"Free will?" WTF?

[nullnaught]

When you put it like that, it sounds like you're saying we're ultimately not in control of any decision we make. Every decision is already predetermined by our genetics, environment, experience.

Basically that sounds like a big excuse to me that one could use to explain why they did something they ought not do, or for behaving a certain way. "I can't help it, it's just a part of me"

And to that, I say bullshit. I would never deny that we all get some pretty damn strong impulses to do whatever, but they are not unbeatable and they have a multitude of different ways we can react to them.

Part of your arguement is that there's subconscious factors going in to play that we're not even aware of. Maybe so, but how exactly are we supposed to gauge how big a factor these subconscious weights actually play? You can't. It may range from completely swaying our decision one way, to still not being enough to change our minds.

Course, this is me talking about shit I don't really know for sure. Just guess-work, saying stuff that makes sense to me. And I think that for most people, free-will is just an idea and that it's generally a lot easier to go with the flow of life around you. But I still maintain that we do always have a choice and some people will make unusual choices, despite their consequences (good or bad).

I have a two part response to this. As far as the being responsible for our actions part goes; well if I wanted to say for example "I'm sorry I tried to shoot the elf; I'm not responsible however because there is no such thing as free will." The police would say back to me "We're sorry we're putting you in jail, but we don't have free will." It doesn't really matter directly wether we have free will or not as far as the practacle side of things go. It isn't a useful arguement to dodge punishment. Nobody would be satisfied by that arguement, and not surprisingly.
As to the part about having a sub-conscience wich is affecting us, I used that as a specific example of what goes into our decisions. We don't decide things from anything but our genes and our experience. In other words, if you are not useing your genes and your experience only to make your decisions what else have you? Decisions are determined by the laws of cause and effect. That is inescapable. And even if you said a decision was made wich was even in part not caused, you are just saying it is random, aren't you? And randomness does not imply will; it implies a lack of will.
What do you think?