If I’m wrong about free will, it’s not my fault

One of Richard Dawkins’ most famous quotations summarizes the materialist position:

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford neuroscience professor, would agree wholeheartedly with Dawkins on this. Like John Lennon, who penned what might be called the hymn to materialism in “Imagine,” Sapolsky believes that if we all quit believing in God, good, evil, and free will, the world will be a better place.

Sapolsky in his books Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017), and Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (2023) may well be establishing himself as one of the more effective defenders of strict determinism and materialism.

Stephen Barr, former physics professor at the University of Delaware, in a review in First Things explains Sapolsky’s view of the positives for society if we abandon completely the idea of free will:

“Much of Sapolsky’s book, especially its last section, is devoted to showing that mankind will be better off in important ways if we stop believing in the myth of free will. We will be liberated (so to speak) from the whole mistake of moral responsibility, including moral praise and blame.”

Sapolsky is no doubt a great scientist and a very effective science writer. His argument against free will and…