Is Free Will Real?
Religions have been founded on the concept that human beings have free will. We’ve accepted this idea as dogma. The relationship between the anointed god and all the events that sum up a person’s life is based on god allowing people to do as they please. We think we are free.
It’s a game of cat and mouse. “I’m god, and you owe me your existence.” Right after this statement, religion adds a very long and confusing list of do’s and don’t do’s meant to rule and control humanity. All that is wrong with our lives is pushed under the title of “Free Will.” You are free to do whatever you want, but you can expect eternal damnation in return. Humanity and the societies structured under these rules lack peace since religious goals are unattainable.
The background music to our messy lives is free will. We bring it upon ourselves. We own our destiny; we are responsible for our actions or inactions. Why, then, do we fail at all fronts? Could free will be an act of fiction?
If you apply scientific theories to our existence, you’ll discover that the cosmos is a cycle of repetitions, starting with Singularity exploding into a well-organized cosmos that re-establishes the spacetime within this frame. Science says this pattern is repetitive—total destruction, then Singularity is formed as condensed matter. A new explosion where singularity emerges as a new cosmos. The catch is that each singularity repeats itself to the last cell. Everything is created, lives, dies, is created, lives, dies again and again is the exact format.
According to science, the future is a fictitious concept. It appears we created the concept of future to define what we can’t see from our present standpoint. However, everything in this spacetime has already happened and will be unchangeable forever. Do you notice any free will in this scenario? There is none. Free will is fiction, created by religion to accomodate free will.
That sense of desperation human beings suffer trying to achieve goals wastes time and potential happiness.
Is reality such that we each have a story playing out repeatedly? Our traumas and successes are set until infinity. Thinking that everything is set after a lifetime of trying to exercise my so-called free will has catastrophic side effects on my psyche.
A part of me has always been an existentialist in the shadow of Albert Camus. But, the philosophy of ‘why bother’ is entirely different from the science of ‘why bother.’ If I accept this science as true and real, my first instinct would be to sit out the rest of my life. Everything that means anything to me is meaningless. Are we mechanical? Are we a series of chemical connections repeating itself for infinity? Executing the actions that we must and suffering the consequences, good and bad, without any say in the matter.
This thought process is dark, very dark, and very troublesome. Yet, being the realist that I always have been, I have no other alternative than to follow the yellow brick road that leads to the evidence that free will is a figment of someone’s imagination. Of course, within the framework of the universe, we will continue to be brainwashed into oblivion and made to believe in imaginary friends and free will. Are we better off?
I’ve always contended that magic is science unexplained. Also, that philosophy is science prior to theoretical science. I’ve always contended that metaphysics makes the most urgently needed distinction between our biology and our energy, aka our spiritual soul. This journey I’ve been on has led to this moment when science, magic, philosophy, theoretical science, and proven science take a seat in one chair for the first time in my lifetime.
Maybe, just maybe, the potential joy and only forgiveness I can come up with for a universe that entraps me is the joy of discovery, even though it genuinely is rediscovery.
Until something ‘new’ reveals itself, this will be my anchor to rediscover my life and maybe even yours.
Could we exist already knowing everything? Would we bother to move? These seem like crazy questions, but reflect on them, and you may understand they are valid. Would we become contemplative within our actions and lives? We go through the motions because the universe needs us to comply with mathematical sequences in order to exist, but as we watch ourselves, we become detached from these mechanical actions. Is that freedom? To execute that which you have no free will to change but can use consciousness to ‘see’ more, something else.
Is consciousness bound by the laws of physics? This could be our window to escape the strings that tie us to perpetual motion, which we do not control.
So far, science has no explanation for consciousness. Where does it come from, and why does it exist? We have a clear enough grasp of our biology, but our minds and our act of dreaming remain an enigma. Are we pre-programmed biological robots, like worker bees, that execute the pre-programmed script of our lives, and we escape it and become free while we sleep and dream? Logic, although unproven, makes this scenario sensical.
Buddhist detachment comes to mind. Chanting that alters our brain waves follows. Is enlightenment breaking loose from the pre-set living we unknowingly engage in?
Some scientists believe information is the fifth state of matter. That everything is out there. Attainable or unattainable but in existence. A Google in the skies. Therefore, as I think and write, ideas float by, which could or could not be all this floating data, creating a quantum entanglement in my thoughts.
Think this through. I make more sense than even I like to admit.
Thanks for reading.
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