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Apologia Report 18:13 (1,149)
April 10, 2013
Subject: Do you have free will? "No," says Sam Harris.
In this issue:
EVANGELICALISM - Time magazine on "putting traditional Christianity back into clinical trial"
FREE WILL - is it "a powerful challenge to conventional notions of individual responsibility"?
+ ... or is it, as Sam Harris says, the "illusory result of a chain of causes over which we have no ultimate control"?
WORLDVIEW HISTORY - "the perfect primer for anyone interested in the development of Western civilization"
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EVANGELICALISM
Jon Meacham's contribution to Time magazine's March 25 theme, "10 Big Ideas" in our culture today, is titled "Preach Like Your Faith Depends on It" (p46). He begins: "This is a very sobering time for ecclesiastically minded Americans. At a steadily growing rate, more and more Americans - especially the young - claim no religious affiliation. The figure has climbed from 15% to 20% of all Americans in the past five years. Pew researchers call the trend 'nones on the rise.' ...
"In a classic attempt to turn adversity to advantage, Christian leaders who once assumed a cultural dominance (in the beginning of the baby-boom era, Christian identification among Americans was at least 91%; today it's down to 77%) are now arguing for a double-down strategy. Rather than softening the Gospel message to make it more marketable to an America skeptical of institutions - a frequent reform point of view - what draws the real energy among the faithful is a renewed commitment to what Christians call the Great Commission....
"At the center of this strategy of unapologetic apologetics stands George Weigel, the papal biographer and prominent Catholic writer....
"Weigel argues for more-thoughtful preaching and liturgy, among other things. In an age of fragmentation, he says, Catholicism, properly presented, could again offer the sort of unity of culture and vision that once existed.
"Evangelical Protestants, for their part, are accustomed to looking outward: a key element of their identity is their sense of obligation to share their faith. Yet given the general hostility toward joining particular denominations - including theirs - they feel a new urgency about their mission. ...
"Putting traditional Christianity back into clinical trial in the culture is precisely what the new evangelists are seeking to do."
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FREE WILL
The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will, by Heidi Ravven [1] -- "In this stimulating treatise on ethics and psychology, Ravven, a religion professor [Religious Studies] at Hamilton College, subjects the belief that humans choose freely between starkly opposed moral principles to a vigorous, wide-ranging critique. Starting with an account of moral behavior in the Holocaust, she moves on to a detailed contrast between the Christian doctrine of free will and a rival ethical tradition, stretching from Aristotle to Spinoza, that grounds human morality in nature and social influences. She connects these ideas to findings in cognitive psychology and brain science that undermine the picture of a rational self making free decisions and reveals the determining role of unconscious neural processes and the environment; these results suggest to her an alternative ethics that highlights the power of social relations and institutions in shaping individual choices. Ravven's dense, scholarly, but very readable text intertwines history, philosophy, and science in insightful and provocative ways. She gives too short a shrift to the motivating force of explicit moral doctrine; despite its lack of realism, free-will dogma captures the moral imagination better than her 'systems theory of moral agency' does. Still, she poses a powerful challenge to conventional notions of individual responsibility." Publishers Weekly, Mar #1 '13.
... and then we have Free Will, by noted "new atheist" Sam Harris [2] -- "In a brilliant and concise book, the co-founder of Project Reason <project-reason.org> argues that free will is an illusion. Harris contends that while most of us feel like we have free will, everything that we seem to choose to do is the result of a chain of causes over which we have no ultimate control - synapses, neural chemistry and genetic predispositions, as well as past events and our environment. Harris, who has a background in neuroscience, relies on that discipline and personal introspection. The neuroscience is impressive. In lab experiments in which subjects were asked to make decisions as regions of their brains were monitored, scientists could see that a decision had been made 7 to 10 seconds before the subject was consciously aware of it. The introspection argument is equally powerful, and Harris points out that much of our life is based on luck and that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand. He argues that accepting that free will is an illusion will help us to create a more ethical society. Currently, our justice system presumes free will, punishing under the assumption that given the same circumstances, an individual could have chosen differently. Exceptions are made for insanity, brain tumors, etc., all of which presume that the individual's free will has been compromised. However, if we assume that free will is illusory - i.e., that criminals are acting outside of their own volition - the question becomes how to deal with offenders and how to protect society. Harris also asks what this conception means for an individual's sense of self. Short enough to be read in a single sitting and provocative enough to arouse outrage and rebuttals." Kirkus, May #1 '12.
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WORLDVIEW HISTORY
The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters, by Anthony Pagden [3] -- Kirkus (Mar '13, #2) tells us that Pagden [Political Science, UCLA] "demonstrates the breadth and depth of his knowledge and his impeccable research of the period we refer to as the Enlightenment. Lest readers are daunted in trying to follow the deep thoughts of the great writers of the 18th century, the author gently explains each outlook, theory and proposal. This was the century of philosophy, but it was also the century when the science of man - i.e., social sciences - came into being. It was Gottfried Leibniz's 'best of all possible worlds.' Seeking to define men and their relationships with nature, and especially with each other, led to this scientific revolution; it was an intellectual process, a philosophical project and a social movement. The figures of the period were a combination of skeptics, epicureans and stoics seeking to build a cosmopolitan world of diverse people with common interests. Pagden impressively illustrates the significant discussions that took place as these scientists, historians and other intellectuals tried to fathom man's nature and subject dogma to reason. ... Pagden serves as a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide through this 'particular intellectual and cultural movement.' A book that should be on every thinking person's shelf - the perfect primer for anyone interested in the development of Western civilization."
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will, by Heidi Ravven (New Press, 2013, hardcover, 528 pages) <www.ow.ly/jPGg2>
2 - Free Will, by Sam Harris (Free Press, 2012, paperback, 96 pages) <www.ow.ly/jPGs2>
3 - The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters, by Anthony Pagden (Random House, 2013, hardcover, 528 pages) <www.ow.ly/jPF1v>
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