Am I the only one who receives a strange calming and satisfaction from knowing that I have no free will. It would mean I really did not do anything wrong, there was no other way. Isn't that a lot better than having free will?

thanks, that was really informative.

He is a divine atheist ,I adore him.

Thank a lot for covering this. I think the thing that obscures what's happening the most, is the fact that we never know the consequences of each possible action we can take, with certainty. So, of course we want to do the thing that will most benefit us. But is that option A, B, or C? We actually don't know for sure beforehand. With something like water, it has a very predictable nature about it, it's always going to flow in the path of least resistance (usually downward). Water would never "decide" to do something unpredictable that surprised everyone. Every one of water's "actions" is completely predictable and some smart guy out there could come up with some formulas that could predict 100% how it will act if you dump a cup of water on your desk, down to each last drop and where it rolls to. But what if water came across a situation where for some reason it didn't "know" which path ultimately had the least resistance and had to make a decision by looking around to see what made the most sense to it - seeing where the other water droplets were going, looking ahead for any downhills approaching. I think water would suddenly appear more humanlike. It's our having to do things without knowing for sure the best outcome, that adds this extra bit of magic/unpredictability. Because if we could see all the cards out in the open that everyone was holding, our moves would be predictable every single time.

No free will = No accountability

Free will and will power are related. Without effert we go nowhere. We can't just sit back and it all unfolds for us. We make our future.

THIS GUY SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE JACK BARKER FROM SILICON VALLEY!!!

This is just one type of hard determinist. There's the ones who say the particles following physical laws control every action, there's the bunch that say that your unconscious mind makes all the choices and you just feel like you did and the worst are the ones who seem to accept everything about free will, intention, desires, knowledge and all the rest, but then just assert that you couldn't have done differently. Sometimes it seems like determinism is a quasi-religious belief that is immune to refutation.

What if this means people can be forgiven for their crimes?

This view takes away the possibility of morality as one must have the choice to do something they ought to do or ought not to do. Do determinist even conceive that morality is viable?