FEELING FREE IS NOT AN ARGUMENT FOR FREE WILL BEING REAL

Most of us don't care if we have free will as in having the power to go back in time to pick x instead of y. We are just happy to feel free. Religion manipulates this to tell you that because you feel free you really are free and accountable before God. Most of the time we do not need that reward and punishing kind of free will.

Feeling free is about how you feel now. A feeling does not and cannot tell if you go back in time that you may choose the opposite of what you chose in any past moment. Where the feeling counts it says nothing. Feeling free only means you feel free not that you are really free. The feeling comes from the fact that you are not aware of anything forcing you.

FREEDOM AS IN LICENSE

Paradoxically, we want to feel we can do what we want though in fact we only imagine we want that much freedom.

Why is freedom as in license not freedom at all? Because you are never really free unless you reconcile feelings and reason. How can it be such an effective illusion? Why is it putting you in bondage though you feel you are free and even freer than you could ever imagine? The answer is that feeling free is not only not the same as being free feelings easily lie. Feeling free is an illusion and illusions tend to breed illusions. Religion by telling you feeling free is proof that you have free will from God is based on a lie and to blame when feeling free becomes freedom as in wanton licence.

PARTLY FREE?

What if your decisions are partly caused by things outside of your control? That is no freedom at all. A university that would let people learn anything but not 2=2=4 cannot say it lets its students freely learn. They will not know if what they learned really was learning. They will not know if the university was right about anything. It has proven itself more interested in being arbitrary than in being mathematical.

Free will, if real, is a mystery because it is hard to see how we can self-regulate and be programmed at the same time. In other words the mystery is how we can be sufficiently free though we are not completely free. It is a paradox or a contradiction and we will never know which. It is safe to say it is a contradiction for there is no proof that it really exists. Proof is the only thing that stops a paradox being mistaken for a contradiction or vice versa.

Free will involves the use of reason but it cannot take reason seriously if it is a contradiction or paradox and we don't know which. When you think of it that way you soon lose the feeling of freedom. It is not true that we have to feel free all the time. We don't.

Some think that the things that program us are beyond our control but in time we develop more control over them. Does that make sense? There is no way to show it. It implies a younger person has less free will than somebody of middle age. This is nonsense.

COMPLETE FREE WILL DOESN'T EXIST

Suffering usually does not come with the freedom to choose. I mean it just happens and you don't do anything to cause it. If you have free will it should be about being moral as in helping suffering so the idea that non-deliberate suffering is ever good or tolerable by God is obscene.

Unclear? Person A chooses to suffer to help others. Person B is forced to suffer but chooses to use it to help others. Person A is the best person. B in a sense is forced to use suffering for good for she or he is stuck with it anyway. The notion of God sending suffering to help us grow in character is nonsense for there is a lack of respect for free will. If God wants to blame our abuse of free will for evil then he should invite people to suffer for others and not be sending it.

Free will is really just about what step you are taking not about what you are stepping into. That actually is not much freedom. Freedom does not give you freedom from the truth, from responsibility or consequences so freedom is paradox. Is freedom an attempt to get away from all that? The answer is yes. But it disappoints for you cannot really do it.

We do not have complete control over our feelings. Suppose I know that sitting on the shore makes me happy. If I go to the shore on a sunny day and the feeling comes to me it does not follow that I caused the feeling. If I know the sun will shine on the beach and go to enjoy it, it does not follow that I caused the sun to come out. Same with my feelings. I could be wrong to think that the beach will make me feel happy - maybe I will feel nothing or maybe I will even feel sad. If I feel happy, I cannot make myself feel even better simply by willing it.

We cannot act without our thoughts. Thoughts matter most in the same way breath matters most when you are out for a cycle. We do not have complete control over our thoughts. Try visualising a teabag for a minute. Soon other images will take over. Your system is not bothered about your alleged free will.

You cannot then be fully responsible for anything you do.

THE ARGUMENT THAT WE ARE FREE FOR WE FEEL IT

People think they have free will because they feel free. But that is self-deception. Feelings prove nothing. You can feel you can get the best job in the world but the truth is you do not have the freedom to achieve it. If I feel that Jesus is God that does not make me right.

You can be programmed by nature to feel free when you are in fact programmed. And we are programmed for we simply cannot be free. A self-programmer is still not free. A self-programming calculator cannot forecast the weather.

Even free willists know that we can feel free and not be free like when we are mad angry. Another example is when we have a lucid dream that seems very real when we are making decisions in that dream. Even free willists agree that these are not decisions or choices for most of the brain has been closed down. Dreams prove that free will is only an assumption.

Both believers in free will and those who say it is an illusion agree that we feel free. Indeed we could be unfree and still feel free. Yet believers in free will go about lying and telling people, "You feel free so you are free." They know fine well that those who say that unconscious processes and the way life and our genes program our brains make choices not us do not deny that we feel free. They see feeling free as part of the programming. And as those processes look like they make choices they do not. The leaf does not choose to fall off the tree in autumn.

Deniers of free will should be considered more rational and plausible and honest than believers. The more the believer stresses free will the bigger the liar he or she is. For example, believers in God stress free will hugely for they argue that he gave us free will and that we can use it to break his law and deserve punishment. They blame evil on us not on God.

Do you really need proof that you could be programmed to feel free and still not be free? You feel free when you are drunk though you are not. A drug is affecting your mind. The main argument for free will, the reason so many who should know better can't discard it, is that we are led to think that we seem to be told by our experience that we are free. We seem to feel that we have different options and that nothing programs us to choose one of them and not the others.

If feeling free proves you have free will, then it follows that the more you feel it the more free will you have! Free will works best when you have maximum feeling that you are free.

God is said to give us free will so that we might love him or reject him. If feeling free makes you free then if you are free, you will feel free all the time if there is a God. You don't so that proves either that there is no God or that the argument, "I am free for I feel free" is wrong. And if it is wrong, then it follows there is no reason at all to believe in free will.

Free will, if it exists, shall be in your mind and will be a faculty in it. A faculty can no more be changed than pretending you don’t have an arm will make your arm disappear and ease to exist because it is a part of you. Free will then cannot depend on our feeling of freedom for we do not have that feeling always. If it should depend, then there is no free will.

If the more you feel free the more you are free then it follows that you can reduce this feeling and you won't be fully culpable for what you do. Murder in psychological terms will be minor. To believe that you can switch from free to unfree by changing your attitude or suspending the sensation of freedom is dangerous. You could turn unfree and commit murder and still be innocent. It could be abused but only if you believe in free will for you will only be doing that if you believe in it. If you do not, then you will prefer to nurture your good side for it determines your future and blesses it. Luckily, we are unfree all the time.

The feeling of freedom comes from the fact that our brains have not decided yet what to do. It is not coming from a sense of real freedom. Many philosophers hold to this (page 8, GOD A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED Keith Ward, OneWorld, Oxford, 2003).

Even if we do have free will we cannot know it. Believing something and being right does not constitute knowledge but luck.

You can feel you have chosen when you actually haven't chosen at all. So you can feel free and not be free.

The more powerful you are the more free you are - if free will is indeed a fact. You can feel powerful though you are anything but so why can't you feel free when you are not?

DO YOU NEED OTHERS TO BE FREE?

People say, "You cannot be free if others are not free for being free and enjoying it means you and others can be free together. You cannot feel free if you think you are among machines or biological computers. "

But you can be free without having free beings around you!

You might not feel happy about it but it has nothing do with your freedom.

The notion however that free will is not just about me but the people connected with me as well is an interesting take on community relations and social conscience.

FINALLY

Free will cannot be experienced.  Feeling free is not experiencing free will.  Free will is only a guess.  We have no way of testing.