"Free Will" Belief/Disbelief Poll

[Rayaan]

I believe in free will because the fact that I realize that there are different choices to act upon means that I'm free to make a decision without being completely determined to do so. I believe in free will even though I think that most of our lives are deterministic. The only thing is that there are different degrees of free will depending on the situation that we're dealing with. For example, I don't think that I had a free will to post in this thread or not to post in this thread. It was determined that I would post here simply because of my desire to post and other factors which led to me to see this topic. But maybe I did have free will when I was thinking what to write here and how to form the sentences in this post because it requires a lot more thought than a simple yes-or-no question. So, some of our actions are deterministic and others are less deterministic. But we are not completely deterministic beings.

After making this post, it almost seems as if everything that I wrote was determined to be written in the same, exact order. But during my thought process, I did feel that I was thinking freely. And if my thoughts are free, then my actions can also be free because many of our actions are an effect of our thoughts. Of course, I wouldn't disagree that there could be a strong level of determinism in our thoughts as well.