by Sir Arthur Foulkes
The debate over free will and determinism is as old as the hills and there is no end in sight. Professor Paul Davies of Macquarie University of Sydney, Australia, observes that it is picking up steam and he is worried about it.
Writing in the magazine Foreign Policy, Professor Davies points out that belief in some measure of free will is common to all cultures and a large part of what makes us human.
“It is also,” he says, “fundamental to our ethical and legal systems. Yet today’s scientists and philosophers are busily chipping away at this social pillar – apparently without thinking what might replace it.
“… But even if they are right, and free will really is an illusion, it may still be a fiction worth maintaining.”
To most Christians, God-given free will is an article of faith. It was defined in the fourth century by the great North African doctor of the church St. Augustine of Hippo in his book On Free Choice Of The Will.
The vast majority of Bahamians claim to be Christian, yet there is in our national psyche strong elements of determinism and fatalism.
A Retrospective Commentary
by Larry Smith
From 1979 to 1983 I wrote a column for the Tribune in a different era (under the nom-de-plume ‘Monitor”). Those commentaries were focused on ZNS television news coverage, which at the time was strictly controlled by the Progressive Liberal Party government under Lynden Pindling.
But although some two decades have passed since these commentaries were written, the context is discernible, many of the personalities are still around, and the issues continue to resonate. Of course, since private broadcasting opened up the air waves in the early 1990s, younger readers may not appreciate the political censorship that existed when these pieces were written.
In fact, news management was so partisan back then, that the following comments may appear one-sided to some. But that is the fault of the politicians alone. These tongue-in-cheek excerpts offer some interesting parallels with current events.
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