NOTE: I realize that Stephen Hawking is now deceased, but the folly of his atheism is very much alive in our world today.
Amazing! Stephen Hawking, one of the world's most renown theoretical physicists, has determined that there is, absolutely, no God (Yahoo News 9/27/14). Reading of his unfounded boldness, I was amused that he thinks it possible to eliminate the supernatural from his worldview, ignore the logical consequences, and then live life as if nothing really changes. Evolutionists like Hawking are a strange bunch, and it doesn’t get any stranger than demanding that those who disagree with them follow the evidence when the mental wherewithal to do so isn't supposed to exist in the first place. Let me explain.
To follow the evidence means that once we encounter competing ideas, we can consider the information associated with each one, and then, of our own "free wills," "choose" the one to which the facts point. I have no problem with following said evidence on any given matter. I do, however, take issue with those who demand that we follow said "evidence" when following it assumes the ability to do the very thing that consistent evolutionists tell us isn't possible in the first place.
So, here is the problem. Once the you eliminate the mind of man as evolutionists of this type ultimately do, then the one supposed human quality we all revere, human volition, of necessity falls with it. Hence, the consensus of those evolutionists honest enough to admit it.
According to Dan Barker, evangelical turned atheist, a purely natural world eliminates free will. "I am a determinist," he boasts, "We have the illusion of free will, which to me is what 'free will' actually means."
Michael Shermer, author of Skeptic Magazine, also tells us that “free will is useful fiction,” with even Hawking concurring. "But if everything is determined by the laws of science," he said, "then free will must be an illusion” (Black Holes and Baby Universes, 132).
Further, John Searle reminds us that, "Science allows no place for the freedom of the will" (Minds, Brains, and Science, 92), with Thomas Metzinger adding, "Determinism is obviously true. The next state of the physical universe is always determined by the previous state." Hence, "For every single…decision you will make, it is true that it is determined by your previous brain state" http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_7.html#metzinger).
Translation?
"No free will!"
"No choice!"
Get it! Evolution is a package deal. You can't logically maintain one worldview and then live as if it's opposite is true. That being the case, how can the evidence matter at all if the ability to choose doesn’t really exist? Further, how can one be "convinced" or "unconvinced" if the supposed mental freedom to do so is merely "illusional" or only "useful fiction?"
My bet, is that the staunch evolutionists who read this article will claim to have "chosen" to read it and then find it very "unconvincing," despite the fact that both are impossible in the supposed naturalistic reality he posits. Welcome to the theist's world, generally, and the creationist's world, particularly, the only world in which the words "evidence" and "unconvinced" mean anything at all.
The folly of evolutionary thinking is proportional to the denial of the Creator as revealed in Jesus Christ and confirmed by his resurrection.
Tony