It can be a scary question, when you think about it for longer than you should. What do we have? What choices can we make? Many people believe in free will, but I pose a short thought experiment to test that:
As a human being on this planet, the first apparent choice you could have had, but didn't have, is 'Do I want to exist?' The answer being clear and straightforward. We had no apparent choice in the matter. No free will there. How about where or when you were born? I suspect we are all in agreement right now. How about your bodily functions? Can you control when your heart beats, or when your stomach breaks down your food, when you need to relieve yourself. Sure, some of these you can resist, such as your breath. Let's try and resist that function. Hold your breath. Use the free will. Observe how long you have with that free will. So now it seems that our apparent free will is here. At least only for a finite time.
Lets move out a bit further. The things that you like;
It seems logical that everything that you like and dislike should be out of free will, and your own choice. But it isn't. The music you love, the foods that you enjoy, all were formed and shaped over the course of your life, using the first aspects: Where and when you were born, and also what your parents or guardians brought you up on, using their own likes, which were shaped onto them before. Or how about loving someone. Do you choose who you love? Why you love them? Lets start another experiment. Try to stop loving someone, try to dislike a food, or to find the horrible jazz you've never found appealing, appealing. There is no free will here.
At the moment we have moved out from the most basic functions we have as a human, expanding our idea of what we really have. Starting with simply having a consciousness, to our subconscious functions, and then to our likes and dislikes. Now is where our true apparent free will comes into play.
Movement. Sure, you can choose to move your hand up, or walk down the road, open an umbrella etc. However, can your free willed movement be restricted and halted? You cannot walk anywhere you want to after all. You cannot move your body in every way that you might will it.
There is one aspect of free will, which is truly free, and has no restrictions whatsoever. This is your mind. Your thoughts, and ideas, are yours to freely create and destroy in all of your will. No one or no thing can tell you what to think and why to think it. However, people can be manipulative, and some minds are easily led. Which leads to individuals and sometimes the masses into being controlled, forgetting that they have the free will of the individual mind.
The pressure of a society in which some topics are allowed, some are taboo, persuades the minds of a lot of people to be easily skewed, with the fear of ostracism or theoretical and sometimes literal castration.
The mind of a man, or woman, is untouchable. Not even by the gods. Or is it? Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes, even the mind.
Let's suppose you could go back in time and fix that mistake that has been bugging you all day.
There is this illusion we have that if you arrange the universe exactly as it was a few moments ago, things could have played out differently. The only way they could have played out differently is if there was an element of randomness added to that. However, randomness isn't what people feel would give them free will.
This idea that randomness is entwined with free will is a complex and paradoxical thought. To me, it undermines the very idea of free will because it implies that our actions are ultimately determined by chance, rather than by our own choices or desires.
What is this relevant?
The concept of free will is extremely relevant, because it acknowledges that everyone has different beliefs and that these beliefs are part of our "free will" that is shaped by external factors such as upbringing, environment, and culture. Therefore, Omnism values free will of the mind and the right to individual beliefs while encouraging respect and acceptance of all religions.
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