A 'proof' of God's existence - free will

[Pat Mustard]

Just to ground the discussion - I find very little justification to believe in a theistic entity.  However, I do not consider myself an atheist.  At least not yet.  And I continue to search for logical and scientific justification for such belief in the name of intellectual honesty.  I will readily admit to and even argue for atheist-like arguments, and I have been banned from religious forums many times simply because, as I was told, my arguments were depressing the believers.  That being said, there are a few interesting philosophical points that I don;t think atheists can answer.  Here's one:

Consider free will.  No matter how you look at it, I can't for the life of me see how there is ANY possibility free will exists, whether there is a God or not.  Clearly, if you take the deterministic side of things, there is no free will.  But even if you subscribe to Liberatarianism, you STILL have to allow for randomness in your actions.  In other words, even if we agree that there is a 50% chance I eat that cheeseburger, the execution of that choice cannot be mine and mine alone.  WHY did I eat the cheeseburger (if I did so)?  The concept of 'choice' is nothing more than the random selection of certain probabilities.  In other words, there is NO free will.  Randomness does not equal choice.  Determinism does not equal choice.  No free will either way.

The above would widely be considered as points against Theism - and rightly so.  So here is the question then.  If there is no free will, WHY then do we have the ILLUSION of free will?  There is no evolutionary benefit to our minds thinking we act freely.  Procreation of species would not be dependent upon such an illusion.  An automaton would act the way it would act, and would react the way it would react - an internal understanding of WHY it did so is irrelevant.  So WHY then do we BELIEVE we act freely?  Could, perhaps, such illusion be 'provided' by a supernatural being?  Could we thus have a soul that encapsulates this illusion? 

Is this "proof" of a God? Not really - which is why I put the term in quotes in the subject.  But I find the question very interesting.  My own rational musings have led me to consider that the "illusion" of free will is in actuality the FEEDBACK loop of how our decisions affect our future actions.  For example, if I got a stomach ache from eating that cheeseburger, my future probability of eating it would drop to 40%.  This neurological process manifests as 'free will', similar to how transfer of short-term to long-term memory manifests as a dream.

Regardless, I haven't decided yet what the answer is.   I welcome your thoughts.

The possible existence of free will would disprove the abrahamic god for definite. Because one of the attributes of said god is omnipotence. If a creature has free will then god has incomplete power over it, therefore god is not omnipotent, therefore by the rules set up by the jewish, christian and muslim religions, that god cannot exist.

I don't understand why christians constantly make out that we have free will, it breaks their whole religion.