Do you believe that we have free will?
SPEAKER_06I hate that question. I hate that question. Why? Free will is an illusion, but it's a very, very powerful illusion.
SPEAKER_05So you believe that the question I'm asking you now, and the answer you're giving me now, is predetermined. I'm afraid I do, and I find that very hard to stomach. What it may invalidate is the idea that all there is to understanding the world is the scientific method.
SPEAKER_02Brilliantly put.
SPEAKER_06I don't think so. Does that make sense? Not really. It's hard for me to quite follow that. Um What other way what other view than the scientific worldview might you be erecting? I can't think.
SPEAKER_05Whatever it is that makes us experientially know that we have choice. Are you asking the wrong person? No, I don't believe I am, actually. I don't believe I am at all.
SPEAKER_03Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Recently, Richard Dawkins was on the trigonometry podcast to discuss his latest book, and towards the last 15 minutes of the video, Constantine Kisson in particular grills him on a couple of things that don't really fit Richard Dawkins' materialism. He first talks about consciousness, and then really they get into the subject of free will and why Richard Dawkins seems to believe that we are utterly determined there is no such thing as free will, and yet we live our lives on the basis that we are free agents consciously making decisions minute by minute. And isn't that a problem for Richard Dawkins' materialism? Here is where the conversation gets to, and I think it's so revealing.
SPEAKER_05I'm not saying you have made this claim, but a lot of people who have advanced that scientific worldview have done so in a kind of all-encompassing way. They would say, Well, you know, there's no such thing as God or intuition or this or that, other ways of knowing, let's what people might describe, right? So how how I guess what I'm getting at is how do we all know, I would use the word know, that we have a choice and other people have a choice, because we live our lives that way, as you concede, and at the same time hold a philosophical belief that that's not true.
SPEAKER_06When you talk about other ways of knowing, that that raises alarm bells for people who sort of think that things like uh It raises alarm bells for me, but that's why I'm asking. Women's ways of knowing and ethnic ways of knowing and things like that. That's not what I mean. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05I don't mean ethnic ways of knowing. What I'm saying is we all live our lives in adherence to a belief that based on our belief system is false.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Ross Powell, we live our lives based on the fact that I'm a freely choosing individual uh who is not utterly determined by other circumstances, but I'm an agent in control of the actions that I make in the world, and that you're uh an agent in the world who is to some degree in charge of the the decisions that you make in the world. We treat one another like that day by day in every aspect of our lives. Dawkins does not deny that, and yet he also says that because of his m scientific materialism, um we don't have such freedom, and that such freedom is an illusion, and Constantine is trying to press him on. Don't you see the cognitive dissonance here?
SPEAKER_06Isn't that quite telling? It is interesting. It it's it's an interesting point. Um and I find it telling and worrying, and but it doesn't stop me having a scientific world view of the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_05Yes. The rest of the world I grant you. I'm not suggesting that that invalidates the theory of evolution. I'm saying what it may invalidate is the idea that all there is to understanding the world is the scientific method.
SPEAKER_02Brilliantly putting it.
SPEAKER_06Does that make sense? Not really. I it it's hard for me to quite follow that. Um What other way what other view than the scientific worldview might you be erecting I can't think.
SPEAKER_05Whatever it is that makes us experientially know that we have choice, even though the logical conclusion of our scientific worldview is that we don't.
SPEAKER_06Ah, we when you say we know we have choice, we I mean we're probably that that's a false belief, isn't it? So Is it?
SPEAKER_05Well, that that's you live your life according to that false belief.
SPEAKER_06The premise is that it is a false belief. It's an illusion. Uh and um But you don't live your life as if it's an illusion.
SPEAKER_05Uh you live your life as if it's true.
SPEAKER_06If you look at somebody who steps on your foot and you think, you you you certainly do. Um and uh I don't think I have a problem with that, actually. I I don't think I have um I think the fact that it's an illusion, it just is an illusion. And and I I I recognize that it is an illusion.
SPEAKER_03That you base your life on that.
SPEAKER_06Uh when you say the entire world, you mean people, do you? Yes. Yes, that's what's the entire world. The entire world is a lot of people.
SPEAKER_05Our societies are built on the idea that we have choice.
SPEAKER_06Oh yes, it is, absolutely. And uh Don't you think that's r revelatory in some way? Uh I think it if if if it could worry anybody, it should worry all of humanity, not specifically science.
SPEAKER_05Sure. But I'm that's why I'm asking you the question. As I say, you are one of the sharpest minds our societies have produced. You are. Um and I think it's interesting to wrestle with these questions.
SPEAKER_06Well, you could wrestle with a philosopher and you'd and you'd and and he would snow you with with jargon and and um which I'd not do which I I'm not equipped to do.
SPEAKER_03He shall snow you with jargon. That's that's what uh a philosopher does. Snows you with jargon. Whereas Richard does not think he has a philosophy. But I want to show you that Richard Dawkins does in fact have a philosophy. It's just unfortunate he doesn't think he has a philosophy, and therefore he is not reflective about the philosophy that he has. He thinks that there is a massive chasm between fact and value, and therefore he is living with the split that the West has lived with for the last 500 years. Uh, ever since the time of Rene Descartes, and ever since the time of the Scientific Revolution, we've tended to think that there are facts on the one side and there are values on the other. And Richard Dawkins very much takes the side of fact, and on that side there are things like knowledge as opposed to belief on the other side, or there is science as opposed to faith on the other side. And Richard Dawkins is basically camping out on the fact side of this chasm. And what Constantine is constantly doing is pointing to the other side of the canyon and saying, what about free will, what about consciousness, what about objective goodness? He doesn't say what about God, but he could say, what about God? Uh all those things Richard and uh much of the Western tradition has relegated to the far side of the chasm, to the point where Richard now stands on the fact side of the chasm and considers that everything on the other side is unreal or less real, and so it's nonsense to believe in free will or consciousness or objective goodness or gods, because science has triumphed. We'll get into this in the video, as Constantine says, science has won. And what has happened since the scientific revolution is because of the success of science in explaining the material world, we've basically said, okay, well, the scientific method is good for that kind of stuff. Um, and we'll just leave to one side issues of consciousness and freedom and goodness and and beauty and th those sorts of things. We'll hive those off. Those can just be subjective things. And you can study those things according to different methods if you like, but we're gonna go with the science thing. And Richard Dawkins is that mentality on steroids to the point where, because of the success of science, Richard Dawkins wants to say, no, the scientific method is the way of understanding the world. And, you know, he can point to 500 years of success in explaining the natural world, and he can say, look, look at all the great advances that science has made. Don't you see that science has won, right? And we don't need the medieval theologians to talk to us about souls and eternal life and heaven and God and pixie dust and all that kind of stuff. We just need scientific data. And so the the triumph of science has led to a kind of a scientism. Scientism is saying that the natural world is all there is, was, and ever shall be. And I think Richard Dawkins is an example of someone who's fallen for scientism when actually science fits within a broader view of the world that actually can't get off the ground without a belief in minds and rationality and consciousness and freedom and goodness, truth, and beauty, right? But Richard Dawkins wants to narrow things down, and Constantine Kisson is saying, look at all these other things that are real. They're real, Richard, even though you can't explain them scientifically, wouldn't you say? He starts off with consciousness. So we're going to go back 15 minutes in the video and we'll see him first um mention to Richard Dawkins something that look you have to take it on faith, don't you, Richard?
SPEAKER_05Do you think human beings are special?
SPEAKER_06And obviously, yes, they are.
SPEAKER_05And what makes them special?
SPEAKER_06Um language, uh culture, technology. Um high level of consciousness. I mean we we're hugely special.
SPEAKER_05What does c what does h what does consciousness mean? That's a difficult question. Um That's why I'm asking.
SPEAKER_06It's something we all know we have. Um and we are we take it on trust that uh other people have it. I I believe you must have consciousness because I have it, but I can't prove it.
SPEAKER_03So we take it on trust that other people have consciousness. Um I've heard Richard Dawkins also say that we take it on trust that we ourselves have consciousness, even though he, along with Daniel Dennett, calls it an illusion. Um, to which the the response is, well, if it's an illusion, who is being tricked? Um there must be consciousness. Even even if even if you speak in terms of illusion, there is still a person to be deluded by the trick that is consciousness. So Richard Dawkins kind of takes it on faith that he has consciousness, and he takes it on faith that other minds exist, and he takes it on trust that there is an external world that really, really exists out there. So Constantine Kisson is absolutely right to point out, look, there there are things that science itself doesn't prove that you begin with, and surely it's a kind of a faith-seeking understanding thing that explains the natural world, not a pure method of skepticism, right? So consciousness is one thing that science doesn't prove, it has to assume because scientists are conscious. Another thing that's not taught by the scientific method is free will, the sense that I am a personal agent in the world and that the causes of my actions are to some degree, they begin with me, rather than I'm just a cog in a machine utterly determined by external factors, and the me gets washed away along with my choices. Is there such a thing as free will?
SPEAKER_05Do you believe in free will? Do you believe that we free have free will?
SPEAKER_06As Christopher Hitchens said, I have no choice.
SPEAKER_05Um Christopher Hitchens was very good at avoiding answering the question in my life.
SPEAKER_06We just avoided it. I hate that question. Um I I hate that question. Why? I I think I'm persuaded by p people that I've read that um free free will is an illusion. But it's a very, very powerful illusion. We we all feel as as if we've got free will.
SPEAKER_03A very powerful illusion that we all feel that we have.
SPEAKER_05So you believe that the question I'm asking you now and the answer you're giving me now is predetermined?
SPEAKER_06I'm afraid I do, and I find that very hard to stomach, but but yes.
SPEAKER_03I mean, one of the reasons why that might be hard to stomach is if the question that Constantine asks and the answer that Richard Dawkins gives are predetermines, then doesn't that undercut the whole rationality of the scientific movement? If we are caused to ask questions and give certain answers, where does deliberation come in? Where does rationality come in? Where does um making up your mind come in? Or is the mind also just a collection of cogs grinding together? But if all brain states are just reducible to your biology and your biology is reducible to your chemistry and your chemistry is reducible to physics, then aren't we just such machines? And isn't Richard Dawkins' atheistic materialism, doesn't it lead exactly to this kind of determinism that gets rid of free will and therefore might get rid of the rationality that supposedly underpins his atheism?
SPEAKER_05The reason I'm asking you about free will is having read your work extensively and now having asked you the question, it seems to me that it inevitably follows from the system of b of beliefs that you have that as you concede free will can't exist, right? Um so the reason I asked you whether it's unscientific is not because I was trying to get you to say something provocative or dogmatic. I'm just trying to understand how human beings might have free will within you know the the conventional scientific understanding of human realities and evolution and so on.
SPEAKER_06Yes, to say that something is unscientific is a pejorative which I wouldn't wish to go into.
SPEAKER_03What about non-scientific? Um like science has a realm, and if you're going to study the natural world, um then science is excellent at coming up with answers to questions about what and how. You know, if you want to know what something is, and if you want to know how the system operates, then science um is a great tool for understanding the natural world. But science is not the tool that we use to understand everything in life, is it? Otherwise, we get into the problem of if all you've got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. And you start looking at this so-called illusion about freedom, and you just sort of hit it with a materialism hammer and you just sort of smash it. Um you smash it to pieces because the tool you're using isn't fit for purpose. Richard is is struggling to talk about non-scientific things in anything other than a pejorative sense, because for him, the scientific worldview is the way of understanding all of reality. And what Constantine is trying to say is, well, aren't there non-scientific ways of viewing reality that actually get you to truths that science can't get you to? And Richard is really struggling with that.
SPEAKER_06My private suspicion is that we d is that we don't have free will, but I wouldn't wish to condemn somebody who thought the opposite.
SPEAKER_05So if we don't have free will, that sort of takes apart quite a lot of the things that we do in society, like rewarding punishment.
SPEAKER_06Quite a lot. Not everybody thinks that. Um there are some people who s who who claim to be um to not believe in free will, and yet who do believe that punishment can be justified.
SPEAKER_05I guess what I'm asking is when I go home today to my two-year-old toddler, why would I reward or not reward certain behaviour if he has no choice? He's doing what he's doing.
SPEAKER_06I think you'd have to talk to a philosopher about that. I I I I share your puzzlement about this whole matter, and I don't understand why it is that those philosophers who call themselves compatibilists, and you can look that up, um, uh, would um nevertheless um dispute the view that um, for example, take punishment with the extreme case, that that that you you you can't punish people because they lad, it was it was the molecules that did it, is not my fault.
SPEAKER_03Well, right. The laughter at that point is when cognitive dissonance kind of clashes, right? When you when you've got a certain set of presuppositions over here and you've got reality here, and the presuppositions don't work. It wasn't me, it was just my molecules. If a cyclone destroys my house, we take that very differently from if a mob of thugs take down my house, right? There are very real differences between those two states of affairs, but what scientifically is the difference and is science the best tool to use to examine the difference between a cyclone and a mob? And a cyclone and a mob, and an individual with a brain tumor that is acting on a certain part of his brain that might be sending him a little bit um insane, um, and a perfectly healthy person, right? And and all those things we know to be relevantly different, and yet science is not the best tool to use to differentiate uh between the impersonal and the personal, let's say. Because we've taken this decision since Descartes to put to one side matters of consciousness and the personal and the subjective and the ethical, the value-laden area, and we've just decided to look at the facts over here. And that has led to lots of progress in certain areas of science, but it has not opened up the world to us um in the way that it might have done because we've split ourselves, right? And now, if we just go along the science branch of the track, we're not able to make sense of that which is very near to us going home to a two-year-old and any kind of discipline or any kind of just treating a human as a human and not simply as a biological system, right? Um what what is it that makes sense of the world that you and I inhabit, whether you're Richard Dawkins, whether you're Constantin Tinkisson, whether you're me, you, we all inhabit a world in which personal relations are very different. I thou relations, to use Martin Buber's term, are very different from I it relations, which are very different from it it relations. Okay. But the scientific method treats everything basically as it it, not as I it and not as I thou. So um Constantine is setting up this this problem. We live in a world of I thou relations and we've got this this method that's really good for looking at it it relations, but then we've got some people who say that it it is it, and there's nothing beyond that, and then you lose the personal and you you lose everything that's actually most near to us and our understanding of the world.
SPEAKER_05Well the the reason I'm uh pressing you on this is a curiosity, uh, because you're one of the brightest minds that our society's produced in a very long time, but b, because I think this is why Jordan wants to continue to have these discussions with you. Jordan Peterson.
SPEAKER_06Well, I don't want to have that discussion. It's more important.
SPEAKER_05Well, you're about you may be about to find out that you're gonna have it nonetheless, I'm afraid. Um I guess the reason we're digging into all of this with you, Richard, is I think it's a very I think I don't think I've met anybody who lives their life as if other people don't have free will. No, I agree with you. Right? So we all live our life assuming that other people have free will, even if we don't.
SPEAKER_06And assuming that we ourselves do as well. Right. Yes.
SPEAKER_05But it's easier to see with other people as most things are, right? So if you behave in a way that is unpleasant for me, I'm gonna assume you've made that choice. In the same way that the reason Francis asked you about politics, I assume, is that that is an area where people almost always act as if people that they don't agree with or people that they do agree with politically are making a choice. You know, people who, if I'm left wing, the people who are on the right there, they've made a choice to be evil. And if I'm right wing, then the people on the left have made the choice to be evil or stupid or whatever the right language would be. So it's interesting to me that I think we live increasingly in a world that is uh deterministic. People are taught to think about the world in that way, and the logical conclusion of their beliefs is that, and yet we don't seem to actually live in that world on a psychological.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you're quite right. We don't we we we we don't. And and we we we may philosophically believe that we are deterministic, but yet we behave as though and we our whole psychology is be is geared to the assumption that we're not, and that we and other people are free.
SPEAKER_05And what do you make of that?
SPEAKER_06Because that's quite a contradiction.
SPEAKER_05Yes, but that's because you haven't answered it. It's quite a contradiction to have.
SPEAKER_06I will not answer it, and nor will anybody else in any satisfactory way.
SPEAKER_03I can I can answer it in a satisfactory way. Okay. Science is great for it-it relations, and it's terrible for either relations, and that's because it is just one way of looking at the world. And if you've watched this channel for any length of time, you might have heard me use Betty the botanist as my analogy. I'm gonna give it to you yet again. If you haven't heard it, Betty is a botanist. There she is in her laboratory, and she's been working all through the night. Gareth, the lab assistant, comes in the next morning and says, Betty, have you been working through the night? She says, Oh, yeah, thank you. Thank you yesterday. You gave me the botanical specimen. And I've been working on it. I've discovered pharmacological properties on this botanical specimen that that's uh gonna help us in the fight against Alzheimer's disease. I've mapped the genome. Of this botanical specimen. It's a first, and you know, I'm gonna get into Science Magazine and Nature Magazine. It's gonna be brilliant. This is a breakthrough for my career. Thank you for giving me the botanical specimen. And Gareth says, Betty, yesterday was February the 14th. I gave you a long-stemmed rose. Do you understand what I gave to you? And in one sense, Betty understands the rose really, really well. She understands the rose better than anyone else has ever understood roses. In another sense, Betty is a moron because there are other ways of understanding the rose simply than the scientific, okay? And what if it's a love gift from somebody else trying to communicate something to you that is not communicated in the genome? You can't just find mapping the genome that Gareth loves Betty, right? You have to be attuned to things that go beyond the laboratory and that aren't captured under the microscope. You're going to actually have to look at the world as a world of eye thou relations and not simply as a world of it-it relations. Betty is very, very clever with it-it. She's a moron as regards I thou relations. But what if the whole world is like that rose? What if it's the communication of somebody trying to tell you that they love you? Can you do scientific experiments on the world? You can do a lot of scientific experiments on the world, and by all means go into the laboratory and knock yourself out. Fantastic. But that doesn't mean you have exhausted the meaning of the world any more than Betty exhausted the meaning of the rose by mapping its genome. There are other ways of looking at the world. And what if you began where you know those medieval philosophers began? Faith seeking understanding. The faith that actually we don't begin as independent reasoners who all by ourselves begin with our you know first person um doubting of the world, and then uh are led to build up a picture from the inside out of the world. Um they they took it on faith, and I think it's it's obviously the case that we live as dependent, communal, heart-driven creatures who are not first doubt-driven, because doubt is parasitic upon faith. We are faith-driven creatures who must receive on faith the love of an external world, the love of a thou who loves us first, and we find ourselves in the gaze of the thou who looks at us. And you can think about that in strictly familial terms, the the mother's loving gaze towards the child is the environment in which this very dependent creature is introduced to an external world, the external world that comes first, the internal world that catches up to it and you trust, and that enables you then to go out into the world and understand it better. You can understand it in familial terms. I think there is a deeper theological strata to that, that there is a God who loves us first, and we are very dependent creatures, and we don't begin with skepticism because you can't begin with skepticism, you have to begin on faith, receiving the external love from outside us as we look to this God of love. Um we are not first independent skeptics who all by ourselves begin with an internal world and work our way outwards. We are, first of all, those who love because he first loved us, as 1 John 4 verse 19 puts it. We love because he first loved us. We we receive from the outside and take on faith I thou relations, and I thou relations are prior to it-it relations, and they're prior to I-it relations, because in the biblical vision, God is persons in communion. God is a father loving his son in the joy of the Holy Spirit, and we have come from I thou relations, and they are primary. They are primary uh temporally, and they are primary uh in terms of our epistemology, how we know the world, they are primary, even I would say, metaphysically, because God is Father, Son, and Spirit, a lover who loves us first, and in dependence and faith upon the lover, we grow up into ways of knowing, ways of ways of knowing that are appropriate to the object of inquiry. And if we're thinking about God, we will think in ways that are appropriate to God. If we're thinking about persons, we'll think in ways that are appropriate to persons. If we are thinking about things, we'll think in ways that are appropriate to things. And science fits really well within that much bigger vision for how we come to know stuff. And the it-it relations are not in competition with the eye thou relations, any more than the rose as a botanical specimen is in competition with the rose as a love gift. It's just one rose, but it can be understood in multiple ways, and those multiple ways are not in competition with one another. And therefore, I can look at a human person and I can see all sorts of biological systems, but that is not in competition with the fact that I look at a person and I say, they are made in God's image. They are someone for whom Jesus died. They they are a person who has legal rights before the law. They are a person who is a member of society, um, they they might be British, and they might be female, and they might be a certain age, and and and all those truths are true at different levels of analysis, and I use different methods in order to get at all those different truths. But I can say that there stands somebody who is godlike, who is in the image of God, who is a personal agent with agency in the world, and I can say that there is their genome and it can be mapped. And those two things are not in competition. The only person who has a problem with Constantine's questions is somebody who believes in scientism, who believes that the physical processes of the cosmos are all there is, was, and ever shall be. But that is to be like Betty. Don't be like Betty.
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SPEAKER_06It's a philosophically difficult problem.
SPEAKER_03It's a problem if your philosophy is scientism. It's not a problem if your philosophy is not scientism.
SPEAKER_00So we we believe that we're in control of our own destiny. But if you look at, for instance, somebody who has schizophrenia, a very profound mental illness, we accept that they are not in control because of the illness.
SPEAKER_06So Yes, you're right. It is um in in courts of law, um, insanity is is grounds for getting off. But in in a in a way you could say that anybody who's done um done a murder has the same grounds for getting off as somebody who does it by reason of insan of insanity. Right. You could make that case. And and would you? And I I don't think that uh anybody, I don't think lawyers have woken up to that possibility.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell That's so telling to think that lawyers haven't caught up with this vision, the scientism vision of reality. When actually what lawyers are dealing with is the moral culpability that we all have, the moral responsibility as agents in the world, and that's something that not only lawyers but moral philosophers and all philosophers and thinkers, for thousands of years before Descartes, before the scientific revolution, have taken for granted, and it has built civilizations. But if we assume that Richard Dawkins' vision of reality is the only vision of reality, then I don't know, will that scientism wash through the legal field? And will all moral responsibility just be dissolved by the universal acid of his scientific determinism? Um is that the world that Richard is kind of presenting to us? And does he does he think that lawyers need to catch up with scientists? Or might the lawyers and the moral theologians and philosophers have something to teach the scientists? I hope it's the latter.
SPEAKER_00Because if we can say that one person is has profound is profoundly unwell mentally, therefore they're not they're not accountable for not responsible for the people for their own actions, absolutely. They cannot be accountable.
SPEAKER_06Nobody's responsible for their actions, is what you're saying.
SPEAKER_05Well, that's the logical conclusion of the world view. That's why I'm grilling you on this. It's not because I'm trying to-trong person. No, I don't believe I am, actually. I don't believe I am at all. The reason I'm asking you is that we live in a world in which science has won.
SPEAKER_03Good on him. I I do think Richard Dawkins is the right person to ask about this question. Um, it would not be right to ask a scientist about moral culpability in a court of law if the scientist simply stuck to science and said, Oh yeah, but that's just my field, and we need to think about humans, and we need to think about moral culpability in a whole meta-ethical framework, and that's not really my domain. Except that Richard Dawkins says that his domain is is everything, right? And that the that the only thing that really deserves to be called true knowledge is what can be reduced to his scientism. So he is the right person to ask about this, not because he has legal expertise, but because he thinks that his scientific expertise trumps what lawyers and moral philosophers have thought for thousands of years. That's that's why he's the right person to ask about this.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell, the reason I'm asking you is that we live in a world in which science has won. Science is what we teach our children in school.
SPEAKER_03Science has won. And so it's this conflict hypothesis. 19th century was full of this idea that faith and science are in this sort of duel to the death and it's a zero-sum gain, you know. And if science wins, religion loses, right? It's a tug of war, and science has won. You know, we've all all got iPhones in our pockets, science has won. We live in this world in which we think that we need to bifurcate the world the way that Descartes and and then the empiricists kind of led us down the track of. We need to split the world into fact and value. We've pursued the fact thing all the way, we've pursued the objectivity and the scientific knowledge thing all the way, and we've left off ethics, goodness, truth, beauty, freedom, consciousness. We've left all those things to one, and science has won, right? And now science is the way we view everything. Ah, but it turns out we actually need a language to describe goodness, truth, beauty, love, minds, freedom, right? And and if Richard is over here saying he has a view that understands the whole thing, but actually he can't deal with the things that are closest to us and that absolutely infect every aspect of our conscious experience day by day, then he's got a problem, and he's not really helping us to solve the problem.
SPEAKER_05Science is how we think about reality, science is how we think about everything. And yet, what the point I'm making to you is we all live our lives in a way that is counter to that very belief system, quite directly. Is that not evidence, for example, of the fact that if we instinctively all know that other people do have a choice and we have a choice about our own decisions at some level, does that not put into question some of the underlying assumptions of that worldview?
SPEAKER_03It questions scientism, doesn't it? It doesn't question science, you can still do your science, right? And Betty can still like map the genome of the rose, but it just says that the rose is not reducible to its scientific properties, right? And and the world is not reducible to its scientific properties, and there's more going on. There are people made in God's image who are moral agents in this world who are acting to one degree or another. We can get into what is freedom in another video, but we have this knowledge of ourselves as agents in the world who are morally responsible, who can treat one another either as other image bearers who deserve provision and protection, or we can act immorally, but we're responsible for that, and that that is the way we live our lives, that is the way society functions. Can't we just take that on faith in the same way that we take consciousness on faith, and the same way that we take the the minds of others on faith, in the same way that we take the external world on faith, which we can't actually prove? Um can't we just take this on faith? Why the method of doubt the whole time? Can't we take these things on faith? What do you reckon, Richard?
SPEAKER_06Um, I don't think so, because um the worldview you're talking about, the scientific worldview, is looking at the world, looking at physics, looking at biology, looking at genetics, looking at um everything that you can measure about the real world and is not um directly talking about this free will question.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's true. If you just want to be a scientist in your scientific domain, but if you think that natural laws of cause and effect are all there is, was, and ever shall be, you've just made a metaphysical claim, not a physical claim, but a metaphysical claim about the kind of universe that we live in, at which point those questions about why you can't explain freedom and consciousness really do start to bite.
SPEAKER_06It's not undermining the the scientific worldview, I don't think.
SPEAKER_05It's um Is it not undermining So the reason I'm saying this is the scientific worldview, as you concede, leads to a deterministic worldview. Almost certainly. No, that you say that there are some people who have a quantum best, right? So then if you undermine the deterministic worldview, then you're necessarily undermining the scientific worldview. You just follow the chain backwards.
SPEAKER_06But that doesn't mean that if you're studying, say, the growth of wheat and you're measuring which fertilizer is is um true. It doesn't undermine that. You can go on measuring things and go on looking at the effects of of experiments. Yes. Um the fact that that you are you are philosophically um deeply mired in this problem of determinism doesn't alter the fact that you can measure things and count things. Totally agree.
SPEAKER_03Measuring things, counting things, great it-it relations, wonderful. Betty the botanist mapping the genome, fantastic.
SPEAKER_05So I don't think it doesn't affect your ability to measure how wheat grows with different types of fertilizer. But I think uh I'm not saying you have made this claim, but a lot of people who have advanced that scientific worldview have done so in a kind of all-encompassing way. They would say, Well, you know, there's no such thing as God or intuition or this or that, other ways of knowing, let's what people might describe, right? So how how I guess what I'm getting at is how do we all know, I would use the word know, that we have a choice and other people have a choice, because we live our lives that way, as you concede, and at the same time hold a philosophical belief that that's not true.
SPEAKER_06When you talk about other ways of knowing, that that raises alarm bells for people who sort of things like uh raises alarm bells for me, but that's why I'm asking. Women's ways of knowing and ethnic ways of knowing and things like that. That's not what I mean.
SPEAKER_03Ha. So you can see where Richard Dawkins gets some of his anti-woke uh kind of uh thinking. He he thinks of it like hocus pocus, I guess wokus pocus would be how he thinks of um, you know, indigenous ways of knowing and feminist ways of knowing, etc., etc. But that that is because he does reduce things. He he reduces things to the cause and effect world of a closed system. But Constantine Kisson is talking about other ways of knowing than the scientific method, the sort of ways of knowing that a lawyer might have in a court of law when he's assuming moral culpability, the kinds of ways of knowing that a father has in raising a two-year-old child, the the kind of ways of knowing that we all experience minute by minute when we assume that we have a consciousness, that other people have a consciousness, that other people are moral agents who are worthy of our consideration, and like we live each moment in other ways of knowing, right? And we just can't get by in this world for more than an hour with just the kind of knowledge that Betty the botanist has, right? That that's the other ways of knowing that Constantine is talking about.
SPEAKER_05I don't mean ethnic ways of knowing. What I'm saying is we all live our lives in adherence to a belief that based on our belief system is false. Isn't that quite telling?
SPEAKER_06It is interesting. It it's it's an interesting point. We're back to where we started.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And I find it telling and worrying, and it doesn't stop me having a scientific worldview of the rest of the world. Great. Yes.
SPEAKER_05The rest of the world, I grant you. I'm not suggesting that that invalidates the theory of evolution. I'm saying what it may invalidate is the idea that all there is to understanding the world is the scientific method.
SPEAKER_06Um, I don't make sense. Not really. It really does. It's hard for me to quite follow that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um well. What other way what other view than the scientific worldview might you be erecting as an alternative?
SPEAKER_05Whatever it is that makes us experientially know that we have choice, even though the logical conclusion of our scientific worldview is that we don't.
SPEAKER_06Ah, we when you say we know we have choice, I mean we're probably that that's a false belief, isn't it? Is it? You live your life according to that false belief. The premise is that it is a false belief. It's an illusion. Uh and um But you don't live your life as if it's an illusion.
SPEAKER_05Uh you live your life as if it's true. You look at somebody who steps on your foot and you think.
SPEAKER_06And uh I don't think I have a problem with that, actually. I I don't think I have totally has a problem with that. Um I think the fact that it's an illusion, it just is an illusion. And and I I I recognize that it is an illusion.
SPEAKER_05But the entire world operates on what you including you and me, on that illusion. Isn't that possibly to say the entire world?
SPEAKER_03You mean people, because the entire world, the entire world. Our societies are built. This is like Betty the Butnist saying, you know, the entire world believes in this illusion called Valentine's Day and love. Um, but you just need to recognize that it's an illusion, and what you need to keep on doing is, you know, discovering the pharmacological properties on the on the leaves of the of the rose, right? Um if you want to understand the world, you might need to understand the world uh using a toolkit that is a little bit more sophisticated than science is my hammer, right? And unfortunately, I think Richard Dawkins has a science is my hammer kind of toolkit, and when he's faced with all kinds of things like truth, beauty, goodness, love, freedom, other minds, consciousness, um like he's just he's just hitting all these like light bulbs with hammers and and saying, Oh, you thought there was light there, that was just an illusion. You are not understanding the world in all its rich variegated complexity if uh all you're going to do is use the hammer of science. And I think Constantine Kisson, kudos to you. You did a brilliant job of opening up the fact that science is wonderful, but it is one tool that we need in a much more richly variegated toolkit in order to understand the world. Now, what does this mean for you and me? Richard Dawkins doubts freedom and consciousness and God. And he's very famous for doubting God, he's less famous for doubting those other two things. What if God is as obvious a thing as freedom and consciousness? What if actually we have had to in the West completely teach ourselves a materialist worldview and constantly indoctrinate ourselves with this mechanical view of the world, such that you just you just have to tell yourself, no, consciousness is an illusion, no, freedom is an illusion, no, God is an illusion, right? Those those things all stand or fall together, okay? And the post-Christian West that has split itself in the Enlightenment and has followed the science versus faith debate and considers science to have won, has eliminated a sense of self and consciousness and freedom and God, and none of those things should be surprising to us because of the starting point. We've started with skepticism, we've started with ourselves, we've started with a method of doubt, we've started individualistically, we've started not with the heart but with the mind, with the brain, right? And all those things lead you to the the folly of determinism, the folly of consciousness is an illusion, and the folly of atheism. And those those those three follies, they they all belong together because they're all from the same worldview. And if you're starting to doubt whether Richard Dawkins is a trustworthy guide when it comes to consciousness or freedom, um you should also doubt whether he's a he's a he's a trustworthy guide when it comes to God. And final point the way in which to bring freedom back into the equation is not to sort of like. Inject a kind of a freedom of the gaps. And the way in which to inject consciousness back into the equation is not to believe in a ghost in the machine, a kind of a consciousness of the gaps. And the way to believe in God is not to inject God into a space within this mechanical world and think, okay, no, there is a space for God, there is a space for freedom, there is a space for consciousness. It is to actually wind back the clock and reweave what the Enlightenment split apart. And to think again that we just don't live in a mechanical universe. And you know we don't live in a mechanical universe. We don't for a moment live the way Betty the Botanist wants us to live. We don't live for a moment the way scientism would expect the world to be. We live in a world in which we are radically dependent, we are faith-based creatures, we receive our life from the outside of ourselves, and we grow up into that kind of thing. We live in God's world. We genuinely live in God's world. And everything we're encountering in every moment of our existence is supernatural. It is not what naturalism would expect you to experience. You are living in a supernatural world. Okay. Therefore, to believe in God is not to add an element to your self-sustaining naturalistic worldview. It is to deconvert yourself from this regime that has been imposed on you, this regime of naturalism, of materialism, that the world just grinds along according to physical laws of necessity. Okay, you need to deconvert from that worldview. But as you deconvert from that patent nonsense, I'm not asking you to kind of come back to basics and then, okay, let's add in a little bit of God here, and a little bit of freedom here, and a little bit of consciousness here. It is to open your eyes to the world that is enchanted, the world that is supernatural, the world in which, my goodness, I am communicating to you right now. I am a mind communicating to another mind, trying to persuade you with reason and emotion and rhetoric and logic. And what do you notice about all these things? They're utterly immaterial. So to be a materialist is the last thing you should be, right? Materialism is the most nonsense vision for the world. And as soon as you see that delusion, the atheist delusion, then you're ready to view the world as the supernatural thing that it is. The world is charged with the grandeur of God, as Gerald Manley Hopkins said. You're living in his universe. And if you can pull at the same threads that Constantine is pulling at, I think you'll start to see that. One way you can pull at those threads is by doing 321, go to 321course.com. We'd love to show you life according to Jesus and awaken you to the supernatural world that we already live in. It's life according to Jesus. So we get Jesus' vision for God, Jesus' vision for the world, Jesus' vision for you. You can do it in eight sessions, you can binge it in a couple of hours. We'd love you to log on, start an account. We won't spam you, it's totally free. We just want you to be able to save your progress and keep going through the course. There's a bunch of added resources, there's a chat community, we'd love to see you doing 321course.com. That'll do us for now. We'll catch you on the next one.
SPEAKER_01Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'd just like to share some listener correspondence that we've had in response to our previous episode, which was about the Oasis reunion, the return of the Gallagher brothers. And Dale from Australia has got in touch. Thank you, Dale. He says, I'm a listener from Australia and I love your show. I really enjoyed your recent episode on the Oasis reunion tour and the brothers' relationship. I wondered if you had ever read about Noel Gallagher's friendship with Bono and the time he asked Bono to explain his faith to him. So Dale in his email goes on to uh to share a couple of articles about this interaction that Noel Gallagher had with Bono from U2. And it seems they they had a really interesting conversation and Bono explained to Noel what what his relationship with God was like, and it seems he sent uh Noel Gallagher a couple of books, a couple of uh Christian books. Well, thanks for sharing that, Dale. That's really fascinating, and I'm sure there are all sorts of conversations going on behind the scenes in in all sorts of industries that are maybe maybe kind of unexpected interactions where people are considering faith again. And we spend quite a lot of time on this podcast thinking about this current cultural moment and why we're in a meaning crisis and why all sorts of people at the moment are beginning to uh take steps back towards faith. They're thinking about what have we lost in in walking away from the Christian story. So we're excited to see what God does in this time. If you'd like to contact the show, do feel free to email Thomas at speaklife.org.uk and we will read some of those out on a future show. So do feel free to get in touch. Well, thank you so much for listening. God bless, and we will be back soon.