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→Atheism, free will and determinism
Commenting on a speech of the evolutionist and atheist [[Jerry Coyne]] Butt wrote:
Commenting on a speech of the evolutionist and atheist [[Jerry Coyne]] Butt wrote:
{{Cquote|Near the end of Coyne’s speech, he attempted to explain the benefits he sees in adopting the idea that free will does not exist (not to be tedious, but keep in mind that he does not really think you can adopt it; instead, you are forced to accept whatever your chemistry determines). He said that a benefit of denying free will is that you would have a “lack of regret for bad things that happen. It takes away a certain amount of guilt feelings from you. You don’t have to beat yourself up over, ‘I should have done this instead of that.’” There you have it. Humans, from the beginning of Creation, have looked for ways to plead “not guilty” in the face of their own sins. We have attempted to blame everyone else except ourselves for our moral failures. Humans have tried to blame God, their parents, their genes, their society, their spouses, their circumstances, and everything under the Sun for the selfish, sinful choices they have made. The next step with this approach is to say that, since we cannot choose our behavior, then “punishment is not justified for retribution (people get—or should get—what they deserve).”<ref>[http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=5339 Atheism & Free Will] by Kyle Butt, M.Div.</ref>}}
{{Cquote|Near the end of Coyne’s speech, he attempted to explain the benefits he sees in adopting the idea that free will does not exist (not to be tedious, but keep in mind that he does not really think you can adopt it; instead, you are forced to accept whatever your chemistry determines). He said that a benefit of denying free will is that you would have a “lack of regret for bad things that happen. It takes away a certain amount of guilt feelings from you. You don’t have to beat yourself up over, ‘I should have done this instead of that.’” There you have it. Humans, from the beginning of Creation, have looked for ways to plead “not guilty” in the face of their own sins. We have attempted to blame everyone else except ourselves for our moral failures. Humans have tried to blame God, their parents, their genes, their society, their spouses, their circumstances, and everything under the Sun for the selfish, sinful choices they have made. The next step with this approach is to say that, since we cannot choose our behavior, then “punishment is not justified for retribution (people get—or should get—what they deserve).”<ref>[http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=5339 Atheism & Free Will] by Kyle Butt, M.Div.</ref>}}
Harris stated about his position that the self is an illusion and a person's sense of self is illusion:
{{Cquote|Illusions are experiences in the mind, but they are not out there in nature. Rather, they are events generated by the brain. Most of us have an experience of a self. I certainly have one, and I do not doubt that others do as well – an autonomous individual with a coherent identity and sense of [[free will]]. But that experience is an illusion – it does not exist independently of the person having the experience, and it is certainly not what it seems. That’s not to say that the illusion is pointless. Experiencing a self illusion may have tangible functional benefits in the way we think and act, but that does not mean that it exists as an entity.
I do not think there are many cognitive scientists who would doubt that the experience of I is constructed from a multitude of unconscious mechanisms and processes. Me is similarly constructed, though we may be more aware of the events that have shaped it over our lifetime...
Answering the question of who is experiencing the illusion or interpreting the story is much more problematic. This is partly a conceptual problem and partly a problem of [[dualism]]. It is almost impossible to discuss the self without a referent in the same way that is difficult to think about a play without any players.<ref>[https://samharris.org/the-illusion-of-the-self2/ THE ILLUSION OF THE SELF: An Interview with Bruce Hood], quote of Sam Harris</ref>}}
== C.S. Lewis's argument from reason and for the irrationality of materialism ==
== C.S. Lewis's argument from reason and for the irrationality of materialism ==