Byron Dickens

First off, you insist on conflating free will with free action. You can reduce me to being a prisoner and bound in chains, to borrow from Hume again, so that I can in fact go nowhere but that does nothing to prevent me from wanting - from willing - to leave. Blocking the road might prevent me from driving on it, but it does not prevent me from wanting to, nor does it change the fact that I chose that route before. You can even tear it up & plant trees there but that doesn't mean the road never existed. That's the very definition of black & white thinking. https://lucidphilosophy.com/black-and-white-fallacy/ Organized or not doesn't matter. There are a multitude of religions some of which posit free will, some of which deny it, some where there is debate about it and some which are silent on the matter. Gibberish. Non sequitur. People do things all the time without being consciously aware of their motivations. It certainly has for thousands of years and it is way deeper than most realize. We haven't but barely scratched the surface.

Irrelevant. If the highway department blocks off a road, that doesn't mean the road doesn't exist. If some form of disability or external restraint interferes with the excersise of one's free will, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Black & white thinking. Again, irrelevant and black & white thinking. Religious and belief/ nonbelief (for lack of a better word) in evolution is not an either/or proposition. "Religious " encompasses a pretty broad spectrum. There are religions which posit free will and those which deny it. Religions which posit a single deity, a plurality thereof and even those which have no recourse to such. Even within Christianity, the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God has been used to argue for absolute determinism, for absolute free will and for everything in between.

What is it called when you stand an argumentum ad populum on its head?

Red herring.

In a purely determinist universe, isn't it rather hypocritical to try to change things?

It's actually far more sinister than most people imagine. There is no actual conspiracy, but they are all conspiring together to make us think there is a conspiracy when in fact there is none. That's how nefarious these people are.

And evolution is not a simple linear progression. But it is still irrelevant to the discussion of free will.

Double

Pure bovine excrement. There is nothing mutually exclusive about religion & science. But that's not just my opinion. More than one scientist and more than one theologian say the same.

Well, why bring it up? It is irrelevant to the issue at hand and therefore a red herring.

Individuals do not invade countries. You must be one of those peace and love people who spits on returning soldiers. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole chasing red herrings. We're not discussing evolution.

Really? REALLY? What the f**k is that? How does one even respond to such an asinine comment?

Red herring.

"Things beyond our control happen. Therefore no free will" is hardly a cogent argument.

It's not quite that simple.

Every single one of Tezza's examples he cites as evidence of "no free will " has numerous counterexamples. First off, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Children think that God is some kind of great meta-parent who doles out prizes to the good little boys and girls and spankings to the bad ones. Children think that freedom means being able to do anything they want, any time they want, without repercussion. Free will does not mean that no one else has anything to say about it. I may not be able to choose to be 6'9" tall, but I can choose to have a killer jump shot if that's what I want to spend my time on. Playing in the NBA? Well, see, there's a whole lot of other people involved in that decision (presumably exercising their free will) who might have other ideas. But I can play basketball. Somewhere. And I can choose how I think about it. Closer to Starise's examples, I knew several people in the Army who grew up in horrible circumstances, who joined precisely to get out so they didn't get sucked into the same trap that landed everyone around them in poverty, despair, crime, prison or a grave. Even more telling examples come from Attachment Theory in psychology, particularly in the area of intimate relationships. "Did you know the last fight with your spouse began long before you met?" reads the blurb on the back of one book. The way we were conditioned growing up leads us to be attracted to certain types of people in certain very predictable ways. And leads us each to react in very predictable ways to the very predictable ways in which our partners trigger us. However, we can react otherwise, contrary to that conditioning. I know I have, and I bet you have too. In fact, given enough effort, we can retrain our conditioned responses. I would argue that the very fact that we are programmed since birth to have conditioned responses to certain stimuli is itself evidence of free will. It means that we are a blank slate that can be programmed in the first place and that we could have been programmed differently. Additionally, free will does not mean that we have all choices open to us. The mere fact of having a mortal, corporeal existence necessarily limits what is available. But, among what is available, we may freely choose.

Maybe to a little snowflake.... There, THAT'S an insult. Feel better now?

Jesus H. Christ! Get a grip! 81% who get it have only mild symptoms. 5% of cases become critical. Mortality rate for those under 20 is. 0001% . Most people who get it are cured. SARS and the swine flu were both way worse. Should people take precautions? Of course. But there's no reason to hoard toilet paper and ammo like it is the zombie apocalypse coming. You are absolutely right. The economic damage is surreal. Get a grip, people!

Attacking someone's ideas is not a personal insult. But you can certainly freely choose to react as if it is....

You have a very childish idea of what free will entails.

Demo mode?

Does anybody know when the looting is scheduled to start? I don't want to be late and miss out on the good stuff.

It's a PANDEMIC, ? yet more people die in automobile accidents over a long holiday weekend than have died from coronavirus so far.

Well, they do already rule over the internet....

Back to Hume's point: the fact that 99.99% of people choose not to excersise it does not mean that free will does not exist. Neither does the fact that things happen which are beyond one's control. The existentialist position is summed up as "man's existence preceeds his esscence." My cat here is a predetermined being. He is a hunter and a carnivore. He can not choose otherwise. In fact, it would be harmful to him if he could. Despite the fact that he has a ready source of food available for the taking that he need do no work for, he still exhibits predatory behavior and will still hunt down and kill things. I, on the other hand, can be a hunter or a vegan. I can even be one thing one day and another the next. If a debilitating health condition forces me to abandon a long held career, I can allow it to devastate me emotionally and psychologically or I can view it as an opportunity to grow. If the cat (assuming his natural state without the human intervening to do the deed for him) can no longer hunt, he dies. That simple. Back to Neal Peart's point: even if you do not choose to exercise your free will, that in and of itself is a choice. We really have no choice but to choose. One way or another. As Sarte put it: "man is condemned to be free."