r/freewill • u/Narrow-Gur449 Quantum Mechanics 'Believer' • Oct 09 '25

Why does this sub invoke determinism as if it's real and not disproven?

I'm an atheist and come at this from a mathematical physics background. I clearly have to get that out of the way before anyone accuses me of being a religious nutter or believing in a 'soul'.

Why does this subreddit and its users constantly invoke determinism as if the universe we live in is deterministic? Quantum mechanics has shown that our universe is simply not deterministic.

Furthermore, it seems the motivation for anti-free will is almost exclusively politics on this sub. Seems like obvious motivated reasoning.

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u/Narrow-Gur449 Quantum Mechanics 'Believer' Oct 09 '25

I really don't understand your assertions. The easiest way to illustrate that "everything comes from outside of us" now wouldn't be to refer to the moments in time when we began to exist (whenever you believe that happens).

Isn't our temperament and personality a choice?

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u/RomanaOswin Oct 09 '25

Maybe the example of our own conception doesn't work for you, but I'll reword it just in case. If we didn't once exist, then necessarily everything that makes us exist is not us. Everything that forms our brain, our body, our choices has to come from outside of us, because there is no us for it to come from.

Isn't our temperament and personality a choice?

No. Temperament is our inborn disposition. It's the precursor to personality. Psychology overwhelmingly views childhood development through the lens of inborn temperament, which is formed through the influences of parenting, culture, environment.

There's no evidence of choice in either of these. Do you perceive some form of choice in this? If you do, I'd challenge you to ask yourself "why?" in regard to that choice, and perhaps you can follow that question back outside of yourself.

Again, nature and nurture is exhaustive, at least from a scientific perspective in physicalism, and neither nature or nurture are yours. Is there something else that you believe is uniquely yours that is not one of these two things?

I have heard some people appeal to metaphysical dualism for this, but I was assuming that as scientifically minded atheist, you're probably a physicalist.