The problem with your evolution argument is the evolution has never proved that it can explain ANY of what you claim. It has never proved that (or how) personality can arise from the impersonal, how meaning can arise from matter + time +chance, how purpose can come from random sequences, or how mental faculties or consciousness can come from chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Evolution has failed to explain ANY of that, let alone have done a good job of it. Your only claim to fame is, "Well, it must have happened, because here we are," and if that's what you've got, you're pretty empty-handed.

The Primary Axiom of evolutionary theory states that man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection. Suppose we have a little red wagon. Let's assume the first genome encoded the assembly instructions for the first wagon. Each newly copied manual was used to make a new little red wagon. The scribe (random process), being imperfect, makes errors each time (mutations) so the next wagon comes out different, with its own new set of instructions. the first wagon and its instructions are junked. Errors accumulate with each new generation. They don't even come from the first one, but only from the previous mutated one. The resulting wagons start to change. No doubt you realize we are looking at a deteriorating picture. Information is being lost, instructions are being downgraded, and wagons will get worse. Eventually the system will break down, and workable wagons will become extinct.

But let's bring a hero onto the scene: Natural selection. Natural selection is like a judge, "deciding" which wagons are suitable for further copying. But it cannot judge between previous wagons and current wagons, but only current wagons (there is never direct selection for good instructions, but only for good wagons. Mutations are complex, but selection can only be carried out on the level of the whole organism). The scribe and the judge work entirely independently. The scribe is essentially blind, working only at the level of molecules (he can see only the letters he is copying, not the whole organism). Random mutations consistently destroy information. The judge, on the other hand, has his hands tied, because he can only choose from what is on the table now. And remember, there is NO INTELLIGENCE INVOLVED IN THIS SCENARIO. The "scribe" is an array of senseless molecular machines that blindly replicate (inaccurately) DNA, and the "judge" is just the tendency for some pieces to reproduce more than others. Natural selection is not intelligent, but blind, mechanistic, and purposeless. Neither have intelligence, purpose, or reason.

And from this process, you claim, evolution does a good job of explaining reason, truth, personality, and purpose. I think you've been deceived, my friend. While there is a remote possibility of such mutations scoring an actual benefit, naturalistic evolution is a theory that proposes that we won the lottery 100 million times in a row.

Of course evolution as a process has been proved. But what hasn't been proved (and can't be) is that evolution did not have an intelligent cause behind it. Ah, theism. Even your claim about the iPod: "If we write a machine learning algorithm, like a neural network, and feed it data, it can develop skills and "reasoning" from the data, despite being a completely deterministic and mechanical system" requires intelligent design for the system to work.

Wow. I'll be honest: this is just astounding to me. The statement I made seems so self-evident. Substantiation? Every time I am confronted by new material, I give reasoned consideration to how it conforms to reality. I weigh various alternatives of explanation, considering the relative strength of each perspective, and pondering the positions that others have taken. My intent and hope is to settle on a conclusion that is the most reasonable explanation for the phenomenon, such that it makes both logical and empirical sense. This process evidences that I am inferring to the most logical conclusion and not just responding in a stimulus/response sequence. If it was simple stimulus/response, I wouldn't bother to, or be able to, consider, weigh, assess, and judge. I would simply respond, as a ball does to gravity when I release it from a still hand.

I would (off the top of my head) define free will as simply that you freely choose to act and you could have done otherwise.

If you believe solely in naturalism and natural selection, all value statements, including truth, are meaningless. It's like an iPod on "shuffle." The only force in the system is random selection. One could never say, "That was a good choice." The iPod didn't choose anything, and can't. We could never expect the iPod to give me a sequential list of the best songs ever, or even to give me a meaningful sequence. It's on shuffle, and that's the only force at play. "True" can never be part of a system that's always on shuffle. Never. Our mental faculties cannot necessarily be trusted, because the whole system is random, impersonal, and mechanistic. There are no other forces at work, and there cannot be other forces at work. If you assume reason and truth evolved, you have a major obstacle in explaining how reason, purpose, personality and truth can come out of a system that is only time plus matter plus chance.

If you are a pure determinist, you cannot claim that for rational reasons. You believe it because you were determined to believe it. it is therefore impossible for you to believe it for rational reasons. The only way you can believe in determinism for rational reasons is if determinism is false. So your argument is self-defeating. If determinism is true, then it doesn't make any sense for you to say that determinism is true, because if it is true, then you are assuming there are rational reasons for believing it. Fine, you can believe it, but if you're right, then your position is no better than the complete opposite, rationally speaking, because you believe people believe things apart from any rational basis.

You said, "We determine if a belief is true by comparing it to the reality to which it refers, and comparing it with competing ideas, and choosing which idea best fits reality. This requires some level of free will."

Why is this so? Substantiate this. Define "free will" for me.

Free will (self-direction) has to exist, first of all, or we would not be human. Many of the things that define us as human beings (love, kindness, forgiveness, justice, etc.) are dependent on the reality of free will. I can't find justice in a court of law if there is no self-direction, either on the criminal's part (he can't be held accountable if he was determined to do it) or on the judge's part (he can't make a rational decision if there is no such thing).

Secondly, if free will didn't exist, we couldn't not know it. In fact, we couldn't know anything. Knowledge is justified true belief. We decide if a belief is true by comparing it to the reality to which it refers, and compare it with competing ideas, and choose which idea best fits reality. This requires some level of free will.

So, working backwards, I agree that we appear to have consciousness, and we appear to have self-awareness, but I don't follow how these things mean that we have self-direction. Maybe your subconscious brain is directing your actions and you only seem to have conscious control. Again, free will may just be an illusion, as has already been said.

To me it's evident that people believe in the concept of responsibility. I am not just a cog in the wheel of life, but I act with volition and responsibility, and I can and should be held accountable for my actions. That's why we have police forces, court rooms, and prisons. We function as a society, as well as individuals, as if the choices we make are volitional and not determined, and we hold each other responsible for those choices.

We also study our natural world (the sciences) as if self-awareness, self-direction, and reason are real. We can evaluate that there are realities outside of ourselves that we can observe and draw true conclusions about. The notion of truth takes us beyond mere biological determinism, which is only concerned with survival (food, flight, fight, and reproduction). We act as if we honestly believe that we can ask "what if..." questions, weigh possibility, make authentic decisions, and conclude truth. All of these are evidences of free will, reason, and objective truth, all of which show that we live and function as if these things are real, reliable, and even have a facet to them that could be considered "true".

Let me try to explain it this way. Suppose you only believe in naturalism, as you seem to be claiming. "So what if we are biologically determined?" Then you believe that all of our mental capabilities (memory, perception, even our a priori intuitions, introspection, reasoning) came to be through a purely mechanistic sequence: things happened. It's the Primary Axiom: everything is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection (both of which, by the way, have an IQ of zero).

Given that scenario, where does "reliability of cognitive faculties" come from? My memory is only reliable if it produces mostly true beliefs. My visual perceptions are only reliable if they conform to reality. But if all of my cognitive faculties have been cobbled together by natural selection, on what basis can we sensibly think that they are for the most part reliable?

As a matter of fact, if you believe in both naturalism and evolution, your very reasoning is self-defeating. You can't rationally accept your "truth" because there is no such thing. There is only "effect." Probing down to essentials, neurobiology enables an organism to succeed at only four things: food, fight, flight, and reproduction. The principal chore is survival. Natural selection enables an organism to enhance its chances for survival. That's all. So if the principal function of our cognitive faculties is not that of producing true or near-true beliefs, but instead that of contributing to survival by making sure elements conducive to survival are in the right place, then what biological determinism underwrites is only (at most) that our behavior is reasonably adapted to the circumstances that help us survive. Our beliefs MIGHT be true, or even mostly true, but there's no particular reason to think that they would be. Natural selection isn't interested in truth, but only in survival. In other words, I can never know if I can trust my thoughts or not, since they were randomly generated (if you believe in determinism) by impersonal biological events.

How can you consider the "what if" question if you are incapable of choice, and incapable of reliable reasoning processes?

> Everything you have said is also consistent with a consciousness that is purely the result of physical processes in the brain.

This is a position called "Reductive materialism"—that everything can be explained, and exhaustively, at lower levels. If this is true, there is no logical, rational answer. All is finally chaotic, irrational, and absurd. We are the result of time plus matter plus chance. "Truth" is not part of the equation. All is impersonal, mechanical, and random. if you accept this, then you are faced with an irrational reductionism, because then we are not human, all is impersonal, and there is no meaning.

The problem with this position is that we know that all is NOT chaotic, irrational, and absurd. We reason with each other. We see order and purpose. We discern meaning. No one has ever demonstrated how time plus chance plus matter, all impersonal, can produce the high level complexity that is humanity. Theoretically we can claim that the world is determined, mechanistic, and meaningless, but no one lives that way. If we did, all discussion would come to an end.

For the record, I don't feel strongly either way: I think there's a huge lack of information available, and to a certain extent I think even if we could somehow prove free will was an illusion it really would change nothing. I am curious, though, what you consider to be compelling evidence? When cogito ergo sum is the thing being called into question, I can't even fathom how to take it back further. This isn't me calling bullshit, I just want your input.

Now don't go blaming theism. Of course all things in nature have some degree of interaction with their environments, and of course animated things interact in a more complex way. I agree with you, and I'm still a theist. The question at hand is whether or not we live in a purely mechanistic environment, determined by inviolable biological causes, or if we are able, through self-direction, to control and manipulate those interactions. I content that we are not just mechanistically determined, but have self-directed abilities to consider, assess, decide, and manipulate. It sounds like you believe that as well.

I don't understand why theists can only see things in such binary terms. All things in nature have some degree of interaction with their environments. Animated or "living" things interact in a more complex way than inanimate or "non-living" things. By extension, higher forms of life interact with their environments to a greater, more complex degree than lower forms of life. Will and choice are just the degree to which we are able to control and manipulate those interactions.

That's why it *does* matter if reason is meaningful or real. If it's not, then all of your arguments are self-defeating because reasoning is unreliable and incoherent. If we are merely play-acting, we are involved in absurd nonsensical incoherence. But while you may entertain that thought philosophically, you can't live your life in any practical way on that basis, The self-contradiction makes it obvious that your position is untenable.