New Year’s Resolutions and Free Will

It’s that time of year again: holiday lights are coming down, gifts are being returned, and New Year’s resolutions are being made. If you’re like me and the people I follow, you’ve resolved to read more books in 2025. What books will you choose? I’m always up for a good paradox, so I’ve decided to choose some books that question whether I’m actually able to choose anything.

Free will has always been an interesting topic to me, but it presses itself more forcefully this time of year when I try to make some decisions more intentionally. I think lots of our decisions are habitual and made largely on autopilot: what will I wear today, what am I watching on TV, what’s for dinner? There are lots of external influences on those kinds of choices. But there are other times that I turn the autopilot off and much more intentionally and reflectively make some decisions. New Year’s resolutions are good examples of that. We think about the kind of people we want to become—what kind of habits we want to develop—and commit ourselves to a course of action that will bring that about.

At least we have the sense that we have the ability to make such choices. And as a community of people who have that sense, we hold each other responsible for how we exercise our free will. But do we have that ability, and should we hold each other responsible?

Robert Sapolsky is a biologist and neurosurgeon at Stanford. He claims in Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will that free will is almost certainly an illusion and therefore we shouldn’t hold people morally responsible for anything. He admits this conclusion seems “nutty” to us, but he is led there by two main points he thinks are obviously correct:

1. The laws of physics don’t allow free will for material things: we know enough about how matter and energy behave to say that free will isn’t something you can find inside purely material systems. It’s not like your protons, neutrons, and electrons can decide on their own to wiggle away from physical laws, and that’s all material things are made of.
2. We humans are material things: humans are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and so we are subject to the same rules as the rest of the material world.

If both those points are correct, the conclusion is that your sense of “I could have done otherwise” is an illusion. And if you couldn’t have done anything else, then you can’t really be held responsible—neither praised nor blamed—for what you do. Maybe there is some randomness tossed in there that could have led to different conclusions, but that’s no better for grounding moral responsibility for our actions. You just do what you do. Your actions might be more complex than what a rock or tornado does, but they are no less determined. Everything follows the laws of physics.

Some people will respond that Sapolsky is right about his first point, but then also insist that we humans have immaterial minds or souls. Those aren’t governed by the laws of physics and so must be where our free will comes from. For us Christians, that isn’t ridiculous. We believe God is an immaterial being and has a freedom that isn’t bound by the laws of physics. Perhaps we share in that immaterial freedom because we have souls that aren’t made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons?

I think there is a legitimate debate about this among Christians, and I’ve been on different sides of it at different points in my career. Lately, I’m more persuaded that it is a better explanation of both Scripture and experience to say “I am a soul” rather than “I have a soul.”

Lately, I’m more persuaded that it is a better explanation of both Scripture and experience to say “I am a soul” rather than “I have a soul.”

I think I am a soul that is currently a flesh and blood organism that is completely composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Maybe that will change in the future when our flesh will be transformed into resurrection bodies—what Paul calls “spiritual bodies” in 1 Corinthians 15. But for now, I am a soul with just the normal human flesh and blood.

Does that mean Sapolsky is right? Do all the protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up my human flesh and blood follow the laws of physics unswervingly? Kind of… but not entirely. Those fundamental pieces of matter follow the laws of physics, but when you get them in the right arrangement, something else happens: a living organism emerges. And if Kevin Mitchell is correct, life can’t be reduced to the physics of material particles.

Kevin J. Mitchell is a genetics and neuroscience professor at Trinity College Dublin, and he has written a book called Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. He tries to show how free will could have arisen naturally as life developed more complex forms. Mitchell doesn’t argue from a religious perspective. In fact, he takes a purely materialistic stance, suggesting there’s no grand cosmic purpose behind the world. For him, evolution explains how we got here without needing a plan or direction from a higher power.

But Mitchell also believes that being alive changes the rules. Inanimate matter, like rocks or tornadoes, don’t “do” anything for a purpose—they just follow the laws of physics. But living things, Mitchell says, have goals and reasons for their actions. A plant “wants” water and seeks it out. A bacterium “decides” which way to move based on chemical signals. These might seem like small or even automatic behaviors, but Mitchell sees them as the early building blocks of something bigger.

Mitchell’s main claim is that life is more than just matter—or at least, it behaves differently. He’s not saying there’s some magical force behind life or other fundamental constituents like spirit or ectoplasm that animates the otherwise lifeless protons, neutrons, and electrons. Instead, once a cell has the ability to maintain its own processes, it acts in ways that are more active and intentional. A living organism can take in energy, protect itself, and respond flexibly to changing environments. That’s not how a nonliving system (like a tornado or a rock) behaves. These capacities grow and become more pronounced in more complex life forms. A single-celled organism might not have free will or conscious awareness, but it can still make decisions based on information from its environment. Mitchell calls this kind of purposeful behavior “agency.”

These capacities grow and become more pronounced in more complex life forms. A single-celled organism might not have free will or conscious awareness, but it can still make decisions based on information from its environment. Mitchell calls this kind of purposeful behavior “agency.”

As organisms evolve more sensors and more complex ways of processing what they sense, their internal “control systems” become more sophisticated. The key is that they can form internal representations of the world—mini “maps” of what’s going on outside of themselves—without immediately reacting. Over millions of years, these control systems can stretch decision-making over longer and longer times, eventually leading to something like choice.