So I came across some articles about scientists claiming/proving that humans don’t have free will and free will is just an illusion.
Are these claims held by the majority of scientists or just a few odd people?
Even if it was proven that our mind doesnt use free will does that mean we don’t have free will? like our soul has the free will?
I’m really freaked out by this and the only thing keeping me from going nuts with this is my faith and trust in the church’s teaching on man having free will! I’m trying to take the word of Jesus and his church over the word of fallible scientists
Any comments for this? Am I overreacting?
Strictly speaking, from a physiological point of view, neuroscience is correct, in this way: Our nervous systems are composed of neurons which either “fire” or remain inactive. In this sense, our minds and feelings are a collection of discrete binary elements.
The proof that there is a finite number of states for a human is simple. We have a finite number of neurons. And, for that matter, there are a finite number of organisms. Each of these neurons can be enumerated in terms of their potential states. Therefore, there are a finite number of thoughts, actions, emotions that you can think, do or feel. HOWEVER, this number is very large. You have billions of cells. So enumerating the number of possibilities would result in a very large number, as we know from the variety of life that we experience.
So, yes. You don’t actually have free will, in the sense that your possibilities are unlimited. There are enumerable limits to what you may think, feel or do.
If you look at free will from another mathematical angle, any system with discrete “logic” gates (neurons), which are of finite number, and in a particular relationship to each other, can only move from one discrete state to another, when those neurons fire off. What that state will be can be defined by the current state of the system, and the (name removed by moderator)ut of stimulus to the system. This is known as determinism. So, in this very real sense, free will does not exist. But once again, the variety of potentials is so large with each person, and then that is multiplied by the number of people in the world exponentially, that it is a popular philosophical notion that free will exists. What exists, from the point of view of the neurosciences, is the illusion of the perception of free will because rationally, we can’t really grasp the number of possibilities. The human mind is clearly only capable to think in small numbers. This has been studied extensively. Our thoughts are very limited compared to what is around us, numerically… or in our ways to enumerate just about anything.
Even without the physiological understanding, this concept goes back a ways. The Deists, of course, understood that an omnipotent God could only be omniscient, if all events to come were predetermined. As soon as God exercises omnipotence and intervenes to change the future, then omniscience no longer applies. This is simple logic.
So, where does this leave a person of faith? Faith is the acceptance of things without requiring proof or logic.
My response to this conundrum is that, there are things which we don’t understand logically or through facts. This is the realm of the supernatural, where God is. Life has more value to me, when I am also a spiritual person. So, while I accept the apparent logic and facts of science, I also reserve the right to believe that there is more than meets the eye of the scientist going on. The rational mind of he Deist was a great thing. If not for that, America might not exist, for example. But their scope of thought was limited to just that… logic. I guess I am saying that in spite of our scientific progress, or perhaps because of it, I prefer to have some mystery and spirituality in my life. Perhaps this is the mystery of free will, which science cannot quantify.
And he did know the end! 
. I agree as a scientist, a biochemist.