Immanuel, watching on YouTube Live,
he wants to know how you would respond
to Sam Harris's claim--and Sam Harris is
a well-known New Atheist--Sam Harris has
claimed that objective moral truths can
be derived from science; that is, God is
not needed for there to be objective
moral truth. Yeah, I've never understood
what he meant there. I mean, I got lost
with him when he said "free will is an
illusion." And I know there's a lot to
that claim, and I've sorted through it,
I've read those books; but when you put
your finger on the fundamental part of
it, he's denying there's anything
spiritual. He's denying there's a soul to
the human. And if you deny there's a soul
to the human, then you deny there's God
and then you deny--and you have nowhere
to look for moral truth except for
science. So if we're going to start there,
I would make him admit that--and I think
he does--that he has nowhere to look but
science, so of course he's going to
conclude everything ends and
begins with science, because that's all
he's got. But then, you know, it
actually becomes very subjective when he
starts saying "This is the objective
truth," "This is the objective truth,"
there's a subjectivity in that. There's
nothing to base it on. And anytime you
have something logically derived, you
have to start with your starting
assumptions. So, you know, if he's going to
build his logical system on that, I would
get down to the first logical premise
and say "Just know that you were starting
from a premise that says that you have
no soul, I have no soul, you have no
explanation for your intelligence and
free will, and we do. So while you're
sitting there scratching your head
trying to figure out whether you can
think freely or not, we're going to go on
with our lives and practice virtue and
move on, because I do think that the
Christian logic is a much, much fuller
logic." And that's what I would say to him.
I'm not sure what he would say back to
that. Okay. You know, when you
say that about free will I always wonder
about the person who argues against
free will but in favor of science, because
science is a matter of being convinced
of things. It's saying "The evidence
has convinced
me," and being convinced means making
a decision. You have to decide: "Yes, the
evidence is sufficient," or "It's not." So if
you say there's no free will,
aren't you saying that there's actually
no science? Because I'm not actually
being convinced by the evidence,
something else is happening, a chemical
reaction is happening in my brain, but I
have not decided, "Yes, the evidence is
sufficient in one area or another." Yes, it
doesn't and many, many, many people have
pointed this out. And personally I just
could not accept that. I mean you
basically say "You have no free will to
think freely," that you're thinking freely
that you'd think that. I mean, it just
goes in circles and it's nonsense.
