Do We Have Free Will? Is Free Will An Illusion?

All but one of the 'Four Horsemen of Atheism' deny the existence of free will. Dan Dennett is the sole exception. Even the most acclaimed scientist Stephen Hawking considered free will as an illusion.

So, atheists have no choice but to deny free will!

An atheist is a materialist. If all there is is nothing more than matter and energy, then strictly, the concept of free will should be negated. If every event is connected to a past (antecedent) event, then any decision cannot be 'freely' decided. The materialistic perspective holds every thought captive to things external – the forces of nature.

Discussing the topic of free will necessitates a brief understanding of free will and its competitors - determinism and compatibilism, at the very least. The definitions found below are from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Compatibilism.1

Free Will: "...free will can be defined as the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their conduct in the manner necessary for moral responsibility."

Determinism: "A common characterization of determinism states that every event (except the first, if there is one) is causally necessitated by antecedent events.[4] Within this essay, we shall define determinism as the metaphysical thesis that the facts of the past, in conjunction with the laws of nature, entail every truth about the future. According to this characterization, if determinism is true, then, given the actual past, and holding fixed the laws of nature, only one future is possible at any moment in time."

Compatibilism: "Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism."

Since these definitions include the term moral responsibility, here's a brief understanding of moral responsibility:

Moral Responsibility: "A person who is a morally responsible agent is not merely a person who is able to do moral right or wrong. Beyond this, she is accountable for her morally significant conduct. Hence, she is, when fitting, an apt target of moral praise or blame, as well as reward or punishment. And typically, free will is understood as a necessary condition of moral responsibility since it would seem unreasonable to say of a person that she deserves blame and punishment for her conduct if it turned out that she was not at any point in time in control of it." One method to ascertain the reality of free will is to think if its archrival, determinism, is real or not. If we are not determined, then the other possibility is that we are free rational beings.

Is Determinism For Real?

William Lane Craig assaults determinism by terming it as an unlivable view, "A determinist cannot live consistently as though everything he thinks and does is causally determined—especially his choice to believe that determinism is true! Thinking that you're determined to believe that everything you believe is determined produces a kind of vertigo. Nobody can live as though all that he thinks and does is determined by causes outside himself. Even determinists recognize that we have to act "as if" we had free will and so weigh our options and decide on what course of action to take, even though at the end of the day we are determined to take the choices we do. Determinism is thus an unliveable view... insofar as naturalism implies that all our thoughts and actions are determined by natural causes outside ourselves, free will is an illusion. But we cannot escape this illusion and so must go on making choices as though we had free will, even though we don't. Naturalism is thus an unliveable worldview." (Emphasis Mine).2 An article entitled Determinism's Self-Destruct Button by Christian apologist Tim Stratton exposes determinism as a self-defeating worldview:3