Sam Harris and Buridan’s Ass

I’m going to “borrow” a post on the Florida Student Philosophy Blog because it illustrates my essential point about the relationship between reason and religious faith. (I will leave my relationship to the original posting intentionally vague, although the clever will be able to suss it out.)
Joe Long, an FSU Philosophy grad student, critiques Sam [...]

Another Mistake about Free WIll

Previously I commented on a neo-creationist mistake about free will; ‘dacook’ on Uncommon Descent was under the impression that the possible discovery of free will in flies was somehow proof that scientific materialism was false.
Here we have the same mistake, but from the other direction: Philip Ball claims that, even if we do discover the [...]

Easy Mistake about Free Will

So when we find evidence that even lowly insects show signs of free will, this can’t be taken as a sign that Darwinism is false.The mistake we find in the post on Uncommon Descent starts here:Though many Darwinists shy away from the implications of their beliefs as they apply to ascribing responsibility for human behavior, their position demands that all behavior is determined by the genetic heritage of selfish genes.This is simply false…. For this further claim to be true, it needs to be that our mental structures are wholly determined by our genes and our behaviors are wholly determined by our mental structures, much like the route of a train is wholly determined by the placement and orientation of the track on which it runs.But this isn’t part and parcel of Darwinism.