The discussion of free will has persisted since time immemorial. Can humanity truly be free to act as it wishes? Regardless of one’s religious views, the topic stirs up quite a bit of controversy. Those who believe in a god oftentimes still struggle with the concept of free will. Delving deeper into the philosophy of predestination and it's relationship with the human mind, we shall come to see that free will cannot exist, at least not in the world as we know it now.
Religiously speaking, an omniscient creator cannot create a being with free will. How can this possibly be? The creator creates the being with the knowledge of how that being will act in any situation. By doing that, that person is destined by a sense of fate given to him or her by a god. It is impossible for the creation to go against the nature that was given to it, as doing so would result in that god not knowing what outcome will come about. That is logically impossible, as omniscience prevents it. So, religions which espouse an omniscient creator cannot also espouse free will, as it is paradoxical to do so. If we disregard religious explanations for the meantime, we can discuss the impossibility of free will even through the lenses of science and logic.
“Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.” Richard Dawkins, in "The Selfish Gene," argued that humanity was nothing more a machine. Humanity functions as a tool of reproduction to continue the legacy of its owner. This is a very evolutionary approach to free will. Can humanity truly be free if our purpose in existing is to pass on our genetic legacy, especially if our genetic legacy is what programs us to act for this purpose? If you consider an actual machine, you may find the similarities between a human’s relationship with a machine frighteningly similar to the gene’s relationship with the human body. It codes and programs us, helping to influence our actions and beliefs. It creates our instincts and natural drives, which encourage us to act in a way that benefits the genes. However, we can still act against our genes. Humanity has been doing it for centuries. Contraception has been around since 1550 B.C. This seems like a free choice. Perhaps we do have self-determination. However, that doesn't take into account causality and randomness.
Everything that we as humans do is either caused or is random. That is, we act in response to past and present events. For example, say that you have a choice between soup and salad at a restaurant. You enjoy salad, but you have been to the restaurant before and know that they put banana peppers in their salads. If you hate banana peppers, you cringe at the idea of getting salad and choose the soup instead. Was this a free choice? No, it was not. You chose soup because your past experience told you that salad was a bad option. Your past experience caused your choice.
Say that you decide completely by random instead. Say that you ignore your past bias and choose blindly. Your friend decides to take two coins, a nickel and a quarter, and put them behind her back. The nickel means soup and the quarter means salad. She shuffles them around in her hands and lets you pick which hand. You pick the left hand. Congratulations, you have chosen soup. Everyone is happy and the choice was free. Except that it wasn’t free. You did not choose soup, chance did.
Can we honestly call any of our choices free? This is a conundrum that has baffled philosophers for millennia. Will we ever know the answer? Perhaps if we learn of a deity’s existence, then the answer will become clear. Until then, free will seems almost like an impossibility.
