The Devout Determinist: Notes of a Conflicted Agnostic

By David D Norenberg MD

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
and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist. - Blaise Pascal

Sometimes when facing an important question, the only honest answer is-I don't know, and I've found no way to know. This would make you, for that particular question, an agnostic. Then you have to reframe the question if you need some kind of answer.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
- Marcus Aurelius

There is unexpected comfort to be found in knowing there are things we cannot know. If traditional concepts in theology and ethics don't fit with other things we feel quite sure about, then what's needed is a different concept, with a different perspective.

The conviction that a law of necessity governs human activities introduces into our conception of man and life a mildness, a reverence and an excellence, such as would be unattainable without this conviction. - Leo Tolstoy

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GRNZ63VM
• ISBN13: 9798244775228
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"