The Most Dangerous Idea: “You Do Not Have Free Will”

Philosophy and Humanity’s Most Dangerous Idea

I recently submitted a paper on inter-religious dialogue. The paper was accepted for publication but one comment made by one of the reviewers was disturbing. It was in response to this sentence in my paper:

Fruitful dialogue and relations between religions is possible only with a willingness to question one’s own assumptions and an openness to the ideas and experiences of other people.

to which the reviewer remarked:
”One cannot choose to be open or tolerant, it’s a result of neurochemistry that human beings cannot influence.”

The reviewer demanded I remove my sentence. I refused. The editor backed me up.

Let the reviewer’s comment sink in. This person, allegedly a professional on-faculty philosopher, not only believes human beings cannot choose to not be intolerant to others, he wants to censor a mention that we can be.

This person believes that we lack free will, that we cannot even question our assumptions and beliefs. Everything about us, this person claims, is determined and we cannot influence it. This view that we lack free will, that we are helplessly the result of chemistry or external events, is not unique to this person. It is a belief that some…