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While most human beings believe they make free choices, rational scientific determinism claims that free will is an illusion. On this view, every effect has a cause, including human decision-making. The only influences on our choices are genetic endowments and environmental factors. Therefore, our views of law and ethics should change to accommodate the idea that our choices are constrained, and we should not be held morally accountable for our actions. On the other hand, my position is that of free will libertarianism. Order, meaning, and purpose in the universe ultimately come from our Creator-God. While determinism is true to the extent that many events follow law-like principles, this does not mean that human nature is necessarily constrained by physical or chemical forces. Our free will is a reflection of God’s volitional nature, who has given us the capacity and the responsibility to act for our own good and for that of those around us. Therefore, moral censure and moral praise make sense, and help to define our ethical lives. This presentation will examine three areas of the free will versus determinism debate. First, the descriptive questions will define what we mean by determinism, and what we mean by free will. The substantive questions will ask if we in fact possess free will, and what is the evidence for this. Finally, the prescriptive questions will examine how all this affects our understanding of human personhood, the self, and bioethical decision-making. Part of the impetus for this discussion came from a public debate between myself and Dr. William Provine of Cornell University, an atheist evolutionary scientist and hard determinist (March 13, 2010). Our joint project is the basis for an academic paper to be submitted to the journal Philosophia Christi.

Keywords:
"bioethics, human free will, determinism, incompatibilism, ethics"