A Christian apologetics critique of materialist arguments against free will — and why the denial of free will leads to moral absurdity
Over the last few decades, advances in neuroscience — particularly brain-scanning technologies like MRI — have enabled researchers to study human consciousness and decision-making in unprecedented detail. Organizations like the John Templeton Foundation have poured millions of dollars into free will research.
Against this backdrop, a growing number of scientists and public intellectuals — especially those committed to materialism (the view that only physical matter exists) — have concluded that humans do not have free will. The article from Fingerofthomas.org examines this claim, its evidence, and its devastating consequences.
Why do materialists deny free will? The logic runs like this:
If only physical matter exists, then the brain — a physical organ — is what makes all our decisions. There is no immaterial "soul" or "self" directing the brain. Therefore, our sense of choosing freely is an illusion; we are simply following the brain's electrochemical commands, which themselves follow the deterministic laws of physics.
Nobel laureate David Gross has noted that free will requires a "unique agent" — an independent self that can make choices. Materialists, by definition, cannot locate such an agent in the physical brain. Prominent atheist thinker Sam Harris has argued that our actions are not chosen by "us" but dictated by our brains, making us something like sophisticated biological machines.
| Aspect | Materialism | Theism (Dualism) |
|---|---|---|
| What decides? | The brain, following physical laws | The soul/mind, interacting with the brain |
| Free will? | An illusion — no independent "self" | Real — the soul is the choosing agent |
| Moral responsibility? | Difficult to justify | Grounded in the soul's ability to choose |
The most frequently cited evidence against free will is Benjamin Libet's 1979 experiment. Here is what happened:
Subjects wore brain-scanning equipment and were told to move their finger whenever they felt like it within a given time window. They also noted exactly when they consciously decided to move.
The finding: The brain's "readiness potential" — electrical activity preparing for movement — appeared before the subject reported a conscious decision to move. In later follow-up experiments (Haynes et al.), brain activity predicted the choice up to 10 seconds before the person was aware of deciding.
Materialists interpreted this as proof that the brain decides before "you" do, meaning conscious free will is an illusion. Media coverage amplified this conclusion, often with sensational headlines like "Scientists prove free will doesn't exist."
The article argues that most people read only these headlines and accept the conclusion without examining the logic or assumptions behind the experiment.
The article presents several critical objections to the way the Libet experiment has been used:
The follow-up experiments only achieved about 60% accuracy in predicting which button a subject would press — merely 10% better than chance (50/50 left or right). Can such a marginal improvement really support the sweeping conclusion that free will does not exist?
Even if someone could predict your decision before you make it, that does not prove you lacked free will. If a friend knows you well enough to predict your restaurant choice, that doesn't mean you didn't freely choose. Prediction and causation are different things.
A crucial finding from Libet's own research — widely ignored by media — was that subjects could veto the brain's preparatory signal and choose not to move. This suggests that even if the brain initiates an impulse, the conscious self retains the ability to override it. The article argues that most popular accounts of the experiment conveniently omit this result.
The conclusion "free will doesn't exist" only follows if you already assume materialism is true. Materialists interpret the data within their own worldview and then present that interpretation as the only possible reading. But the data is equally compatible with dualist interactionism — the view that a non-physical soul directs the brain.
If we allow for the existence of the soul (as theistic dualism holds), the Libet experiment looks very different. The brain's early readiness potential could simply be the effect of the soul's intention — the soul initiates the will, and the brain, as its instrument, begins preparing the body to act.
This is exactly what Dualist-Interactionists would predict: the soul wills, the brain responds, and the conscious awareness of the decision follows. On this view, the experiment confirms the soul's role rather than disproving free will.
The article highlights a deeply ironic problem. In 2016, The Atlantic published a piece titled (paraphrased): "There Is No Free Will — But It's Better to Believe There Is." The reason? Researchers found that when people are told free will doesn't exist, moral behavior collapses. People become more likely to cheat, lie, and act selfishly.
If free will doesn't exist, then moral responsibility is meaningless — nobody truly "chooses" to do good or evil. But when people actually believe this, society deteriorates rapidly. So even the proponents of "no free will" admit it's better for people to believe in it. The article asks: doesn't this suggest that the denial of free will is not just philosophically wrong, but practically destructive?
The article drives the point further: if you believe that exploiting children, human trafficking, or genocide are genuinely evil — not just molecular events with no moral significance — then you cannot consistently be a materialist. If the physical brain is all there is, then a murderer's actions are no different in kind from a raindrop falling: both are just matter following the laws of physics.
The article closes with a direct appeal. Every person experiences free will daily. You know the difference between acting voluntarily and being forced. When you pray, when you make a promise, when you resist temptation — you are not simply observing your brain execute a predetermined program. You are choosing.
Yes, certain brain regions activate when you decide something. But the question is: who initiated that brain activity? The materialist says "nothing — it's just physics." The theist says "the soul — the true 'you' — which God created."
The article ultimately argues that the denial of free will is not a courageous scientific conclusion but a predictable consequence of a flawed premise: the rejection of God. Once you remove the Creator from the picture, everything that makes us human — consciousness, moral responsibility, meaning, purpose — becomes inexplicable. The way back, the article suggests, is to acknowledge the God who designed both the brain and the soul that inhabits it.