FREE WILL MAKES NO DIFFERENCE RIGHT NOW AND WHY DO WE PRESUME TO KNOW THAT WE BEHAVE AS IF WE HAVE FREE WILL EVEN IF WE DON'T?

Society assumes free will which means that we may feel a lot more free and feel free more often than we actually are. Germans felt free under the Nazis. They don't think much about what their free will is and means. That is the biggest question of all and you cannot get to faith in God unless you think he gives you free will to find him and is not to blame for the bad things you do. It is bigger than God.
Let's do the thinking.
 
Free will in the libertarian outlook thinks that if you have to act in a situation there is nothing making you decide which of many outcomes will be the one. You can bring about one of any number of outcomes.

Determinism holds that we live in a chain of cause and effect so you only seem to choose what you choose. It had to happen. You feel free even when your choices are very curtailed. The person with too many options can feel burdened and unfree. Determinism does not really believe in choice. But it uses the word. By choice it means the road you are taking while you feel nobody else is forcing it. This is a redefinition of choice. The free will version of choice exaggerates how free it feels.

Some call this 'having to happen' free will which confuses the issue. They are called compatiblists but this is only playing with words. You can say the apple fell from the tree of its free will but that is only words. That is not free will. They tend to argue that you should be treated as responsible as long as it not an outside person forcing you to act.

The claim that even if what we do is not really down to our free agency but the way strict cause and effect make us act is interesting. It's disciples say we act as if we have free will even if that is true. But that is presuming to know how we would act and feel if we had free will when we don't. It is presuming to know how we would act if we had fake free will. This shows an arrogance and a presumptuous ignorance that is simply incredible. It equates to saying you just know the number of particles that comprise the moon. No it is worse for you know more about the moon than a hypothetical unreal alternative to reality.

This presumption is a prop that helps us to feel free. It means that free or not we will feel free.

Free will is easily believed when we think we feel free and deliberate between different options as if we control what we will go for. Some call this illusion. Some call it delusion. Maybe. But why not call it a habit? Habits are good for short-cuts. We need to work so we need habits to help us do that instead of using up time. And the feeling of being unfree can happen even when you do have a choice. Say a gun is held to your head to give you a choice between sparing a murderous person or shooting a friend. So the feeling of being free is not about telling you if you are really free or not.

Free will for picking toast or porridge for breakfast is not the same thing as free will for making a horrible confusing complicated choice. It is not like choosing to end a terminally ill person's life on their request. With all choices there is pressure to choose something. That pressure gets worse when it is something that hugely counts. So free will is not so free after all.

It has been noticed that how the past is the past shows free will or unfree will makes no difference. If free will is real then that does not affect the past. If free will is nonsense then the past still does not change. For example, terrible things such as genocides still happened. All that changes is whether you think people are responsible or not. How much does that matter for you cannot make people responsible and treat them as such very much anyway? Most rapists for example get off scot-free or lie their way out. Declaring people responsible makes them hide more secrets from you. Responsibility is not much good for bringing justice to a Hitler. Worrying about humans being responsible is really only important for our information and there is no proof that it really does much good in the end in practice.

The free will debate mixes up what psychologists say about us feeling free and what philosophers say about it. Yet it is not a psychological question but an ontological one. Psychology is not there to tell us if free will is real or not and takes it for granted that all people feel free when they act and they feel that their choices are really their choices. That could however change if lots of people go to the therapist and deny feeling free. Psychology is about making you a person that is good for yourself and good for others.

We conclude that the talk about needing free will really is coming from those who fear that denying it means you will undermine how free you feel. It makes no real difference. And a undesired outcome of a position or argument does not mean the position or argument is wrong. Religion when it says that at the last moment of your life that you can make a final choice for God - which gives you eternal happiness - or against - which gives you eternal damnation has a startling idea of how free you actually are. That would be free will in the sense of how nothing at all programs anything about your choice. You can eat a baby as easily as feed it. You can steal a Rolex watch after a life of incredible integrity. This doctrine is motivated not by sincerity but by the wish to feel free. It causes a lot of people to feel free or more free though they don't really want to be that free. Life would be frightening if we were. Those who want you to validate free will are trying to manipulate you for themselves. This is true of free willists and their cousins the compatibilists. And it is especially true of religions like Christianity, Mormonism, Islam and Judaism that hinge on free will giving you the power to embrace God or exclude him by sin. They stake a lot on it including their creator God and their scriptures.