This is one of those things that you just shake your head at and find it hard to believe that it just happened but it did. I stumbled into this thing in the middle, so I don’t know how it started, but over on Reddit, there was a discussion going on about determinism and free will and I asked the self-identified hard determinist a question.
You’re not going to believe what he said.
Right up front, I’m going to say I’m not a hard determinist. That’s not a surprise. I think that, depending on how you define your terms, free will is a thing. You can make decisions freely whether anyone likes it or not. You might not be able to make them without any outside influence, after all, you can’t choose to flap your arms and fly because human biology doesn’t work like that, but you can decide most things that you are capable of doing, and do them without restraint.
The hard determinists hate that though, as I’ve discovered. In fact, a lot of them are no different than the religious presuppositionalists, but this guy was on an entirely different level.
Like I said, I came into this in the middle, but I popped up and asked the hard determinist how he defended hard determinism. He said he didn’t have to defend it because it was just true. Besides, he couldn’t possibly do so because his actions are pre-determined and if he isn’t pre-determined to provide evidence, then he can’t make the decision to do so because no one has free will.
What the actual fuck.
I’ve had people allude to that in the past, but never come right out and say it. Most of them, I figure, are just embarrassed by the implications and therefore just retreat, but not this guy. He’s a super-hard-determinist who thinks that everything was decided at the beginning of the universe and we’re just meat robots going through the motions because that’s all we can do.
That sounds an awful lot like Matt Slick or Sye Ten Bruggencate, right? That’s essentially what it is. Unfortunately, the guy left before I could ask any really interesting questions, although who knows, he might show up again if he’s “pre-determined” to do so, but this is really absurd. Are you honestly saying that you were pre-determined from the beginning of the universe to show up on Reddit today and type those specific words into your keyboard? That’s what you really believe? Seriously?
Yet that’s pretty much it. That goes for the hardest of the hard determinists, of course, but they’ve essentially taken themselves out of the rational conversation because they can’t possibly do anything that they don’t want to do, with the excuse that they just weren’t pre-determined that way.
I guess running for the hills was pre-determined too, huh?
Honestly, how do you have a conversation with people like this? I know I shouldn’t bother, but sometimes you’re just shaking your head so hard, you give yourself whiplash.