A few minutes ago, I sat down at my desk and decided to write a short article about free will … but therein lies the problem. Did I actually decide to write about free will, or was it just a brain state totally determined by the laws of physics acting on natural causal chains extending back to the initial conditions of the universe when it first came into existence?

Everyone lives and acts as if they have free will, even those who assert that there is no such thing. So what is it?

Free will defined

In the academic world of philosophy, the definition of free will that is most generally accepted has two criteria:

Free will: Free will is the ability to make a decision that

a) was not determined by any antecedent conditions and,

b) could have been decided otherwise.

What free will does not include

I have often observed people assume that if you cannot carry out your free decision, then you do not have free will, but this confuses the difference between making a decision that satisfies the two criteria, and the ability to carry out that decision. This is an extremely common mistaken view of free will. The criteria for free will does not include the ability to carry out a decision that has been freely made.

For example, Terry may, after much deliberation, decide to rob the convenience store but, upon arriving, discovers the store has already closed for the day. Terry's decision was still freely made, but the ability to carry out that free decision was limited by the circumstances.

Does a computer have free will?

The short answer is no; criterion (a) is not satisfied. The output of a computational process is determined by the hardware, coupled with the software, and any physical inputs that occur during the computation, all of which is determined and controlled by the laws of physics (assuming a free will-being is not interfering during the process).

If human beings have free will and artificial intelligence does not, then there will always be a fundamental difference between the two. Even if the output of the computer is affected by quantum states, those quantum states are controlled by the laws of physics. So any artificial intelligence we build that operates by the laws of physics will make criterion (a) impossible—the laws of physics will determine the outcome. Therefore, AI will never have free will.

Free will is supernatural

Criterion (a) entails that a free decision cannot be causally determined. To clarify, it cannot be the result of a series of causally-linked events. This means that nature and the laws of nature cannot determine a free decision. Free will, therefore, must be able to operate independently of the laws of physics or, more generally, the laws of nature. An effect that is not produced by the laws of nature is, by definition, “not-natural” or “supernatural”.

It is precisely for this reason that modern science has a problem with admitting the existence of free will, despite the fact that every scientist in the world lives, thinks, decides, and acts as if they have it.

Experiments to test for free will

As early as 1874, hardcore materialists such as T.H. Huxley asserted the belief that a decision is the result of a causal chain of events, all of which are ultimately governed by the laws of nature. More recently in the 1980's, Benjamin Libet conducted a series of experiments measuring activity in different parts of the brain in an attempt to test for free will. He observed that the 'decision' to move an arm was detected before the conscious part of the brain was aware of it. Therefore, he concluded, the person felt they had made a decision, but that feeling was merely a physical result of the other part of the brain already sending commands via the nervous system to move or not move.

A fundamental flaw in his experiments, and those that have been done since then, is assuming that the so-called free decision originates in the brain and, therefore, should be detectable. But free will, if it actually exists, must necessarily take place independent of any physical processes whatsoever and, therefore, cannot be detected by physical instruments. Instead, free will must reside in what we might call a 'mind' which, in turn, interfaces with the physical world through the physical brain. So all such experiments can measure is physical brain activity, but they are totally the wrong tool to detect a non-physical mind, or free will. interfacing with that brain. All the experiments can see is the effect of free will on the physical interface--the brain.

Consequently, any scientific experiment, which is completely dependent upon the laws of physics, is at a disadvantage when attempting to detect things that are not controlled by the laws of nature, nor composed of the normal building blocks of nature--space, time, matter, and energy.[1]

The contradictory life of a materialist

If you ask someone who does not believe in free will why they made such-and-such decision, they will always respond by giving you the reasons they arrived at their conclusion. But if there is no free will, their explanation is totally wrong. They have mistakenly assumed that their decision was a result of rational processes using rules of logic.

The correct explanation would consist of a massive series of equations of physics and chemistry, with inputs including the strength of various electric and gravitational fields, what they ate for breakfast, the weather, genetic mutations in their DNA, and a mind-staggering, host of other physical factors and causal chains going back to the origin of space-time, matter, and energy, all of which determined the brain state they had which occurred at the point of the so-called "decision". Even their assumption that their decision was a rational one would actually be another brain state, also determined by physics, chemistry, and so forth.

The stark reality

The simple fact of human existence is that free will seems to be self-evident to us. We experience our ability to make decisions on a daily basis. It is so strong, that if someone told you that you have never made a decision in your life; they were just brain states determined by the laws of physics controlling the causal chains extending back to the initial conditions of the universe, you would think it absurd.

Science is based on observations, and personal experience counts as a primary observation. Thus, if we are to be consistent, we must conclude that we cannot be merely a physical brain completely controlled by the laws of physics in a giant, interacting series of causal chains issuing forth from the initial conditions of the universe. Instead, we must have a non-physical mind that can make real decisions following rules of logic rather than laws of nature, within which free will can be exercised and experienced. 

If a materialist protests at this point, I must point out that even his protest is not a logical one, but produced by physics and chemistry--processes that care not whether a belief is true or not. When a computer outputs an answer, dictated by the physics of the system, whether the answer is true of false is irrelevant to the computer and the program. It is the person examining the output that cares and who must determine if the answer is correct, or if they have made a mistake in their programming.

The absurdity of humanity with no free will

If we have no free will, then not only is it absurd to think we are making decisions, but it is absurd to think that we are thinking. Morality becomes absurd, arresting criminals for so-called "bad" behavior becomes a an exercise in futility, and the courtroom where they are tried is a charade produced by laws of physics. Every word that was spoken in that courtroom, every thought in the brains of the judge and jury, even the so-called "crime" and the imaginary moral "choices" that occurred .... all of it was totally determined, controlled, and produced by the laws of physics operating on a series of causal chains launched by the initial conditions of the universe if there was no free will involved that satisfied the two criteria mentioned earlier.

So how do we know if we have free will?

First, we can conclude that the best explanation for our own, internal experience and observations of free will decisions is that we actually have free will. That would explain the experiences. Science is based on the assumption that observing something is legitimate evidence that the "something" we observe is real. The same goes for our internal observations of free will decisions. We might grant that if only a minute fraction of humanity experienced what they described as free will, then maybe they could be insane, but the awareness and experience of free will is near-unanimous. Billions of people live and think as if they have it.

Second, it would help if we could get some external confirmation; but as I've already pointed out, it cannot be natural-process-based science. It must be something external that, itself, is supernatural. If God confirms that we have free will, then that would constitute external confirmation. Arguing for the existence of a supernatural creator is beyond the scope of this article but we can come pretty close to deductively proving the existence of such, as I have done in an earlier article.[2]

Does God confirm that we have free will?

As I have shown in an earlier article,[2] just as it is logically impossible for a woman to give birth to herself, so it is logically impossible for the origin of nature (including the universe and/or multiverse) to have been produced by nature. So we have only two choices for the origin of nature .... nature or something not natural, i.e., supernatural. It is logically impossible for nature to have produced itself. So if there are only two choices, and one of those choices is logically impossible, then the option that remains is the correct one. In this case, logic dictates the existence of a supernatural cause for the origin of nature. For the sake of argument, let's call that supernatural creator, God.

What does God say?

Some theologians argue that we do not have free will, only the appearance of it. What this entails is that God is not only the origin of every good thing given and every perfect gift, but he is also the origin of every heinous evil that has ever occurred.

To clarify, if there are no free will creatures on this earth, then everything that happens here is ultimately determined by God, both the good and the bad. Even the laws of nature stem back to the mind of God. Not only does he create the universe, but by determining all the causal chains of the universe and their outcomes, he is the direct cause of all good and evil.

To illustrate this, imagine if a man were to take a hammer and smash a priceless work of art. He could argue in court that it was actually the hammer that did it. While it is true that the thing that did the smashing was the hammer, the fact of the matter is that the hammer itself was controlled by the man; it had no free choice in the matter. Therefore, it is the man that is guilty.

In the same manner, if we have no free will, then every moral atrocity that has ever been committed in history was directly caused by God. There may have been a very long causal chain leading up to that atrocity, but it was God who initiated and determined every causal chain including that one. Furthermore, all of God’s statements to the effect that he hates evil become absurd and self condemning. So if we have no free will, we must embrace a very low view of God, and “low view” would be an understatement.

Still, what does the Bible actually say?

There are many, many statements by God that confirm that we do, indeed, have free will and, thus, unlike the hammer smashing the sculpture, we must take moral responsibility for our actions. Because the decision was a free will decision, according to the two criteria for free will mentioned earlier, it could not have been caused by any antecedent conditions, including God and we could have decided otherwise.

Example 1:

Jesus lamented over the people of Jerusalem who would not turn to God, saying, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"[3]

Just two observations … First, we observe that Jesus, who said he is "I AM", the God of Israel, clearly wanted to save the people of Jerusalem. Second, he could not because they "were not willing". Consequently, he implies that those who would not receive what God had to offer were responsible for their decisions, not God. Of course, he is speaking in generalities here. Within a few weeks many inhabitants of Jerusalem would receive what he had to offer them.

Example 2:

God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah about the moral atrocities of Judah at that time stated, " They built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination. " [4]

Two things to note here … First, when God says he had not commanded them to do this, that would include any causal chain of events he would have initiated that would have determined that they did those things. Second, the fact that human sacrifices did not even enter the mind of God means that the first cause of such atrocities lay within the minds of human beings, not God.

Example 3:

God, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel to the people of Jerusalem who had become totally wicked at that time period, said, "As I live!” declares the Lord God, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?"[5] 

Again, it is clear that the desire of God is that each person who has ever lived turns to God from their own wickedness, but his urgent question reveals that they, are the ones that must make that decision.

Example 4:

In this last example, we are given a glimpse of what we might call the final judgement of humanity by God, where every individual who has ever lived, but has not been willing to receive the gift of purity and eternal life, stands before God to give an account for every single thought, attitude, and action over the course of their entire life. It says,

“And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened ... and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds."[6]

Some might suggest that only those who have been spiritually reborn have free will, but this passage makes it clear that those who are not will still be judged "according to their deeds". If the deeds they committed were not a result of their own free decisions then, like condemning the hammer that smashed the sculpture, it would be absurd to judge the person according to their deeds. We can infer, therefore, that the final judgement of all humanity entails that each person had freedom of choice. It's how we used that choice that counts. In another place it very clearly states that on judgement day, each person’s conscience and thoughts will alternately accuse or defend them[7]—yet another indication that we must take responsibility for our own decisions and we could have decided otherwise; both criteria for free will were operative.

What about Pharaoh?

The most cited passage in the Bible to counter the idea that we have free will is found in Romans chapter 9, and Pharaoh is the example. But if we read the original account found in Exodus, we see that Pharaoh "hardened" his heart in the early stages and God hardened Pharaoh's heart in the later stages of the plagues of Egypt. The “hardening” was specifically against Moses’s demand, on behalf of God, to let God’s people go. It would be wrong, therefore, to conclude that Pharaoh had no free will simply because his heart was “hardened”.  There are a few things do deal with in Pharaoh’s case and the first is that it does not follow that to "harden" someone's heart is to remove their free will. 

For example, several years ago, I watched a video on how to get better grades. One of the points it made was that, for the exact same content in an exam or paper, your mark can be significantly affected by its appearance, by an average of at least ten percent. This afternoon, I was talking with a professor friend of mine and mentioned this to him. He said that he was currently marking papers and struggling with that very issue. Some papers had good content, but were “annoying” in their appearance. He had to intentionally ignore the appearance of the paper, in order to give it a fair mark for the content.

Here’s the point: the appearance of a paper can harden a professor’s heart against giving it a fair mark. It took an intentional act of the will to set aside that influence. The “hardening” was the influence; the role of free will was to wilfully overcome the hardening. It wouldn’t have taken much to make Moses and the God of the Hebrews an annoyance to Pharaoh. I expect quite a number of human beings could, themselves have negatively influenced Pharaoh, “hardening” his heart against Moses and God.

In exactly the same way, we all have a natural tendency to influence each other's decisions for or against countless possibilities. Free will is the ability to override all influences and “hardenings” of one’s heart, but we do not always do that, letting the influences be the persuading factor. We often find it difficult to do what we know we ought to do, if someone else is putting pressure on us. If a human being can influence or harden another person’s heart against or for deciding something, then Pharaoh would have no chance against an influence God brought to bear. He simple could not resist, but it was within the context of Pharaoh already having hardened his own heart against God.  

The takeaway is that it is a bit of a leap to conclude that because God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against letting his people go that, therefore, Pharaoh had no free will, especially when it states that Pharaoh hardened his own heart in the early stages.

What about predestination?

There is a larger, more controversial issue-what role does free will have in how we spend eternity? There has been a great deal of discussion on this particular problem. What follows here are my own thoughts.

For an example, God states with regard to Esau, Pharaoh, and people in general that he will have mercy on whom he has mercy, and that it does not depend upon “man who wills” but upon “God who has mercy”. Within the context of the example he gives for Pharaoh, he could be talking about what roles we play in life, but is easy to extend it to our eternal destiny. If this were the only passage talking about this, there would be no issue, for all of us have sinned and are in a state of spiritual death. None of us deserves to be saved, so if God chooses some to save, that would be an act of mercy and grace and it would not be unjust. The problem arises as a result of God, himself, stating his passionate desire that the wicked turn to him, to the point of earnestly urging them, and grieving over those who do not, such as Moab and Jerusalem.

If God alone decides who will be saved and who will not be, then God is defeating his own desires according to his very own statements from one end of the Bible to the other. It makes no sense for God to plead with the wicked to turn to him while, at the same time determining that they do not turn to him. That would be a self-defeating, and self-frustrating God. Instead of urging the wicked to repent, or saying to Jerusalem “you were not willing”, just predestine them to turn to God. So how does God’s mercy and grace operate in a way that God is not self-defeating? We could gloss over the problem of a self-defeating, self-frustrating God by saying God is mysterious, or deep, but that is not really an option given that God, himself, expresses quite clearly for all to see, his sorrow over those who die in their sin.

An enormous step forward in understanding can be taken when we see that God chooses people “according to his foreknowledge” [See endnote (1) below]. So his mercy and grace is given according to his foreknowledge of each individual. But what is it, exactly, that he foreknows? Given that God has indicated, in an abundance of scriptures, that the only obstacle to fulfilling God’s desires for us is our resisting the work of his Spirit, we can infer that it is his foreknowledge of whether a person will resist his Spirit or not, including Esau and Pharaoh. This, then, is a key factor in what he foreknows and is, thus, what his predestination is contingent upon.

A person is not saved as a result of some random situation where they happened to be at the right place at the right time or by trying to earn God’s favour. Rather, we can rejoice that on the basis of his foreknowledge, God knew that if he orchestrated history right from the very beginning, and intervened in our individual lives, drawing us to himself, that we would accept the free gift of eternal life he offers us.

Those who would not turn to him, he still brought into this world to use according to his purposes, but on judgement day, their own conscience and thoughts will point out to them that they resisted and turned away from God, not because God made them do it, because he makes it crystal clear it is his desire that they turn to him, but because of their own willful, intentional resistance against God.

God knew, before the foundation of the world, that Pharaoh would resist God and harden his heart against him. But God also knew that if he brought Pharaoh into this world and raised him up to the position of King of Egypt, the result at the end of history would be that many more people would receive the gift or purity from moral evil and eternal life through the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ. Thus, it did not depend upon the will of Pharaoh as to whether he was brought into existence for that purpose. He was raised up by God as king of Egypt to accomplish a greater purpose, exactly because God in his foreknowledge knew that in Pharaoh’s willful resistance to God, many more people would enter eternity with God.

This is a subject of much discussion among theologians. But after a couple decades of reflection upon the discussion, I have thus far found only one explanation that seems to be free of logical and theological contradictions. I might summarize the rational train of thought as follows, but please be reminded that it is only my thoughts; I am not presenting it as the official answer. 

1. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should turn back from their sin.[5]

2. Most perish, and few enter the narrow way that leads to life.[7]

3. Therefore, something is defeating God's desires.

4. God is not self-defeating.

5. Therefore, something originating outside of God's determination, is defeating his desires.

6. If God has, by his own sovereign decision, given us free will, then by that very sovereign decision, he gives us the ability to make decisions he will not determine by antecedent conditions, including himself. [See endnote (2)]

7. Therefore, a free decision to resist God, stiffen our necks, and harden our hearts originates within us, not God.

8. Therefore, it is the free decision to resist the Holy Spirit, stiffen our necks, or harden our hearts that defeats God's desire for all to come to repentance, exactly as we saw described earlier.

9. On the basis of God’s foreknowledge of how we will respond, he knows exactly how he must predestine, or orchestrate history, to bring about the eternal destiny he has foreseen if he does. [See endnote (1)]

Does God’s foreknowledge “determine” our decision?

God’s foreknowledge of all our free decisions is determined by your free decision, not some future “fact” floating around in the mind of God. To clarify, it is your free decision that determines what God knows about any particular decision you make in the future. If, in the future, you decide differently, then that different decision determines what God “already knows”.

Imagine getting in a time machine and observing the results of the next election, then returning to the present. You now have foreknowledge of the results of the next election but have you determined those results because you do? Not at all. Your foreknowledge of the results has been determined by the results themselves, not your foreknowledge of them. Same goes for God’s foreknowledge of your own free decisions.

What about merit?

Some are concerned that if free will is involved in receiving the undeserved free gift of purity and eternal life that Christ offers, then somehow we can claim some merit for it. This notion of "merit" is an example of something that D.A. Carson describes as an exegetical fallacy; it is "an appeal to unknown or unlikely meanings".[9] Nowhere else is accepting an unearned, free gift seen as earning the gift. If it is earned, it is not really a free gift; if it is a free gift, then it is not earned. 

No one starts off by trying to find God; it is always God who takes the first step. But, as he draws all people to himself, most are "not willing". Some, however, accept the "free gift of eternal life"[10] by “receiving” Jesus Christ[11]; They did nothing to earn it, but they could have resisted the work of God in their hearts, as God so often describes in the Bible. Nowhere is "not resisting" or accepting an unmerited gift, seen as merit. To claim that accepting the unmerited gift of eternal life is meritorious is to introduce a contradiction, an oxymoron, and a notion of the word "merited" that is outside the meaning of the word.

Perhaps I could illustrate the role of free will and salvation with this metaphor.

Imagine a group of people in a pit. It is all they have ever known, so they are not looking for anyone to rescue them. A rescuer comes and sees the people in the pit and throws a rope down to them, but they do not have the ability to climb it. They can do nothing to save themselves. So, the rescuer drops a lasso around each person and begins to haul that person up. The person can do nothing to help the rescuer, but each person has a knife. So the choice they have is to either resist the rescue attempt and cut the rope, or accept the rescue and let themselves be hauled up out of the pit. The people who are rescued made a decision to accept that rescue by not resisting, but did nothing to deserve it; it was a gift from the rescuer. The people who remain in the pit have done something to remain there ... they cut the rope (i.e., resisted the work of the rescuer). Thus, they have taken responsibility for their final state.

We see these two decisions described by Christ when he said, " He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day."[12]   There are those who reject Christ, and those who receive him. The fact that a judgement will be rendered on that basis entails that the person who did the rejecting is the one responsible when they are judged on the last day.

Conclusion

There are at least two reasons to conclude we have free will. First, it is patently obvious and self-evident to us that we have it. Despite anything the materialist person might assert, they all think and decide with the assumption that they can actually make valid, real decisions.  Second, there are an enormous number of instances in the Bible where God clearly indicates that we can make decisions and be held responsible by God for those decisions. That entails that those decisions were not determined by God, and we could have decided otherwise, satisfying the two criteria for free will. If we have free will, then every time we make a free decision, we are doing something that is neither produced, controlled, or determined by the laws of nature.  An effect, by definition, that occurs but was not produced, controlled, or determined by the laws of nature is supernatural, or “not-natural”.

So the final question for each of us is framed by the following statement Jesus made. Will we receive him? ...

"But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name."[11]  

Endnotes:

1. In 1 Peter 1:1,2 we see that the followers of Christ were chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. This clarifies the statement, “for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined” in Romans 8:29. There has been some discussion on whether the “foreknew” is relational or is referring to foreknowledge of the person. If we consider the relational option, we have a circularity problem, essentially, those whom God had a relationship with, he predestined to have a relationship with. Fortunately, 1 Peter 1:1,2 clarifies this; it is God foreknowledge that forms the basis for his predestination. Within that context, God can know us before the foundation of the world. He knows who will resist him and who will receive him. Within this context, his relationship with us began before the foundation of the world. So the relational option is possible within the larger context of his foreknowledge, but it does not make sense vice versa.

2. There is general agreement among both theist and non-theist philosophers that the attribute of omnipotence includes only the ability to do everything that is logically possible to do; it does not include the ability to do the logically impossible, e.g., make a square circle, or make himself exist and non-exist simultaneously. See, for example, W.E. Mann, ‘The divine attributes’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1975. 151-150. Another way to look at it is that the axioms of logic (the law of non-contradiction, for example) originate in God and are part of his nature. God cannot self-contradict his own nature, including violating his own axiom of non-contradiction. This explains why lying is contradictory to God’s nature; it creates a contradictory statement asserting that both A and not-A are the case.

References:

1. Steve Taylor, 'How a flawed experiment "proved" that free will does not exist', Scientific American, 2019.

2. See my blog article on the origin of nature, ‘What caused the universe?’.

3. Matthew 23:37, English Standard Version.

4. Jeremiah 32:35, NASB 95.

5. Ezekiel 33:11, NASB 95.

6. Revelation 20:12,13, NASB 95.

7. Romans 2:14-16, NASB 95.

8. Matthew 7:13,14, NASB 95.

9. D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies.

10. Romans 6:23, NASB 95.

11. John 1:12, NASB 95.

12. John 12:48, NASB 95.