An Easter-tide conundrum 2

Here's the second installment on the 'Cheesiest Explanation Ever Given'.

Lesson 2 – Free Will and Determinism

The essential question that you are asking about God is really rooted in the debate between Free Will and Determinism.

Free will can be defined as ‘agents’ having the ability to make a choice free of constraint.  (Or as the great philosophers would put it:  “To be is to do”-Socrates, “To do is to be” – Sartre and “do-be-do-be-do”-Sinatra).  The problem with ‘free will’ is that we are creatures who have inherited all sorts of biological behavioral biases.  For example, some people believe they are righteous because they are healthy and exercise all the time.  Turns out that they’re on the right side of the distribution for endorphins (aka: brain cocaine) that they generate when they exercise.  The endorphins overpower the lactic acid signals they get from their muscles and they enter ‘runner’s high’.  People on the left side of the distribution get nothing but pain from exercise so they don’t do it (do we John?).  We are also victims of our circumstances, where we are born and who we are around – your point Rich.  So Free will is ‘dirtied’ by the reality of biology and circumstances.  Still standing but with a nasty shiner.

Determinism or Fate can be defined as all events are inevitable consequences of previous events (Or as my dear old Dad would say:  “It’s just one damn thing after another”).  A deterministic universe is one where the end state can be predicted with certainty if one knows the mechanics and the beginning state.  It is a ‘Newtonian’ world that is sometimes described as “the watchmaker” made the watch, wound it up and now knows exactly what time state it is in based upon the beginning state position (which according to Douglas Adams is always late Sunday afternoon just before the beach bars close).  A billiard table is described as a deterministic “Newtonian” system. 

But some other guys came along and did some weird experiments.  Cats like Schrödinger (he was actually a guy with an imaginary cat), Von Neumann and Heisenberg.  In particular Heisenberg demonstrated in his “uncertainty principle” that at the quantum (or itsy bitsy) level not all attributes of a quantum particle can be known when it is measured – the measurement sullies the measuree.  Schrödinger said something important about this too but since he was always fooling with pretend cats nobody took him seriously.  But anyway, the upshot of the uncertainty principle is that no one can predict with certainty the absolute position of any object or particle.  All we can do is predict where it is likely to be based upon statistics.  In other words, Macauley could Welsh on a game of Billiards by claiming that the winning shot was not on the table but was in fact in the Gamma Quadrant of the Pika Zebulon galaxy and if he was playing against particle physicists, presumably they’d have to believe him.  Thus determinism is dirtied by uncertainty and the fact that Newton was ever so slightly wrong.  It is standing but bloodied by a big sock in the kisser from Heisenberg (with its sweater scratched up by that cat).

So patiently you ask: what does this have to do with the price of dingoes in Dallas?  And I say:  patience little glasshopper whose tiny wing beats cause hurricanes in Houma.