Richard Dawkins' Faith In Free Will Is As Blind As A Christians To God

[Purple Rabbit]

Interview with Dicky boy from http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/

QUESTION: If you do not explain free will in a religious sense, how do you explain the ontology, the coming into being of free will?

MR. DAWKINS: The question of free will is a profound philosophical problem. And, as I said before, nothing is changed by adding the word "genes." So you could ask a question about how do you explain free will in a non-religious way -- not just to a Darwinian or somebody who believes that we are gene machines, but to anybody who takes a philosophically deterministic position.

So forget all about genes and think entirely about the philosophy of determinism. Now, everybody who calls themselves a determinist knows subjectively that they have the sensation of free will. We all know what it feels like to feel free. The only argument is whether fundamentally we are determined. That's one position which I wouldn't mind taking up. I don't find any difficulty with that position. I am quite prepared to believe that when I think I've taken the decision -- when I feel that I, with my own free will, have exercised a free choice, I've decided to do one thing rather than another -- I've decided to immigrate or decided not to immigrate, or to buy this house rather than that house -- it feels like free will. But it's perfectly possible that actually my decision to immigrate or not to immigrate was influenced by events in the brains which were influenced by other events, influenced by other events, which fundamentally all have a definite physical cause.

But it doesn't matter. There is no difference between the way it feels to have free will if there is this kind of fundamentally illusory free will that I've been talking about, or if in some other sense (which actually I can't quite imagine what it would like) we really did have free will. It wouldn't feel any different. It certainly wouldn't affect any of the arguments we ever have in selfish genery, when we ask whether we are free to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes and practice some anti-Darwinian behavior, such as contraception. Clearly that's no more difficult to imagine than deciding whether to immigrate or not to immigrate. The facts are that we do make such decisions. The facts are that we do take a decision to use contraception. And the -- contraception the mere existence of contraception -- something as mundane as that -- or the mere existence of the fact that one could take a decision to immigrate -- is not going to solve one of the great philosophical problems of all time. That's going to be there in any case. It doesn't actually affect how we feel or what we do.

That's clear enough. Dawkins does not believe in contra-causal free will, but the feeling of free will in a deterministic world.

Still wondering why quotes are important when attributing a position to someone? Than you might be pre-determined to stay a bigot just the same.