Free Will

To my atheist friends:

I’m a scientist and a Christian Libertarian, something most of my atheist friends really can’t get a handle on. I actually believe that life was designed and created and did not arise from spontaneous generation, literally come from natural lifeless chemical reactions, nor do I believe that all life on earth as we see it evolved from simpler organisms. But I cannot “prove” the existence of a God or the God.

As a chemist I can prove, and demonstrate that when chemicals are mixed in the correct proportions under certain conditions you always get the same reaction. Prove this to yourself at home. Take a ¼ cup of vinegar (a mild organic acid), and add to it a teaspoon of baking soda (a fairly mild organic base), you will get a bubbling reaction. Most of you will recognize this as the basic reaction used to create a “volcano” for typical elementary school science experiments. Repeat this process over and over again until you prove to yourself that when vinegar and baking soda are mixed under at room temperature and normal pressure you always get the same reaction. In fact I’ll wager everything I own that you will get that reaction every time, no matter how many trillions of times you repeat it. In nature under the same conditions when two chemicals mix you always get the same results. This is natural, and repeatable.

If there is only nature and there is no god, nor designer, nor programmer that created life as something special, or to be specific if there is no supernatural, then there is no free will. If we are simply the result of chemical and environmental reactions over time; then your very thoughts are simply the product of chemical reactions because certain chemicals in certain conditions interact in your brain. They are not truly yours to control, nor controlled by anybody or anything other than the natural conditions in which the reactions occur. Therefore nobody can be responsible for their actions; hence there can be no good or evil actions, since the actions of a person are simply the result of complex chemical reactions. The decision of a soldier to throw herself on a grenade to save her buddies is no more noble or good than the decision to rape and murder somebody. Both decisions are simply the result of certain chemicals being in certain concentrations under certain conditions. If life is just the result of natural powers not some supernatural power no decision or action is more valuable than another.

If you do not believe in a god, then you have to believe the scientifically improvable, improbable, and probably impossible. You have to believe that life spontaneously arose from non-living matter. This theory is un-testable, we cannot create the conditions which existed on earth billions of years ago, and to believe it you must have faith because there is no proof.

To my non-libertarian friends:

I’m a Christian Libertarian, something most of my non-libertarian friends really can’t get a handle on. I actually believe that people have free will and should be free to do as they please so long as they don’t infringe upon the rights of another. That allowing freedom has, and will, provide for the best for all men. Free will is the basis behind the Judeo-Christian ethic; the granting of free will, the exercise of free will, and the consequences of exercising free will are the story of the Bible.

The forefathers of this country, looked upon thousands of years of civilization before them, and applied scientific reasoning determined to how best for people to establish governance. It had only been about 300 years (very short time in man’s history) since Roger Bacon described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. This time of the mid 18th century is known as the “age of enlightenment.” Through that “enlightenment” our forefathers believed that men were endowed with unalienable rights, that were independent of the government, and that the best, fairest, most equitable way to govern was to create a government which was limited and protected these rights. The continental North America was populated by people who lived this way. When the ruling elite (King of England), started to arbitrarily take away the people’s rights, they revolted, declared their independence, and penned the foundations of our country.

Our forefathers determined that history showed that power corrupts people, and that all people being free to live free and independent, being allowed own and acquire property, and to do business (or to not do business) with each other under fair laws that applied equally to everybody (no ruling elite, or nobility with special privileges), protecting individuals rights based on sound Christian principles would result in the best overall system of governance for everybody. They didn’t even give the government a monopoly on the use of force, and recognized the right of all men to protect themselves, thus extending the long tradition of the right to keep and bear arms. They argued over slavery and eventually in a bloody civil war the practice was ended. In a very short time, free people, living free lives, became the most powerful country in the world.

Ruling elite, robber barons, rich socialists, and the power hungry have been slowly trying to put the genie back into the bottle. We lived in a country where the government didn’t determine your future, where people can become millionaires from their garage ( HP printer company was a garage startup), where men were freely rewarded by their fellow citizens for the goods and services they provided, and where the common worker can and did, force companies to treat them fairly. Where when organized labor become taken over by some ruling elite, free men could and did choose to work where unions didn’t control their destiny. This whole free will thing really disturbs the ruling elite.

So the ruling elite have gone back to ancient ways (read the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and The Prince), we again have bread and circuses. Instead of free people being able to all be treated equally, they choose to try and treat people differently based on race, sex, religion, geography, education, etc. To control the population they are “spreading the wealth”. Television has replaced the circuses, actors have replace gladiators, and welfare has replaced the daily distribution of bread, but the end goal is the same, to control the masses. Anything to keep power, rather than let free people determine how best to spend their money, reward their fellow man, and what charities to provide based on their own free choices. If you think there isn’t a ruling elite, then explain why congress and the government are exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act, why they are exempt from OSHA. The government is forcing charity, and forcing how and where people must do business. By law you must now buy government approved services from government approved providers. Not just from whom, and under what conditions you can purchase services, but you no longer have the choice of choosing not purchase a service, this is exactly why we threw out the King and declared our independence.

This country was founded on the Judeo-Christian idea that men have free will, free to enjoy the rewards of wise decisions and free to suffer the consequences of foolish decisions; just as men are free to choose to follow Christ, or not to follow him, and be rewarded or suffer as a result of that decision. The problem with free will is that some people will freely choose not to do what is in their best interest, or choose not to do what the ruling elite want. Some will choose to smoke, or choose to not exercise, or choose to waste their money stuff they don’t need instead of preparing for their future, or choose not to get an education when offered. Because liberals (and many conservatives) don’t believe in a God, they don’t believe in free will, and thus don’t believe that people should suffer (or be rewarded) for the free choices they have made. If you recall Æsop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper, the grasshopper suffered the consequences of his actions. Today, leaders in our government blame the ant for the grasshopper’s condition, and it uses force to reward the grasshopper with the product of the ant’s hard work. They talk about income redistribution, sounding like they believe in the Marxist theory of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, they actually just want power and control, and use the idea of “spreading the wealth” to justify their power grab. History has repeatedly shown that, under socialist policies, the ruling elite get richer, and everybody else gets poorer, and are just a means of sharing the misery, not sharing the wealth.

Belief in God matters, belief in free will matters, belief in Christian ideas matter. If there is no God, then the idea posed in the famous “B” movie when the Mongol General asked "What is best in life?" and Conan replied "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!" is just as valid an idea as Christ’s answer to a similar question posed by the Pharisees, “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… and … To love your neighbor as yourself.”

Of course if there is no God then there is no free will, and none of this really matters.