

It becomes an, what would be the point?

Yeah, I mean,

it's like God is creating a world that

he hates and loves and that he makes

you do things that he doesn't want you

to do.

There's so many violations of the law of

non-contradiction,

which I argue is an attribute of God

himself.

So he violates himself in so many

different ways.

But this will emerge again when we talk

about predestination because it's a very

important aspect of that.

So I have two other questions that have

come to mind as I've been thinking about

this.

One is free will really a human thing

or is there other animals?

Are there animals that have free will?

Like I think of my dog and he's

stupid.

He doesn't think he reacts to what's going

on around him.

Is there cheese on the counter?

Is there anything on the counter that he

can eat?

And he will just do it.

But he knows if I'm there,

he can't just do it unless I turn

my back.

So are the laws of nature making him

think?

Or is it just he's reactant?

It's a very interesting question because I

had a problem in my garden shed.

There's a latch you just lift and open

the door.

And a raccoon was coming every night,

lifting the latch, going in,

closing the door,

and having a nice comfy nap all night

long and doing his business in my

wheelbarrow.

And this went on until it was...

Isn't that just fertilizer?

So anyways,

I solved that problem by adjusting the

latch, locking it so he can't get in.

But you look at animals,

there seems to be thinking going on when

the raccoon...

lifts the latch,

but the problem with determining whether

the animal has free will or not is

a concept we call behavioral modification,

that's part of it,

that your behavior can be trained.

So your brain does appear,

the physical part of your brain does

appear to be something we might call a

neural network and it can be trained.

and it's trained by stimuli like for

example in the past you may have seen

the raccoon sees this latch and what's

this and oh it opens the door and

there's a reward there's a comfy warm spot

in there it doesn't have to worry about

coyotes or

cougars getting it so there is a reward

and it just was all accidental it just

happened this way but the neural network

gets trained there's been a reward for

this behavior and it remembers it has a

memory system so you got memories

associated with rewards and you can go on

and on like this till you actually look

at animals and you say there seems to

be it looks like thinking it looks like

they're making a decision but it's all

programmed by this neural network it's a

reward system

So that's I can't really answer that.

But I think Michael Egnor will be an

interesting person to ask,

although maybe he will be like he he

hasn't done brain surgery so far as I

know on animals.

So he doesn't have the same.

experimental observations to make on

animals.

But at this point,

I would say that animals,

at least from a religious perspective,

a theological one,

God does not seem to hold animals morally

responsible for their so-called decisions.

It's all behavioral reward, punishment,

modification.

In fact,

I was in North Korea and found out

while I was there,

been there a couple of times,

and once for a month where you get

to discuss, find out all sorts of things.

But one of the things they do not,

or at least at the time I was

there,

this would be back around nineteen eighty

eight or eighty nine.

They did not believe in psychology because

they thought that's religious.

There are total fans of behavioral

modification.

So that's why they will use what we

might call brainwashing, reward,

punishment.

Very much a part of how the North

Korean regime works or keeps its people

doing what they want them to do is

through a system of rewards and

punishment.

And all you need is a neural network

for that that could be trained,

and then the population behaves

themselves,

except we know from other examples in

history,

the population gets tired of that.

Now,

what is it about them that gets tired

about this?

I mean, they've grown up in that system.

They've never known anything different.

Even the media is not allowed,

so they don't get TV or internet,

not the normal citizens.

So even then,

you see that there's still something where

they get...

They don't like this,

and they overthrow the system.

So, yeah, the animals,

I tend to think they certainly do not

have free will,

at least that can perform moral

deliberations.

Otherwise,

God might hold them responsible,

which he does not.

All right.

And then the other question I have is

when you look at the brain,

and maybe this is a better question for

the doctor when he comes in, but...

with brain illness.

One of my daughters has anxiety,

and the people that were helping us with

that turned us to a TED talk about

the amygdala.

And how the amygdala,

the amygdala and how it works.

And in that Ted talk,

he talks about a guy who had a

railroad spike that went through his

amygdala and totally changed all his

behavior.

Yeah.

I'm familiar with that story.

Yeah.

It's a bit of an urban myth though,

uh,

because there's a lot more information

about that guy.

And, uh,

what happens is that what ha actually

happened is, uh,

that he eventually returned.

He,

he adapted and became a normal person who

made normal decisions, but that took time.

And so this is one thing,

the brain surgeon, Michael ignore,

does point out is that you can damage

the brain, and it causes various problems,

and this is one of the reasons he

thinks there's gotta be a mind here.

So the mind,

which he says is completely immaterial,

it interfaces with the brain,

but it observes, we got a problem here,

this interface is badly damaged.

we're going to have to create a

workaround,

and it's the mind that will start figuring

out a workaround.

For example, if you cut right through,

if you separate the two halves of the

brain,

if the mind is an emergent property of

the brain,

you essentially have two brains now.

two brains that can't talk to each other

anymore there's no connection between the

two so you would predict you should have

two minds because the mind is an emergent

property of the brain so you never get

two minds he says you always get the

one mind who now realizes we got a

bit of a problem because if you put

a card

up here,

the left eye can't see what the right

eye is seeing, and so the right eye,

I might be getting mixed up on which

side of the brain, will recognize, oh,

that's an apple,

but they can't tell you what it's called

until the other eye figures it out,

sees it.

But so the mind very quickly learns to

adapt and say, if there's something here,

I don't know what that is,

but I do know that if I get

the other side of my brain to get

the visual input, then I'll know.

And so it'll tell the brain,

turn your head so that you can get

the other info,

and then you will be able to tell

the guy that that's an apple.

So that's a very simple thing that he

talks about,

but he's done literally thousands of brain

surgeries

and it's not a you see here's the

deal in a materialistic worldview

everything that we would attribute to a

mind is actually physically caused by the

laws of nature and this complex chunk of

chemicals we call a brain everything under

the free will thing it's not a question

of

Everything you do is now your mind and

your brain is just sitting there as a

useless appendage.

No.

It's a combination.

They work in sync.

And your brain is an amazing thing that

runs your body pretty much.

So you don't have to think of when

your next heartbeat is.

And it can actually produce and simulate

things.

So...

A lot of mistakes people make in talking

about free will in the mind is, say,

brain damage and so forth,

is that they fail to realize that,

but Michael Egnor, see,

he's not just coming to his conclusions on

the basis of this incident that happened

in a mine, you know,

like a hundred years ago.

He is a guy who is actually doing

brain surgery on, by now,

thousands of patients.

And he's observing firsthand,

making observations that tell him that,

yes, you can damage the interface,

but the mind will figure out a workaround.

If the interface is still not so badly

damaged that you can work around as

possibly.

So if you think of somebody who was

born with a disease where the brain

doesn't work as we would see as normal.

Yeah.

The mind may still be there in the...

You would argue it is.

But it's got a badly defective interface.

So I'm just thinking of people that aren't

able to...

either communicate or do something that

would enable them to show they have free

will.

Yeah.

Is it something that...

I'm not quite sure where to go from

here,

but it's like there's a difference between

the body doing its thing... Mm-hmm.

versus there's actual thought going into

what the body is doing.

Yeah,

there is a difference because the body

will do stuff and it's up to the

mind to exercise some self-control.

Let's say somebody slaps you on the face

at a hockey game.

uh there's actually just instinctive

reactions you don't have to deliberate on

this where the deliberation comes in is

will i restrain what my body wants to

do here there's just a reward punishment

you know it's a self-defense mechanism

smash the guy's face in and you don't

think about this it's just simply

programmed into your neural network that

there's a a threat of harm here this

is just

programmed in where the mind enters.

Another interesting point about this

Sheldon is and I'm reading his chapter on

comatose patients because the person show

that appears to be in a vegetative state

now they know and they have a certain

percentage like I remember either at least

ten percent of people in vegetative states

when they put brain things on them

Or when they resuscitate them eventually,

they are actually hearing what's going on

in the room.

It's just they can't do a thing about

it.

And there really almost is no,

there doesn't seem to be even any physical

brain scan evidence that they're hearing.

But then when they're resuscitated, yeah.

So they have a rule now.

I don't know if this is for all

hospitals,

but it's certainly in the ones that he

works in.

Never say anything in a room with a

comatose patient that you would not say to

them to their face if they were fully

cognizant.

This same thing applies to people with

severe mental disabilities.

Let's say somebody who's so mentally

impaired that you can just talk about them

right there in the room and stuff.

Well,

their brain has definitely got a problem,

but their mind does not.

And the evidence is accumulating that

They're trapped.

And in fact,

they're trapped in a brain and a body

that they know is badly detected,

but they hear the insults and the

derogatory things you're saying about

them.

Often they get spoken of as there's just

an animal.

They hear all this, they understand it,

but there's nothing they can do about it

because their brain is actually in very

poor condition.

So then there's the ethical question in a.

In a body,

you have a heart that you can do

a heart transplant or a lung transplant.

Are we at a point where brain transplant

is just as ethical as a heart transplant?

I'm not going to make you answer that

today.

It is time for us to head to

our next meeting.

But those of you that are watching either

now or later, feel free.

Ask your questions in the chat.

We'll get to them.

And, yeah,

head over to KirkDurston.com to read his

article on free will.

And we will see you next week.

Yeah.

Bye for now.

Bye-bye.