Free-Will, Neuroscience, the Amygdala Hijack Response, and Prayer.

I have been reading up on the claim from some Neuroscientists that they have disproved the existence of free will, a major plank in modern materialist doctrine. 

In a paper published more than 20 years ago, Dan Wegner and Thalia Wheatley suggest that our brains make decisions for us several seconds before we are consciously aware of it. The fact that we think we have the freedom to make a decision is just our brain playing tricks on us.

Benjamin Libet performed EEG experiments in 1983 which appeared to provide evidence that unconscious brain activity made the decision before our conscious thought even registered the question.
(https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/out-the-darkness/201709/benjamin-libet-and-the-denial-free-will)

Paul Bloom and Adam Bear propose: "Perhaps in the very moments that we experience a choice, our minds are rewriting history, fooling us into thinking that this choice—that was actually completed after its consequences were subconsciously perceived—was a choice that we had made all along." (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/what-neuroscience-says-about-free-will/)

So, goes the thinking, all of our decisions are essentially hard-wired and the result of external stimuli, not the result of our freely willed considerations at all, even though that is how we experience reality.

A recent study by Victoria Saigle, Eric Racine and Veljko Dubljevic has called this research into question. They assert that the "interpretation of study results appears to have been driven by the metaphysical position the given author or authors subscribed to – not by a careful analysis of the results themselves....Basically, those who opposed free will interpreted the results to support their position, and vice versa.” The authors of this report do not take a stance on whether free will exists or not, they just argue that neuroscience has not proved it one way or the other. (https://news.ncsu.edu/2018/03/free-will-review-2018/)

(One thing to take away from this is that scientists are not immune from bias, though some people want to advance certain scientific conclusions as strictly "fact-based" without any possibility of prejudice or agenda. The scientific method is amazingly helpful to our understanding of the world, but it does not automatically eliminate bias in the cultivation of data or in the application of its findings. Part of the beauty of the scientific method, though, is that findings are meant to be subjected to rigorous testing and attempts to disprove them. We should remember this whenever we hear the words, "Of course, science tells us..." Science points us towards truth and aims to give us the best explanation of currently available data, but it is never finished with its self-examination.)

All this talk of brains and free-will reminded me of a talk I heard from Daniel Goleman on Social Intelligence and the Amygdala Hijack. (It is about an hour long and well worth listening to). (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hoo_dIOP8k&t=2907s&index=2&list=PLAafuGpq2nxynsOod6AuL0sKgCKLAsdai)

The Amygdala Hijack is something our brain does when confronted by stress-inducing stimuli. It locks us into the fight-flight-freeze response, an adrenaline-dump which is designed to help us when facing a bear attack or something similar. Unfortunately, this response is not particularly helpful when dealing with the stresses of the modern world, in which bears play a surprisingly minimal role (though I could tell you a story...).

So, for the most part, the Amygdala Hijack response does not help us, but we have a hard time overcoming it. At first glance, this seems to reinforce the notion that we have no free-will. Our subconscious brains are doing the deciding for us, for good or for ill.

But Goleman argues that we are actually not enslaved to this response. In a series of studies on people he calls "Olympic-level meditators", it was discovered that the regular practice of meditation, silence and stillness could significantly reduce the gap between the Amygdala's response and our conscious decision-making. The result was that certain people had learned to overcome, or at least mitigate, the brain's subconscious decisions.

This brought me, as most things do, to a consideration of prayer. Stillness, silence, and meditation are vital starting points for prayer, and always have been. These practices apparently allow us to overcome our very natural impulses around fear.

But prayer goes even further than this. Communing with God helps us to learn what to do with our freedom from fear. We are given guidance, comfort, encouragement, and security in the knowledge of God's love for us and his identity in us. And with our freedom we may be able to help others who are trapped in their fear.

This all sounds like discipleship to me. We train our minds to be renewed - "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." (Rom 12:2) This is about becoming attentive to God, learning obedience rather than acting on whim and impulse. Repentance literally means changing our mind, which we can do once we become aware of what we are doing and why.

More study needs to be done on this idea of Social Intelligence, meditation, and the overcoming of the Amygdala Response. And more thinking and praying needs to be done on how prayer fits into it all. But I have some hope - and some personal experience - that prayer really does create in us the kind of peace and contentment that allows us to think and act with freedom.

Grace and peace,

Aaron