I’ve read Sam Harris’s book, Free Will, and other works and essays on the topic, and while I can accept the intellectual postulate, I nonetheless remain satisfied that my ‘illusion of free agency’ is sufficient to enable me to strive to improve myself or attain any goal. My illusion of freewill allows me to ignore, if not dismiss, the notion that who I am and what I become are part of an unbroken chain of causes and effects—in other words, I’m essentially a billiard ball on the universe’s pool table! That having been said, a more nuanced analysis of genetic and environmental influences—nature AND nurture—would almost certainly benefit our understanding of human frailty and failings.

As a nullifidian what frustrates me with the intellectual position that we lack free will is that it puts me back at square one, where, as a believer, I had more-or-less been saddled with the same position! If, after all, one worships a god who is omniscient—one whose knowledge of the future is perfect and as certain as it is of the past and present—how truly free is the believer? If the script is already written, down to the last detail—I.e., what color socks he/she will choose to wear—the believer is merely going through the motions. Much like the unbeliever, the believer is under an ‘illusion of freewill’ whether or not he/she realizes it, as any decision, no matter how minor, has already been predetermined. Oh, the humanity!