Neuroscience tends to suggest we don't have free will. In fact, there is no "we" or "self". But more evidence and studies needed to confirm and absorb this concept.

I think we have neuroscience now and that free will vs. predestination/determination is an antiquated way to try and explain or theorize about how consciousness works.

If we didn't have free will prisons would be empty

How can free will exist when we are each driven by chemical make-up (I do not have any choice in being a depressive - I was gifted in utero with the defective brain chemistry of my immediate forebears) and the demands of our physicality? Read Elie Wiesel's 'Night" to see how raw hunger can turn son against father, crushing one of the most inviolable social taboos, and human against human in the desperate scrabble for a single loaf.

Likewise, we are each the sum of our childhood experiences, most especially at the hands of parents. If you are an introvert or a bully, the greatest likehood is that you were shaped by the actions of those closest to you, those charged with your safe upbringing. As adults we mimic and model the observed behaviors of our parents, family, and larger community.

While there's no evidence of predetermination based upon some divine calculation and our destinies lie, to some extent, in our own hands, we are not at will to choose either the body we inhabit or the basis of the behavior patterns we exhibit.

Would it were otherwise.

We have free will and I have made a lot of choices through the years , some good and some bad! If your life was preordained you wouldn't have to work at it and probably wouldn't be much fun!

"I will choose free will" - Geddy Lee

I believe I am in a virtual reality which is based upon a B Movie that plays on endless loop, sort of like Bill Murray in Groundhog day but not as funny. If you remember that movie it wasn't one of Bill's best works.

predetermined what? once you're past the whole deity thing this is of no consequence.

It is likely that when looked at carefully enough, everything in the universe that happens could be predicted and thus considered "pre-determined." However, the math and processing power that would be needed to calculate these predictions will not be available to us soon, and perhaps never.

This has to do with whether or not you believe it is possible for anything in the universe to be truly random. It's a subject intellectual navel-gazers still debate, but I contend that randomness is not at all possible. That being the case, the universe is necessarily a deterministic machine; in turn, therefore, everything in it is determined and must follow along the timeline accordingly.

Free will-whether your environment cooperates is a different story.

here is the thing, if for instance time travel is posible and you can go forward and backwards in time, and you can't change anything, then no we don't have free will, and everything is set and can't be changed, but if you can and change the past, then yes we would have free will. just something to think about.

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The opposite of free will is not predetermined. Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Many social constraints impede our decision without making our life predetermined.

I could persuaded on Soft Determinism, as our subconscious thought is estimated to consist of about 95% of all thought processes, and there are obviously an incredible amount of penchants, predispositions, and persuasions that impinge upon us. We react far more than we act. Try to think of a situation in which you were not reacting your environment in some way.
However, to claim that there is no such thing at all as independent thought simply runs into too many paradoxes. For example, it makes this debate mute since we are only expressing the thoughts that we are determined to express anyway. In other words, if you believe in Determinism, it is only because you can't help it.

We are people, with higher brain functions than the animals of the world. Of course we can make choices, that’s what life is about.
We don’t regularly run on instinct. It’s a feeling, which we choose or ignore.
Animals, instinct run.

Free will is only an illusion.