No.537
Freewill is such a misnomer. We have a will but our will is bounded to desires with the dominant desire always winning in any given moment. As such our being is formulaic, understandable, predictable. Random action is incompatible with the concept of choice, choice only exists in a deterministic system, so if something happens randomly then it's not a choice it's just random. So people who say we can act in an acausal manner and that's proof of freewill they are wrong. The other concept of freewill is acting from intrinsic motives unmoved by any outside influences; in that case only "The All" is free, since outside of The All (God) there is nothing, so The All must act entirely according to pure will. In other words god is the reason, and is not compelled, motivated, or moved by anything external to itself (since there is nothing external to God aka The All). I'm talking here about first cause. The final argument in favour of "free will" in humans is the notion a human will can initiate a causal chain. There are various arguments for this which I reject, there is only one line of reasoning however that could lead some credence to the idea of human will being involved in first causes, which is that the human will is an expression of the cosmic (or universal) will, and since that cosmic will is free from outside influences (the "free" part of "free will") then some argue that the human will attains freedom by its participation in cosmic will. The idea expressed in the Bible of "not my will be done, but yours" is actually an expression of the attainment of freewill. The idea is that if you deny your own will and seek to do the will of "the father" only you become free, you attain freedom in this way. I counter this however with the fact that doing something outside of the will of the cosmic will is absurd, how could one will something apart from the cosmic will? I think people cling to the notion of free will for emotional reasons or because they don't really understand the nuances of the philosophical debate around it. I recommend you read a book called The Arcane Teachings because it talks about all the different concepts of fate, determinism, predeterminism, etc. and systematically defines and explains each one and leads you to an ultimate conclusion about how things actually work.