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This hotly debated topic is now gaining daily momentum into the mainstream.  If in fact free will is an illusion as many now claim it to be, the implications of this bombshell discovery will shatter how people go about their lives and will be talked about everywhere all time for there is no more important topic as it touches everything we do as human beings.

Thinkers have long recognised that free will – free choice, the ability to have done otherwise – is an illusion. As Darwin put it, “the general delusion about free will [is] obvious”, or as Freud put it: “I am sorry to say I disagree with you categorically over this”. Einstein stated that, “I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. Everyone acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity”.

Not only does the non-existence of free will reduce to the evidence of neurobiology, but also reduces to a fundamental issue within logic. If we do in fact live in a deterministic universe, a universe of cause and effect, then we act as we do because of the biology we inherit and the environment we are raised within. Our character, our choices, would be the direct result of the pure luck of that biology and upbringing, and there would be no freedom of choice, no ability to have done otherwise. But even were we subject to indeterministic effects (aka the quantum world of uncaused actions), there would also be no freedom of choice, because indeterminism means that our thoughts and actions would be of a perfectly random nature and would also be emerging from outside of our conscious choice or control.

An idea and public debate topic whose time has come AND HAS ARRIVED!

Free Will skepticism is never uttered at our presidential debates because it seems

to be so anti-freedom, so anti-American, and so politically incorrect.  But at what cost?  If we (USA) are the world leaders (or want to be in almost everything else), why can’t the good old US of A be the leader in philosophical thought and intellectualism?  We owe it to ourselves as a nation and more importantly as a species to get this right once and for all.  Why shouldn’t this question “do you believe in free will?” or more simply put “Is there free will?” be asked at our debates?