Home______John Horgan, Scientific American writer, on Daniel Wegner & free will

"When I woke this morning, I stared at the ceiling above my bed and wondered: to what extent will my rising really be an exercise of my free will? Let's say I got up right . . . now. Would my subjective decision be the cause?

Home______Losing Control

Control is the central issue in all religions. Loss of control delivers the adherent into God's grace, the bliss of nirvana, or satori. Thy will be done, whatever phrase it takes, is common to them.

Religious doctrines hold that the individual cannot choose this deliverance, but must depend on God's grace, or the happenstance of enlightenment. Man can do nothing to achieve it. Christianity, and the two main Eastern religions help an illustration.

Home_____ Albert Einstein on free will & Ramana Maharshi on freedom & destiny

"If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will." Albert Einstein

Scientists in general accept that the universe is a closed system, deterministic and explainable by physical processes involving cause and effect. Yet we all experience the feeling that we can choose between option A and option B.