Free Will is Back. Sort of.

So. Do we have free will, and does God exist?

Well, if you're going to get rid of them again, you're gonna have to have a darn good reason. Better than, I DON'T THINK SO! That's so lame.

Let's talk about it for a minute.

If you are someone who doesn't believe in free will (and feel free, btw), then you could be accused of not thinking clearly about it.

Because if you are also (as there is an excellent chance) a person who detests religion and all this God talk, then you are not making any sense.

Because (you know where this is going, don't you?) if there's no free will, then all of the religious people have no choice but to be religious. All caps warning. It's not their fault. I changed my mind about the all caps. You gotta lay off. Stop hassling them. The particles made them religious, ultimately.

And you, btw, are irreligious, atheist, agnostic, and/or skeptical not because you are so smart. You have no choice. The particles made you that way. Lucky you.

None of us get to claim any credit or take any blame for our looks, brains, success, talent, skills, experience, hard work, money, possessions, achievements, or anything. For our failures, shortcomings, flaws, zits, flatulence, body odor, obesity, baldness, bad posture, terrible grades, lousiness at sports, friendlessness, ugliness, or anything.

So if you or anyone are taking any credit or blame for anything and if you don't believe in free will, then you are no less an idiot than religious people.

Actually, to be totally precise, none of you are idiots. If free will does not exist. You only have the capacity to be an idiot if free will exists.

So if you think religious people are idiots, or if you think atheists are idiots, or if you think anybody anywhere for any reason at any time is an idiot, then, really, the only way for that to be true is if

(you know where this is going, don't you?)

Free will exists. And by extension, God might also exist.

WTH?, you might exclaim with some heat and passion. H, to remind you, is Heck, because crapload is our swearing limit. It's like a law of physics.

Newton. Not Newman. Pay attention.

Because, we reiterate, the smart guys used the deterministic infinite universe to get rid of both Free Will and God. And the most recent group of smart guys have not been able (or motivated) to update that. Atheists are Newtonians all. I'm so embarrassed for them. You. Whatever. You're still using a Newtonian universe to get rid of God, unbeknownst to you. You also think that God doesn't exist because religious people are idiots, which, I remind you, is only true if Free Will exists, and if Free Will exists, then so does God. It's like Catch-22, which I should not admit is my favorite book of all time.

Major Major Major Major. I just had to say that.

You should be nicer to idiots, btw. If free will doesn't exist. 

If it does, then, well, they're idiots. Still. Better to be nice. There's that naughtiness thing lurking out there somewhere. Plus, we are each an idiot about something. Einstein said that. Paraphrased.

Symmetry. By Da Vinci as a child.

Summing up. The only way that religious people are idiots is if free will exists, and if free will exists, then (it is highly likely) God exists.

So summing up again. The only way that religious people are idiots is if God exists.

That's some nice symmetry.

So if free will does not exist, then you can't be an idiot (nobody can) and nothing is your fault and making fun of idiots or someone else's beliefs is not a fully informed thing to do. Though, of course, if there is no free will, then making fun of others is not your fault.

Yeah. See. Nobody lives like that.

We completely and totally act like people actually are idiots and things are someone's fault, otherwise nobody could ever go to jail for doing anything wrong or evil, and in fact, evil would not exist. Good, neither. There would be no good or evil, because for you to do something evil or something good would take a free will decision on your part, which you could not do if free will doesn't exist. The particles made you do it.

So we all spend all of our time acting like we all have free will. Even the scientists who think we don't have free will, act like they have free will.

Weird.

Free Will. Not Free Willy.
Pay attention.

That doesn't mean we have free will, though.

There's this Newtonian concept called Determinism, and another one called Mechanism. They are the problem.

Determinism says that everything is predetermined by things that happened already. Again, it's all about the particles.

Mechanism says that, because of the laws of physics, everything acts like a machine, and what a machine is, is predictable. Everything happens the same way that it has always happened, so we can predict what's going to happen.

So the laws tell the particles what to do, whether they are single particles or a galaxy made of particles, and the particles do just that.

And since you are made of particles, theoretically we can look at the way you have ever done anything and predict what you will do next.

There you go. No free will. Even in a universe with a starting point.

Since we still have to answer the question of where the laws and the universe came from, God is still theoretically around even if free will is not.

But.

This is all Newtonian. That's not the universe we live in. Well, it is, in part, but only the dull and boring and predictable parts.

It's really a Quantum thing.

It's pretty simple.

The Newtonian thing says, if you know everything about the particles (where they are, how fast they're going, stuff like that), then you can predict where they will go and what happens when they get there.

And you lose your free will. Because you are made of particles.

But the Quantum thing says (wait for it), 

you cannot know everything about the particles. Any particle. Not even one.

It's called Quantum Uncertainty. You can't know where they are, or if they are, or where they're going, or if they're going.

And since we can't predict what the particles are going to do, and you are made of particles, then theoretically we can't predict what you are going to do.

And now. Theoretically. You get your free will back.

We're not really sure what that means, of course.


That's the problem.