FIRST
Believers in free will say, "You can misuse your free will and become very bad." Innocent until proven guilty? Then they need to prove that we have a very bad potential to make evil of our own free will. That is an accusation that needs to be taken seriously and not made lightly. It is just an assertion for they offer no evidence at all for it. Teachings like that reflect subconscious disrespect at best or conscious passive-aggression at worst.
THE ARGUMENT
We simply feel free because we do not suffer obvious pressure. This has nothing to do with free will. Free will is a mere doctrine - there is no evidence. Nobody can be sent back in time one second to test it - to see if they go for something different from what they went for.
How asserting free will (when it may not exist) is argued to cause harm:
1. It assigns moral blame without sufficient evidence. Claiming someone has free will is a necessary precondition for holding them morally responsible. If free will is unproven, attributing blame assumes guilt without proof. This violates the principle that serious accusations require strong justification.
Harm: People may be condemned for outcomes they did not freely cause.
2. Free-will belief encourages treating wrongdoing as an expression of the person’s character rather than as behavior produced by causes.
Harm: This makes compassion and rehabilitation harder by personalizing fault.
3. Free will belief legitimizes moral judgments of intentions that are inaccessible. Only the agent has direct access to their internal mental states.
External observers cannot verify whether an action was freely intended.
Harm: Others are granted unjustified authority to judge motives they cannot know.
4. It relies on subjective experience as evidence, which is unreliable. Feeling free does not demonstrate being free as in having metaphysical free will. Incidentally, altered states (e.g., intoxication) can increase feelings of freedom while reducing control.
Harm: People are encouraged to trust misleading introspection over evidence.
5. The honest position is uncertainty or agnosticism about free will. Acting as if free will is settled fact exceeds available evidence.
Harm: Society normalizes overconfidence in unresolved metaphysical claims.
6. Free will stresses punitive more than corrective responses. Blame focuses on punishment rather than understanding causes. Causal explanations (psychological, social, neurological) are sidelined.
Harm: Responses to harm prioritize retribution over prevention and treatment.
7. Free will belief enables psychological and moral double standards. People excuse their own behavior via circumstances but blame others’ character. Free-will assumptions make this inconsistency appear to be collateral damage.
Harm: Unequal moral treatment becomes socially acceptable.
8. Free will belief promotes moralizing language instead of problem-solving. Labeling people as “selfish” or “evil” adds no explanatory value. Causal models better support behavior change.
Harm: Energy is diverted from solutions to condemnation.
9. Free will belief is used to support potentially harmful religious doctrines - sin, guilt, repentance, and salvation narratives.
Harm: Individuals may experience unnecessary guilt or psychological distress.
10. Free will belief risks harm in child moral education. Teaching children they freely choose wrongdoing assumes capacities they may not have and may encourage premature malice and rebellion. Framing behavior as moral failure rather than developmental limitation can confuse or distress.
Harm: Moral education becomes punitive instead of supportive.
11. Free will belief weakens legal and ethical consistency - for the law should align with psychology, not metaphysics.
Harm: Justice systems may prioritize blame over public safety and recovery.
12. Belief in free will fosters the illusion of control rather than realistic self-understanding. It may satisfy emotional desires for control. This does not increase actual control over behavior.
Harm: People may neglect structural or internal causes they could otherwise address.
13. Free will belief allows moral responsibility to be asserted asymmetrically - society assumes free will when blaming but suspends it when excusing favored groups.
Harm: Moral responsibility becomes a tool of power rather than fairness.
14. Free will belief creates conceptual incoherence in religious moral systems. If humans are inherently sinful or very damaged, genuine freedom to do good is undermined. If sin is unduly influenced by Satan or nature to happen, and yet punished, responsibility is contradictory.
Harm: Individuals are blamed for conditions they did not author or fully author.
15. Free will substitutes moral certainty for empirical investigation. Free will is not experimentally demonstrable. Treating it as foundational discourages further inquiry.
Harm: Moral frameworks become insulated from correction.
SO?
If free will is uncertain or false, asserting it as fact causes harm by justifying blame, punishment, and moral judgment that exceed what can be rationally defended. God belief, by the way, claims God is free and gives us the gift of free will. It celebrates a doctrine that is mixed at best and does not deserve an accolade.