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Excerpted from this book
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Put simply,
Christians believe God created us and our world. We can remain open as to how
God accomplished it. I find no scientific argument that disproves God’s
creation. With that assertion in mind, I now turn to one such counter-arguments:
that genetic determinism proves neither we nor Adam have the ability to make
free choices. To that argument I now turn.
God is free. We, as bearers of God’s image, possess freedom.
We as creatures are called to respond to God, to choose right over wrong. For
that, we need freedom. At least that is our tradition…. But are we really free?
Determinism—the philosophy that everything we do has been programmed by forces
beyond anyone’s control—has supplied a recurring motif in the history of ideas.
In the early nineteenth century, Pierre-Simon de Laplace stated baldly:
An intelligence knowing, at a
given instance of time, all forces acting in nature, as well as the momentary
position of all things of which the universe consists, would be able to
comprehend the motions of the largest bodies of the world and those of the
lightest atoms in one single formula, provided his intellect were sufficiently
powerful to subject all data to analysis; to him nothing would be uncertain,
both past and future would be present in his eyes?
This suggests that everything, from a decision to marry to
the outcome of the battle of Waterloo, has been fated.
Today
determinism is back in a new form and tied with the revolutionary discoveries
in genetics. The world-famous scientist, Francis Crick, who co-discovered DNA,
has laid down the gauntlet for those who defend the existence of human freedom.
He comments on the title of his well-known book:
The Astonishing
Hypothesis is that “you,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your
ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more
than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated
molecules. As Lewis Carrolls’s Alice might have phrased it: “You’re nothing but
a pack of neurons.”
If Crick is
right, then we have some problems with our sense of freedom. In fact, it does
not exist. And without freedom, we also have problems establishing ethics. The
Christian tradition has located the ability to transcend our human, bodily
limitations through the notion of the soul.
Unsurprisingly, Crick subtitled the book, “The Scientific Search for the Soul.”
Theologians have used “soul” and “spirit” for this component of the human
being. For simplicity’s sake, I will stick with “soul.” The soul offers us
freedom and the ability not just to be determined by our body. How then can we
respond to Crick?
Of the many
ways to refute his position—or most forms of determinism—the easiest is this:
it is self-defeating. In a playful phrase, the biologist and theologian, Arthur
Peacocke has labeled the position “nothing buttery.” (Remember Crick’s
rephrasing of Alice: “You’re nothing but
a pack of neurons.”) Take Crick’s argument to its conclusion. If our thinking processes are “nothing
but” the interaction of bio-chemicals in the brain, then we have no way if what
we know is true. It just is. We might as well call the size of our feet or the
color of our hair “true.” They are simply facts, neither right nor wrong. This
makes Crick’s wonderful discoveries “nothing but” the movement of electrical
charges in his predetermined brain. But in fact, we know that some
genetically-influenced behavior patterns—a tendency toward violence or
alcoholism—are not beneficial. Crick does not offer any means for assessing or
responding to them.
Thankfully, we are not stuck with genetic
determinism—or any determinism for that matter. Our faith has long taught that
we are not just our bodies, but that our soul offers us transcendence from
bodily processes, giving us freedom. Scientifically-minded theologians talk
about the soul as a capacity for transcendence and freedom rather than a
“thing” that can be located through scientific experiments. In addition,
Crick’s arguments rest on reductionism,
the notion that the workings of any system can be reduced to its smallest
parts. But reductionism misses the point. Ted Peters, a theologian constantly
exploring the effects of science on belief, has summarized it this way:
“Determinism at the genetic level does not obviate free will at the person
level. Genetic determinism just like all conditions of finitude place each
person in his or her particular situation, readying the person to exercise
freedom.” Our genetic makeup set the boundaries for our choices—not choices to “do
anything” (as we often want freedom to mean). Our genetic structure is the
chord structure over which we improvise our lives.
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Coda excerpted from this book
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A coda: I think this is what C. S. Lewis was getting at when he criticized the scientific atheism of the 1940s. The specific reason
Lewis rejected the “Scientific Outlook” lies in the self-defeating nature of
the two claims “we can think” and “nature is all there is.” Here we come to a
key theme: the Scientific Outlook asserts the truth and
reasonableness of its claims without thereby providing a place for reason. Or
as he phrased it:
If
minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and
biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot
understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance
than the sound of the wind in the trees.
Lewis called this atheistic science, "the Scientific Outlook." He conclude that it tries to fit in reason in an irrational—or maybe arational—world. Lewis
concludes that this move is self-defeating.
As an alternative, Lewis discovered in his own life (around
his conversions in 1930 and 1931) something he argues here: Belief in a Creator
God who endows humanity with reason makes entirely more sense. The divine Logos
creates human reason. The primary Cause undergirds all secondary causes. Lewis
says that is why he does not believe in the “Scientific Outlook,” but instead
believes in Christianity, which includes reason and science. As he closes the
lecture, he writes,
Christian
theology can fit in science, art, morality....
The [atheistic] scientific view cannot fit
in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I
believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I
see everything else.
Lewis believed that Christian theology gave grounds
for reason and thus reasoning about what is true. It’s a vision of life that
makes sense of all experience, and therefore it makes sense of science.
Image two (I'm a jazz drummer): the God who improvises with us by the Holy Spirit, and we are called to follow God’s will in a dynamic, improvisational way. 
From God's perspective, the Eternal One who is able to transcend time while still being intimately involved it, we might say it all looks a perfectly organized scheme. But from our perspective, we experience the One who "works all things together for good" (Romans 8:28), even in and through our mistakes, our attempts, and our decisions. It's the God who leads us in a truly free life. This is at least part of what Jesus means when he tells us that he will make us free indeed (John 8:36).
