Season 5 Podcast 74 A New Voice of Freedom, Argument for the Existence of God, “Why Altruism?”

Season 5 Podcast 74 A New Voice of Freedom, Argument for the Existence of God, “Why Altruism?”

In their vain attempt to prove we have no freewill, science claims that we are altruistic only because we have an altruistic gene. In other words, all behavior is driven by genes and is not the product of freewill. Merriam-Webster defines altruism as an “unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.” But the genetic code doesn’t explain the good feelings we have when we show charity. Charity is often narrowly defined as money or goods given to the poor, but charity is much more than an act. Charity is an emotion, a feeling, a prompting of the Holy Spirit. Pure charity is pure love. That is beyond the genetic code. It is what makes us human, what separates us from other living things. 

We have two bodies not one. We have a mortal physical body governed by the brain made possible by the genetic code.  In fact, the physical body is a biological machine precisely created and engineered by God to give the spirit maximum freewill. The physical body does not have freewill because it does not have life in itself. The spirit body, however, does have freewill. The genetic code governs the physical body. It does not govern the spirit body. The spirit body has life in itself. It does not grow old, and it cannot die. It is the spirit body that gives the physical body life. When the spirit body leaves, the physical body dies. Or, in other words, when the physical body dies, the spirit body leaves and returns to God who created it. The remains of the physical body return to what David called ‘the dust of death’ and Shakespeare shortened to “dusty death.’  

The body is a biological machine and without a complete genetic code, the body could not respond to the commands of the brain. The purpose of the body is to give flesh to the feelings of the soul. Without a physical body, we could not experience mortality.  The body gives physical experience to spiritual abstractions.  The body feels what the spirit only imagines.  The brain is the most sophisticated organ of the body, and it still holds many mysteries, but intelligence, consciousness, and self-identity reside in the spirit. Without a physical body, we may as well have remained in the spirit world.   Without a spirit body, the physical body cannot have life. 

Since the physical body is a biological machine, there must be a gene for every behavior, or the body could not respond to the emotions of the spirit.  The brain may govern the body, but the spirit within us rules the brain. We are not zombies The genetic code is a complete information system, but the body does not act independently of the brain and the brain does not act independently of the spirit.

The physical body is strictly governed by physical (also called temporal, natural, or scientific laws). How then can we have freewill if we are governed by such strict laws? First of all, science is also correct in saying that everything is governed by a strict set of laws. That applies to both the temporal world and the spiritual world. Without law there would be no creation, only chaos. The great paradox and the great miracle of creation is the compatibility of freewill and law and the compatibility of temporal law and spiritual law, or the compatibility of the spirit and the body.

Though freewill lies in the spirit, it should come as no surprise to Christians that without temporal law and spiritual law, freewill could not exist in the mortal world.