One of the key topics that needs discussion is that of free-will. The following (taken from one of my articles on the mind which began this forum) is just a taster of what the issue is about and hopefully can set off some discussions. Most of us believe we do have at least some degree of free-will. Is this compatible with us being purely physical creatures?

"As individuals we have a strong sense that we have choice and can freely decide to do different things. As such we believe, rightly or not, that we have a degree of autonomy. We have a sense that we can choose to buy a certain article or to go up to someone to speak to them, for example. We award people who choose to do brave things in war, and give them medals, because we feel they could have chosen to do otherwise. We punish people who do bad things because we believe they could have chosen another course. Therefore, to a great degree we are responsible for our actions (and, as Jesus made clear, our thoughts).

The big question is whether a purely physical object such as the brain, however complex, could have free-will. The reason this is controversial is that any purely physical system is subject to the laws of physics and therefore cannot do otherwise than what it does. External physical conditions may affect the outcome, but there is no freedom that we can see within such a purely physical state. And quantum randomness at the atomic level does not help to explain free-will, because being random means a lack of any autonomy or real choice.

If we really do have autonomy to choose, then this is a strong argument for the non-material nature of the mind."

Thank you Antony for stimulating us to discuss this highly relevant topic of freewill. It is defined in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy as ‘the capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action among alternatives.’

As you recognise, there are some who would argue the choice does not exist. One such is a Neuroscientist I met recently who argues that since none of us has any thought consciousness before a thought arrives and since thoughts appear spontaneously, they have been generated beyond our consciousness and therefore we accept them rather than dictate them. This leaves us not much better than information processing machines.

I would argue that though this could, arguably, be true of our thoughts, our decision making can still be based on free will because a thought can be rejected. And while it could be argued that the second thought just came, also from the deterministic cerebral machine, if it contradicts the first thought, then it leaves in question what is being determined.
I would further argue that decisions can be based on the assembly of more than one thought and that choosing which thoughts to give priority to is itself an expression of freewill. And the consciousness of choice further underlines the likelihood of the choice being actual. It is not a watertight argument, but one that I think makes sense.

Choices are also, apparently, constrained by moral responsibility. There is no reason why the cerebral processing machine should propel us towards a moral good. Yet on a day to day basis, thoughts and actions express moral values. True, in Romans 7, Paul bemoans being something of a prisoner of decision making. He feels pushed towards making ‘wrong’ decisions. But I would argue that this is not determinism, but consciousness of a real choice in which there is real pressure coming from his consciousness of baser instincts to make the wrong choice

Of course, it is not only in philosophy that challenges to freewill exist. More extreme forms of Calvinism – or predestination – take us in the same direction.

So if we can argue successfully that freewill exists and if we believe we were so created, how important is our freewill to God?