Question

Hello, honored Rabbi. I have a question: For scientists, the first rule is of course not to posit axioms about the universe. In the 19th century they thought it was completely deterministic — “God does not play dice.” Since then there has been a revolution, and we see science becoming more and more refined, and things that were unacceptable in the past are now turning out to be absolutely true.

My question is: do you think it is possible, from a materialist standpoint, that a person really does have free choice (real choice, not in the compatibilist sense), and that there are objective moral values, at least very basic ones, like that murdering an innocent person is never “good” — or are these concepts valid only for those who believe in the Holy One, blessed be He? I sometimes talk with atheists. Usually most of them tell me that there is no real free choice, and morality is something that changes from society to society, so if I grew up in a society where murder is considered good then I would probably think that too… that in the end it is all just evolutionary justification and so on. But today I spoke with an atheist (an agnostic) who told me that in his view it is indeed possible for a person to have free choice even without a transcendent factor, and that there are things that are *objectively* bad or good.

Honestly, my first reaction was that he is not really an atheist. At least that is how it seems to me: that one cannot really speak about free choice in the pure sense of the term — the kind for which a person can truly be judged and one can say whether it is “good” or “bad” — in a world that runs without some intelligence directing it; and certainly in that case there is no such thing as “morality”! But then I am immediately guilty of positing axioms about the universe, and of being very rigidly fixed in this outlook.
What do you think? Thank you very much, and have a good week.