"Without free will, Mother Teresa and Charlie Manson are essentially the same. By determinist principles they are morally interchangeable. They are biochemical robots following the dictates of causal force. This is the determinist paradigm."
"All bets are off if we live in causal reality. Is anything real? Does anyone else exist? Are we the same person we were yesterday? If you think you know who you are, you can’t be a determinist. You only “know” what you’re caused to believe true."
"Not even logical truth is spared the causal chopping block. In a causal universe, the claim 2 plus 2 equals 4 is a causally compelled belief. Tomorrow everyone on the planet might well be caused to believe that 2 plus 2 equals 17. And if they are, then by golly 17 it will be."
"Determinism faces a Sophie’s choice. It must either concede that free will exists, in which case there’s personal responsibility. Or it must concede that morality doesn’t – since biochemical robots can’t do anything but follow their causal programming."
"Morality is a thorn in the side of determinism. We don’t hold someone responsible if they’ve got a gun to their head. But in a causal universe, we always have a gun to the head – the gunpoint of predetermined causation. Morality is ruled out from the getgo."
"The correlation between the belief in determinism and anti-social conduct shouldn’t be any surprise. The idea that we have no control whatsoever over what we do is a ready-made excuse for misconduct."
"There’s no north pole by which we can set our moral compass in a causal world. Actually, that’s not true. We can set our moral compass to the north, the problem is that north lies wherever we’re causally compelled to believe it lies. . ."
"Determinism is premised on causation, which is conceptually and scientifically unsound. It can’t be defined, can’t be proven to exist, and doesn’t seem to be the way the world operates. The Emperor of causation is wearing no clothes."
"People are enthusiastically stoned to death in the name of honor and justice for such crimes as infidelity and sexual preference. By what criteria can determinist principles distinguish the moral impropriety of such barbaric conduct from our cultural practices? Whose moral truths are more moral if they’re all believed on causally compelled thoughts? "
"Relativity theory stripped causation of its exclusive governance over reality. Quantum theory swooped in to offer a vision of the world in which causation has no place. The four hundred year reign of Newtonian law has ended. Long live causation. "
"[There’s a] fundamental flaw at the heart of determinist doctrine. Determinism is doomed by its Achilles’ heel – if our thoughts are compelled, there’s no such thing as truth. Truth is whatever we’re causally forced to believe true. Determinist principles are fundamentally self-contradictory and rob themselves of any truth value. "
"If relativity theory rocked the causal applecart, quantum mechanics overturned it in the middle of a busy highway. A probable paradigm of reality displaced the Newtonian causal model. We don’t appear to live in a predetermined universe."
