by Lloyd Harrison Whitling

One way to identify a religious belief as such can be found in the quick effort to put the onus onto critics to prove that the objective of the religious belief does not exist. When challenged to prove that only deterministic factors are at work to enforce all choices, decisions and creative endeavors in which human beings find themselves involved, determinists will, instead, retort that the challenger must prove instead that free will exists— whether or not that ever entered the discussion.

Free will acts as Determinianity's equivalent of Satan. Free will as it gets defined in most dictionaries, defies belief for the thoughtful person: It is impossible to create conditions (much less find them in Nature) that enable an unrestricted capacity to do whatsoever one may desire. We are all constrained in many ways and in all circumstances, including the choosing of one from many alternatives, so that no will is totally free. Even though that is not the special meaning that determinists give free will (and never bother to explain), it remains a red herring behind which determinists hide their own unproven doctrines; and because they are not talking about the same version of free will, the challenger ends up defending something different from what the determinist (if (s)he knows much about it at all) is talking about.

A second way to identify religious belief makes itself apparent if you can accurately identify what acts as a stand-in at the god position. In other words, where is the supernatural component? What acts as an irresistible force against which all human efforts are futile? In Determinianity, that answer is in the force inherited from the past that imposes fate onto all that occurs in the present and future.

Let's examine that: Our normal human perceptions of cause and effect stand in the place of a god for determinists, wherein our perception of events is that they occur in a sequential fashion, each sequence serving as cause for the next. Where one sequence is isolated to be looked at, it appears to be sensible, but that is not the way nature works. All of existence presents itself as a process to our senses; that process results from a stirring effect in which all events branch into multiple results, all of which interfere with each other,  (at least) many of which feed back to the causes, alter their character, and even negate them so they are out of the picture. The result, to our perceptions, is chaos.

That does not affect Determinianity's theme at all, and even though its believers have not offered a demonstrable example of their creed possessing a useful purpose, let alone established itself as factual by the common methods used by scientists, like all religionists, they view themselves as being above the need for that. Although it is up to the believer, always, to bear the onus of proof and to show the world why Determinianity is science and not just religion, just as it is in every other similar case where claims are made about things or conditions that have never been shown to exist, that onus is shoved onto the skeptics. Any philosophy with a definable stand-in for a god and a devil is definitely a religious philosophy, and Determinianity lives up to Calvinistic Predestination's religious heritage.

Will, choices, self, consciousness are all denied existence in the philosophy known as "determinism". It goes the other extreme, it appears, by denying we are anything but the toys of chance. All forms of determinism invalidate the specific attribute that distinguishes humankind from all other known life forms, our natural facility for reasoning.

Question: "If our capacity to reason and choose is nothing but an illusion, how can determinists claim reason and thought to be what led them to atheism, or to maintain their absence of supernatural beliefs?"

To negate reason and choice removes mind and morality from humankind and replaces them with a secular variety of the religionists' predestination. It does so by proclaiming all our actions and choices to be nothing more than the result of everything that ever occurred since the dawning of existence. 'Predestination' claims a god knows every instance of our existence before we are ever born. We are born "sinners" and it has been set in time whether or not we will die "sinners"; we have no say in the matter "unless that has been granted in our predestinations." In determinism, the same thing is said, that "We have no choices. We appear to choose, or to change our natures or our circumstances, only because we were predetermined that way."

"How?" we might wonder.

"We don't know enough to say that," they offer as a stock response. Like Xianity's god named God, Determinianity works in mysterious ways. Are we not as well off with gods of the same ilk? "You only think you made those choices because that's the way human perceptions work." Is that different from perceiving cause and effect as being the only determiner at work in our lives? Is that different from perceiving cause and effect at all? Is that different from the claim that everything is as God wills and has preordained it? How is one set of perceptions more valid than the other?

  Determinianity accomplishes nothing more than to take common sense and turn it into irresponsible secular  nonsense. All of such kinds of philosophy are nothing but godless religions. We must recognize them as that because they pick up on an idea that cannot be tested and verified, and expound about it to beyond the point of absurdity, decree something to be in opposition whether it is or not, and then accuse critics of supporting that, whether or not they do. That is what religion, for the most part, is all about.

That is what I meant when I said Determinianity does it by attacking the notion of "free will". Say anything against Determinianity, and you are automatically a "Free Willy" since, in Determinianity, you have no will at all. You are an automaton, a mindless machine responding to internal and external circumstances with no say at all in the matter.

Free Will does not serve as Determinianity's only straw man. When opponents insist that they do make choices on a regular basis, determinists begin assailing them with notions about 'spirits' and 'souls', and demand to know who or what it is that drives such choices. They will tell you about experiments that "prove" that the body responds to stimulation microseconds before informing the brain that it has done so. They demand from opponents to define an organic vehicle for choice, but overlook their own statements wherein one is never described. "Who or what," we should demand of them, "informs the brain that such an event has taken place? If consciousness does not exist, then why was such a notification necessary?"

Some of them will describe the various depressants and stimulants to which the human body responds in a predictable fashion, with no choice in the matter. Such chemicals act as pharmacological stand-ins for chemicals the human body naturally produces to serve its own needs. That injecting chemicals to produce an effect, and that we cannot avoid that effect, stands as proof for determinism is a preposterous claim. Chemicals injected from exterior sources are not put there as a result of the body's own determination, and so should be regarded the same as poisons that have invaded the system. That the body has built-in defense mechanisms, whether or not they sometimes go awry, serves as only a fallacious red herring argument that decoys the discussion away from anything at all to do with conscious making of choices.

A better, truer picture of what goes on inside our bodies and minds might result from setting aside all animal functions common to all living mammals, and then looking only at that which makes us 'different'.  Consider Determinianity's claims too closely and you risk becoming a skeptic and risk losing the curiosity that led to all the great ideas that have stayed with you and nurture your own existence. Such curiosity is something else Determinianity would, by decree, prevent us from having in the first place.

We share that in common with many other animals, true, but we differ in that we use it to initiate the discovery process that has led to the great variety of ways in which humans live and use technology today. Even in the most primitive places, human beings live in ways that other animals cannot, and the word 'primitive' mainly refers to the developmental stage achieved by their technology and science.

Determinists will insist we exhibit curiosity as an instinct, and that we advance only as a result of copying and accident. That is the opposite of true! We develop technologically because we want to know. We ask, we tinker, we predict, we try, and we learn, and then we verify what we have learned. Anything good that has come to my life has resulted from my own curiosity, including the woman I have shared love with for half a century. Would I pass up my appreciation for all the good things in my life to adopt this philosophy as my own?— Could I then consider myself better off than had I remained a proponent of Xianity?

I think not. Both are repulsive to my sensibilities because both demand that my sense of self be subjugated to some unproved and undisciplined concept invented by somebody else, perhaps not purposefully so, but contrived nevertheless to enslave its adherents under the guise of a mystery "too vast for our puny human minds to comprehend." All purpose, one size fits all answers to life's dilemmas serve no great purpose I can perceive beyond attempting to mold the lot of us into some absurd kind of sheepish conformity. The motives behind their perpetuation seem ulterior in their eventual application, once they have taken root, as a result of undermining our own sense of individual sovereignty, integrity, and personal responsibility.

We are all constrained in many ways by internal and external circumstances, and also by the simple fact that choosing to pursue one route often cancels out all other options from that point on: We can (legally) marry one choice at a time, who generally must be of a sex different from our own, and be required to abandon all the others. We can live in one home, drive only one car at a time (or walk or take a bicycle instead), be in only one place at a time. A pure understanding of free will would violate all those impingements. 

Beyond that (as if that can't be enough), other physical limitations impose constraints that the concept of free will disallows: We may not be strong enough, tall enough, or smart enough to pursue our preferred choices. We may not be aware of many alternatives to what we do choose. Some potential choices may have been romanticized so that we become influenced to choose them. We may remain oblivious to some due to attitudes induced by our beliefs. These, and many more like them, impinge upon free will and make it an impossible concept to defend. Why, then, does Determinianity insist that we are "Free Willies" when we argue against it?

The answer is simple: Determinists have no facts to work with, but for those they have cherry picked from the rubble, and so must resort to sly religion-like arguments, angry responses and name-calling in their own defense. Rather than acknowledge its actual true opponent is emergence, Determinianity distracts us with red herrings and platitudes.