Originally Posted by
Xei
Everything in the universe is the product of the universe's laws, yes. What is your point?
It's actually quite hard to distinguish what is classed as a chemical reaction and what is classed as life, especially in primitive life forms (this is because there is actually no physical distinction between the two; life is a battle of chemical reactions), so in a sense you can extend the theory of evolution.
Actually you can't predict the exact future of the universe, even if you know everything about it. This is a result of quantum theory; the universe is inherently random. If you want you could, I suppose, look to this as a source of 'free will'.
On the scale of our brains though, quantum theory has little importance. So yes, every decision we make, we were always going to make.
I don't think it is correct to say that this means we have no 'free will' or 'choice' though. That would be to deny our most innate experience. The view I take is I suppose a version of soft determinism: yes, we were always going make a choice. But we still make the choice. It was us, our mental processes, that led to that choice being made. So by any standards we do indeed choose. This I suppose is equal to saying that free will exists.