The famous trail lawyer Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) made a name for himself by using the “determinism defense” to get his clients acquitted of serious crimes. The crux of this approach is the idea that humans are not really responsible for anything they do because they cannot choose freely—they are “determined,” predestined, if you will, by the nature (or God) to be the way they are. So in a sense, Darrow says, humans are like wind-up toys with no control over any actions or decision. They have no free will. Remember that Darrow was a renowned agnostic who was skeptical of all religious claims. But Darrow was wrong about human free will for two reasons. First, in our moral life, our own commonsense experience suggests that sometimes people are free to make moral decisions. We should not abandon what our commonsense tells us without good reason—and, Darrow has given us no good reason. Second, Darrow’s determinism is not confirmed by science, as he claims—but actually conflicts with science. Modern science says that there are many things (at the subatomic level of matter) that are not determined at all. They just happen.