Free will does not exist.

Feel free to assume anything you want. If you want to assume the non-existence of God feel free to go to the religion section. We must have free will because we make choices every day! Free will is in principle a religious concept. You are coming here arguing against a religious concept and wanting to negate religion? I don't think so. It isn't really required, but it's kind of a cheap claim on your part. Just pointing out, you're asking claiming a religious concept doesn't exist and asking that I disregard all religious concepts. Fixed much? Not really. Your making a number of assumptions here which simply aren't grounded. You're assuming determinism due to the existence of laws and you're the one denying actual lines in favor of arbitrary ones. 1. Does an atom have free will? No. Atoms oddly can't be pegged down due to quantum uncertainty, and though I've heard some free will defenses grow out of this idea they are all pretty silly. Your problem here is the connection between the first and second question. You ask why then would atoms working together be able to fight the forces of a deterministic universe. This is wrong. You are committing the fallacy of composition. Let me make a quick analogy. Is an atom visible to the naked eye? Why would you believe that atoms together would be visible to the naked eye? -- The underlying problem is you are trying to say that what applies to one applies to the group. This is simply false. 2. Why does consciousness need to be exempt from the universe in order to exist? If you haven't checked, the laws of the universe are actually pretty fuzzy. You can't even predict the atom, much less my brain. And even then that's what brain's do. The truth is, my brain is extremely well formed, it is not confined by the laws of nature to come to an inevitable conclusion. This is actually a backwards way of viewing things. My brain is formed specifically to 'evit' conclusions. If you throw a rock at me, that rock will fly straight due to basic physics and hit me. However, my brain can 'evit' (evade) that consequence. I can catch a view of it in the corner of my eye, calculate exactly what is going to happen, and promptly trigger my muscles in such a way as to avoid being hit. Certainly at some level my brain chemistry works within ordered laws, but that isn't to say that my brain results are all predetermined and everything is worthless. To the contrary, my brain is structured specifically to predict the future and react in ways specifically designed to re-craft the future in a manner more beneficial to me. The concept that, because this is at some level defined by laws of nature it isn't free will is a misunderstanding of exactly what brains do. 3. Where do I draw the arbitrary line? Well, I draw it arbitrarily of course! Where do I draw the actual line between where my brain is just neurons, just cells, just atoms, just particles, just quarks, just energy? The brain functions at the unit level. I make decisions at the level of the brain. Certainly with a lobotomy my brain level decisions would be different. Just as one could dose me with an neurotransmitter and change my behavior. A spray of oxytocin and I'll trust you, serotonin makes me sad, ohhh endorphins! That has a lot to do with the brain and how it works, but nothing to do with what it does. The brain functions to give us more freedom. The brain serves to give us free will, to free us from the bonds of determinism. The brain is an amazing engine for lifting ourselves above what we would otherwise be. This idea that we could just plot the course of every particle and predict the future to an exacting degree is a little off, both in the quantum mechanical sense, and the general. However, we could make rather stunning predictions if we looked at things as groups and objects and conceptualized them and used our understanding of the laws of nature to predict what they will do. Guess, what? That's exactly what our brains do. We do that because figuring out the deterministic world is a very useful bit of information. We can dodge rocks and win arguments. Let us say you build a deterministic machine which predicts the future exactly. I ask it whether I will step to the right or to the left. And which ever event it says, I will just do the opposite to spite it. What answer can it give? None. It can't give a definite answer to that question because its deterministic inevitable result will easily be evited by my brain. You ask where I draw the line. Right there. Ask the computer about a rock, a planet, even trees, or dogs and you might very well get an answer. Ask it about me, and you'll be screwed. I buck that system because of my brain. I buck that system because I have free will in a natural materialistic sense. If you have two deterministic machines and ask what the them what the other deterministic machine will determine you're going to run into troubles... and that's the trouble with your idea. You fail to realize that that is what a brain is. More than just a bunch of atoms, it's a deterministic machine. And you can't really determine what a deterministic machine will do without first determining what it is set to determine, and if that determination is changed by your determination, you just don't have the information you need even if you have all the information in the universe. Freedom evolves. -------------------------------------------------- Out side of this argument, allow me to pander briefly. Free will exists because regardless of what you say God exists and gives us free will. You think you're so smart with your big words and fancy debates but you can't just assume God away. You want him to assume you away too? Huh? I didn't think so. Thank you.