In your opinion what causes christians to believe in Jesus

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The same can be said of free will, I think, since even the perception of '...some autonomy of choice...' may be deterministic.

Boru

I look at the whole issue as a pragmatist.  Why define everything as black OR white when you can differentiate, through terminology, black, white, and all sorts of shades of gray?  I would enjoy discussions about the possible variations, if such conversations ever progressed beyond the words used.

However, the real bottom line for me is this: one reason at least some people stick with spiritualistic ideas, including Christianity, is that they think atheism necessarily implies materialistic determinism (or reductionism if you prefer), and determinism doesn't preserve appearances.  I think that assumption is mistaken because of what I have read about consciousness research by reputable scientists who embrace emergent materialism in their assessments.  That is a viable third alternative, and from what I have read to-date no one has excluded either determinism or emergent materialism as possible descriptions.  In fact, such terminology may be too limited to encompass the finer details of what scientists now understand about how consciousness works.

There are, of course, important problems with religious ideas about free will.  They too often assert that people can choose their sexual orientation for instance.  They also assert that belief is a matter of choice, as Grand Nudger pointed out.  In general, their idea of free will makes them susceptible to all sorts of word magic: the power of prayer, of affirmations, of commitments and so on.  Their belief in their version of free will is a big part of the reason why they can uphold beliefs which look impossible to others, through an act of will (or denial of our real limitations).  So to me it is no wonder they suffer from so much hypocrisy and rationalize so much.  Much of the world really is determined.

It's been argued (reasonably, I think) that free will cannot exist in any framework that includes an omni-creative God, such as the Abrahamic one.

Essentially, the argument is that if God created the universe, he created every thing in it. If we include choices in the set of 'things', then God not only knows the choices we make, but he also created those choices as well as their outcomes. God not only knows that you're going to have eggs for brekkie, but he's also arranged things so that there is no possibility that you would have anything else.

I'm not convinced that this is a definitive argument, but it's not an unreasonable one.

Boru