Humans hardwired by God, not neuroscience

Free will has been a topic of discussion for centuries with everyone having their own idea of whether or not we humans really make our own decisions. This is a topic I explored two years ago when I took an introductory philosophy course.

It took a while for me to gather enough data in my brain to decide that it only makes sense that we have free will and it was given to us by Jesus Christ. As a warning, if you don’t believe in Christ and you don’t believe in the Bible, then you will not believe my argument.

There are many verses in the Bible that specifically state that humans have free will to execute their own choices:

“But without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly,” according to Philemon 1:14.

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curing: therefore choose life, that both thou and they seed may live,” Christ says in Deuteronomy 30:19.

Take Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God forbid them from eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When they did eat of that fruit, they were proving they had a choice.

“Some neuroscientists claim that [the rejection of free will] entails giving up on the notion of moral responsibility,” said Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “There is no actual distinction, they argue, between someone who is violent because of a large tumor in his brain and a neurologically normal premeditated killer – both are influenced by forces beyond their control, after all – and we should revise the criminal system accordingly.”

This is justifying the actions of murderers as not having control over their actions. I understand that there are medical conditions that make certain actions or thought patterns more prevalent in a person and can cause them to do harm to others. But if a perfectly healthy person who murders someone has no free will, then why are there still consequences for their actions?

The fact that there are so many different religions, including the lack of religion, demonstrates our free will to choose what we believe. If we did not have free will, there would be no reason for God to judge us. If our path was predestined and we did not have free will, why would we be punished unless the choice was ours to believe and do what we want?

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” according to Joshua 24:15.

University of Chicago professor of ecology and evolution Jerry A. Coyne states in an article for The Chronicle that our decisions result from “molecular-based impulses and chemical substances transmitted from one brain cell to another.” He goes on to say that these molecules “must obey the laws of physics, so the outputs of our brain – our ‘choices’ – are dictated by those laws.”

Well, since God created the entire universe including the laws of physics, that means he created how our brains molecules and impulses work.

“Neuroscience can explain what happens in our brains: how we perceive and think, how we weigh conflicting considerations and make choices, and so forth,” said Johns Hopkins University professor of philosophy Hilary Bok in an article for The Chronicle. “But the question of whether freedom and moral responsibility are compatible with free will is not a scientific one, and we should not expect scientists to answer it."

It doesn’t matter what neuroscience has to say about the way our brain works to make decisions, because God was the one who hardwired us. We make the decisions the way we do because He granted us that freedom.