Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism?

[Ferrocyanide]

People do things because of reasons.  Reasons are not the same thing as material causes in a reductionistic sense.  The wiring of the human brain works the same no matter what is decided.

You can forget about atoms if that is something that bothers you.
I am talking about order vs disorder, deterministic vs random.

You are depending on an outdated, behavioristic or reflexive model of the human brain.  A living brain is much more than a computer, so the analogies only go so far.

The emergent position (as contrasted with reductionism) is that there exists both bottom-up and top-down causation.  Brains create their own information which is often as causal as any more direct cause of behaviors.  Otherwise crazy people wouldn't try to do impossible things like fly off rooftops.

How does the bottom-up and top-down process work?
If brain create information, do they use a process of some kind or no process at all?

Fly off a rooftop is something that you can have in a deterministic system with a deterministic brain. In that person’s judgment, he thinks he can do his stunt and survive. Maybe his plan isn’t perfect, maybe he did not consider every single state of the system.
A team of engineers can design and plane and test it out and find that it crashes. This is why using computer simulations, small models helps, since it reduces the costs.

So, how do brains create information?

Free will decisions are virtual, yet still causal.  They are in addition to what is merely determined on a less complex level.  That is what makes them emergent.

I am saying all this to contrast the perspectives of emergent materialism with reductionistic (deterministic) materialism.  Science has not decided which is correct yet.  See for instance Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy.

What do you mean by virtual? Are you talking about a process that is not done by atoms and that they are done by something else?
What do you mean by causal?

I looked at the link. i am not sure how it is related to free will. I would like to have an explanation as to what free will is.
For me, it looks like a software such as Win XP, an AI that drives a car, they do have free will.
I’m not saying that the human brain is identical to Win XP or a AI that drives a car. The recipe of the brain seems to involve more.
People seem to be saying that a deterministic brain does not have free will. <---- I don’t understand why they are saying that.

We really should start a separate thread.