Recently, Talk Heathen put out a video from a theist who wanted to talk about God and free will. While the call itself was pointless, the thought experiment that Kenneth Leonard came up with was terminally flawed and I see this kind of thing happening all the time.

So let’s talk about it.Essentially, the idea was this: Name the first African-American celebrity that you can and then, why did you come up with that name and not another? Did you have free will in making that choice? The problem is that in this example, there is no choice being made. It’s simply a matter of mental recall Just because the first person the caller could come up with was Jay-Z, or in my case, it might have been someone like Morgan Freeman or Neil deGrasse Tyson. So what? This was not a choice in any case, it was a simple matter of recall based on an arbitrary characteristic provided. That doesn’t tell you anything.

Then, they went on to ask if, could we go back in time, was it possible that the caller could have come up with another name? There was an assertion that no, it wasn’t possible and I fail to see how they could come to that conclusion. It seems to me to be a case of ideology driving ideas, not the other way around. First off, obviously, we can’t go back in time to see, so it’s just an assertion, not a testable hypothesis. Secondly, so what? The caller’s mental recall was likely based, as they noted on the show, some recent memory of Jay-Z, a song they heard or an interview or whatever and that’s what made that name pop up first. Well that’s how memory works. We tend to recall more recent things than older things, all other elements being similar. Had the caller been friends with a black celebrity, I’m sure that would be the first name that would come to mind because personal relationships are typically gauged at a higher rate than random people.

But what does any of this tell us? Unfortunately, other than serving as an example of how memory works, it tells us nothing because there was no “will” being exercised whatsoever. There are no conscious decisions here. It makes the entire exercise pointless.

A little while ago, after having another one of these pointless free will debates online, I went to get some frozen yogurt and I tried an actual experiment. Could I choose to get any flavor that I wanted (or didn’t want) to choose? Therefore, I went down the line of machines and added some of every single flavor in the place to my cup, even if I didn’t like it. It certainly wasn’t the best cup of frozen yogurt I’ve ever had but I proved my point. I could choose any, or all, of the flavors on display. I wouldn’t do it again because, honestly, it was a waste of money, but I demonstrated that I had the free will to do whatever my mind decided to do with no external constraints. It’s a very easy experiment. You try, at least if you don’t mind having a terrible experience.

I really do think that a lot of people are getting their ideologies involved in their non-experimental data. They make assertions they cannot test and dismiss results they do not like and there’s a lot of “explaining” away any result they don’t approve of because they just want to be right. It’s just like religion, if you notice. “You can’t do that!” you’ll hear and the second that you prove you can, they come up with excuses that bring the argument firmly back to their side. Just like religion. Instead, when the experimental data shows their side wrong, they need to be able to change their minds and a lot of people out there simply can’t. If someone showed me an actual god, I’d accept it as part of a new paradigm. I wouldn’t try to explain it in a way that conformed to my pre-existing beliefs. Sitting there screaming “that can’t be!” doesn’t change what is. You have to go where the evidence leads, not where your mental preconceptions want it to go.

It’s why these discussions never go anywhere useful, because at least one side tends to think they’ve got it all right, damn the evidence. That’s just not how rational thought works.