If a sovereign God exists, man is determined, not free: Atheism has its own problem with determinism vs. free will, so this issue can’t be used to choose atheism over Christianity. But in fact the Christian solution to this problem is better than any atheist solution could be. Atheists say that the human will is subject to the fate of environmental determinism, which is law without any sense of free will, or a product of randomness, which is freedom without law. A few atheists, like B.F. Skinner, have been courageous enough to embrace determinism; but most claim that the human will is spontaneously free. This is inconsistent with their commitment to naturalistic evolution. But whichever view the atheist holds, the human will is a product of the impersonal and amoral. There is no more moral significance to randomness than there is to materialistic determinism. Either way, the atheist view excludes the possibility of the existence of moral laws that humans have the moral freedom to obey or disobey. At least in the Christian worldview, morally responsible humans are a creation of an absolutely moral personality. There is a distinction between God’s being and man’s being, whereas the atheist denies that humans have a distinct nature from the impersonal, amoral sources that gave rise to humans. An exhaustive explanation of how God creates morally responsible creatures is impossible. We haven’t even discovered a cure for the common cold, so how can we expect to exhaustively understand something as mysterious as the human will?
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 14:13:18 +0000
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