The Bible clearly teaches that we choose whether we will serve God (Josh. 24:15) to reap the blessings of life or reject Him and reap the consequences of everlasting punishment (Deut. 30:19; Matt. 25:31-46; Rom. 2:5-11; Gal. 6:7, 8). Each man will give an account of himself to God
(Ecc. 12:13, 14; Rom. 14:12). We will be judged by what we do in our bodies (2 Cor. 5:10).
However, atheists have often alleged that humans are not responsible for their actions. Atheistic naturalism—the worldview which holds that all that exists is natural processes—implies that the human mind which seems to make decisions is just the outworking of blind natural causes. The famous atheist Richard Dawkins professed, “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.”[1] The atheistic evolutionary biologist William Provine stated:
No purposive principles exist in nature. Organic evolution has occurred by various combinations of random genetic drift, natural selection, Mendelian heredity, and many other purposeless mechanisms. Humans are complex organic machines that die completely with no survival of soul or psyche. Humans and other animals make choices frequently, but these are determined by the interaction of heredity and environment and are not the result of free will.2
This is the logical outcome of atheistic evolutionary thinking—no free will, no purpose, and no meaning.
There are naturalists who believe in free will, known as compatibilists, but they are inconsistent. How can “molecules in motion” be guilty of acting one way instead of another? Fifty years ago, one of our brothers in Christ—Thomas B. Warren—debated the renowned atheist Antony Flew. Flew said that men ought to pursue truth.3 Warren responded by pressing Flew on the inconsistency of the word ought and moral obligation within the atheistic framework.4 Later in his life, Flew abandoned atheism and embraced theism. He noted that the question of how free choices could be physically caused was pivotal to this transition.5
Famous atheist Sam Harris emphatically declared, “Free will is an illusion.”6 He went on further to ask:
What does it mean to say that rapists and murderers commit their crimes of their own free will? If this statement means anything, it must be that they could have behaved differently—not on the basis of random influences over which they have no control, but because they, as conscious agents, were free to think and act in other ways. To say that they were free not to rape and murder is to say that they could have resisted the impulse to do so (or could have avoided feeling such an impulse altogether)—with the universe, including their brains, in precisely the same state it was in at the moment they committed their crimes. Assuming that violent criminals have such freedom, we reflexively blame them for their actions. But without it, the place for our blame suddenly vanishes, and even the most terrifying sociopaths begin to seem like victims themselves. The moment we catch sight of the stream of causes that precede their conscious decisions, reaching back into childhood and beyond, their culpability begins to disappear.7
While these statements are shocking, Harris has embraced the implications of the general theory of evolution regarding human behavior—no free will, no guilt, and no such thing as justice. Science may well explain what is, but without free will it cannot explain what ought to be. This removes the culpability of those guilty of even the worst moral atrocities. Even rape considered from a naturalistic standpoint must be explained as some evolutionary adaptation or by-product of sexual selection in spreading genes.8 If man is just an evolved animal, why would it be wrong for him to act like his predecessors?
Other fields of study have been influenced by this denial of free will for years. In psychology, Sigmund Freud downplayed the concept of free will to emphasize unconscious sexual and aggressive drives as the causes of human behavior. A more blatant denial of free will came from John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner who advanced behaviorism—the view that human behavior is caused by external stimuli. While the Bible does not deny that one’s environment can have a tremendous effect on the individual (1 Cor. 15:33; 2 Pet. 2:8), it does not teach that humans are incapable of overcoming these influences (Rom. 12:2). We are not merely victims of our environment. Ezekiel 18 gives examples of individuals going against the environment in which they were raised. Each one of us has the ability and the obligation before God to obey Him even if the world around us tempts us to disobey (1 Cor. 10:13). While animals act on instinct, humans are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26, 27). Animals may exhibit cooperation and empathy since they are conducive to survival, but human conscience involves a sense of ought which is not the same as instinct. C.S. Lewis made a compelling argument that human morality has God as its ultimate foundation; animals survive on impulse, but what humans have is something above the natural impulses that tells us which impulses we ought to pursue.9
For society to work, we must accept personal responsibility for our choices. Though some individuals are so severely handicapped they are not accountable for their actions, this does not apply to everyone. We cannot always blame genetics, hormones, mental illnesses, or society at large for our ills. Society is made up of individuals. The choices I make as an individual have consequences. God prohibited humans from acting on impulses that would lead to murder, adultery, theft, etc. in the Israelite society to which He gave civil laws (Ex. 20:13-17). He sanctioned the death penalty for some of these crimes (Gen. 9:6; Ex. 21:12). Even the ox without a human conscience was put to death if it took human life; its owner was also held responsible if this was a pattern (Ex. 21:28-31). God expects me to uphold the ethic of loving my neighbor instead of doing him harm (Rom. 13:8-10). Governments today are to punish evildoers and praise those who do well (Rom. 13:1-4; 1 Pet. 2:13-14). When we do away with human free will, we get rid of any real sense of justice.
[1] Richard Dawkins. River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1995), 133.
2 William Provine, “Scientists, Face It! Science and Religion are Incompatible,” The Scientist 2, no. 16 (September 5, 1988): 10.
3 Thomas B. Warren and Antony G. N. Flew. The Warren-Flew Debate on the Existence of God. (Moore, OK: National Christian Press, 1977), 24.
4 Ibid., 29-30.
5 Antony Flew. There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 59-60.
6 Sam Harris. Free Will. (New York: Free Press, 2012), 5.
7 Ibid., 17-18.
8 Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer. A Natural History of Rape. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 59-60.
9 C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 10.