Is it possible to be protected when no one has free will

I am pretty sure you are the one who don't get it. We don't have free will in a cosmic scale, but to us, we might as well have free will. We absorb information and use our brain to analyze and make decisions. Us not having free will only means that no matter what we choose, our decision is already determined and can be predicted if we have enough information in the quantum level (which isn't nearly possible with our current technology). However, to us, we are still making the conscious choices. Just because we have no true free will doesn't mean we shouldn't be held accountable for our actions. The world isn't fair, some people are born with better specs while other are born inferior objectively. No one chose to be born smarter and stronger or born disabled. If you somehow are born lacking empathy and you go on a killing spree, tough luck because you still deserve to be locked up. Your example of liquor doesn't makes sense. Them believing that they have free will isn't what made them become alcoholics. They lack free will and they weight the euphoria of alcohol over the negative consequences. Addiction has nothing to do with believing in free will. Any organisms with a brain will prefer the decision that makes their brain feel better. An alcoholic looking to quit is looking for the long term happiness of their brain. If they thought they have no free will, then they could easily say "I have no free will anyway, I am determined to drink this bottle of liquor anyway". Correlation doesn't mean causation. Just because they happen to think they have free will doesn't mean it's the cause. You can easily choose to mention a group of people who donates to charity and chances are the majority of them believe they have free will. Would you want a murderer who killed everyone you ever love to not be blamed because he was born lacking empathy and was raised in an abusive family? He never chose to be born under those circumstances and his action of killing your whole family is determined by many factors except his free will. So what if you know he has no free will? we still lock him up and we don't care if he is unlucky. I don't think you understand what I mean by "we live the way we do because we live in a democracy". Democracy was developed because of human traits such as empathy. I never said it has anything to do with free will. So what if we know there objectively isn't free will? People aren't lied to about free will. You need a liar first before you are lied to. People believe it themselves from their own experience. It wouldn't really matter if every scientists in the whole world proved that we don't have free will. To us, we still make our own decision, even if the decision is determined before we even made it. To the point of your question, yes we can still be protected from each other because our societies have been functioning without free will all these time. Humans are like every other social organisms, we live together and cooperate because it is our instinct to. You are talking like we have free will all these time and we just suddenly don't. Sure the realization that we don't have free will might devastate some people and give them some existential crisis but that's about it. We don't need free will to protect ourselves against each other. Just because someone can't be blamed in a cosmic sense doesn't mean they shouldn't be punished. You mentioned a lot about God but I am pretty sure it all comes from the same book. It is basically a book telling you to believe in itself. There is absolutely no place in this world that requires any presence of a God. And if we play your game, what is God's purpose of creating us when we have no free will? We are basically machines and do machines deserve to be sent to hell for doing what they are programmed to? I would assume you are a Christian but why do you ignore the contradictions in the bible? The concept of heaven and hell only works if we have free will. If we have no free will, there would absolutely no reason for anyone to be rewarded or punished because we are only carrying out what "God" programmed us to. You do realize that the entire bible is based on the idea of "free will" right? Did God programmed Adam and Eve to eat the fruit since the beginning so he can punish them? Did God programmed humans to be "sinful" so he can send his son to save humans from himself? The bible is a narrative mess and I am not sure why you believe so firmly in the lack of free will but still believe in the bible.