Free Will - the illusion

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I suspect our creator or his evil twin introduced this particular meme to humanity, in order to entertain themselves watching our contorted struggles with it, one way or another.

Am am in-fact speaking of the philosophical determinism.

It is the only scientific explanation for the world.

Scientism has the truth.

As long as you don't know your "will", it might as well be considered free for practical purposes.
In a deterministic sense: naybe I'm determined to quit smoking tomorrow? Maybe I'm determined to try and fail and try again and succeed?

From a legal perspective, I think the notion of NO free will would create positive changes-
A perpetrator is therefore a person whose brain came into circumstances where it decided to commit a crime -
That does mean the person is "inocent", but his brain needs some therapy so it won't decide to do harm again, in such a circumstance. That might include things like help getting your life together, accepting legitimacy of social order, other's people's rights etc.

Of course, there might be brains that need more and different treatment than others - but paedophilia is for example a situation where the perpetrators are considered mentally ill, and punishment alone will not make them into socially acceptable people.

the people who seem to have a great deal of "free will" in their lives just don't grok the less fortunate masses.

There's an interesting study by Daniel Wegner (2002, 2004; Ebert & Wegner, 2011) on free will if you're interested.

it would be interesting to see belief in existentialism graphed on x-y, with poor folk on one end and rich folk on the other.

Free-will may yet be possible through science and technology, for now perhaps it is best to angle oneself towards physical health if eventual autonomy is the goal.

Sam Harris speaking in Australia about the illusion of free will.
For those who speak dutch is also reconmandeble to search for Dick Swaab.

How did I miss this one? No, you cannot base a personal conviction upon something so amorphous, problematic and open to interpretation as the statement that "this is what science says". The expression itself is, at best, misleading, because 'science' never says anything (due to the fact that it is a method of enquiry and nothing more), but scientists, on the other hand, do. I cannot even recall the number of times people have tried to argue that something was correct simply because Stephen Hawking said it was.

Anyway, the very first issue with this belief of yours is what you mean by the term 'free will', and I bring this up because there are many ways to view it. For example, I do not believe our will is free to the extent that we can accomplish tasks that clearly violate the rules of nature (ex. fly by just flapping our arms, walking on water), but I also cannot accept that when it comes to making a decision (ex. whether to turn right or left at an intersection) we are nothing more than 'programmed robots'. Clearly you decided to post this message of yours here, so what was it, precisely, that compelled you to do so? If you were compelled to write what you did, and this in turn was based upon what you are compelled to believe about the notion of free will due to the fact that you are without the ability to ratiocinate, which in turn is due to your complete absence of free agency, then why should I believe a word you say? Your conclusions are not based in the free consideration of objective facts, but is nothing more than the end result of blind, material forces at work. Do you see how acceptance of your own philosophical position regarding free will actually undermines your argument?

Okay, I'll admit I haven't read the responses here to your post yet, so maybe all of this has been covered and addressed here already, but I have to say that I have challenged this belief many, many times before, and I have to say that all the arguments for the non-existence of free will just do not stack up. They are all based upon philosophical assumptions (ex. materialism) that I just do not accept, and they are almost always self-refuting. You have to accept certain premises as being true, but these premises are simply taken on faith.

A Sam Harris clip? This guy doesn't have a clue.

Why do so many people believe that 'science and technology' will solve all of our problems? They usually create more problems for us, by making life evermore complex.

What is this supposed to be about? Are you trying to say that God is nothing more than "an imaginary friend"? If so, you haven't a clue regarding the (rather complex) philosophical arguments that have been made in defence of the notion of God. Theists, to perhaps your surprise, do not believe in "Invisible Sky-Daddies", in spite of what the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins would like people to believe.

You're kidding, right? You do know that the term 'scientism' is actually derogatory, and is used to point out the fallacy of assuming that only such truths that the method of science can uncover can ever be considered to be, in any objective sense, actually true. The statement "scientism has the truth" is completely circular, because you have to assume beforehand that only it can give us what it is that we need in order to uncover what we call 'truth', but... how do we know this is even true? In other words, is the statement "scientism has the truth" actually true?

Excellent point. Why be angry with people if they are simply 'following their programming'? That's not very rational!