"You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm."- Sam Harris
"It’s true that human persons don’t have contra-causal free will. We are not self-caused little gods. But we are just as real as the genetic and environmental processes which created us and the situations in which we make choices. The deliberative machinery supporting effective action is just as real and causally effective as any other process in nature. So we don’t have to talk as if we are real agents in order to concoct a motivationally useful illusion of agency, which is what Harris seems to recommend we do near the end of his remarks on free will. Agenthood survives determinism, no problem." - Tom Clark (excerpt)
Is there fate or free-will? For me, the debate is all about the notion that both life and death are infinite and temporary, and that we are part of both, part of god/nature/infinity and part of his creation/temporary time, as witnesses of nature/god/infinity.
As linearly, like Sam Harris and other determinists argue, only fate can be accepted in all forms should there not be a creator still living in us, down to cause and effect. From one angle, only the creator if he is in every form is free to give free-will. Consider, that we are born but have no choice in the matter and our behavior is shaped by our genes and our environment - then it is all a reaction of which we were never free to influence ourselves, we were never in control of our genes and environment, and thus we were all part of fate.
However, linearly there has to be a start and end logically but what could create the beginning? Thus, the linear argument breaks down, and in infinity there is only free-will. Take away the concept of time, and you take away cause and effect, or sequences requiring time, or actual death. There is only freedom left.
Yet we experience linearity, so we are therefore arguably stuck in both fate and free-will, time and freedom, if we believe in a god or nature as a creator and an infinite being; since we are part of god and nature. After all, the causes of the Big Bang is still a mystery. The big point is time and sequence seems to negate free-will, however there is plenty of scope to argue that a straight line is the antithesis of life; again the argument being is life ever abundant and infinite and are we trapped seeing it through a time lens where it is short and hopefully sweet.
Nevertheless, the argument could be taken down a different, less pinickity, road. To one of choices, with free will representing the ability to choose. Well, the only choice we don’t have, is the choice to not make choices and to an extent how we make our choices. It’s that which dooms us to both a need for stability and an insistence of variety. If we lost all curiosity we would only choose the same, until that would lead to such bad results we would die out or be forced to change. And if we only choose differently we’d die out from lacking stability. So we chose to be stable and unique by being slightly various, giving us free will and life?
That final argument is like arguing that Free Will allows you to deny its obvious existence, whilst fate doesn’t. So do you deny it?
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