A while back I finished reading “God’s Crime Scene”, the new book by J. Warner Wallace. I wanted to post something about some studies he mentioned in Chapter 6, on free will. This is one of the places where he found evidence in a surprising area.

Wallace says that free will makes more sense if theism is true, because we have non-material souls that interact with our bodies, but are not causally determined by them. On atheism, only matter exists, and you can’t get free will (or consciousness) from matter. So atheists like Sam Harris and Alex Rosenberg, for example, deny free will, because they are materialists and atheists.

Anyway, here’s what he writes on p. 256:

In 2008, researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of British Columbia conducted experiments highlighting the relationship between a belief in determinism and immoral behavior. They found students who were exposed to deterministic literature prior to taking a test were more likely to cheat on the test than students who were not exposed to literature advocating determinism. The researchers concluded those who deny free will are more inclined to believe their efforts to act morally are futile and are, therefore, less likely to do so.

In addition, a study conducted by researchers from Florida State University and the University of Kentucky found participants who were exposed to deterministic literature were more likely to act aggressively and less likely to be helpful toward others.” Even determinist Michael Gazzaniga conceded: “It seems that not only do we believe we control our actions, but it is good for everyone to believe it.”” The existence of free will is a common characteristic of our experience, and when we deny we have this sort of free agency, there are detrimental consequences.

I decided to look up these studies.

Here’s the abstract for first study: (2008)

Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications.

And the abstract for the second study: (2009)

Laypersons’ belief in free will may foster a sense of thoughtful reflection and willingness to exert energy, thereby promoting helpfulness and reducing aggression, and so disbelief in free will may make behavior more reliant on selfish, automatic impulses and therefore less socially desirable. Three studies tested the hypothesis that disbelief in free will would be linked with decreased helping and increased aggression. In Experiment 1, induced disbelief in free will reduced willingness to help others. Experiment 2 showed that chronic disbelief in free will was associated with reduced helping behavior. In Experiment 3, participants induced disbelief in free will caused participants to act more aggressively than others. Although the findings do not speak to the existence of free will, the current results suggest that disbelief in free will reduces helping and increases aggression.

So what to make of this?

If you’re an atheist, then you are a physical object. And like every other physical object in the universe, your behavior is determined by genetic programming (if you’re alive) and external inputs. Material objects do not have the ability to make free choices, including moral choices.

Here’s prominent atheist Jerry Coyne’s editorial in USA Today to explain why atheists can’t ground free will.

Excerpt:

And that’s what neurobiology is telling us: Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject “decides” to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. (These studies use crude imaging techniques based on blood flow, and I suspect that future understanding of the brain will allow us to predict many of our decisions far earlier than seven seconds in advance.) “Decisions” made like that aren’t conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we’ve made them, then we don’t have free will in any meaningful sense.

Atheist William Provine says atheists have no free will, no moral accountability and no moral significance:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.

(Source)

If you don’t have free will, then you can’t make moral choices, and you can’t be held morally responsible. No free will means no morality. Can you imagine trying to get into any sort of enterprise with someone who has this view of moral choices? A marriage, or a business arrangement, etc? It would be crazy to expect them to behave morally, when they don’t even think that moral choices is possible. It just excuses all sorts of bad behavior, because no one is responsible for choosing to do the right thing.

Believers in materialism are going to struggle with prescriptive morality, including self-sacrificial care and concern for others. Their worldview undermines the rationality of the moral point of view. You might find atheists acting morally for their own purposes, but their worldview doesn’t rationally ground it. This is a big problem for people who can see objective morality woven into the universe – and themselves – because they have the awareness of objective right and wrong.

Choosing to do the right thing

I think what atheists like to say is “I can be moral, too”. That’s not interesting. What is interesting is whether it is rational for you to be moral when doing the right thing sets you back. When I look at the adultery of Dawkins, the polyamory of Carrier, the divorces of Shermer and Atkins, etc. I am not seeing anything that really wows me about their ability to do the right thing when it was hard for them to do it. They all deny free will of course, and think that trying to resist temptation is a waste of time.

Wallace explains how the awareness of free will and moral choices caused him to turn away from atheism, in this blog post.

He writes:

As an atheist, I chose to cling to naturalism, in spite of the fact that I lived each day as though I was capable of using my mind to make moral choices based on more than my own opinion. In addition, I sought meaning and purpose beyond my own hedonistic preferences, as though meaning was to be discovered, rather than created. I called myself a naturalist while embracing three characteristics of reality that simply cannot be explained by naturalism. As a Christian, I’m now able to acknowledge the “grounding” for these features of reality. My philosophical worldview is consistent with my practical experience of the world.

I think atheists who want to be honest about their own experience of first-person consciousness, free will, moral realism, etc. will do well to just accept that theism rationally grounds all of these things, and so you should accept theism. Theism is real. If you like morality, and want to be a virtuous person, then you should accept theism.

One of my favorite things about Trump beating Kamala is how much more money the left spent trying to help her win. Democrats FAR outspent Republicans in their campaigns. And once a dollar is spent on this election, it isn’t there to be spent on the next one. I was very skeptical about Trump’s ability to win this election. He was not my choice. But not only did he win, but he really hurt the secular left.

Here’s the story from Daily Caller:

Outside groups spent $442.7 million on independent expenditures designed either to support Vice President Kamala Harris or to oppose Trump between Oct. 5 and Nov. 5, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show. On the other side of the equation, PACs only spent about $160.7 million supporting Trump and opposing Harris over the same period. Despite the massive financial advantage, Harris lost the Electoral College and is on track to lose the popular vote as well, according to the New York Times’ projections.

I thought this part below was interesting, because of another story I read recently about how a company that collects donations for Democrat campaigns was not verifying whether the donors were legally allowed to make those donations at all.

Harris’ allies largely relied on dark money — where the original donor is unknown — to fund their home-stretch spending spree, according to FEC records. Future Forward PAC, the primary super PAC that supported Harris, was responsible for about 70% of the pro-Harris and anti-Trump spending during the final month of the election.

Trump’s allies were considerably less reliant on dark money. Make America Great Again Inc., the primary super PAC behind the president-elect, took in about $286.2 million this election cycle, campaign finance records show. Of that sum, about $260 million came from named individuals.

Harris’ official campaign also had far more money than Trump’s, raking in nearly $1 billion in funds while the president-elect took in just $388 million, Forbes reported.

So, here is the article from The Center Square, which reported the latest on Democrat donation collection.

It says:

A nearly year-long investigation into ActBlue, a Democratic Party online donation platform, alleges a large number of suspicious donations have been made, resulting in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton petitioning the Federal Election Commission to get involved.

[…]Since launching the investigation, Paxton said it’s been publicly reported that potentially fraudulent transactions have occurred on political committee online platforms.

“Certain platforms appear to facilitate straw donor transactions, where a contributor disguises his identity by attributing his contribution to another, unaware person,” the petition states.

Alleged straw donations are being made through the use of prepaid credit cards, which he says “are a favorite tool of fraudsters.”

Paxton’s office launched an investigation into ActBlue in December to determine if the platform’s operations were compliant with all applicable laws.

[…]The OAG’s investigation says it found a large number of suspicious donations that were made “through obscured identities and untraceable means,” necessitating FEC action.

Through the use of prepaid cards it “appears that straw donations are systematically being made using false identities, through untraceable payment methods,” Paxton said.

We are talking about a lot of money here:

ActBlue says it’s raised more than $15.8 billion online since 2004.

In the third quarter of fiscal 2024, it says “6.9 million unique donors gave over 31 million contributions to 18,396 campaigns and organizations, totaling over $1.5 billion.”

Could these donations be coming from donors who are not legally allowed to make these donations?

I know that China, for example, has a lot to lose if Trump imposes tariffs on their exports. So, if it were possible for them to get away with it, why wouldn’t China collude with Democrats in order to interfere with the election? I would not expect the corrupt Biden-Harris regime to do anything to stop them. They’re too busy faking Trump-Russia  collusion stories, conducting surveillance on the Trump campaigns, pre-dawn raiding the homes of Christian pro-lifers, and labeling American parents as “domestic terrorists”.

Normally, on this blog, every other post is some “new study” that I can use in discussing the controversial issues of the day. A lot of the best new studies get unpublished if they go against the worldview of the secular left, for example, the famous ROGD study. (That one was later re-published). Or they don’t get published at all. It’s fun to see what was allowed to get published pre-ban.

Here’s a study that’s on PubMed, one of my favorite web sites for studies.

Abstract:

This pilot study compared mothers of boys with gender identity disorder (GID) with mothers of normal boys to determine whether differences in psychopathology and child-rearing attitudes and practices could be identified. Results of the Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines and the Beck Depression Inventory revealed that mothers of boys with GID had more symptoms of depression and more often met the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder than the controls. Fifty-three percent of the mothers of boys with GID compared with only 6% of controls met the diagnosis for Borderline Personality Disorder on the Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines or had symptoms of depression on the Beck Depression Inventory. Results of the Summers and Walsh Symbiosis Scale suggested that mothers of probands had child-rearing attitudes and practices that encouraged symbiosis and discouraged the development of autonomy.

Fifty-three percent of the mothers of boys with gender identity disorder were diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder or had symptoms of depression.

Now, there are concerns I have about this study. First, it’s a small number of research subjects, which is understandable because back in 1991, there were not a lot of kids with gender identity disorder.

So what is Borderline Personality Disorder? Here is the description from the NIH:

People with borderline personality disorder may experience intense mood swings and feel uncertainty about how they see themselves. Their feelings for others can change quickly, and swing from extreme closeness to extreme dislike. These changing feelings can lead to unstable relationships and emotional pain.

People with borderline personality disorder also tend to view things in extremes, such as all good or all bad. Their interests and values can change quickly, and they may act impulsively or recklessly.

I don’t know much about mental illness, but I’ve been told never to date (much less marry) someone with BPD, because it is the most serious mental illness.

This finding from the study is interesting to me, because it suggests a reason why we are seeing this enormous surge in LGBT identification among young people. Sure, there is peer pressure, that’s what the study on ROGD was about. But now it suggests a chain between radical feminism, the Sexual Revolution, the decline of women’s happiness, and their transgender children.

We know for certain that women are experiencing far greater unhappiness after radical feminism became widespread, because they don’t like the goodies of radical feminism – promiscuity, abortion, careers, etc. – as much as they liked being married to a good man, and being a stay-at-home mother.

Daily Wire noted this in 2017:

According to a recent study from Yale University researchers, liberated, college educated women are freezing their eggs because they can’t find a man to marry and have children with before their natural childbearing years expire. In the U.K., for instance, one in five women is childless when their natural reproductive years expires, as opposed to one in ten women a mere generation prior.

So what’s to blame for this onslaught of college-educated yet terribly empty women?

The short answer is feminism.

The short answer is feminism, because although women claim that it’s men’s fault for not marrying them, no man with a brain would ever marry a feminist. It’s actually become too dangerous for men to even date feminists. I don’t even talk to them. The character traits that go with the feminist worldview are not just anti-marriage, they’re dangerous to men. Women who blame the bad results of their own choices on men are not safe to even speak to.

And as I’ve noted before, the decline of marriage is causing a massive spike in mental illness. Not in conservative women – just in progressive women.

Feminist web site Evie Magazine reported on the some 2020 findings by Pew Research (left-wing pollster):

A 2020 Pew Research study reveals that over half of white, liberal women have been diagnosed with a mental health condition at some point.

[T]he study, which is titled Pew American Trends Panel: Wave 64, was dated March 2020 — over a year ago.

The study, which examined white liberals, moderates, and conservatives, both male and female, found that conservatives were far less likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those who identified as either liberal or even “very liberal.”

[…]White women, ages 18-29, who identified as liberal were given a mental health diagnosis from medical professionals at a rate of 56.3%, as compared to 28.4% in moderates and 27.3% in conservatives.

Here’s the part of the data I thought was most interesting:

It turns out that marriage accounts for a lot of women’s happiness. But by allying themselves with radical feminism, women have made themselves totally unattractive to marriage-minded men. I think that the explosion of kids with gender identity disorder is just one of the ways that feminism is working itself out.