CADRE Comments

Bill's topic from a few days ago is something that Christians (and other theists of all stripes) have been chewing over for thousands of years. It might seem like the answer is a simple yes or no; but there are concepts which supernaturalistic theists are (in principle) committed to, which introduce difficulties. I spent several hundred pages in Sword to the Heart ( which can be found for free in some different formats, including first here on the Cadre Journal ) slowly and carefully working up those concepts, but I'll summarize them below in a progressing topical order relevant to the question of God's responsibility. ( Click here on the jump to proceed. )

One area where naturalists seem to have a great difficulty in being consistent is in the area of determinism. Recently, I saw a portion of a debate where the naturalistic/atheistic/scientist-type made the claim that evolution leads to the conclusion that there is no such thing as free will. This, of course, leads to the question, "Do you really think that, or did you have to say that?" In fact, I think that a great tact to take when someone says "there's no free will" is to say, "Why are you telling me? After all, I am determined by my upbringing and genes to disagree." Apparently, the bombastic Richard Dawkins recognizes that this is a problem, but his solution is . . . well, weak. In an entry by Evolution News and Views entitled Who wrote Richard Dawkins's new book? , American Enterprise Institute's Joe Manzari asked Dawkins how he could reconcile what appears to be a fairly strong case of determinism in his naturalistic philosophy with his ...