William Provine’s 2005 AD lecture entitled “Evolution and Intelligent Design: The Implications for Human Free Will” is generally agreed upon to have been heavy on assertions and light on facts.
Comments ranged from “He makes a lot of jumps to conclusions as if they were obvious” and “He can’t define what free will is,” to “it was an entertaining presentation” and “he was pretty amusing” with a touch of “He left a lot of questions unanswered.”
An article that reported on the lecture offer some interesting windows into the tangle web that William Provine’s atheism weaves. It seems pretty clear that his emotional perturbations lead him to read his own atheistic views into biology like so many tea leaves.
In his opening remarks he stated (as with the comments above, I will be quoting from Julie Geng, “Prof Denies Human Free Will,” The Cornell Daily Sun, August 30 2005),
I was a vocal opponent to I.D. [intelligent design] even before [the movement] began.
I am unsure whether this is supposed to be an attempt at humor or a statement about his own cleverness—or both. But let us take it a face value and simply deal with the fact that, preemptive or not, he opposes the Intelligent Design movement. Why did/does he do so?
Let us note that previously, William Provine had declared:
Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear—and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me.
There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.[i]
How modern evolutionary biology implies a positive affirmation of God’s non-existence or any of his other assertions remains unstated.
So, why did/does he do so? Part of the reason is,
One of the most fascinating views of I.D. supporters, Provine said, was that the only differences between humans and chimpanzees were “human free will and immortal souls.”
And as we just saw, he infers the non-existence of the soul—via denying life after death—from modern evolutionary biology.
Just as in the essay The Desperation of the Deicidal, Memetic Eugenics and the Evolutionary Watchmen, part 2 of 2 I noted that Dan Barker has invented his very own particular and peculiar definition of free will as being “the illusion of free will” William Provine also coins a definition of free will,
Choosing doesn’t imply free will…Choices are not made freely — there are all kinds of constraints on it.
Certainly, there are all kinds of constraints on choice making but it is making a choice nonetheless and this is the very definition of free will—making the choice; no matter what constraints play upon the choice.
We thus learn that 1) he opposes the Intelligent Design movement because 2) the ID movement affirms the existence of human free will and immortal souls (this is actually questionable) 3) he infers a positive affirmation of the soul’s non-existence from modern evolutionary biology and 4) he stated, or admitted, “I hated the idea of human free will.”
It would perhaps be best to read this backwards: he 1) “hated” (past tense) “the idea of human free will” and 2) infers the soul’s non-existence and so 3) when the ID movement affirm the existence of human free will and immortal souls he 4) opposes it.
But note that he did not oppose Intelligent Design because they held those affirmations but because he was a vocal opponent to the ID movement even before it began. But why? Because he had an a priori commitment to reject human free will and immortal souls. With these ideas in mind he restricted himself from freethought and thus, rejects anything that contradicts his own concoction of an atheist worldview.
It was his emotional perturbations—hatred of free will and making an imaginary leap from biology to there is no God—which lead to his scientific and philosophic conclusions (if they may even be referred to as such).
In this, he joins many atheists, including Charles Darwin (caveats in place), who seek to do away with God—behind the thin disguise of “science” or “reason”—in order to justify their rebellion and in order to psychologically deal with their emotional perturbations. For some evidence of this see Why Atheism is Chosen.
[i] Provine, W.B. 1994. Origins Research. 16 (1): 9