Smart people have been debating whether we have free will for a long time.
And make no mistake, this is a debate among the smartest of people. This is not the smart people versus the dumb people. Nor is it a debate strictly among the religious and the anti-religious.
One view is that we are just biochemical machines.
Which means that we don’t have free will. Our biochemistry determines the outcome. Given the same input and conditions, we’d make the same choice every time. We’re deterministic, like the software applications that I work on every day.
Another view is we have something beyond our biochemistry that aids the decision process.
For the sake of terminology, let’s call that a soul. The soul provides a random factor. Given the same input and conditions, we might not make the same choice every time.
Regardless, we must live as if we have free will.
What choice do we have?
