Post details: Yes, it is so your fault. And mine. And everybody's

03/26/11

Permalinkby 08:11:48 pm, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, 223 words   English (CA)

Yes, it is so your fault. And mine. And everybody's

My latest MercatorNet column

A choice argument
Did you choose to cheat on your taxes? Or snub a friend? Free will makes an unexpected comeback.

Possibly no issue between traditionalists and new atheists rankles more than this one: Are we simply the products of our genes and neurons, or can we make authentic choices?

Traditional religions encourage repentance for sin, which just means, "I knew what I was doing and it was wrong." No one repents of slipping on the ice, and ending up in traction. But a new doctrine has been highly seductive. You never choose.

In a blog entry, "No soul? I can live with that. No free will? AHHHH!!!," on the Psychology Today website, Tamler Sommers, professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, explains why he thinks no free will is no big deal. He acknowledges that most materialists have not wanted to confront the issue directly.

To bring his idea home: Why should a man suffer any penalty if he kills your spouse, rapes your daughter, and maims your son? By definition, he is not responsible for his behaviour. That's not because he passes normal tests of insanity, but because no one is ever responsible for their behaviour. Ever. At all.

Sommers cites one study where we learn that ... more

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Permalink

Pingbacks:

No Pingbacks for this post yet...

The ID Report

January 2012
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
<<  <   >  >>
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Search

Linkblog

Links - Groups and Organizations

Links - Of General Interest

  • A Brief View of Time and Those That Live There

    Don Cicchetti blogs on: Culture, Music, Faith, Intelligent Design, Guitar, Audio

    Permalink
  • A Quick Guide to Sequenced Genomes Permalink
  • ARN Related Web Links Permalink
  • Creation/Evolution Quotes

    Australian biologist Stephen E. Jones maintains one of the best origins "quote" databases around. He is meticulous about accuracy and working from original sources.

    Permalink
  • CreationEvolutionDesign

    Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.

    Permalink
  • Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove

    Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"

    Permalink
  • ID The Future

    Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.

    Permalink
  • John Mark Reynolds Blog

    A Philosopher's Journey: Political and cultural reflections of John Mark N. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Torrey Honors Institute at
    Biola University.

    Permalink
  • NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Permalink

Misc

Syndicate this blog XML

What is RSS?

powered by
b2evolution