Free Will, Decision making and religion

[GrandizerII]

Glad I'm not alone on this.

But it asks the question what even is free will?

Putting aside the compatibilist notion (or shall I say notions) of free will, usually what people mean by free will is that magical ability to make choices independent of any prior factors whatsoever.

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Having thought about it for a while, I don't think . . .

Well, if the ideas expressed here are true, then of course "you" don't "think". "You" don't "do" anything if "you" are reducible to a mixture of physical interactions determined by nothing but a previous causal history. "You" can't help BUT "behave" in the way you do, in a very similar way, although admittedly more complex way, that a bacterium or a pine tree or a cow can't help BUT "behave" as they do. Your entire post is nothing but the effect of a long series of randomly occurring causes that would not differ in any substantially meaningful way from say, falling asleep, defecating, telling your children that you love them, writing a poem, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or composing a symphony (all of which would be equally reducible to the random alignment of causes into your own specific causal chain). That is, if what you have described is true.

In fact, your own experience of "identity", the "you" we see and the "I" you experience are ultimately delusions. If "you" are reducible to a particular and determined causal chain, then what "you" were 5 seconds ago is not the same "thing" as the "you" that exists now (having undergone 5 seconds worth of the continuing causal chain). There is no "you". Mind blowing.

There is no "you" in the discrete sense that you speak of, correct. But that does not make it a delusion as there is a "you" at any certain point in time that "you" exist, but the boundaries of what constitutes "you" are sort of arbitrary.

Or, in short, "I think, therefore I am" regardless of what kind of "I" I am.

Are you done with the argument from incredulity now?