Do we have free will, or is everything pre-determined?

"Given that time trails off from present to past like the wake of a ship, we have access to the spontaneous, ecstatic creativity of the present moment.  Yet, our decisions in the moment are usually generated by our habits or our conditioning.  This, I do not believe to be free will.  To exercise free-will is to illumine the moment with the spotlight of awareness.  Symbolically, to turn on the light in order to see the moment more clearly.  Awareness is the doorway to exercising free-will."

"There are only infinite possibilities in every given moment. Free will means conscious will which means one that has a choice. This can only happen if one is conscious every moment and not hindered by the effects of the mind which can only conjure up situations and experiences of the past. If one is only living through the constructs of the mind which are system operations of one’s conditioning, then everything can be calculated and it is pre-determined through cycles of cause and effect."  

"We do not have free will nor is everything pre-determined.  There is no independent ‘self’ to experience such a thing as ‘free will’.  On the contrary, time moves out from present, rather than from future to past or past to future. The present is everything - all else is a hallucination.  Thus, neither past nor future can pre-determine the present.  Behind the movie our minds create, there is only ‘is-ness’.  No separation; only continuation.  Spontaneous occurrence.  We create the labels."

"Everything is pre-determined to give us the illusion of having free will.  By maintaining the illusion of free will, we continue to act without questioning the source of our decisions.  We are like prisoners who have never seen the outside world and believe the prison walls to be the edge of our domain.  We humans perpetuate this theme all over the world.  For whoever or whatever created our existence, they were strategic enough to keep us imprisoned in our own ignorant perception of freedom." -The Kid

"Yes we have freewill. Free will of the spirit. Though we do not realize this at a body level, so it looks like an illusion. Earth is a 'free-will' zone meaning that: anything goes. We create our own karma and resolve our own karma through way of our actions, agreements, contracts, and treatment of others."

“We know free will does exist for many reasons. I’ll stay away from quantum mechanics for now and list three obvious reasons we know free will is a factual part of consciousness. 1. We directly experience it. I make choices all the time. I’m pretty sure you do too. You can decide to go for a ride or to lay out by the pool. You are not forced against your will to do these things. Materialist religion holds that intelligent agency does not exist, so this rather vocal minority of adherents will insist that when you think you are deciding things, it is just an “illusion”, they say….”
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“Free Will is an illusion, and here is the logical reasoning that explains why: A chess program thinks for a moment, its algorithms running at inconceivable speeds. Split seconds pass by while it assesses billions of potential moves and counter moves. It finally chooses, and in an instant you realize that you’ve been crushed again by the computer. This is the shared experience of any chess player who bravely challenges the world’s top chess programs. Even the best human players can no longer avoid this experience. Yet do humans get the last laugh? Does free will put us above such rudimentary processing machines? It seems that way, but logic says otherwise….”
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