"Free will?" WTF?

[nullnaught]

Freewill and causation and predestination and all of these things have been a matter of some minor debate for, oh at least 10 thousand years.... A short time

There is no easy answer, thus philosophical students still debate this in class, Clergy stand on pulpits and 'debate' it to the the laity.

On one hand we have to accept that no man is an island - this means that no one is outside of everything else. We react as much as we act. If I hit your shin with my cane (accidentally I swear ) your reaction will be to grab the tender spot, say ow. This is predicable behavior given an outside stimulus.

We humans are also blinded to possibilities, we can not see all possible outcomes of any given situation, thus we act on a thing is more of reaction, reaction based on what we do know and what previous experience has programmed us to do.

This sort of reactive behavior is linked to cause and effect.

To a point we are animals capable of reasoning. Thus when I smacked your shin with my cane you could react by not reacting, ignoring the pain, or you could react by taking my cane from me and beating my shin in kind. Here is where the 'free will' thing comes into play. You can break your own programing, choose to react or not react or react in a way that is unexpected such as beating an old crippled elf with his own cane

Free will is not an absolute, nor is predestination. We have wiggle room, working within a cause and effect frame work with the ability to use our own will to change the outcome based on our behaviors.

We have the ability to become more than our basic programing.

As applied to humanity, we are the first species (perhaps the only ones ever on earth) that have the ability to change our course down the path of history by exercising our ability to choose.

As to the first line; yes there is an easy answer: We are biological robots. Clergy and pholosphers wont accept that answer because the have a vested interest in not accepting that answer. But they have no response to the answer either. The clergy resort to ghostes, and philosophers ignore it or at their best they sometime invoke the uncertainty principle as if injecting randomness creates free will.
in the shin hitting episode I don't see how free will comes into play. The "choice" you make is dictated by subconscious impulses you are not even aware of. You react either way, but you have just one reaction, and you couldn't have chosen an other action, because your subconscious won't allow an other choice. And your subconscious is caused as well by your genes and experiences. You can't escape cause and effect.
Where does this wiggle room come from?:confused: Demonstrate its existence either in a thought experiment or some other way I can understand. The wiggle room is precisely what I deny exists. Show it.
We have the ability to become more than our programing? aren't you just restateing your premise? It isn't true just because you insist it is true, is it?:confused: