Free will is of utmost metaphysical and epistemological significance. If someone does not have free will, he or she cannot know anything, because all beliefs would be formed outside of his or her control and thus could never be verified. Of course, I can know that free will exists (in my case) if I can reason and have knowledge, since no free will means no ability to control any thoughts or choose beliefs and thus no belief of mine is certain. A being can only possess the ability to reason if it also possesses free will [1].
As I have pointed out so many times on my blog, I know some things with absolute certainty--my consciousness, the contents of my mind, that I have sensory perceptions while not asleep, that I have memories, that I can reason, that logic exists and is itself infallible, that truth exists, and so on--and thus I know that what follows from me not having free will is objectively untrue. It is not that consciousness, rationality, and at least knowledge of inviolable universal axioms (like "truth exists") simply seem to be true; there is no way that the axioms cannot be, and I am aware of their veracity. I know for sure that I have consciousness and that I am a rational being, since the fact that my constant experiences are intelligible at all proves that I grasp the three laws of logic and since I can and do reason actively. And a human's ability to reason is infallible to the extent it is aligned with reason (the laws of logic and what follows from things) itself. I realize that I have knowledge and then realize that free will follows from this, not the other way around.
That I have a will is almost as immediately obvious as my consciousness, if not as obvious. Since what follows from me not having free will is false, my conscious experiences of controlling some of my thoughts and bodily functions, like lifting an arm or curling my toes, are not illusions. My mind really is animating my body and enabling me to perform free actions with it. Also, it not only follows from a person not having free will that he or she cannot know anything at all, but it also follows from a person not having free will, since that person cannot reason, that he or she could not have any reason to believe that free will does not exist to begin with.
With that aside (I have already explained much of this before [2]), I will list and refute specific arguments against free will, ranging from ones based on biology to ones based on theology.
Biology: Materialism, material determinism
Mind, the seat of consciousness, is purely immaterial and is not the brain, as I have proven on other posts [3] (and just as consciousness and mind are immaterial, so is logic), and is what presides over the body (not all bodily functions occur or do not occur as willed--coughs, physical arousal of the genitals, and so forth). Without a conscious mind, having a will is impossible. The very existence of someone's will, even if it wasn't free, depends solely on the existence of his or her mind. Since determinism in the material world could only affect material things, the processes that govern the behavior of matter and nature would not negate freedom of the will because minds, without which wills cannot exist, are nonphysical.
Determinism in nature is like a set of dominoes; once a domino knocks down the next one the reaction continues, the dominoes unable to choose to stand or fall. But having a conscious mind places a being in a new position, one with agency and intentionality. The mind remains free. It is only because I have a mind that I perceive, think, or will at all. If there was no immaterial component to my nature, no consciousness and mind, then there would be no part of my nature that could choose (or perceive or know) anything, and "my" (there is no self apart from a mind) behaviors could be solely determined by external material forces.
Psychology: The subconscious, personality
The very notion of the subconscious mind is unsupported and unsupportable [4]. Still, the idea has been accepted in some circles that a subconscious portion of the mind, a mental caldron of hidden desires and motives, secretly dictates the conscious will of an individual. Even if the human mind had a subconscious component behind detectable mental activity, the fact that a person knows and is aware of anything at all necessitates free will. As I explained above, rationality and knowledge require free will, and the subconscious does not erase these things. The conscious mind is still what actually contemplates and makes decisions.
Personality does not erase free will. Individuals have their own unique mental characteristics and preferences that can drastically shape how they perceive the world. My own personality--consisting of my extroversion, passion, desires, motives, and other subjective mental characteristics--does influence what behaviors I may want to partake in, but this influence does not in any way negate my ability to choose my actions themselves.
Sociology: Social conditioning
Social conditioning does not nullify free will or mean it does not exist. To truly fight social conditioning, one must take a strictly rationalist approach and doubt and test everything, until only things that cannot be false are at the foundation of one's worldview and undiluted reason is utilized to discover what necessarily follows. But conditioning is not an unsurpassable hurdle to knowledge and in no way means that humans do not make free choices. Someone could fight and walk away from social conditioning; it does not follow from the mind being conditioned that it therefore cannot make its own choices using an uncoerced will guided only by itself. Conditioning might affect what people do and believe, not because peoples' actions are controlled by their society, but because they can allow their culture to influence the way that they decide to behave.
Theology: Divine determinism
Christians in particular err Biblically, in addition to the aforementioned offenses against logic, when they claim that God makes choices about human actions on behalf of humans, whether for their salvation or their moral lives. Deuteronomy 30:19, John 7:17, Joshua 24:15, and Genesis 2:16-17 are passages of the Bible that clearly teach or necessitate human free will. Even if the Bible did not explicitly affirm human free will, I know with absolute certainty, through the process described above, that I do possess free will whether or not Christianity is true.
Besides, the idea that God forces people to become saved apart form their own volitions is very unbiblical, for reasons I have discussed elsewhere [5]. This idea would mean that God is directly responsible for the fact that the unsaved have not chosen a restored relationship with him, meaning that God keeps them in a state of ontological rebellion against himself (Ephesians 2:1-5) and thus in a state of sin, that he punishes and will punish people for outcomes they could never reject--denying moral autonomy and responsibility as stated in verses like Deuteronomy 24:16, and that he does not want everyone to be saved despite Scripture testifying to the exact opposite (2 Peter 3:8-9, 1 Timothy 2:3-4). Only a Biblically erroneous theologian would ever teach such a thing!
Conclusion
Human epistemology and moral responsibility depend on whether or not humans have free will. This means that the issue of free will is of huge importance to philosophy and theology! Christians must address the topic accurately, rationally, and Biblically, especially in the face of a culture steeped in a scientism that often denies the existence of free will due to fallacies. Reality is on the side of those who affirm free will, whether or not the entirety of the Bible and Christianity is true!
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/reason-refutes-determinism.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/explaining-free-will.html
[3]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/10/consciousness-cannot-be-illusory.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-immateriality-of-consciousness.html
C. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/examining-meditations-part-6-mind-body.html
[4]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-subconscious.html
[5]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/foreknowledge-is-not-predestination.html
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