What’s Wrong with This Picture?

At the heart of our prevailing scientific worldview resides an apparently unresolved theoretical paradox. That paradox makes it practically impossible to develop coherent social programs, while threatening to rob our life of its moral significance. We believe that we are free and are generally responsible for the choices we make and the life we live. Yet, modern science apparently tells us that causal determinism rules the natural world, leaving no place for human free choice. Meanwhile, the world’s religions do not seem to provide a more scientifically coherent and theoretically constructive alternative perspective with which to guide human living. The challenge of this work will be to show why the doctrine of naturalistic emergence can address the fundamental inadequacies in prevailing scientific and religious worldviews, while also providing a means for coherently addressing the problem of freedom, and its relation to determinism.