ant wrote:Hi Ant. It is a question of balance of probabilities. A. Universe is consistent: all real evidence and logic agrees.
versus B. Universe is inconsistent: no evidence supports, except for wishful thinking by religious fantasists.
Robert, You are setting up a False Choice
Far from it. Consistency versus inconsistency is a real choice. As an armchair scientist, I am continually astounded by the power of the assumption that the laws of nature are universally consistent. It continually proves to be totally reliable. Before the rise of modern science in the time of Newton, people had no basis to assume universal consistency, so fell back on the default of an arbitrary interventionist God who could do as he wished, as a personal being. So the false assumption of inconsistency has a powerful cultural hold as the basis of supernatural religion.
Science, in its discovery that our universe is actually governed by consistent rules that determine the behavior of matter, opened a new paradigm. Laplace summarized in well in his comment to Napoleon that God is an unnecessary hypothesis. On this basic axiom of universal consistency, the theory of relativity is a refinement of Newton's laws, showing that when Newton's assumptions are tested against observation, they break down at very fast speeds and in the presence of large lumps of stuff.
The principle of consistency was retained in the theory of relativity. Science has not yet fully explained how the universe is consistent because of the inconsistency between quantum mechanics and general relativity, but even this difficulty should not lead anyone to give up by saying, oh well the universe is not materially consistent and God magics the difference between small and large scales. The powerful assumption of science, which I endorse, is that apparent inconsistencies are not real but are only due to human inability to fully understand what is happening.
I personally differ from the mainstream philosophy of science because I regard science as an absolute matter of faith. I just think science has cracked the secret of the universe in fields such as GR, QM and the periodic table, which each have such abundant consistency in their core observations that they should be regarded as absolutely true. Refinement such as through a grand unified theory should be expected as a bonus, not a radical revision.
The relevance to the discussion here on free will is that our psychological liberty of choice can be fully explained as consistent with science. Saying that determinism destroys freedom is irrelevant theological speculation. It does not. At the point of decision we are completely free, despite large processes of the universe proceeding in a remorseless mechanistic way.
Intruding a supernatural entity into the picture offends against Ockham's Razor, by postulating an unnecessary being. All supernatural mythology is mere fantasy, the corruption of earlier natural observation. Imagining a God who operates contrary to the laws of nature is just mud on the page, obscuring our ability to formulate a logical understanding.