OUR FREE WILL STILL DEBATED

At last, after 118 years, Scotland Yard has identified Jack the Ripper, the
Victorian serial killer, as a man who died unconvicted but insane in an
asylum. Britain's judicial system is now preoccupied with a serial criminal
still alive, whose more than 400 driving violations include running into
people.

The man is not only a drug user but addicted as well to driving. His
defense attorney claims it's a sickness not unlike compulsive shopping at
the mall. Because the man's offenses are linked to addiction, he is
regarded by the law as sick rather than responsible for his actions. Unless
he can be cured of his compulsion, he is not to blame, and there is no cure
in sight.

According to author Theodore Dalrymple, the British government believes
that drug addiction turns people to crime. Dalrymple argues that the system
has it backwards: "Insofar as there is a causative connection between
addition and criminality, it is that criminality - not whatever predisposes
people to it - causes addiction and not addiction that causes criminality."

He insists that addicts are not helpless, citing the huge numbers of
American servicemen who addicted themselves to heroin during the Vietnam
War only to give it up spontaneously on their return to the U.S. He notes
that "two years later their rate of addiction was no higher than that among
drafted conscripts who never made it to Vietnam because the war ended."

In short, he concludes, that addiction is freely chosen and actually
enhances criminal irresponsibility, adding that "the existence of drug
clinics sends a message to addicts that they are ill and in need of
treatment rather than they have chosen a disastrous path in life. It
conceals from people their responsibility for their own lives....."

Neuroscientists increasingly attribute human behavior to brain activity
over which people have no effective control, further diminishing
responsibility. The age-old belief in free will is now battered by science
as well as by secular philosophy. Nobel laureate Francis Crick, the
co-discoverer of DNA, argued that people's emotional, moral, work, and
family lives depend exclusively on the state of their brain molecules. Roy
Fuller, one of the inventors of Prozac, insisted that "Behind every crooked
thought there lies a crooked molecule."

The courts sometimes appear to agree. Dan White, who shot dead the mayor
and city supervisor of San Francisco in 1979, was convicted of manslaughter
rather than murder because the jury believed he consumed too many sweet
cupcakes, the sugar in his brain turning him into a killer. Generations of
boys in seminaries and boarding schools have suspected that authorities add
saltpeter to their meals to curb their sexual aggression.

Religion rests on responsibility. Civilized life depends on free choice.
Two centuries ago the philosopher David Hume argued that it is possible to
be simultaneously free determined - that, short of insanity, we may be
predisposed to act in a certain way, but to avoid situations in which we
are tempted. To be free, it seems, we must believe in our freedom.

David Yount is author of the book "Celebrating the Rest of Your Life: A
Baby Boomer's Guide to Spriituality" (Augstburg).