If free will was not real

[bennyboy]

There are always external influences; even when you are asleep, your body is still very much awake.

Influences are not compulsion or obstruction. For example, seeing a beautiful girl might influence me to seek sex or at least to flirt a little. But it's still an expression of my own intent. If I were gay, her presence might have a very different effect on me. Therefore, it's my personhood which perceives the girl and then draws an intent, not the object of perception which "forces" my intent.

Obviously, since will is the manifesting of intent in the external world, one must have some perception of that world and ideas about how one wants to interact with it. But that's not an infringement on free will-- it's the arena in which free will seeks to act.