Matters of choice, responsibility, and free will have entranced and entangled philosophers, theologians, and scientists for millennia. These questions cut to the heart of what it means to be human, and at times to the very nature of reality itself. Specifically, our view of God and our relationship to our Creator and one another depend significantly on what we do with the questions of free will. So what do we know about it?
Over the past decade, philosophers, theologians and scientists have been working together to try to understand if free will exists. Famous experiments like those of Benjamin Libet, have been reexamined and new ones have been done. This summary, full report (for those that want to dive deeper), and video from the John Templeton Foundation, who have invested significantly in this question, summarize some of what has been learned in recent years. We still haven’t answered the ultimate question, but we know much more than we did even a decade ago.
