ABSTRACT
Prominent scientists have not shied from making pronouncements about human free will. And often, the pronouncements tend to be negative: assertions to the effect that findings in the field of biology, cognitive neuroscience and/or social psychology show that human free will does not exist. Evidently, if all explanations human subjects give of their actions are post hoc explanations—better: post hoc rationalisations—then human freedom is in trouble. It is worth noting that the claim that science has shown the brain (or the human organism more broadly) to be a deterministic system is controversial. It is questioned, in the first instance, whether any amount of empirical observation could establish the thesis of determinism. Messer maintains that it would not. Messer suggests that Christian theists have little to fear from the idea that all human behaviour is embedded in a complete, deterministic causal nexus.
