Regardless of if it’s practical to live that way in daily life, the world seems pretty determined. Everything happens because a vast amount of interactions between infinite factors causes it to. You can’t really say you choose between things as many influences have been taken in by you and many things have affected your psychological state. Has everything been practically decided by the big bang? Now, this is not to say we can know everything or predict the future, but we know what’s likely. Socialism or extinction may be inevitable, but we don’t know yet. Socialism can only happen if people keep fighting, regardless. People will be convinced or principled or not. Science seems to agree with this, and only few, like the wrong Sartre would propose we have ultimate free will. So are there any arguments against determinism? I know there is a saying that you’re freer when you recognize how your freedom is restricted, and that recognition may make your actions better, but isn’t there ultimately no freedom?
Btw, I made this post partially because a while ago I wanted to look into Deism. Deists claim they are convinced of god by rational argument. What “rational arguments” did I find? “There’s no way evolution is real” and “where else does our free will come from” was all I found. Stupid.
Rationality and reason are overrated, I think. They have their place but not on their own. People like Richard Dawkins iirc make appeals to rationality and reason and their work can still be riddled with problems. It seems that everyone since the enlightenment calls themselves rational. It’s a la mode. They seem to sometimes mean that there’s a rationale. But there’s one of those for everything if you think about it hard enough.
Anything can be “rationally proven” given certain premises/assumptions. Our premises are closer to reality than the idealists.
Edit: Didn’t Descartes “prove” god exists by asking how the idea could exist in so many people’s head’s without it being so? Also, where do souls come from then?