Free Will (libertarian sense):
The power to do otherwise in exactly the same situation — if the moment were
repeated exactly, you could have chosen differently. This view denies that
choices are fully determined by past events or causes.
Determinism:
The view that all events, including human choices, are the result of prior
causes and conditions — meaning you could not have done otherwise in the exact
same situation.
Illusion of Free Will:
The feeling or impression that we are free to choose otherwise, even if our
decisions are determined or automatic.
Belief:
A conviction that something is true or real, often held with confidence and seen
as more stable than a guess or a fleeting opinion.
Guess:
A tentative judgment or assumption made without full knowledge or evidence.
Often mistaken for belief due to repetition or habit.
Occult/Supernatural:
In this context, a term for things believed to lie beyond natural or scientific
explanation — often associated with mysterious or unverifiable powers.
I see libertarian free will as subconsciously an occult or supernatural claim, despite Robert Kane etc who defend it without appealing to the supernatural — instead using indeterminacy within physical laws. If random happens in nature that does not mean free will can act out of the blue.
I reject compatibilism for it asserts that free will means nothing outside of you forces you - that is inadequate. Compatibilists don’t merely say we feel free — they argue that freedom is acting according to one’s desires, reasoning, and character, even if those are caused. But the evidence of this freedom is really just a feeling, a feeling of freedom. That will not do.
There is a tacit occultism or supernaturalism in "I feel free therefore I am free - I know I am free." That is like the psychic reading a hunch as some mysterious form of knowledge. And this magic is even outsourced to God - "God gave me the gift of free will and this nice feeling of having it to prove I have it."
DEBUNKING THOSE WHO SAY THEY BELIEVE
It is tempting to go around saying that free will just describes how we have no obvious exterior pressure to do something we do, and does not mean “Free will is the power to help or hinder, and the person alone chooses, and this choice is not programmed.” Maybe it is better to say that free will, meaning real power over a situation to turn it to bad or good, is just an assumption. The free will as in power to create a choice out of nothing, as it were, is the kind we are on about here. Putting it like that shows it is essentially an occult or supernatural concept.
I cannot go back even a second in time to see if I really could save John instead of killing him. Those who argue that the will is programmed or controlled say that if you could go back for all eternity, you would keep killing him. Christians say you have real freedom, so you could in fact save him.
I will be pressured to care about this question: “Will I necessarily kill him if I could have a repeat?” Common sense says what matters is what happened, not if you could have done otherwise. Free will, if it exists, cannot undo the deed. I am brainwashed to care.
There is no way you can predict or control what you are going to think in 60 seconds’ time. Try telling yourself you will think of a clear blue sky every second for the next half a minute and see how you get on. Another thought will get in — so the longer, the worse. You may say, “I can think of my rose bush now and in the next minute.” In fact, what happens is you want the image now, and it pops in. You did not ask for it to be a yellow one or to show five roses in bloom — or whatever. It just happened.
And you are not making the next minute — it happens to you. If it involves a bomb, you will not be thinking of the rose bush. Also, your mind can go blank. Your mind acts like it will not be controlled, which is why things you don’t want to think of always appear.
This refutes the view that you will think thoughts that help you use and perhaps increase your willpower. These things show that even if you are free, you are pushed around by forces — and that is even more important. If God gave you free will out of love, he doesn’t know what love is. He may mouth the love words, but that is all. He does not have much respect for free will or for you.
Free will is not a scientific theory, for there is no way you can test all to see if Jean will choose coffee rather than tea. If Jean is behind a screen, out of sight, there is no way you can get all the causes in front of you to tell what she has chosen. A lot of the religion and science debate is about whether they can speak to each other. Free will is a core idea. The idea that God is good and we cause evil depends on it. To say that religion and science have something in common is as mistaken as saying that some religion that calls Jesus a fraud is a friend to Christianity. When are we going to hear, “Atheism and Christianity are not in opposition but complement each other. They are two different disciplines. But the truth in both comes from God”? There is no mention of the fact that if science does not oppose God, it does not care either — so it amounts to atheism without the labels.
Just to be clear, science and religion need to speak to each other when it comes to the core subjects, not the details. The details that overlap do not count - despite many over-emphasing them.
There are naturalists who hold that all is natural and blind force, and who say the only exception they can consider relevant or noticeable is that we have free will. (They ignore how a nice feeling of freedom and that x should be done can itself be a form of manipulative force. Feeling free is not the same as being free.)
They would probably concur that denying free will is problematic and requires demolishing the following claims:
That we do things we know are unfair and morally wrong.
We only have a moral obligation to do something good and fair and just if we can do it. Ought and can go together.
The two fall together. But as we have seen, science cannot convincingly and clearly defend the notion of free will. So how naturalists are those naturalists?
Having an intention to do something prior to choosing it does not prove the two are causally connected. A always following B does not mean B caused A. It is a fallacy.
Even if that were not the problem — even if free will were valid and true — it does not follow that anybody affirms it for the right reasons. It would be impossible to respect those who preach it if they just do it to fit in.
Everybody seems to fall into that fallacy endlessly. It is a universal bad habit. But you may say, “My intention is to treat myself to some lemon cake, and then I choose to reach for the cake. Of course my intention and the choosing have a causation relationship.” A always following B only indicates that B might be causing A but does not tell us if it is probably doing so or definitely doing so. Even if free will should not be an illusion, that association between intention and the action definitely is. And yet it, more than the feeling of being free, is behind people’s affirmation that free will is true.
The philosopher fears, “It is hardly likely that our cognitive faculties and our thinking ability are any good for helping us form beliefs if blind forces that don’t know what they are doing have given rise to them.” Are you nullifying your own mind by saying that there is no God or creator, and that luck has led to us being here? We definitely do get a lot of stuff right. But suppose there is a concern. Now there is a bigger problem — a fatal one. When you say, “Maybe my faculties are full of errors and lies because nothing reliable programmed them. I deny this, for I don’t want to believe it. I want to choose this unreliable processing to form this belief.” Dreadful.
And also, not liking the outcome of something is no reason at all for opposing it. You may not like to think that alcohol is dangerous, but that is no reason for drinking a litre of vodka every day. There is a difference between thinking you might have problematic faculties and wanting to have them! That is asking to error. It gives a good reason for why denying the existence of a reliable, honest God is a necessity — it is for our wellbeing.
The butterfly effect shows that the picture when we do something is huge, so while you may mean to be unfair, you may be part of fairness in the big picture. For example, stealing John’s dinner sets in motion something that topples a tyrant in Russia in a hundred years.
There are landmines, and you can warn the children. And if you start saying there is some supernatural or paranormal or private reason why you cannot warn, “ought implies can” does not mean much. It backfires. People like you might be mainstream one day — and in healthcare and banking, they already are.
In a world that shouts, “Don’t impose your morality on anybody else!” it is clear that “ought implies can” is regarded as less and less relevant.
Many say life is about helping others.
Self-interest is the main reason I am even available or able to help. For example, I crave and take food, and that matters to me more than what others want. Helping others does not keep me here. Taking does. The person giving away their bread all the time will die, but the one who steals it at every opportunity will live. That shows where nature’s “priorities” really are. Even altruists and do-gooders say that it is better for me to be here to help even if I can’t, or even if I don’t. Helping others then depends on me coming first. So I am putting myself first. The helping is not part of me the way my self-interest is.
What if I have to choose?
I am here to help even if I don’t and won’t.
Or
I am here to help and I will and do help.
It will have to be the first, for being here at all matters more than what you are going to do. You cannot help or hinder or neither unless you are here in the first place. Far from the freedom of the will mattering most, you are better existing even if you seem as if you have it but do not. The argument that free will is a core aspect of your being — your identity — is wrong.
One may feel that there is some force in his surroundings that links with him so much that he feels that his free will is in the microwave, in the walls, and everywhere around him. Try feeling for a day that you are free and that this freedom is broadcast to you by some energy, perhaps from the sun or the moon or whatever. Perhaps there is some force unknown to science there? You will notice the feeling of being free is stronger. The feeling of being free is there, but now it is for this reason. How reliable is the feeling, then? How reliable is the painter who would use dust as paint, or as a canvas?
The feeling of being free feels like some kind of transcendence. You feel you are bigger than physical things and they don’t control you. You already think you broadcast something to yourself, telling you that you have this liberty.
Deniers of free will point out that the brain alone is hugely complicated. Life is complicated. Influences we do not even realise are there are complicated. So you don’t know and can’t know all the causes of your choice. To choose x is to choose not-y, not-whatever. You are making a choice about everything else too. Yet we seem to think a choice is one thing — x. It is, but most of it is not about x. Something is simplifying things deceptively. For that reason, we can affirm that the reason you feel free is that you are free from knowing all the causes. Is that being “I am a person who acts as if I have free will”? No. If you ask for pizza and you get it, it may be given to you though you asked, but not because you asked. Yet you feel your choice brought it to you.
Religion says God does not want to force us to love, so the downside is that we might choose evil. God made all, and God makes only good, meaning that evil is not God’s fault. Religion says evil is not a force or thing but a falling short — a lack. So it denies that God makes evil. It blames us, which hardly seems to fit the notion that you are innocent until shown guilty. Now it says evil attaches itself onto good to deceive and to make you afraid that if you attack it, you damage the good too. So it is a lie and full of tricks. A choice that is not informed is not a choice at all. So the idea of choosing evil or sin is nonsense. The only one choosing evil would be God. None of this is coherent. God, being all good and all wise and all powerful, is a complete mass of contradiction.
FINALLY
The belief that we experience libertarian free will is not grounded in evidence, but in habit, misunderstanding, and the seductive feeling of freedom. This feeling, though powerful, is unreliable — a product of ignorance about the countless causes behind our actions. What is often taken as belief is closer to guesswork, shaped by culture, emotion, or the need to preserve moral narratives. When we examine how thoughts arise unbidden, how choices are inseparable from circumstance, and how morality itself assumes freedom that may not exist, the concept of free will collapses into incoherence. Whether dressed in religious justification or compatibilist redefinition, the idea of uncaused, self-originating choice belongs more to the realm of the supernatural than the natural. We do not experience free will — we only think we do.