Determinism Is Self Defeating

[Red Celt]

I know what it means, but where is the reason and evidence?

Are you really sure about that?

"Only lifeforms have free will, that's why they call it life. Earth, the weather, stars, etc are deterministic."

The word "life" has nothing to do with "free will". Else, single celled organisms would qualify. Or bacteria? How about we jump up a few levels of complexity and ponder whether or not grass has free will?

I tried the billiard ball metaphor already, but let's expand upon that to see if we can get you to actually understand what determinism means.

Imagine a massive billiard ball table and (to extend the longevity of the thought experiment) let's imagine that the table is frictionless. The balls keep on bouncing and rebounding for a very long period of time.

Each time a ball hits a cushion (or another ball) it might be thought that the ball is deciding the angle it will take before that collision takes place. Each time it decides upon that angle, that angle is exactly what happens. The illusion of free will (and it is an illusion) is that those decisions are by choice. What we don't appreciate, however, is that every single thing that we do is predetermined by everything that has happened over the course of our life.

If you are driving along in a strange place and reach a T-junction, which direction will you take? Predeterminism would have it that you will always take the same direction.

Ah, says you, but if you remain lost and arrive back at the same T-junction, you could take a different direction. Well, of course you could, but the decision you make now will be different because the neurons and synapses in your brain have changed since the last time.

If you could freeze the moment in time when you approached the junction and recorded every single detail... and load those details back up again, you would always act in the same way. Because there is no Deux Ex Machina.

It feels exactly like free will... only it isn't.