"Free Will" Belief/Disbelief Poll

[Rayaan]

We live in the past, present, and future. The past is what has happened, so, as the vast majority or people understand I'm sure: You can't change that. Many say you can change the future. But the future means "what will happen" even if it isn't determined. You can't change that. How can you change whatever will happen to whatever won't happen? The future is whatever will happen, absolutely whatever that is, so you can't change the future either.

The future means that something will happen but not exactly what will happen, doesn't it? If so then how does it mean that we don't have free will?

And the present is already present. The moment you think you have changed it it has already become the past. So how can you change that?

If you think about the present time at every moment in the smallest scale possible, it does seem that we have no control to change what is happening. But on a quantum level, time behaves differently and there might even be closed-timelike curves which could possibly allow our minds to break away from a causal chain of events. Maybe free will is something that happens so quickly that we don't realize it before it becomes the past.

So, there might be a certain degree of free will existing at every moment of time in the present, but it escapes our awareness as soon as an action is made.

Futhermore though, if the universe itself is acausal (in the sense that it is probabilistic and some things are just an awful lot more likely than others and so that makes it seem as if cause and effect is more straight forward than it is) and we are naturally part of the universe, part of nature, how would we be able to break the acausal rules, whatever they are, and be self-causing agents?

I think it's possible for free will and a causal universe to both exist at the same time. Why? Because the laws of nature doesn't always have to be limited to creating things which are also causal themselves. Also, we don't know if the universe is 100% causal or not. If that's the case, then it's possible that there are unknown quantum laws operating in the universe which could allow beings with free will here on earth like you, me, and everyone else. Why not?