A thing about religious (and other) people and the illusion of free will

[Angrboda]

I don't know that I'd use artificial that way, or draw that inference based on that use.  I don't want to argue too many things at once.  Everything that occurs "occurs in nature".  If there were a free will it would be a free will occurring in nature.  Artificial things do occur in nature.  Artificial selection - breeding, is real.  It exists.  So some thing x being artificial or "non naturally occurring" in whatever novel sense is in no way any indication that it cannot exist. That it cannot possibly be real.  

Free will and fate.  Free will and fate.  The fundamental drama of experiential content.  We feel like we choose, and we know how often we're pushed.  I think it's somewhere in the middle.  Our choices are also pushes and vv.  I don't think that place has free wills...but I don't think that place is predeterministic either.  Yes, things that happen effect what happens.  The decisions that I make, free or otherwise, can be consequential.  Adding me to a situation adds something, multiplies the possible consequences and outcomes of whatever it was.  Fields don't just grow the way I use them.  None of this needs me to be any more to what I do than an ant is to collecting aphids, though.

For some people, this is an apocalyptic suggestion.  Hallowing out the very foundations of law and society.  For me, it's an observation of connectedness.  Of common origin.  Of common purpose.  Of common interest.  Religious ideas, to make that explicit.

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
― Voltaire