First, Free Will is a cultural misnomer. (Promulgated by religious BS)

Second, If you're like me, you've got a committee of personalities knocking around up there, arguing and debating. Much of the time, I just stand back and let them hash it out. Does actually intervening count? Do all these voices have 'free will'. My suspicion is that they are programs, albeit chaotic programs, rifling through the memory RNA.

Third, What people might count as 'free will' assumes there's some ongoing and persistent personality or self that is inside expressing that free will. That self is a lot less reliable as an ongoing entity. It's easily influenced by pain, diet, sunlight, electrical charge, electromagnetic fields, antigens, etc. Where's the continuity? If anything, that personality is just another logic program that compares the values and timing of the various committee members and evaluates the decision making processes against the matrix of circumstances. That evaluation is often too ephemeral to put into words, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's like you know you had a dream, but you forget what it was about.

There are a few things religion absorbs and claims as its own. There are also some atheists who reject the subject of their claim simply because they did absorb it. Morals, purpose ..circumcision.. and free will are some of those things.

I don't see how your reasoning lead up to your conclusion on free will, but I think our free will is a biological mechanism that evolved out of necessity. Back when life was just evolving nerve cells, they were for a single purpose. As life evolved and more functions appeared, there would eventually be conflicting functions. A tail in the back that is trying to propel while its eyes in front see danger ahead.. a chemical receptor drawing it toward a chemical while its sense of temperature is saying danger. A mechanism would have evolved for communication between functions, what we (me) call consciousness. Without this mechanism, without a function of communication between different nerve cells, all of early life's simple functions would be trying to function at once and it wouldn't survive to be able to evolve into what it is today.

Buridan's ass is a thought experiment often in discussion of free will. Stating that when a donkey is hungry and presents with 2 stacks of hay that are completely the same, the donkey won't be able to pick between the 2 and starve to death. That neurologically, the stacks have equal influence. The same number and size of the straws, the same position, the same distance away from the donkey.. every.. every detail mirrored, it'll activate conflicting neurons that cancel each other out.

That illustrates why I think life wouldn't have survived to evolve. When life was simple organisms with just a few functions with simple nerve cells, there would be a point where the organisms shut down and wouldn't be fit for survival.

That's where our free will comes from. While some things might be harder to override, like addictions and habits and reflexes, we have the ability to interrupt a function at will.

What sucks though, since it's a function of your physical brain.. it can be damaged, destroyed, or manipulated even. That usually spells disaster for the brain and hinders living.

No it doesn’t

Yes it does

The illusion of it does. A bit like being on a cruise ship. Do what you like on board but you will still end up in New York.