Most don’t doubt that humans have free will. So much is premised on having personal autonomy and choosing the path life takes. But when you think about it, it’s almost certainly not true or only true in the very smallest sense.

So much of what you do, particularly the really big things, you have so little choice. You don’t choose who you will be at birth, what you will be born as - human being or otherwise. Will you be born into a healthy body or a diseased one? Will you be mentally handicapped? You don’t choose who your parents are, or the kind of community you will emerge in, which town, city or country, which point in history. None of these do you choose.

Then when life starts, control doesn’t get much better. You spend much time being subject to bodily function. No choice here but die. You must eat and sleep. You will feel pain. If someone punches you in the face it will hurt. Little choice there but be anaesthetised at the right moment.

So much experience will appear random. Whether it is or not, whether it is determined by some greater force you will never know for sure. Either way you won’t choose it. It will be served up. Take it or leave it if you can and you probably can’t.

They say you choose your friends but they come and go. You don’t choose their coming and invariably you don’t choose their going either. They say you choose your life partner but once biological, psychological, emotional, social and economic factors have taken toll what left of free will there?

And so on and so on. Whatever examples you think of can virtually all be explained away by some kind of determinism. The more determinism the less choice, the less free will. If there is any free will it is probably in the smallest degree. If there is little free will or none at all we’re in a whole different kind of premise for human beings. The consequence of such a realistic possibility taken to be true are great.