How "free will is an illusion" does not contradict theology
The phrase "free will is an illusion" has always struck me as ridiculous. Yet, it is increasingly gaining respectability as indisputable, scientifically demonstrated fact. How can the two be reconciled?
It occurred to me last night that "free will is an illusion" is now (I don't know about, say, 400 years ago) always accompanied by something like "You think that you chose soup instead of salad, but..." and then a bunch of neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary theory, etc. And then--and I think this reveals that there is an agenda, and it is not simply (or at all) the rigorous search for objective reality--almost invariably there is some commentary that goes something like, "Sorry to burst your bubble, but you were fed a bunch of myths and/or lies in Sunday School".
Sometimes it goes farther than that: we get a lecture about how much suffering this free will myth has caused and how in the future people who know better won't punish others for actions they had no control over.
But it occurred to me last night that this belief that supposedly everybody has that they could have chose salad instead of soup is probably not the same thing as the free will in "God gave us free will". The latter, as I understand it, is believed to be contained in certain sacred texts that are [B]revealed[/B] to us by the divine, and is accepted on faith. It is, as I understand it, not the same thing as that aforementioned belief that supposedly we all subconsciously harbor in our minds and that science supposedly exposes as an illusion.
Therefore, saying that "free will is an illusion" contradicts theology makes as much sense as saying that "sin is an illusion" or "salvation is an illusion" contradicts theology. The latter two are not subconscious, taken for granted beliefs like the belief that you exist. They are, just as I understand free will, ideas that one consciously acknowledges or denies and accepts (on faith) or rejects (no faith).
I think that the "free will is an illusion" evangelists need to come up with something to call it other than free will. "Absolute personal autonomy is an illusion", maybe.
It occurred to me last night that "free will is an illusion" is now (I don't know about, say, 400 years ago) always accompanied by something like "You think that you chose soup instead of salad, but..." and then a bunch of neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary theory, etc. And then--and I think this reveals that there is an agenda, and it is not simply (or at all) the rigorous search for objective reality--almost invariably there is some commentary that goes something like, "Sorry to burst your bubble, but you were fed a bunch of myths and/or lies in Sunday School".
Sometimes it goes farther than that: we get a lecture about how much suffering this free will myth has caused and how in the future people who know better won't punish others for actions they had no control over.
But it occurred to me last night that this belief that supposedly everybody has that they could have chose salad instead of soup is probably not the same thing as the free will in "God gave us free will". The latter, as I understand it, is believed to be contained in certain sacred texts that are [B]revealed[/B] to us by the divine, and is accepted on faith. It is, as I understand it, not the same thing as that aforementioned belief that supposedly we all subconsciously harbor in our minds and that science supposedly exposes as an illusion.
Therefore, saying that "free will is an illusion" contradicts theology makes as much sense as saying that "sin is an illusion" or "salvation is an illusion" contradicts theology. The latter two are not subconscious, taken for granted beliefs like the belief that you exist. They are, just as I understand free will, ideas that one consciously acknowledges or denies and accepts (on faith) or rejects (no faith).
I think that the "free will is an illusion" evangelists need to come up with something to call it other than free will. "Absolute personal autonomy is an illusion", maybe.
Comments (45)
I do not know if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me.
Is the free will in "God gave us free will" the same thing as the free will in, say, a neuroscientist saying "Free will is an illusion"?
You mean "God gave you free will" and "You believe that you chose soup instead of salad" are interchangeable?
Even if science could leave no doubt that a belief like "I chose soup instead of salad" is an illusion, would that falsify "God gave you free will"? The former is simply about something in one's mind. The latter is, as I understand theology, about our entire nature, constitution, being, etc.
Where did beliefs like "I chose soup instead of salad" originate? Didn't "God gave us free will" originate in a completely different way?
I sense that we may be dealing with a category error.
This is a philosophy forum, not a religion forum. If you have a philosophical point to make, make it, but just saying determinist philosophies don't contradict theology because the book says so is not a philosophical argument.
If the religious wish to make a philosophical argument (and many do) they are implicitly claiming, as philosophers like Plantagina do, that their epistemological system is defensible. If its not defensible logically, but taken on faith, that's fine, but it's not philosophy, it religion.
Determinists are suggesting that they have a logical argument which denies free-will. That is relevant to those who think they have a logical argument in favour of free-will. If anyone wishes to abandon logic and simply take matters on faith, that's their choice, but they don't then get to dictate the meaning of terms, nor have they got any place in philosophical arguments. Its pointless just saying "I believe whatever the bible says" as a line of argument. What's anyone supposed to say to that?
They can give the determinist argument, "I believe you don't".
I don't think Free Will can be observed in every day experience.
What can be readily observed is the mind making a choice in the direction that it would like to move and then exert will to try to move in that direction. There is endless evidence of this in our life experiences and is common among all life.
I didn't say religion had nothing to say in philosophy. I said that those propositions of religious belief which are taken on faith cannot be used to argue against opposing propositions arrived at by logical inference. It makes no sense.
Imagine I came up with a huge elaborate proof in mathematics that in fact P=nP. What would be the point in someone publishing an opposition simply stating P does not equal nP... "because I believe it doesn't". How does that advance collective knowledge any?
If there are thing you simply believe to be the case on faith, that's fine, but it's pointless discussing them with other people who are trying to use logic to arrive at their beliefs.
Philosophy is really about trying to arrive at some justified beliefs based off the fewest axioms possible. Theology is about understanding and deriving implications from the axioms already given. The two are only compatible to the extent that the theologian claims to be able to derive religious beliefs from as few axioms as the philosopher.
The highfalutin' sense, which, as you point out, is tied in with ideas about the soul and theology, that does seem dubious (though it's not totally out for the count, it of course depends on prior views about the existence of God, etc., and I'm the kind of rationalist who believes that question is far from settled).
The common sense idea is often supposed to be incompatible with determinism, but it seems compatible to me. The common sense idea is simply that we do seem to ourselves to make decisions.
When science looks deeper, it finds that we are sophisticated "moist robots" with internal decision making machinery that parses its environment and decides what to do next. The machinery also has a model of itself, its body and the environment (and that would be what comprises our conscious experience, i.e. our conscious experience is the very existence of that internal modelling process, as a relatively discrete physical object, or rather ever-shifting set of physical processes, a "brainstorm" in Dennett's coinage).
So the thing that's made the free choice is you the moist robot, with your own internal machinery that parses your environment and decides what to do next. The fact that all that machinery is deterministic machinery doesn't make any difference to the fact that the choice belongs to and is expressed by the moist robot and not any other portion of the universe. (Note also that the choice is also free in an interpersonal or political sense, when it's not coerced, and that is intimately a part of the concept as well).
Things like the Libet experiments don't make any difference either - so what if the moist robot's inner model of its body, internal computer and environment "gets the message" shortly after the moist robot's machinery has already made the decision? It's still literally your decision.
The puzzle really arises because our consciousness, our conscious experience of self, is of being a commander of the crew of our body. The reality is that we are a virtual commander, i.e. the sense of being a separate something "inside" the body is illusory. (This is what people discover in meditation and mystical experience, the illusory nature of "I", "me", etc., if that's conceived of as being some mysterious thing inside the body peeping out from behind the eyes - although of course that discovery doesn't invalidate the interpersonal use of those terms, which simply serve to help distinguish one moist robot from another, while moist robots are in each other's company.)
So long as free will is tied to being this supposedly real, separate soul-thing that inhabits the body, then yes, the concept is dubious and stands or falls with the validity of the soul/God concepts.
But if the soul is a virtual thing, like an icon on a computer screen that represents a whole bunch of stuff that looks nothing like the picture on the icon, but yet it's functional - then the concept of free will just seemed to apply to the virtual entity, whereas it actually applies and functions perfectly well in referring to the totality of the moist robot, with its internal machinery, with its internal model, and its own virtualization of itself, its command routines, etc., within that internal model.
And in the larger, Laplacian sense of determinism, well we know enough to know that's not really true, natural processes are deterministic, but often unpredictable, and that's why the deterministic processes in the brain have to figure out what to do next, on imperfect information. If their computing power were infinite, then there would be no choice and no decision, strictly speaking, "what to do next" would just fall out ineluctably from the computation. But our brain's computing power is limited, hence it has to make a choice between options, none of which has been formulated on the basis of infinite knowledge about start and end states, with access to infinite computing power to calculate any "chaotic" equations down to absolute perfection.
An interesting new nomenclature for Mind. I guess it is suitable for those who like to role-play bots in their life. What happened to Dennett's "selfish-gene"? No longer sells well?
I adore it when scientists just make up stories to sell more books.
Fully appropriate. I look forward to more comic books from Dennett's.
No. I think it fully validates it as pure comic fantasy. Dennett's is just spinning tales from pure imagination. People who want to role-play bots (I use to role-play play Superman as a child) love it.
Dennett is spinning tales from pure imagination? What makes you think that?
Have you ever seen or experienced a Moist Robot in your body?
How can you see or experience a metaphor, or analogy?
"Moist robot" is just a humorous way of thinking about yourself in terms of biology, engineering and computation. A human body is like a complex machine, just made of squishy bits and bones instead of metal and plastic. The complex machine has a lump of special fat up top, encased in bone, that is able to register and model the environment (plus itself in the environment) in its substance, just like a highly advanced robot would in silicon (already we can see things coming together in this way with the Boston Dynamics robots). I don't see how it's problematic.
I get the feeling that you somehow think Dennett is trying to take away your toys (so to speak). I've seen people react this way to Dennett before, and I'd like to understand what's going on with this type of reaction. Could you unfold a bit more what you think he's doing wrong?
I agree, all Dennett's is doing is replacing Mind with the carefully chosen substitution character Moist Robot. I'm sure there were many marketing meetings with his publisher when this cute metaphor was chosen. Definitely appeals to those who love their bot Sci Fi stories. Kudos to the publisher and Dennett's Sci Fi prowness.
We have to keep track of Dennett's:
Selfish Genes
Moist Robot
My prediction of the next one is:
Superball Sunday
I disagree, what he's actually doing is trying to bridge the "Scientific Image" and the "Manifest Image." The cute/catchy analogies and metaphors are tools for thought, he's not some sinister, machiavellian figure who's trying to replace our ordinary mental concepts with snazzy new ones, or substituting fashionable, catchy new ones for the old ordinary ones by sleight of hand, he's using these metaphors, analogies and catchy ideas to help us think about how our ordinary mental concepts might be related to our scientific understanding of the world.
Because after all we do have this problem that science seems to be telling us one thing, and our ordinary mental concepts seem to be telling us another - so how do we reconcile the two? Dennett's general theme is that when you look clearly at what each Image seems to be telling us, maybe it's not actually telling us what it seems to be telling us; maybe the Scientific Image doesn't have the dire implications it seems to have, and maybe by some slight revisions of our ordinary mental concepts, we can see how they can be reconciled with the Scientific Image.
You will note, for example, that he's pretty staunch in defending the concept of free will as necessary for society, necessary for us to use, valuable, and saying that we shouldn't stop using it - unlike many other scientists and philosophers who are running around telling us that free will is an "illusion" and that we must stop thinking in terms of free will.
His middle-ground is that yes, it's an illusion in a certain precise sense, but it's a benign illusion like money, and it's still hugely important and necessary, and we still need to work with it and use it, just like we do with money. "Free will" doesn't refer to a single thing that has its own ontological existence distinct from physical things, but rather to a set of complex conditions at the scientific level, yet we still need to use the single term to get a handle on that complex set of conditions, or rather: the use of the single term is still the best way for human beings to get a handle on that complex set of conditions.
That is exactly what he is doing and it is the only thing he is doing. He gives new names to Mind, for all those who want to be role-play some other little things. I think they only question one might is: What are you? A Selfish Gene or a Moist Robot?
As for me, I still retain the same Mind as I had since I was a baby. I don't need to think of myself as some cute comic book symbol. I got over that decades ago.
Quoting gurugeorge
Ignore biological science.
Quoting gurugeorge
I love his ability to come up with compromises that increases his readership base. No doubt his publisher is pleased.
yeah but as a necessary illusion. Talk about ‘condescending’. The point is, if mind is real, Dennett’s entire life work is undone.
How would you know? What would make more sense is to say that you have the same theory of what your mind is that you had since you started thinking about what your mind is. In that case, Dennett isn't asking you to change it entirely, just to revise it and modify it in the light of science.
Quoting Rich
Why?
Quoting Wayfarer
He's not saying mind isn't real, he's saying it's not quite what we think it is (although it's partly what we think it is, it does have some of the features we think it has, just not all).
It is in this unconscious, non-conscious mind where decisions are made, and passed on for the conscious mind to announce. Experiments have shown that in lab tests, decisions are reached "before we have made up our minds." That is, before we are consciously aware of what we are going to do in the lab set up, the unconscious mind has decided.
This subtracts nothing from who I am, or who you are. Whatever goes on in my subconscious, unconscious, non-conscious mind is ME. I don't exist just in the conscious mind.
I am sure, just based on experience, that I am not free to choose all options before me. I have learned some options are unacceptable and I am afraid of some options. (Like, will you jump off this very high diving board for $1000? No, never. It's not an option I am capable of considering.) Torture me with electric shocks and red hot pins under my finger nails. Will I confess what I have vowed never to reveal? Sure. I'm not superman.
Is some of our behavior determined by physics, chemistry, biology? I suppose it is. Given the prevalence of the right set of chemicals in my brain, I will be unable to maintain positive, upbeat thoughts, even though that is what I prefer. Can I talk myself into and out of a depressive state? I don't think I can will myself to feel depressed, if I don't feel that way. Neither can I talk myself into feeling just fine if I feel very anxious and depressed.
So, from my POV, we are left with a constrained free will over which our conscious mind does not exercise much, if any, control. Will does the controlling of the conscious mind, not the other way around. We can feed our minds information, it will make a more or less free choice. How it does that will probably be invisible to us. The invisibility doesn't mean it is all determined. It just means we can't see it happen.
Andrew Ferguson, The Heretic.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I could probably write something here that could really annoy you. Maybe even, scare you. Then a pathologist could come along and take a sample, and say 'ah, Bitter Crank has been scared by something', if he or she was nimble enough. The traces might be picked up in the blood. But what scared you, was the meaning of what you have just read.
Because if someone shows me an optical illusion I don't try to maintain the belief that my eyes were right and come up with some increasingly convoluted story to explain it. I just accept the evidence that my eyes were in fact mistaken on that occasion. If anyone proved logic to be untrustworthy I would accept that and use the new method they suggest. Religion is not interested in the truth, its interested in making things fit the answer it already has.
Quoting René Descartes
Of course not, do you not understand how thought experiments work, or the meaning of the word 'imagine'?
You have to meditate on the absolute absurdity of quantum wave-particles asking questions of other quantum-wave particles. Do you have a theory for this absurdity? Does Dennett? I mean other than creating little characters that buzz around in the body acting like minds? There is no theory off how this all comes about. All there is is a fabricated bedtime story made up out of thin air.
Quoting gurugeorge
Exactly what scientific evidence is there that little Moist Robots are zooming around in the body.
Science measures some neurons kicking around and ah hah! There is the mind. It's the neuron! Now supposed a TV repairmen noticed some LEDs kicking around in my TV set and I said, Ah Hah! There is the mind! What would you say? And then he says that little people are stored in the electronics? Sound like a nice theory to you? I know that we never actually saw little people in the electronics, but they have to be there, right? And then he tells you to always come to him if something happened to notice the little people in the electronics, would you go?
Compare: "one would have to meditate on the absurdity of quantum wave particles killing/eating/avoiding/procreating with, other quantum-wave particles". Those terms describe emergent properties that quantum particles don't have, that doesn't prevent them from properly referring to large scale (in relation to the quantum scale) properties of objects (made of quantum particles, like animals) that I presume you'd have no problem talking about.
Quoting Rich
The idea is that the whole body/brain is a moist robot/control system, not sure where you're getting the idea of them being something inside the body. Perhaps you mean the idea that Dennett talks about elsewhere, of the body being made up of little robots?
I agree that any one-to-one correlation between neurons and consciousness would be absurd, but that's not the way most people think of the correlation between mind and its physical substratum. (There are several ways of thinking about it, and it's still up in the air, but the idea of framing some kind of correlation or identity isn't intrinsically absurd.)
It's pretty clear by now that at the level of behaviour, you can in principle have robots behaving like humans behave (for example Boston Dynamics is creating robots right now that look uncannily animal-like in their behaviour), and behaviour is part of the concept of the mental (e.g. I wish to move my hand and move my hand). Now I'll grant that there's a huge difficulty, a seemingly "Hard Problem," when it comes to the subjective features of consciousness, but if all the third-person features of consciousness can be accounted for by brain activity (e.g. we observe: animal sees other animal, reacts, robot sees door, opens it, etc.) then it's not inherently implausible to think that there may be a way of understanding the subjective features of consciousness using the same science.
That's the kind of extremist rhetoric that Dennett is trying to wean us off by pointing to examples that don't have a clear cut answer as to whether they exist or don't - e.g. centers of gravity, money. Both of these are illusory "in a strict sense" (for a given meaning of "strict"), but they are real enough to be indispensable, and real in the sense that they are quick and dirty ways of referring to complex, abstract patterns of co-ordination.
IOW, Dennett is arguing that free will is real enough to be indispensable in an analogous way to how centers of gravity and money are indispensable, and the worry that their "strict" illusoriness either ought to, or might induce people to, give up their everyday usage, is misplaced, as misplaced as the notion that people ought to, or suddenly would, stop using money when they realize it's just an abstract representation of exchanges of real value on a ledger.
This is actually a Wittgensteinian point too, also reiterated by Austin: "real" isn't necessarily a binary concept. It can be and is sometimes, but it's not essentially so always.
So what is asking questions of each other, molecules? And what are molecules comprised of? It's all just waves.
Quoting gurugeorge
So we are one big robot of molecular stuff that just started to talk to other robots of molecular stuff? Does this even sound like believe science fiction? Do you have a theory of how this all happens or is it just something being made up?
Quoting gurugeorge
No, it is just made up out of thin air. Pure fiction to sell a story that some people want to hear, just like Biblical stories or mythology. Materialist need a Genesis story but and Dennett made one up for them. The Tale of Moist can Robots. Why do you want to be a robot if there is zero evidence of it?
Yeah I know. And I think several others have said similar things independently. But they're wrong. To explain life in biological terms, instead of using the elan vital concept, is not to ignore life as a phenomenon, any more than to criticize Feminism is to criticize women. To ignore one theory about a thing, while explaining a thing, isn't to ignore the thing.
I think I understand why this response keeps cropping up though, there is a gap in Dennett's explanation, and it's related to the idea of the "Hard Problem" and thought experiments like P-Zombies, etc.
Eh, I give up, I just tried to explain that in the passage you quoted there, if you're not going to engage with the argument there's no point carrying on.
There is no theory or evidence. It all is supposed to just happen. Like magic or a religious Miracle. People want to believe it for some reason or another. I use to play-role characters as a child because it was fun.
Yes, just a small gap like how the heck the whole thing happened and is still happening?
No that's not the gap, the gap is the problem of subjective consciousness. But that's not the same thing as mind in the sense of the controller of an organism's actions. That looks like it's almost certainly all explainable in terms of neurons and hormones (whatever the final explanation is). Anything that's to do with physical doings of the body - which is to say, speaking, acting, etc., is explainable as the brain tugging on various strings, it's a mechanical process, and to the extent that the mind (whatever it is) finds expression in the material world, that's all explainable in the same way.
The Hard Problem is the existence of what seems like a subjective view on the world and how that's connected to the mind as body-controller.
I do think there's a resolution to it, but while I think Dennett does actually deal with it in his own way, he's never been able to explain it in a way that gets it across to people. The gap is just "More work needed here" - rather than "and a miracle happens here."
Calvin thought this was rubbish.
If you are a Calvinist Protestant there is no problem. But you have to accept that God knew before he created you that you would die a saint or a sinner. An almighty God could know no less.
So where in the Bible does god insist on free will?
Thus the problem is Life. Yep, exactly what he is replacing with his little stick man.
Quoting gurugeorge
Then what is making the decisions? The bot? How did that happen?
Quoting gurugeorge
Ok. So now it is no longer the Moist Bot, it is the Brain? Which is it and how did it all happen. What is the theory behind this miraculous event? You start off with a BIG BANG. Then what? Did it just happen? Was there a miracle that just keeps happening. How is it that this Moist Bit was revealed to Dennett and not to me? Where is the theory of how it all a happened? Or am I just suppose the believe Prophet Dennet because the Laws of Nature spoke to him and not to me?
How does a computer or a robot "decide" which move to make next in a game of chess? It's clear that computers can be programmed to make decisions in a very real sense (i.e. they have to scan their environment, and come up with some options in relation to their goals).
Now of course we program the computer or the robot with its goals, and we are not ourselves programmed by anything external to us in that way. But the general idea is that similarly sophisticated - in fact much more sophisticated - decision-making machinery has gradually evolved over very long periods of time (via differential selection and reproduction) in living creatures, only it's not made of silicon but of neurons, fat, hormones, etc. Hence, "moist robot."
It's not necessary, for this explanation to be valid, to have to explain the origin of life, or the universe. Also, there's no contradiction between the theory of evolution, or a mechanistic explanation of brain functions, and religion, if that's what you're worried about: the classical arguments for God's existence (Aristotelian/Thomist) are arguments for God as the sustainer of existence here and now, so therefore He would be the sustainer in the here and now of the existence of the mechanistic systems in brains, etc. too. Using evolutionary systems and mechanical principles would be just the way God rolls, so to speak. Whether the universe had an origin in time or didn't, also makes no difference to the arguments that demonstrate the necessary existence of God, or of any Absolute or creative principle (e.g. Logos).
As I said, the key difficulty is simply about the subjective aspect of consciousness - the objective view is unproblematic, either for science or for religion.
So we are c programmed electronics. Do you observe electronics in humans?Quoting gurugeorge
Yes, they can be programmed. They don't make decisions. The humans make all the decisions and then symbolically program the computers. Who or what is programming humans? Gos is an obvious candidate. Where it's that programmed stored? Have you observed it? Has anyone observed this program? If so where?
Quoting gurugeorge
So it just happened over a long period of time? Any theory other than this?
Quoting gurugeorge
Exactly, the only problem it's how life as we experienced it developed. How we make robots is not a problem. The reason that it is not a problem for religion is that God takes care of all of the questions and He took only 8 days. Science on the other hand relies on "it just happened (the technical word is evolved) over a long period of time". So, the only difference is that science says that the Miracle took a little longer? And based upon this mundane tale, I'm supposed to believe I'm a Moist Robot? A comic book character? Couldn't I be Superman?
I'm beginning to think you're either dishonest or you're not reading very carefully and just being triggered by odd words here and there. I said in the very post you are quoting:-"we are not ourselves programmed by anything external to us in that way" and then I go on to explain how we come to behave in a way that's similar to thing that are programmed.
Quoting Rich
Do you not understand the theory of evolution? Roughly speaking:
1) DNA is like a blueprint for the self-assembly of a body/brain structures out of nutrients, an organism. That includes whatever "control center" organisms may have for parsing the environment and making decisions as to what to do next. Various parts of the DNA code for different "building blocks" of the organism, various components, etc.
2) Any given body/brain structure will "fit" its environment (be able to cope with its environment in various ways) better or worse than some other (e.g. one structure might have slightly faster reflexes, at a certain extra energy cost; faster reflexes will help it avoid predators, at a certain extra energy cost; it's up to the environment whether the faster reflexes are worth the extra cost - both the feature and its cost are relevant and both will bump up against the environment).
3) Body/brain structures that survive long enough to reproduce and pass on to their offspring their DNA, will ipso facto pass on the building blocks and components, the "neat tricks," that helped them (the parents) fit their environment; those that don't, won't.
4) All the various components were the result of random mutations in origin, but so long as they help the organisms survive and reproduce, they keep getting passed down to the next generation, while at the same time if they don't help the organism survive and reproduce, they aren't passed on; eventually, over a long period of time, you have an accumulation of "good tricks" that work well together; well-knit bodies, fast reactions, decision-making control centers (brains) that make good decisions, etc.
5) IOW, the "best bits" stick together and make survival and reproduction more likely, the more likely reproduction is, the more likely a given particular "build" for a given bit of organism will be passed down through the generations and be inherited by future generations.
Essentially, there's a random element that throws things against the wall, those elements that stick and work well together get passed down the generations and accumulate, resulting eventually in highly tuned organisms that fit their environment very well.
Quoting Rich
No, life is not a problem, we understand roughly how life developed, or at the very least we have placeholder explanations, and proofs of concept. The archaeological record is not perfect (for obvious reasons) but it's good enough to prove the theory, we can watch evolution happen in real time with creatures that have fast reproduction cycles (like fruit flies, etc.), and the biology and chemistry are understood well enough so that we can actually tinker with DNA at a micro level. The initial step from inorganic chemistry to organic is still somewhat mysterious, but that's just because we don't have access to the same timescales as nature did. I suspect that part of the puzzle will only be solved definitively if and when we come across a planet somewhere out there where we can catch that intermediary step in the act. But every other step on either side of that gap, we know very well.
The problem is and remains the subjective aspect of consciousness, not life as such.
Re. the question of the Bible, etc., there is no contradiction between science and religion unless one takes the Bible (or any other holy text) absolutely literally. I don't see any reason to. I'm not hostile to religion or to Christianity, but while I can understand the Bible as a revealed text filtered through human error, I can't take it seriously as a document every word of which is true, it just doesn't make sense to me that way.
(I'm aware that I've said we should stop several times now, but each time you've said something that makes me think maybe we can continue, but if you do take the Bible absolutely literally then I think we really will have to knock it on the head.)
Sure I do. You think that writing paragraphs upon paragraphs about stuff hides the fact that there is still no theory of how Mind/Consciousness arises? You think replacing Mind with a Little Stick Man and calling it a Moist Robot solves the problem?
Don't give me terms. Tell me the theory of how a Mind that eats Big Macs and enjoys it arises. And I don't care if it took 7 days or 7 billion years.
Life is consciousness. That which does not have life is called a Robot. All Dennett does is stick Moist in front of Robot and he magically creates Consciousness/Mind. That you cannot understand this, is not my problem. Dennett depends upon a gullible readership to buy into the Miracle without asking HOW? When was the magical moment when that Bot became alive and why do we have an infinite magical moments after that. And why do bots like talking to each other about football?
No, you don't, and the way you're talking here demonstrates that you obviously don't, otherwise you would understand that the questions you're still asking are already answered by the theory. That's not to say you can't disagree with the theory, but you'd have to actually engage with it, instead of continuing to repeat questions that the theory has already proposed answers to.
If you want to be a Moist Robot, be one.