Wrestle With This

Do we have free will or not. Of course, this question comes up from time to time in churches as a question of theology. Do we choose God or does He choose us? Are all of those that are going to heaven predetermined or is it still an unknown quantity? I don't want to get into all of that. I want to wrestle with a scientific article on the subject:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/81bc32e4-d5e3-11db-99b7-000b5df10621.html

You really will want to read this article, I think, but I'll do my best to accurately reflect the meat of it in this discussion. According to this article, an American neuroscientist has demonstrated that there is a distinctive build-up of electrical activity in the brain before your conscious "decision" to move your arm, for example. Basically, by the time you think that you want to move your arm, your body is already most of the way there. It seems to make the "decision" part of it a last-second add-on to the process. The example in the article is that it's like driving a car and then finding out that the steering wheel is not attached to anything and that the car has been driving itself.

Some neuroscientists in Australia, though, took the experiment one step further. They electronically stimulated the brains of their subjects to influence the decision. Basically, they would ask the subject to raise an arm then they would stimulate the brain to raise the subject's left arm. Amazingly, the subject reported that they chose to raise their left arm in spite of the fact that it was going to happen regardless. So not only is the steering wheel not attached to anything, but someone else is driving the car and anytime it turns right or left you think that's where you want to go.

Now, if all of these experiments are being interpreted correctly, the implications to our society are huge. Did that man choose to kill his neighbor or was it predetermined? Can he be held responsible for something that he couldn't control? The article talks about some of this, and I don't want to get into that. I just want to wrestle with the experiment itself and what does it really mean.

Is it possible that our free will is an illusion that just makes happy? We feel better when we think we are in control, so we tell ourselves that it was our choice.