No soul? No free will and no responsibility then, yet the latter's essential...

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Here's the argument in brief video form for free will impossibilism, for anyone who's unfamiliar with it (Shazza?). 





If there were some kind of ethereal supernatural "soul" in the picture (for which there is, of course, zero evidence) then perhaps some from of free will would be possible, but for the atheist, it's a simple impenetrable brick wall. No human has free will. And yet,

For society to function in any kind of moral way people need be held responsible for their actions (eg - crime). You frequently hear the line "they did it of their own free will" etc. I say this is the core paradox of being alive in society and that the sooner everybody gets on board with it the better, instead of giving a lame ass shrug and carrying on as normal. Here's my new mantra, to be drilled into my puny, malleable, yielding, fickle mind:

We need be held responsible for our actions, including by ourselves, although in truth the logic and evidence overwhelmingly directs that we are not. This is the fundamental foundation of a modern, atheistic, civilised society, and the bolded bit need be drilled home from infancy.

Yup, it's the mother of all paradoxes, but there we have it, it's....inescapable.

Forty thoughts AF?

It isn’t a paradox at all. If there is no free will, then all of our actions are constrained. This includes acting as though we have free will, and all the repercussions of doing so.

If Joe chops up his wife and feeds her bits to the neighbour’s pet shark, we can argue that, in the absence of free will, Joe could have done nothing else - it is impossible for him not to have done this and he bears no moral responsibility for his actions.

Then the police come and investigate Joe. He’s arrested and brought to trial, convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. While in prison, Joe gets into a fight with Jim, gets shanked, and dies of his wounds. But no one in this chain of events - not the cops, not the jurors, not the judges, not the prison guards, not Jim - could not have acted in any other way.

This is why the ‘no free will’ position fails as a scare tactic. People generally frame it as, ‘If criminals have no free will, then society can’t punish them’. This is just stating that ONLY Joe has no free will. But if Joe has no free will, then no one has free will. We can’t help but punish him any more that he could not have killed his wife.

Boru