Determinism

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January 9, 2026

Is the Free Will Defense Fatally Flawed? And Why Won’t Christians Sin in Heaven?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheistic objections, Determinism, Problem of Evil
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My series on the problem of evil will be wrapping up soon. The last two episodes (186-187) have focused on a potential flaw in the Free Will Defense (FWD), which is arguably one of the best answers to the problem of evil.

The FWD assumes that it is logically impossible to create free creatures who are incapable of freely choosing evil and hate. However, God is free and God can love, but cannot choose evil. So not only is it logically possible to be both free unable to sin, but it’s a metaphysical reality as well. It would seem, then, that God could have created us both free and unable to sin. If so, the FWD fails.

I examined the objection in great detail, and ultimately conclude that the objection fails and the FWD succeeds. If you want to know why, listen to the two episodes wherever you get podcasts or at https://thinkingtobelieve.buzzsprout.com. Or, you can read the paper I wrote on the topic below.

If none of that interests you, perhaps you will be interested by my discussion of why Christians will not sin in heaven – also covered in the podcast and paper. What does that have to do with the FWD? Listen to episode 187 or read the paper to find out.

A Potential Flaw in the Free Will Defense

February 23, 2023

Free will and science

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Determinism, Epistemology, Science
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Scientists could never discover that free will does not exist via scientific experimentation, because in a deterministic world, the result of the experiment would, itself, be determined. The conclusion that there is no such thing as free will would not be arrived at because the scientists chose to set up the experiment in a good way and reasoned correctly about the data they received. Instead, physics would determine both the study’s structure and conclusions. As such, the conclusion cannot be trusted.

Even if determinism is true, this truth would not be “discovered” by the experiment, but “determined.” Discovery requires the exercise of free will. That’s why all such experiments are self-defeating. They can only be informative if free will exists. And if the will must be free for the experiments to be informative, there is no point in doing the experiment. You already know the answer before you begin: free will exists.

February 21, 2022

Does God’s Knowledge of the Future Eliminate Our Free Will?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Calvinism v Arminianism, Determinism, Epistemology
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If God is omniscient, then He knows everything that will happen in the future – including everything you will ever do. God knows that on x date at time t1 you will stub your toe, and on q date at time t5 you will forget where you placed your keys. God has had such knowledge from eternity past. Since God cannot be mistaken, it is certain that you will stub your toe on x date at time t1 and forget your keys on q date at time t5. How, then, can our “choices” be free? Does God’s knowledge of the future eliminate free will, reducing us to mere actors who simply perform the parts of a cosmic play written for us by God from eternity past? Are we puppets with no control over our own destiny? Is our experience of free choice illusory? Darwinist, Robert Eberle, sums up the problem nicely:

[Francis] Collins asserts that there is still free will, but fails to explain his logic for arriving at this extraordinary conclusion. Either what will be is known and fixed or it is not. An infallible god that knows what is going to happen is in conflict with the idea that there is free choice and thus a responsibility for one’s actions.[1]

I am not persuaded that God’s knowledge of the future determines our fate for two reasons. First, knowledge is not a cause of anything. Knowledge of some x is not what causes x to be. The truth of x must precede the knowledge of x.

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August 22, 2017

If God knows everything, are we truly free?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Determinism, Philosophy, Theology
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If God knows every choice we’ll make from eternity past, doesn’t that mean our choices are not free – that God has caused us to do what we do? No. Knowledge is not a cause. Knowing what someone will choose to do in advance of their actually doing it does not cause them to do it. While it’s true that if God knows X will happen, X will most certainly happen, but it’s not God’s knowledge of X that makes X happen. It’s our choice to do X. God merely knows what we will freely choose in advance. While God’s knowledge is chronologically prior to our acts, our acts are logically prior to God’s knowledge. If we would have chosen A rather than B on October 12, 2006, God would have known A rather than B. The reason He knew B would happen from eternity past is because He knew we would freely choose B from eternity past. God’s foreknowledge does not determine our choices, but is informed by our choices. In other words, God’s foreknowledge is not the cause of our actions; our actions are the cause of God’s foreknowledge.

October 8, 2015

Does Libertarian Freedom Require the Possibility of Evil?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Calvinism v Arminianism, Determinism, Philosophy, Theology
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Steven Cowan and Greg Welty argue contra Jerry Walls that compatibilism is consistent with Christianity.[1] What they question is the value of libertarian free will (the freedom to do other than what one, in fact, chooses to do, including evil). Why would God create human beings with the ability to choose evil? Libertarians typically argue that such is necessary in order to have genuine freedom, including the freedom to enter into a loving relationship with God. After all, if one could only choose A (the good), and could never choose B (the evil), then their “choice” of A is meaningless. The possibility of truly and freely choosing A requires at least the possibility of choosing B. The possibility of evil, then, is necessary for a free, loving relationship with God. It is logically impossible for God to create free creatures who are unable to choose anything other than A.

Cowan and Wells ask, however, what would be wrong with God creating us in a way that made it impossible for us to desire or choose evil, and yet our choice would still be free. All that would be required is the presence of more than one good to choose from (A, C, D, E, F…). No matter what we choose, we could have chosen some other good, but never evil. This avoids the logical contradiction and preserves real freedom of choice. Cowan and Wells argue that such a world would be superior to our world since this possible world preserves libertarian free will, but lacks evil. In their assessment, there is no reason for the actual world if the value of libertarian free will (relationship with God, gives us freedom to choose the good, gives us the freedom to do otherwise) could be obtained without the possibility of evil. For the libertarian who wants to maintain that the actual world is superior to this possible world, they must maintain that the greatest value of libertarian freedom is that it gives us the opportunity to do evil. Why would God value our ability to do evil if He is good and hates evil? Why would God create a world in which libertarian freedom results in evil if He could have achieved all of the goals of libertarian freedom without evil?

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September 21, 2015

Compatibilists: Why do you deliberate?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Calvinism v Arminianism, Determinism, Epistemology, Philosophy, Theology
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Compatibilists are those who believe that freedom and determinism are compatible with each other. On their view, one is free so long as they make actual choices. And they maintain that people do make actual choices: They choose what they desire. Of course, the problem comes when you ask where those desires come from. The desires are determined by God or physics. So what if physics or God determined for you to desire to kill your roommate? Then you will “choose” to kill your roommate.

In my estimation, this is not a very robust sense of freedom. Indeed, I would argue that it is not freedom at all. If desires cause actions, but the desires are determined by something other than the self, then the actions are determined as well, even if only in a secondary or intermediate sense. More could be said in the way of critique, but I have done so elsewhere.

For this post, I just want to pose a simple question to compatibilists: If our choices are caused by our desires, are our desires are determined by God/physics, then why is “choosing” so hard? Why do we struggle with deliberation? The only reason we experience deliberation is because we possess conflicting desires and we need to weigh them to decide which desire to act on. If our desires are determined, does that mean God (or physics) determined for us to have conflicting desires? If so, what would the purpose be other than to give us the false appearance of having libertarian free will?

June 10, 2013

Coyne on free-will: “we don’t have free will” but “we have no choice but to pretend that we do choose”

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Determinism, Philosophy
[32] Comments

Scientists say the darndest things. Last January I blogged on an article Jerry Coyne wrote in USA Today regarding free will. At one point he said, “So if we don’t have free will, what can we do? One possibility is to give in to a despairing nihilism and just stop doing anything. But that’s impossible, for our feeling of personal agency is so overwhelming that we have no choice but to pretend that we do choose and get on with our lives.”

Coyne is still spinning the same gobbledygook. Recently, on Coyne’s own blog, a commentator took Coyne to task for acting as though humans have freedom, while being adamant that they do not. Coyne responded:

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May 13, 2013

What philosophers believe about God, morality, et al

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Determinism, Epistemology, Mind, Naturalism, Philosophy, Relativism, Science, Theism
[14] Comments

Philosohpers David Bourget and David Chalmers recently surveyed 931 philosophy faculty members to determine their views on 30 different issues. Here were some of the more interesting results:

God: atheism 72.8%; theism 14.6%; other 12.6%.
Metaphilosophy: naturalism 49.8%; non-naturalism 25.9%; other 24.3%.
Mind: physicalism 56.5%; non-physicalism 27.1%; other 16.4%.
Free will: compatibilism 59.1%; libertarianism 13.7%; no free will 12.2%; other 14.9%.
Meta-ethics: moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 27.7%; other 15.9%.
Normative ethics: deontology 25.9%; consequentialism 23.6%; virtue ethics 18.2%; other 32.3%.
Science: scientiﬁc realism 75.1%; scientiﬁc anti-realism 11.6%; other 13.3%
Time: B-theory 26.3%; A-theory 15.5%; other 58.2%.
Truth: correspondence 50.8%; deﬂationary 24.8%; epistemic 6.9%; other 17.5%.

Notice that although 72.8% of respondents are atheists, 56.4% are moral realists. This goes to show the strength of our moral intuitions. While atheists do not have a sufficient ontological grounding for objective moral values, they still believe in them nonetheless.

I was surprised that only 13.7% believe in libertarian free will. I would expect it to be much higher. Perhaps this correlates with the high rates of physicalism.

HT: Scot McKnight

July 12, 2012

Given materialism, is the concept of “rape” even meaningful?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Determinism, Moral Argument, Naturalism, Relativism
[7] Comments

A friend of mine made a point the other day that I thought was insightful. If matter is all that exists, and there is no free will because everything is either determined or indeterminate, then there is no real distinction between rape and consensual sex since the distinction relies on the notion of free will. If the will is not free, then strictly speaking, no act of sex is chosen—even so called consensual sex is not chosen. Every act of sex is chosen for us by forces that lie outside of our control. We may think that we choose to engage in sexual activity or choose to refrain from doing so, but these are just illusions. Prior physical processes cause us to either have the desire to engage in sex or the desire not to engage in sex.