I can certainly imagine the tension of interactions like that.
I wonder what that professor would have thought about my own upside down experience of what he thought would have changed my world view - - and it did - - but in completely the opposite sense.
Through my college years, I was a rather ardent determinist … a “casualit-ist” of the most complete type. Whether there was Quantum randomness or not, I certainly didn’t construe such randomness as how the human mind could be Free, or how consciousness had anything to do with a soul.
And that was all decades ago!
But, it was only a few years ago that I listened to a lecture by Daniel Dennett. Someone on this list (or probably another?) described him as one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism. I don’t recall who said that.
But in his talk he discussed a friend’s book on magic. When he asked his friend if the book was about Real Magic, the friend chided Dennett and they agreed that the only Real Magic is the kind that just can’t exist! Dennett was comparing this point to Free Will… that the only Real Free Will is the kind that just can’t exist!
At this point, I would have ordinarily said: “Ah ha… just what I’ve been saying … there just isn’t any room in the Cosmos for Free Will!” But this time, I didn’t say this in my mind. I was caught by the mystery of something Being Real and Not Possibly Existing, all at the same time. Sometimes linguistics can be a terrible trap; and sometimes linguistics helps a person make new leaps into seeing the world around him!
What one of the English-Speaking World’s “Four Horsemen of Atheism” did was convince me that there IS a God. (Say what?) It would take a God to make it possible for my conscious mind to operate outside of the dimensions of causality that we all rely on to be dependable. It would take a God to provide a place for our mind, our consciousness, to be Free, to not be ensnared by the logical chain of determinism and causality, and make our Consciousness something more than just an epiphenomenon!
No doubt there are those who would “poo poo” this Eureka moment for me. Frankly, I don’t think there is anyway to really explain it to someone who doesn’t already understand it. And so I won’t try to hard to do so here.
But I owe a great thanks to Prof. Daniel Dennet, my unintended Mentor, my sponsor into an awakened view of the Cosmos. Thank you!
George Brooks