Does Neuroscience Indeed Prove Free Will Is An Illusion?

Published On: November 6, 2025

“Free will is an illusion,” declares neuroscientist Sam Harris. Scanning equipment seem to reveal our brains make decisions before we’re consciously aware of them. The conclusion seems inescapable: We’re not really choosing anything—our neurons are.

For Christians who believe we bear God’s image as moral agents, the claim strikes at the heart of everything. If neuroscience has proven we’re merely biological machines executing predetermined programmes, what happens to moral responsibility? To human dignity? To the Bible’s insistence that we choose whom we will serve?

But here’s the plot twist: Neuroscience hasn’t disproven free will at all. It’s made a fundamental category mistake about what free will actually is. And the latest research actually supports the Christian understanding of human agency.

THE EXPERIMENT THAT STARTED IT ALL

In the 1980s, Benjamin Libet wired participants to EEG machines and asked them to flex their wrists whenever they felt like it. The startling discovery? Brain activity (called “readiness potential”) spiked about 350 milliseconds before people reported consciously deciding to move.

The interpretation spread like wildfire: Our brain decides, then tricks us into thinking we decided. Consciousness is just along for the ride. Free will is theatre.

But this conclusion rests on a critical misunderstanding.

THE CATEGORY ERROR: TWO KINDS OF FREE WILL

When neuroscientists say they’ve disproven “free will,” they’re actually attacking something called libertarian free will—the idea that our choices must be completely uncaused, spontaneous, emerging from nowhere. It’s the notion that in any given moment, we could have chosen otherwise with absolutely nothing determining our choice.

Here’s what’s remarkable: Reformed Christian theology has never believed in that kind of free will.

Instead, historic Christianity holds to compatibilist free will—the view that we freely choose according to our desires, character, and reasoning. As theologian Jonathan Edwards would have explained it, the will always follows what we perceive as the greatest apparent good in that moment. In other words, we choose what we want most, and those choices genuinely express who we are.

This isn’t determinism robbing us of freedom. It’s authentic agency. When we choose chocolate ice cream because we love chocolate, we’re not less free because our choice flowed from our preferences—we’re more ourselves.

The Libet experiments don’t threaten this understanding at all. They simply show conscious deliberation has a neural substrate. Of course it does. We’re embodied souls, not ghosts operating meat puppets.

WHAT LIBET ACTUALLY PROVED (AND DIDN’T)

More careful analysis reveals Libet’s findings don’t prove what the headlines claimed. Those readiness potentials don’t predict what we’ll choose—only that general motor preparation is happening. We could still veto the action (participants in the studies could stop themselves). Recent replications have shown the original conclusions were overstated.

More importantly, modern neuroscience offers a completely different interpretation. Global Workspace Theory, developed by researchers such as Stanislas Dehaene and Bernard Baars, suggests consciousness doesn’t originate every micro-decision—it acts as an executive gatekeeper. Think of it like a newsroom: The conscious mind doesn’t write every story (that’s what subconscious processes do), but it’s the editor deciding what makes the broadcast.

You’re not a passive observer. You’re actively selecting which unconscious processes get amplified and acted upon. That’s exactly the kind of top-down control Christian theology requires.

THE PREDICTIVE PROCESSING REVOLUTION

But the real game-changer comes from cutting-edge neuroscience itself. Karl Friston’s predictive processing model—now the dominant framework for understanding brain function—reveals something fascinating: Our brains constantly generate competing predictions about what to do next, weighing them against our goals and values.

Free will, in this model, is selecting which prediction to enact. We’re not controlled by unconscious forces—we’re rational agents weighing probabilistic futures and choosing based on what matters to us the most.

This is compatibilist agency embedded in neural architecture. It’s precisely what Scripture describes: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). Our choices flow from our character, but we genuinely choose. Now 21st-century neuroscience vindicates it.

WHY THIS REQUIRES A SELF

Notice something crucial: These models only work if there’s a unified self doing the selecting, weighing, and choosing. Global Workspace Theory needs an executive controller. Predictive processing needs an agent to evaluate predictions against values and goals.

Materialist neuroscience keeps smuggling in what it claims doesn’t exist: a rational, unified person making decisions.

This is exactly what the doctrine of imago Dei provides. Genesis 1:27 tells us we uniquely bear God’s image as rational agents who deliberate and choose. We’re not just stimulus-response machines like animals driven by instinct. We have what philosophers call “second-order desires”—we reflect on our desires, judge them, and choose which to act on.

Neuroplasticity research confirms this top-down reality. Our thoughts and intentions literally reshape our brain structures. Mental states cause physical changes. Studies on cognitive behavioural therapy demonstrate that changing how we think changes our neural pathways. The causal arrow runs both directions.

Even the “hard problem of consciousness”—why subjective experience exists at all—remains completely unexplained by neuroscience. You can map every neural correlate of decision-making, but you’ll never explain the “what it’s like” of deliberating, the felt sense of weighing options. That irreducible first-person perspective points beyond mere materialism.

LIVING LIKE IT’S TRUE

Here’s the practical test: Even the most committed neuroscience determinists live as if choices matter. They deliberate about career decisions. They hold their children accountable. They get frustrated when people break promises. Why? Because we can’t escape the reality of agency, no matter what our theories claim.

We’re responsible agents whose choices flow from either renewed or unregenerate hearts. As Jesus said, it’s out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34). Our actions express who we truly are—and that’s precisely what makes them free and morally significant.

THE VERDICT

Neuroscience hasn’t disproven free will. It has revealed the neural mechanisms underlying our choices, and those mechanisms look remarkably like what Christian theology has described for millennia: rational agents deliberating according to character, values, and reasons.

The question was never whether we have some magical libertarian power to choose randomly. The question is whether we’re genuine agents who weigh options, reflect on values, and act for reasons—or whether we’re just unconscious biological machines fooled by an illusion of control.

Both Scripture and cutting-edge neuroscience answer with a resounding yes: Indeed we are real agents, created in God’s image, genuinely choosing, and morally responsible for those choices. Our brains don’t control us. We, rational souls bearing God’s image, deliberate and choose through the instrument of our brains. That’s no illusion. That’s the reality neuroscience is only beginning to map.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ON NEUROSCIENCE AND FREE WILL

What do Christian neuroscientists say about free will? Christian neuroscientists like Warren Brown (Fuller Seminary) and Malcolm Jeeves argue for “non-reductive physicalism”—the view that mental properties emerge from but aren’t reducible to brain states. They emphasise that finding neural correlates of decisions doesn’t eliminate agency any more than finding the biological basis of love eliminates love itself. Neuroscientist Sharon Dirckx points out that even materialist researchers like Michael Gazzaniga (who wrote Who’s in Charge?) conclude that brains enable rather than eliminate responsibility. The scientific evidence is, therefore, fully compatible with us being embodied souls bearing God’s image.

If God is sovereign over everything, how can we have free will? This is the classic Calvinism question, and Reformed theology has a nuanced answer: God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are both true simultaneously (what theologians call “compatibilism”). Acts 2:23 demonstrates this perfectly—Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” yet those who crucified him were still “lawless men” held accountable for their choices. Philosopher Paul Helm explains it this way: God ordains both the ends and the means, including our genuine deliberations and choices. We’re not puppets—we’re characters in a story whose author has written us as real agents making meaningful decisions.
What about brain damage or mental illness—doesn’t that prove the brain controls us? Actually, this cuts both ways. Yes, brain damage can impair decision-making (like Phineas Gage’s famous frontal lobe injury), which shows mind and brain are intimately connected. But neuroplasticity research reveals the reverse is equally true: changing our thinking patterns can heal brain dysfunction, as demonstrated in CBT treatment for depression and OCD. Neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz’s work with OCD patients shows that willful mental effort literally rewires malfunctioning brain circuits. The relationship is bidirectional, not one-way determinism. This fits the Christian view that we’re embodied souls—neither pure spirits nor mere machines, but unified persons where mental and physical causation interact.

Don’t split-brain experiments prove consciousness is an illusion? Split-brain research (where the connection between brain hemispheres is severed) does show fascinating dissociations—the left hemisphere might claim it chose something the right hemisphere actually initiated. But philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues this proves too much for materialists: if consciousness is just neurons firing, why would evolution produce the illusion of unified agency? The illusion itself requires explanation and serves no survival function in a purely materialist framework. Christian philosopher JP Moreland points out split-brain phenomena suggest consciousness involves more than just brain function—we’re observing disruption of how the soul interfaces with a damaged brain, not proof there’s no soul at all.

What about addiction—if people can’t control their behaviour, how are they responsible? Addiction demonstrates that our wills aren’t absolutely free (we’re influenced by brain chemistry, habits, trauma), but it doesn’t eliminate agency entirely. Even addicts make choices within constraints—whether to enter treatment, call a sponsor, or avoid triggers. Philosopher Kevin Timpe distinguishes between “regulative control” (initiating actions) and “guidance control” (acting according to your reasons, even if those reasons are disordered). The recovering addict who struggles but chooses to resist is exercising real agency. Scripture recognises this: we’re enslaved to sin yet still commanded to repent—because even in bondage, we retain sufficient agency to respond to grace.
Do any secular neuroscientists defend free will? Absolutely. Neuroscientist Peter Tse (Dartmouth) argues in The Neural Basis of Free Will the brain’s criterial causation—where neurons change the criteria by which they’ll fire in the future—provides a mechanism for genuine agency. Philosopher Alfred Mele has spent decades demonstrating that Libet-style experiments don’t prove what determinists claim. Even Michael Gazzaniga, while materialist in outlook, concludes the concept of responsibility is built into the brain’s interpretive systems and can’t be eliminated. Kevin Mitchell’s recent book Free Agents (2023) argues from evolutionary biology that agency is real and emerges naturally in complex organisms. These aren’t Christians sneaking theology into science—they’re researchers following the evidence toward some form of genuine agency.

How does this relate to AI and machine consciousness? This is where the free will debate gets really interesting. Current AI systems (even advanced ones like GPT-4) don’t have genuine agency—they’re sophisticated pattern-matching systems without desires, values, or self-awareness. Computer scientist Judea Pearl argues AI lacks “counterfactual reasoning”—the ability to imagine “what if I had chosen differently?” which is essential to moral agency. Christian apologist John Lennox points out that even if we could create silicon-based consciousness, we’d still face the “hard problem”—why is there subjective experience at all? The human capacity for moral reasoning, creative choice, and rational reflection points to something beyond mere computation. This is why the imago Dei matters: we’re not just processing information; we’re persons made in the image of a personal God who creates, chooses, and loves.

OUR RELATED POSTS