I don’t like the “There’s just stuff bumping into other stuff, and how is that free?” Argument. I feel like it’s unessisarily reductive.

A stone washing down a river might be guided deterministically by fundimental forces, as are all of the actions of a human brain.

However, the stone was dislodged by erosion. My will was set into motion by abstract human concepts. My memories, biases, emotions, education, habits, etc. these are not fundamental or physical forces. I was free, uninhibited by state or peers, to decide based on these internal factors.

Sure, if you rewinded time and replayed it, I would always make that decision, and so would the stone wash down the river, but the human had a meaningful perception of free will.

I would argue that free will is not a physical concept, but a phycological one. It succeeds in describing the experience of mulling over a decision, and freely acting upon it. It is fair and reasonable to say it, just like in my example it is fair and reasonable for me to say a terrible person is evil.

If you twist the definition of free will contain some mention of subatomic autonomy, then sure, it doesn’t exist, but the concept predates such ideas…

Heck, even the Bible- I’m an atheist- but the point of writing that God gave humans free will was the expression of the human experience. The writers wanted to explain why being a human FELT different from being a stone. They were grappling with the experience of consciousness in a spiritual way. The original text never claims to be the ultimate expression of physics. It’s reductive to dismiss the text as meaningless just because some later “free will” proponents claimed that the brain is quantum or whatever.

Sorry, I agree with you about the nature of the universe. I just think these reductive debates are, in general, unproductive. I believe they misrepresent the subject from both sides.