Anything and everything!
Let’s start with the one and only Eckhart Tolle
There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance
A planet of playthings, we dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive
The stars aren’t aligned or the Gods are malign, blame is better to give than receive
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear, I will choose Freewill
There are those who think that they were dealt a losing hand
The cards were stacked against them they weren’t born in Lotus Land
All preordained, a prisoner in chains, a victim of venomous fate
Kicked in the face, you can pray for a place, in heaven’s unearthly estate
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear, I will choose Freewill
Each of us, a cell of awareness, imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends with uncertain ends on a fortune hunt that’s far too fleet
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear, I will choose Freewill
-Neil Peart
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For those of us who believe in God, we are given the gift of life and the freedom to choose. This is free will. By definition, a gift is something given with no strings attached, so this does not mean “choose what you like except not this or that.” It means “choose what you like, period.” God (in pretty much any religion that one can name) is a loving God. Well, to love is simply to empower. To love is to say yes. So we say, “we choose this,” and God says “Yes,” - always “Yes.” This explains wars and famine etc. He gives us these awful things because he promised us free will, we chose them and he does not reneg on a promise. Those who say “well I don’t know why this happened but God has a plan for me,” do not understand the concepts of gifts and free will. This is basically a cop out to absolve oneself from the responsibility of one’s choices. God has no plan. If he had a plan, he would not give us free will. He would just make us do things and our existence would be pointless. God can do better than that.
For those of us who do not believe in God, well then we all do whatever the heck we feel like while on this planet. Sounds like free will to me.
So yes, God or not, we have free will, absolutely, at least in the sense that we understand free will to be.