Are you the master of your destiny, the captain of your ship? Or are you just a passenger on a voyage to the unknown? In a word, is there such an entity as free will; or is free will the greatest illusion of all time? Let's take a look at this question along with a discomforting answer.
We'll start at the very moment of conception. At that moment, until the end of life every single cell in the body will be indelibly stamped with the XY chromosome for a male, or the XX chromosome for a female.
These chromosomes determine whether the male hormone, testosterone, or the female hormone, estrogen, will cause a person to develop into either a male or a female. But they also determine the sex of the brain. Yes, even the development of the brain is influenced by sex hormones.
Male brains contain seven times more gray matter than white, while female brains have ten times as much white matter than gray. But this doesn't indicate anything more than a rudimentary knowledge about what each part does. But it does hint at different abilities.
Researchers have concluded that an eight-year old boy has the math skills of a 12-year old girl. Conversely, the same researchers found than an eight-year old girl has the language and fine motor skills of a 14-year old boy.
But it's not only math and language abilities that are sex linked. Indeed, every thought, every action, every wish and desire, are influenced by sex hormones. They even affect how we will vote.
A group of 17 scholars from Penn State analyzed the voting records of 12,000 twins. Their conclusion: “We provide definitive evidence that heritability plays a role in the formation of political ideology.”
It's not that we have a gene coded for a political party, said the researchers. It's more like an ongoing conversation between genes and an ever changing environment.
Other social scientists believe that this interplay between genes and environment affect all your choices: your favorite color, flavor, foods, what you like or dislike, and so much more; and all this if not at the moment of conception, then in your early formative years.
Likewise your choice of a spouse was not a matter of conscious choice but of emotion, independent of cognition.
In other words, all your actions, thoughts, and emotions, do not spontaneously arise without a cause. They are responses to causes, in this case, heredity, and environment. The law of cause and effect governs not only inanimate objects but animate beings as well. It is the arrogance of man that claims he is an exception. But nothing can be “uncaused.”
It only appears that you have control over your thoughts and actions. In reality, you have no control; rather you are controlled. For example, if free will existed, surely there would have been some who would have decided to be wholly good, completely upright, and faultlessly moral. Alas, those perfect specimens are nowhere to be found.
Inevitably this leads to questions involving theology and responsibility.
Let us suppose that you believe in free will. What does this say about the deity in whom you believe?
This God falls far short of being a God. He is as supremely ignorant of what His creation will do as we are. He has created a world in chaos, with mini-gods each acting in accord to impulses that arise without cause or predictability. In this respect, the divinity is both ignorant and irresponsible, at most a well meaning God but only a hapless bystander to a creation gone a muck.
On the other hand, if you do not believe in free will, then your God is one who has complete control over His creation. He is also a God in the fullest sense of the word. He is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly responsible for His creation.
But this makes God the author of all the horrors of this present evil age. An unsettling conclusion. You are left only with faith that this is by design and shall ultimately be drawn to a perfect conclusion by a perfect God.
So which shall it be? “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Or was Brutus right; Our faults are not in ourselves but in our stars?
Sincerely,
Bob Scroggins
New Milford, PA