The Pontificators

I’m a computer programmer by trade; pity me.

The mental habits that twenty years of software development forces upon one have many disadvantages: we tend to break things into pieces instead of seeing them whole; we believe that solutions which don’t bear up under logical scrutiny are unacceptable; and we like the rhythm of lists of three items even when we can only think of two.

But they have advantages too. Over the years, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with Boolean arithmetic, that strange math whose operands are True and False and whose operators are And, Or, Xor, and Not. So now I will exhibit some developer’s hubris (another occupational hazard) and apply Boolean arithmetic to some of the big philosophical questions.

The Cartesian product of two binary states has four possible results. Huh? In plain English, if we have Thing 1 and Thing 2, each of which can be true or false, then there are four possible combinations: Both things true, both things false, and the two combinations of one each.

For this discussion, my Two Things are God and Free Will. God (Creator, First Cause, atom spinner) either exists or (s)he does not. People either have free will (the ability to evaluate inputs and make uncoerced decisions) or they do not. A mountain of books have been written about the nature of God and of free will, but let’s set aside the discussion of their nature beyond the brief definitions already provided, and focus on their combinations of existence. We’ll solve the simplest problem first and build on that, which is another thing programmers do.

If God exists or does not, and we humans do or do not have free will, then we live in one of four universes:

No God, no free will: Biological Determinism. This is an increasingly popular viewpoint, which states that free will is an illusion. What appear to be decisions are really the artifacts of an 80-year-long chemical reaction going on in our brains. If you put a brain in a particular state and feed it the right combination of oxygen, sugars, and neurotransmitters, that brain will not only root for the Pittsburgh Steelers, it will even spout apparently plausible reasons for having “chosen” to do so. But it’s not choice, not even thinking. It’s chemistry. It’s stimulus and response. If you stimulate a flatworm with a mild electrical current, it curls up. But did it decide to? Do flatworms think at all? If they don’t choose and we do, what is the nature of the difference?

This philosophy sounds like it was invented by engineers, with their huge blind spot of “If I can’t measure it, I will insist that it does not exist, and cite Occam’s Razor, whatever that is.” Brain cells can be seen. Brain chemistry can be detected, measured, and duplicated in simple terms. But the consciousness, the part of the brain that calls itself “I” and decides whether or not it likes bacon, cannot be detected or measured. But if you beat on the brain — sever its connections, remove pieces of it, or bathe it in various chemicals — the “I” changes and so do the decisions. Therefore chemistry trumps consciousness, and the illusion of free will is merely a by-product that is thrown off by the brain as it works, like a light bulb throws off waste heat.

Which begs the question: is this a universe you want to live in? The determinists have an answer for that: “The question means nothing, as does your response. You’re not choosing to like or dislike determinism, because determinism says your choice is an illusion.” So deal. Your life, along with everyone else’s, is part of the remainder of a huge division problem which was set up billions of years ago (they don’t say how or by whom) and has been chunking along ever since.

God but no free will: The Puppet Show. In this universe, God exists, but humans do not have the power to make independent choices. Which means that we are either God’s paper dolls, with whom (s)he plays to relieve the boredom of being immortal and alone; or we are God’s screen saver, pretty random patterns thrown up for the amusement they may provide.

This universe is equally unpalatable to deists and humanists.  Deists want God to be better than that.  Humanists believe they are better than that.

Both universes which lack free will are morally bankrupt, because in them morality itself does not exist. If morality involves the existence of right and wrong and the consequences of choosing one over the other, the whole house of cards falls down if there is no choice.

Either one of these universes make a fine home if you want to take no responsibility for your actions. Just substitue “Brain chemicals” or “God’s predestination” for “The Devil” in the phrase “The Devil made me do it.” It explains the Steelers, bacon, and that thing you did last weekend that you don’t want to discuss here.

But if you’re like me, you prefer a universe where some of these so-called illusions are real. Life makes more sense to me if I live in a world where my choices are my own and my actions have consequences. So let’s take a look at the remaining two universes.

No God, but free will: Invictus. “Invictus” is the title of the most famous work by William Ernest Henley. I won’t cite the whole poem here, or even give you a URL. If you don’t have enough brains or initiative to find it yourself, you shouldn’t be reading this essay anyway — go play, Daddy’s talking grown-up talk to the big people.

Which pretty much sums up this universe: It’s all up to you. Learn, count the cost, choose, and bear the consequences. Your actions mean something. In fact, your actions mean everything, because there is no heavenly yardstick of rightness and no eternal reward for being golly-gosh goodly and godly.

Invictus is a great poem. it’s filled with firm rolling cadences. It is the internal monologue of a hero. It’s where we get the phrase “My head is bloody but unbowed,” and it ends “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.” Yesss! Score! It’s Captain America time! Do the difficult right thing over and over because you are strong enough and smart enough to do so, and because every choice you make matters! Your choice may be the first action of a butterfly-wings effect that changes the world forever! Boo-yah!

Can you tell how much I adore this universe? Free will makes me responsible for my actions — which I like — and the absence of God means no carrot and no stick. Things are right because they are, and you choose them because you would rather choose right than wrong, which makes you awesome.

And of course, the absence of God puts humans at the center of the universe. This world view could just as easily be subtitled “It’s All About Me.” But is it, really?

Both universes which deny free will have a logical flaw: without free will, life means nothing. In a similar fashion, both universes which deny God have a logical flaw: they lack a first cause. Who set up the dominoes and pushed the first one over? Look at anything as small as an atom, as pretty as a fern frond, or as big as a galaxy, and it’s easy to see the phrase “Some Assembly Required” in big invisible letters. The second law of thermodynamics (which has proven trustworthy so far) says that in a closed system, entropy — the level of randomness and the dispersal of energy — increases over time. Clocks run down but they don’t run up. Over the course of time, a stone wall falls apart but it does not fall together.

In a godless universe that starts out with nothing but disorganized atoms, every complex structure had to fall together somehow, with no plan but the randomness provided by an infinite number of immortal typing monkees. And who created them?

This is like saying you can put together a jigsaw puzzle by shaking the loose pieces in the box. It’s easy to imagine that two pieces out of a thousand might eventually fall together. But would they stay joined while you continued to shake? Or would the random energy be just as likely to shake them apart as it would be to shake the next two pieces together? What about eight pieces, or a hundred?

Godless scientists (a description, not a value judgment) get around this argument by saying that we have an infinite amount of time to work with, and that eventually there is a random configuration which puts all the pieces together. Yeah right. I’m not sure I’m ready to buy into that theory. It is not intuitive; my common sense rebels against it. “Fiat Lux!” may be glib and trite, but it sure does wrap up the act of creation in a nice neat bow.

Which leads us to the fourth universe. God and free will: It’s All Happening. If a choiceless universe is soulless and a godless universe is implausibly assembled, then the universe which is most satisfying emotionally and intellectually is the one in which God and free will exist side by side. God — whether you see him as attentive shepherd or blind watchmaker — sets the whole works in motion, and free will makes it all interesting.

True, I have controlled the discussion. I have done all the talking, and you’ve been muttering “Yes, BUT…” as I’ve lead you down the garden path. But isn’t it happy? Isn’t it plausible? Isn’t it all for the best, in this the best of all possible worlds? Keep nodding, there’s a good little robot <head pat>.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold my bear trap. You have watched me build it, sharpen it, oil it, and set it. In my next installment, I will ask you to step in it. We have seen the logical flaws in universes one through three; does the fourth universe have its own “gotcha” as well?

I think it does.

Yr bud, Duke

Tags: bacon, bear trap, Boolean, four universes, free will, Invictus, Steelers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Duke, Faith, Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.