Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Devout Determinist: Notes of a Conflicted Agnostic

The Devout Determinist: Notes of a Conflicted Agnostic

Norenberg, David D.

Paperback

Atheism & AgnosticismHistory & Philosophy of ScienceSelf-Help

ISBN13: 9798244775228
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Mar 5 2026
Pages: 318
Weight: 0.94
Height: 0.67 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Must every event have a cause? It's a straightforward yes or no question that leads directly into a deductive minefield.

If you answer yes, you are a determinist. Determinism is the doctrine that every occurrence in nature is the inevitable result of antecedent events, and it applies to everything, including active brain cells. Then could you ever have done anything other than what you did? If you could go back to a do-over moment, with everything, including every atom in your brain, exactly as it was before, could you have acted differently? Do you have free will?

In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. - Albert Einstein

In quantum theory some events involving atoms are said to happen randomly, spontaneously, without a cause. Brains are made entirely of atoms. Could quantum physics save free will?

Without free will, what becomes of personal responsibility, right and wrong, good and evil? What about Heaven as a place where goodness is rewarded? Concerns about morality and immortality tie into three preeminent questions: Is there a God? Could there be an afterlife? Do our lives have any purpose? Herein is a search for answers, with a treasure trove of apropos quotations from past and present scientists, philosophers, and writers.

Along the way, on a readily digested whirlwind tour of modern physics and neuroscience, three great mysteries are encountered-happenings that are real and true and easily described, but cannot be explained. The strangest is a fact that shatters a fundamental principle in how we think the Universe must work-that simply can't be true, except it is.

There is a level of reality underlying or transcending or beyond the Nature we can see and understand. If some things are real and true but incomprehensible according to our sciences, could there be other unfathomable things that nevertheless are real and true?

It is incomprehensible that God should exist

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