Belief in religious propositions IS a matter of choice

Has God has given you the free-will to choose to follow and worship him, or not?

Some think freewill in direct contradiction to how we come to believe as we do; they think that science shows that nobody gets to simply pick and choose what they can or can't believe. In fact, nearly every choice we make is made subconsciously, not consciously. For evidence of this they cite studies like this They argue that we aren't really making a conscious choice to accept or dismiss any claim.

Quick question: How many live sporting events have you ever watched? Surprisingly the answer is the same for everyone - Zero. Why? Because there is a time lag, even when one is in the stands, for the light reflecting off the player to reach your eyes. It is almost instantaneous but not quite.

Thesis: Results from studies like the one cited and like Libet's original experiments is exactly what we should expect if the Christian dualist-interactionist view of humans is correct.

In Libet’s initial experiments people were instructed to press a button with one of their fingers while he monitored their brain activity. Libet discovered that prior to a person’s awareness of his decision to press the button, a brain signal had already occurred which resulted in his finger’s later moving.

So the sequence is:

1) a brain signal occurs about 550 milliseconds prior to the finger’s moving;

2) the subject has an awareness of his decision to move his finger about 200 milliseconds prior to his finger’s moving;

3) the person’s finger moves.

Some have taken the results to provide evidence for determinism and even materialism.

In a second run of experiments, Libet discovered that even after the brain signal fired and people were aware of their decision to push the button, people still retained the ability to veto the decision and refrain from pushing the button!

Some interpreters take the brain signal to indicate a “readiness potential” to initiate movement which the subject may go along with or cancel.

From the Christian perspective this is exactly what the dualist-interactionist would expect. The soul (or mind) does not act independently of the brain; the mind uses the brain as an instrument to think. So, of course, the soul’s decisions are not simultaneous with the conscious awareness of them. How could they be?

Given the soul’s reliance upon the brain as an instrument of thought and the finite velocity of the transmission of neural signals, of course there is a time lag between the mind’s decisions and the awareness of them. In Libet’s experiment, since neural processes travel at finite velocities, of course it takes time for the mind’s decision to come to consciousness. This is exactly what we should expect on a dualist-interactionist view.

It's a conscious decision, but because of the finite velocity of neural signals it takes time for the person to become conscious of it. Just as we never see present events because of the finite velocity of light, but only events just slightly past, so we do not have consciousness of our decisions simultaneously with our making them.

If the soul has the ability to decide without being causally determined, then in order to make free, responsible decisions, the soul just needs to be conscious of the facts relevant to the decision prior to making the decision. So there’s no reason to deny free will.

So, in no way do experiments of this type refute the Christian dualist-interactionist view; they in fact support it.

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