Determinism vs free will in Science and Religion both claim legitimacy by explaining the cause of the cause (of the cause ...) Both of which seems to lead to doom at the end of the tunnel. I think that's pre existing insecurity. Our amygdala(s) survival instincts require some kind of stimulation and a threat works as well as social acceptance or sex.
We not only dream of optimum scenarios, we also imagine negative ones. Just surf popular media. Somebody is scamming the group you along to and it never ends well (they're despicable, and they'll get away with it unless you send $5).
Bring this attitude (mortality + Hormones) to the cause of the cause (when nobody really knows what it is) and of course that light will be an oncoming train.
Determinism is built around inescapable influences. Like someday you'll die & have to account for your lack of compassion for starving innocents, and butterflies flapping their wings in China can(will) cause catastrophes somewhere else years later. Science mostly admits there's not much to be done about it *.
OK what to do? Here's the work around: determinism is incompatible with randomness (yay!). A determinist would say there's no such thing as true randomness, only approximations. A Freewill-ist would say that Determinism can't be proved because though it's true that physical processes can be traced down to the atomic level, and therefore follow a predictable trajectory back to whatever they manifest, the inherent randomness of the universe prevents duplication under any but original conditions which change immediately and continually, so it's always going to be a one-off event. And while it sounds nice, If the universe COULD be run in reverse, everything would go back the way it started at the Big Bang, except it won't. The randomness is provided by natural atomic decay of elements and particles. Each element has a number of isotopes that loose ions at a statistically predictable (but individually inconsistent) rate called the Half Life, which is how long it takes for them to become non-radioactive and or transmute into a lighter isotope. Half lives last from a few milliseconds to millions of years depending on the element. Most of those newly freed ions get gobbled up by other nuclei to make other kinds of atoms. This is happening constantly everywhere, especially in plasmas inside stars.
OK, given there are 10 to the quadrillion-quadrillion-etc. atoms in the universe and 118+ elements, each with a half-life that looses ions which interact with the half-life of every other atom, produces randomness that would make Schrödinger swoon (but his cat would still have PTSD). It might also allay any existentialistic fears some people might have of Astrology: that our every action is fore-spoken thus we're nothing but puppets designed to suffer.
Fine: so none of it can be proven either way ergo ignorance is still bliss.
and that's why we love cats.
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*except for the cryogenic-reincarnation people which is more like blind faith and belongs among religions. Religions though claim ETERNAL salvation! If you can (only) believe it. Pretty clean scam w/ no accountability & it's all on you. Thank God trump didn't go down that road instead of Real estate.
