How it's supposed to happen

So, yeah. Free will.

I really doubt I'm in the right frame of mind to do this proper, which is how it seems to go each time I go about trying to type up a 'deep thought' type of post.
I'll attempt it regardless. If I jump around and don't make my points clearly enough, well, that's pretty much P@ for the course, isn't it?

After giving the matter of free will some thought, i've decided that it most likely doesn't truly exist. However, bottom line is, we have the illusion of it, which might ultimately result in the same thing. (Heh. I think I just covered both bases there. [doh]) And in the end, it really can't be proven or disproven, so arguing about it is just so much mental masturbation. Which, granted, can be fun, but in the end doesn't really accomplish much.

That being said....

Here's something: For those of you who believe that free will exists... prove it? And, yeah, I know that just three sentences back I said that was an impossible task, but, you know, humor me. Either prove it, or tell me why you think that it does exist.

I'm going to explain why I think it doesn't.

The Universe is, as far as I can tell, a deterministic place. When certain actions happen, you will always get the same reaction. Light always travels at 186,000 miles per second (yeah, yeah, except when it doesn't). The earth always orbits around the sun. Gravity always works (again, yeah, yeah, except where it doesn't... and actually, I think that still stands that gravity remains working, it's just that there isn't any in zero-g. I'm not an expert on the matter [heh. pun.], and I don't need to be, my point stands that these things have no choice in how they work. They just do. If you drop a bowling ball, it will always fall to the ground. So, bowling balls don't have free will. At least in regard to whether they want to obey the law of gravity.)

But, the above examples are all of nonliving things. Life is a different matter, some may say.
Well. Let's take a look at life.
Your lungs will always do the job they were made to do (assuming you don't smoke or develop cancer or whatever).
Your stomach will always do the job it was made to do.
Skin cells always react the same way to cold.
So, by breaking your body down, you can see that individual body parts don't have free will. Your blood always flows. It doesn't make a decision between clotting or not, for example.

So, what about consciousness? The ultimate test. Well, it would help if we knew exactly what consciousness is. I mean, if we're going to say that only conscious things have free will, does this mean that people with underdeveloped levels of consciousness (say, babies) don't have free will?
...I'm not sure where I'm going with that. [shrug]

Here's what I propose, though. That since everything else is deterministic, and is only reacting to events that have come before - that all of the present is effect from the past's causes - then why would consciousness be any different? How could it be?

When you are given a choice, whatever you wind up picking is what you had to pick. Because of everything that has happened from the creation of the Universe up to that point in time. There was no other option, really. You are simply reacting to the weight of history.
In order for the choice to have been different, there would have to have been something different done at the Big Bang (or however the Universe began). Seriously.

So, that's basically it. I don't feel I've explained it very well, but I'm open to dialog in the commenting section. And I'm not set in stone on this theory, either. If evidence of free will comes along, and it's convincing enough, I'll happily change my mind. (Of course, at this point I see it more as I would have to change my mind, because there's no other way that it could've happened.) ;)

Some interesting 'side effects' of this belief of Fate:
It goes a long way toward explaining psychic abilities that some people seem to display. The human brain has evolved to be superbly adept at picking out patterns. If all of life is basically a set of dominoes falling, if you can get a good enough picture of what way the dominoes will fall, you could conceivably predict when the next one would. (Does that make any sense?)
Theoretically, one could know everything that is going to happen (and, by extrapolating, everything that ever did) if you could look at the patterns enough. Perhaps that's what our ultimate destiny is.

Another thing, and it's more a neat idea than anything, is that if there is no free will, and if there is a god, then obviously god doesn't have free will either. Which would explain "why god lets bad things happen", which is one question that millions of people (theists and atheists and agnostics together) have asked themselves. God lets bad things happen (and good things) because God had no choice in the matter. This is how it is supposed to happen.

And lastly, I've found that accepting the idea of fate and predeterminism, bad things are easier to accept. It's kinda a Zen thing, really. There was no way of avoiding it, none of the choices I, or anyone else, would've made any difference, so, there ya go. Paradoxically, I have a feeling that many people don't want to give up the idea of free will. (Because they're enamored with control, is my suspicion.) At first the idea of lack of free will bothered me, too, but I've come to terms with it. Because there's no other way that it could've been. :)

All right. Have at it.