The Experimentally Proven Existence of Free Will Proves the Soul’s Is Not Bound by Physical Law.
I am going to present a slightly different quantum argument for the existence of the soul. The general view of the scientific community is that we have no free will–everything is determine, and this lack of free will is compatible with the materialist view of the world.
The first quote is from a friend of mine, with whom during my crisis of faith, I had many conversations that involved, free will, evolution, evidence for atheism, intelligent design, what would cause Will to change his mind, and our personal stories. These interchanges took place over three years or so and continued after his diagnosis with brain cancer. Will was the son of a Methodist minister who sadly never got to discuss his change of heart with his father. I think he was a bit sad about that as he obviously liked his father so this wasn’t a preacher’s kid rebellion. His views are outlined in a book on him, and I strongly disagree with what he sees as the nature of evolution:
"If you really accept evolution by natural selection, Provine says, you soon find yourself face to face with a set of implications that undermine the fundamental assumptions of Western civilization:
o There are no gods or purposive forces in nature.
o There are no inherent moral or ethical laws to guide human society
o Human beings are complex machines that become ethical beings by way of heredity and environmental influences, with environment playing a somewhat smaller role than is commonly supposed.
o There is no free will in the traditional sense of being able to make unpredictable choices.
o When we die, we die _ finally and completely and forever . from "The Faith of an Atheist" by George Liles, written about Cornell Biology Prof. William Provine "MD" Magazine, March, 1994 pg. 60
Searles agrees that there is no free will and says that if we have it we have to have an entity that can influence matter (that is how I interpret his statement–a little more broadly than just limited to moving molecules)"
“But if libertarianism, which is the thesis of free will, were true, it appears we would have to make some really radical changes in our beliefs about the world. In order for us to have radical freedom, it looks as if we would have to postulate that inside each of us was a self that was capable of interfering with the causal order of nature. That is, it looks as if we would have to contain some entity that was capable of making molecules swerve from their paths. I don’t know if such a view is even intelligible, but it’s certainly not consistent with what we know about how the world works from physics . And there is not the slightest evidence to suppose that we should abandon physical theory in favour of such a view.” John Searle, Minds, Brains, and Science, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p 92
These statements seem to posit a universe lacking soul, and Provine’s world is positively bleak. So is there a way out of this conundrum. We certainly feel like we have free will? Is there any evidence of free will from science?
As it turns out there is. It comes from an observational experiment which works ONLY if there is free will. This is scientific evidence FOR the existence of free will. The Nobel prize winner, Gerard t’Hooft said:
"A class of very important questions arose when John Bell formulated his famous inequalities[1]. Indeed, when one attempts to construct models that visualize what might be going on in a quantum mechanical process, one finds that deterministic interpretations usually lead to predictions that would obey his inequalities, while it is well understood that quantum mechanical predictions violate them. In attempts to get into grips with this situation, and to derive its consequences for deterministic theories, the concept of “free will” was introduced. Basically, it assumes that any ‘observer’ has the freedom, at all times and all places, to choose, at will, what variables to observe and measure. Clashes with Bell’s inequalities arise as soon as the observer is allowed to choose between sets of observables that are mutually non commuting. "
Gerard t’Hooft ON THE FREE-WILL POSTULATE IN QUANTUM MECHANICS https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0701097.pdf, p. 3
For understandability, non-commuting operators don’t change ontology, see p. 7 of t’Hooft’s article.
In other words, in order for Bell’s famous experiment to work as it does, the observer MUST have free will. If that is so, then that certainly makes me look back at Searles’ statement: That is, it looks as if we would have to contain some entity that was capable of making molecules swerve from their paths. While maybe not molecules, Gordie and I have presented much evidence from quantum that the conscious observer affects matter. To me, this is just another reason to hold that the immaterial soul actually exists.
The conjunction of these two ideas means that the existence of free will as shown in Bell’s Theorem supports the concept that the immaterial soul exists. Free Will requires something to be above and apart from matter. To again quote the physicist Stephen M. Barr,
"But this was only one of the remarkable reversals produced by the quantum revolution. In the opinion of many physicists-including such great figures in twentieth-century physics as Eugene Wigner and Rudolf Peierls-the fundamental principles of quantum theory are inconsistent with the materialist view of the human mind. Quantum theory, in its traditional, or "standard," or "orthodox" formulation, treats "observers" as being on a different plane from the physical systems that they observe . A careful analysis of the logical structure of quantum theory suggests that for quantum theory to make sense it has to posit the existence of observers who lie, at least in part, outside of the description provided by physics. This claim is controversial. There have been various attempts made to avoid this conclusion, either by radical reinterpretations of quantum theory (such as the so-called "many-worlds interpretation") or by changing quantum theory in some way. But the argument against materialism based on quantum theory is a strong one, and has certainly not been refuted. The line" of argument is rather subtle. It is also not well- known, even among most practicing physicists. But, if it is correct, it would be the most important philosophical implication to come from any scientific discovery." Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), p. 27-28
Romans 1:20 says," For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."
It seems to me that it is up to Christians to defend our viewpoint, not waiting for atheists, scientist or not, to point out where nature might show the glory of God. When we just accept what people tell us without critically thinking through the issues, we end up believing what they say about the nature of reality.
One physics student struggling with how free will fits into his deterministic world view wrote:
"I was going through the results of Bell’s theorem recently and found that the freedom of the experimenter to choose the variable to measure is a key assumption. Given that we have no reason to believe that experimenters have "true" free will, how does this affect the validity of Bell’s theorem?
…
So…does the current state of science allow for traditional "free" will that is unbound from the laws of nature? After all, that is the meaning of the word "free" - as in "not bound"." Reference Bell's Theorem and Free Will
The one answer to his physics forum question referred to Libet’s work which suggested that the brain makes up its mind before the consciousness becomes aware that the decision is made.
“EVEN now, your brain may already have decided to turn the page. That’s the upshot of a study which found that a person’s decision to press a button can be detected up to 7 seconds before they are even aware of it.”
"Our decisions are predetermined unconsciously a long time before our consciousness kicks in," says John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, Germany, who led the study. "I think it says there is no free will"
“It’s not the first time scientists have cast doubt on conscious free will. In the early 1980s, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet uncovered a spark of brain activity 300 milliseconds before subjects opted to raise a finger, in a brain region involved in planning body movement. However, this area may only perform the final calculations to move, not the initial decision to lift a finger, Haynes says.”
“His team asked 14 volunteers to tap one of two buttons at will, with a finger of their left or right hand, and used an fMRI scanner to monitor their brains all the while. They saw part of the prefrontal cortex - vital for executive thought and consciousness - "light up" about 7 seconds before the volunteers pressed a button.”
“What’s more, deciding to press the left or right buttons revealed slightly different brain patterns, enabling the team to predict 60 per cent of the time which button would be pressed (Nature Neuroscience, 001: 10.1038/nn.2112).” Anonymous, “Your brain makes its decisions long before you know it,” New Scientist, April 19, 2008, p. 14
What about those experiments like Libet and of Haynes which suggest that the unconscious brain makes a decision before consciousness becomes aware of it? The body is prepped to move before the subjects become consciously aware of it. Haynes says there is a 7 second precursor signal to movement. Libet’s time was less and his data has been claimed to be an artefact by John Eccles. These experiments are claimed to show that consciousness has nothing to do with making our decisions.
I don’t know what the exact problem is but it is clear to me that the conscious decision to move does not take 7 seconds. Consider driving and seeing danger ahead. The generally accepted time of our response is 1.5 seconds from seeing the danger and hitting the brakes. The best response time is .7 seconds (obviously in teenagers lol). That best reaction time is divided as follows:
Of this, 0.5 is perception and 0.2 is movement, the time required to release the accelerator and to depress the brake pedal. Driver Reaction Time
Furthermore while driving, we can’t prep our bodies for movement prior to actually SEEING the danger. There would be a lot more bad accidents if we required seven seconds to move our bodies. Evolution would have wiped out such a lethargic species. A leopard can run at 37 mph, which means that if it takes that long for my body to decide to move, any leopard that gets within 4 houses from me, will have me for dinner while I just stand there.
My guess as to the problem is that the subjects in these experiments have been given instructions prior to the tests and they prep their body accordingly. I know I would start thinking about what finger to move. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from doing so.
Besides, physics says we have free will, and that means our WILL is not bound by the laws of physics–that is what Free means. Again, quantum leads us to understand that consciousness is a very special thing in this universe, above and apart from matter.
With the existence of a God an open question, one can’t claim with certainty, like Provine did, that there are no moral or ethical laws.
To go back to Provine’s list above, if the soul is not subject to the laws of physics, then it is something immaterial, and many of his claims fall.
The claim that gods don’t exist as a statement of his certitude falls. If immaterial objects exist, then maybe a God exists.
The claim that evolution is purely naturalistic is at least questionable. IF a God exists, then who knows what he did during the evolution of life?
The existence of the immaterial soul affect’s Provines claim that when we die we are just gone. Not necessarily if we are not material girls, as Madonna sings!
I sincerely liked Provine and wish he were still here to discuss this with. I think the discussions would be different now.