Free will does not exist.

Prior to final arguments, let me just ask that everybody vote their biases. I understand my arguments are good. In fact, for the most part I've taken them from "Freedom Evolves" by Dr. Dennet. Let me just say, my opponent believes your immortal soul to be nothing more than the faint impulses of neurons and that your death is just the cession of those things. VOTE HIM DOWN FOR HIS BLASPHEMY! That or me up for my arguments. Certainly, if you didn't take everything religious off the table in a debate about a religious subject one could perhaps have used a religious reason to justify the religious subject. We have free will because God has given it to us. Refusing to debate this on religious towns and conceding that one could make a valid (not possible to make a sound one sadly) argument in favor of religious free will, is probably best. I, however, accepted your terms and explained exactly how and why humans have a secular, materialistic, free will. We make the inevitable not inevitable. You say that the debate is about determinism, but you're wrong. The debate is about free will, look at the topic. My argument specifically accepted that the universe may be deterministic. However, that doesn't negate free will in the least. I see you have conceded that you cannot prove determinism via a fallacy of composition. However, that's actually rather moot to the argument I am advocating. My argument is determinism doesn't negate free will in the sense of making the inevitable evitable. Your second point again is an argument for determinism as well as a reiteration of your argument that determinism contradicts free will. My entire contention is that determinism exists AND free will. You accept that we can't predict the brain and yet it's deterministic and thus free will doesn't exist? In order to contradict free will you would need to predict what the brain will do, and have me, as an individual restrained such that I can do nothing else. Frankly, no. If a computer told me I was going to step to the right, I would step to the left just to spite it. Certainly it could predict this, but it can't predict it's prediction and my action and have them both correct. This was the main thrust of my argument. Deterministic computer calculates you will do A, you do B because it predicted A. Well, then it's wrong. Why is it wrong? Because it didn't account for free will. It could do this prediction for a rock and get it spot on, same thing for the function of a computer, or plants and the like. However, I would not be predictable in this sense. Because I have free will. I have the ability to predict the future with a well-formed brain and assert my independence over the deterministic world just to spite the world. There are certainly lesser reactions than this, and those are certainly the evolutionary precursors of my free will ability, however plants tilting toward the sun is simply a step towards the line which cuts of reactions from actions. To react to something is to have something happen and quickly act to forestall the consequences. However, humans can act in a manner prior to the event. We can predict where the rock will hit and act according. We can disprove a machine that tries to put us in a box. The brain is very impressive in this ability and it certainly shows that humans are different in this sense. We have a mental action ability where other organisms only have reaction ability. You could certainly program a computer to predict some future activity, but you couldn't predict the activity of a computer predicting future activity. You couldn't predict exactly what the predicting computer will predict because your prediction might very well change it's prediction. -- This is free will. How a transistor works and the internal functions of the bus can change the operation of a computer. But it does not change the function of the computer (just how it functions). Turning it off doesn't make a computer suddenly into a fax machine. Just as shoving some problems into the brain changes how it functions but not what that function is. Changing the way you act is certainly an indication that your brain is deterministic. However, my entire argument is that free will is independent of determinism. Even a deterministic brain can still make choices and make what would be inevitable for a non-brain evitable in a very real sense. Free will is the ability to make choices which outside factors and natural laws do not solely determine. The fact is the choices we make are often the product of predictions made about the universe. As such, these predictions cannot themselves be predicted until after the prediction. You can't know what I'm going to do until I do it: That's free will. Even if it were possible to track every particle in the universe and calculate what they would do, that calculation would play a role in my calculations and the only way to get such a device to work is to never give me the results or do the "predictions" after the actions. You can't know I'll do A, and restrict my ability to do B. You might for some lesser organism or for rocks and such, but with my brain: No. With my free will: No. I have free will.