Chantal, such an awesome question. I wrote a couple of articles on this, but there are good Catholic debaters and speakers who are presenting on this topic! I reference a couple of them. Let’s keep the conversation going!
I meant to post this on Monday and then completely forgot, but better late than never.
Your part about your concerns about ABA remind me of something I’ve been pondering recently, and I’m curious what your response to it would be. I have heard the argument that free will doesn’t exist, "determinism" and "conpatibilism," because we are controlled so much by our environments and the laws of science and neurobiology. This argument holds that our actions are the result of involuntary neurological processes that we are rarely aware of, and thus, free will cannot exist, since we function by these neurological processes. According to this argument, information about the world influences our actions and brain before we can even consciously articulate what is happening; even a conversion from atheism to Catholicism can be explained away by determinism as being not an act of the intellect and an act of the will to choose faith with the help of God's grace, but as being the result of mere determining factors in the laws of physics or of synapses in the brain.
I am a cradle Catholic, so I absolutely believe in free will, but I’m not scientific enough to know how to dispute this false argument. I’m very interested to hear how you would reply! Thank you in advance and God bless you and your family!
Chantal, such an awesome question. I wrote a couple of articles on this, but there are good Catholic debaters and speakers who are presenting on this topic! I reference a couple of them. Let’s keep the conversation going!
https://open.substack.com/pub/josephclem/p/the-elephant-in-the-room-free-will-part-one?r=q3ejl&utm_medium=ios
Thank you so much for sharing this article! I’m saving it to read later when I can ponder it in depth.
This is incredibly cool.
Right??
I meant to post this on Monday and then completely forgot, but better late than never.
Your part about your concerns about ABA remind me of something I’ve been pondering recently, and I’m curious what your response to it would be. I have heard the argument that free will doesn’t exist, "determinism" and "conpatibilism," because we are controlled so much by our environments and the laws of science and neurobiology. This argument holds that our actions are the result of involuntary neurological processes that we are rarely aware of, and thus, free will cannot exist, since we function by these neurological processes. According to this argument, information about the world influences our actions and brain before we can even consciously articulate what is happening; even a conversion from atheism to Catholicism can be explained away by determinism as being not an act of the intellect and an act of the will to choose faith with the help of God's grace, but as being the result of mere determining factors in the laws of physics or of synapses in the brain.
I am a cradle Catholic, so I absolutely believe in free will, but I’m not scientific enough to know how to dispute this false argument. I’m very interested to hear how you would reply! Thank you in advance and God bless you and your family!