We argue about free will - in rhyming couplets

So I affirm, as real events
Or even as mere accidents
All human lives are ruled by forces
Laws and antecedent causes

Like we can know any of this stuff
It happened bloody long ago enough
No other species are concerned with this
Such is the weight of humanity's hubris

I beg to differ, Almy friend
For this is simply nature's end
That we may speculate and so
Derive conclusions as we go

If hubris, then that too is willed
And not by us but by the build
Of nature's vasty incubus
And not by a homunculus

Inside us, watching all the light
And sounds and fighting for its right
To exercise its point of view
No will for me -no will for you!

No will - no hubris! For we can't
be built up into what we aren't
This 'hubris' isn't choice per se
But ignorance, obscuring the way

Consider a while the instant of choice
The to-ing and fro-ing of internal voice
till a decision is made, and the moment is gone
free will is a tangible phenomenon

What's more important, I submit,
For us, and each act we commit,
Is not the force that might incite it
But how we live our lives, despite it

If atoms have laws like Newton maintains
and matter alone constructs our brains,
our actions lack value, for better or worse -
But how can some atoms construct a verse? (even a bad one)

Matter alone cannot be afraid
cannot ponder just how it was made
nor ponder about the beginning of time
atoms cannot appreciate rhyme

behind the view we call free will
Is possibly a wish to kill
The world around us - do we feel
That it is stamped with the Devil's seal?

Is this what our inner voice
Which tells us that we have a choice
Whispering in our inner ear
Forestalling a real but deeper fear?

A voice it is, inside our heads
But disembodied; in our beds
We dream and see and speak to others
Some are foes and some are brothers

A thousand voices in our minds!
And are they ours, or yours, or mine
Or his or hers, which one is me?
Is this one spectral - that one free?

And also: what makes inner speech?
The neurophysiologist will teach
Us that causality will prevail
As only at the end curtailed

Is overt speech, when thinking; so
It seems that it is speech turned low
So that it remains a thought
As utterance, it is cut short

And what produces such a sign
Upon the screen of inner mind?
Experience, biology
And nothing left that could be free...

even if causality is disproven
it remains a useful illusion
so i will not become indignant
i'm functionally indifferent

Determinism is self defeating:
Ideas the scientists keep on repeating
Why should we trust the theories they say
They were destined to say them anyway

Because the future can be foretold
Free Will looks narcissistic and old

if God indeed had a plan, divine
then Judas should not be reviled for all time
merely acting as fore-ordained
to betray, though his conscience was strained
that he later hanged himself in a tree
is a conundrum of theological glee.

where Calvin saw predestiny
free will became travesty;
for even if choices are constrained
they are not choices if preordained
and to follow the logic to the end
we have no free will, my friend.

Now in a world as Voltaire described
where God was a myth or a scribe
the foundation of will makes a shift
predestiny moot, creates a rift
for the possibility
of free will in humanity

But we know that men's minds are not free
from culture and neurology,
and where God is re-defined
in terms of customs and mind
it is clear no progress has been made
Rather still we sit puzzled in the shade;

If the forces within determine my grin
Then Free Will has taken a spin.

Would it be terrible out of place
To discuss this in the context of time and space?
For scientists have been known to intuit
That both are merely a crystal in a larger fluid.

in anything, like fluid contained
lie the seeds of the pre-ordained.
the container provides the limit
how can free will function in it?

One afternoon, when all alone
I whittled though right through the bone
The kernel that I thought was there
Was but a wheel, containing air

And suddenly it seemed to me
My teeming thoughts were far from me
They coalesced, and fell apart
According to another's art

Gathering like birds in flight
In fear, or boredom, or delight
Out of one, another grew
And guiding this, I knew not who

I watched amazed as if a disguise
Named 'me' was passing by my eyes
And all the while, me wondering
Who was doing the pondering?

I could not see him, how could I
The cognizer identify?
For he was always watching me
And never could the object be

And here it is, behind us all
The one who watches one and all
Our personalities, it seems
Are nothing but the watcher's dreams

Mere marionettes are you and I
Strung up on stars from low and high
But suddenly we are awake
And unaware, begin to quake

Fearing death, or life, or sin
The strangeness of the world we're in
The strangeness that is us, in truth
Beyond volition or reproof

The conversation now seems to be
Of determinism's effects on morality.

That's true, for if one has no choice
Morality can have no voice
Or not the voice we thought it had:
'I will do good', 'I will do bad'

imagine a deterministic universe
and ask if i could know what you were about to do, but first
if pushed to predict your choice of midday meal
(say, chicken mayo or gherkins and veal)
my conclusion must remain with me
only then would you not be so contrary
as to pick just the opposite of my word
and all this is disregarding heisenberg

You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice

Gansgta Youth, your rhyming's wonky
AABB, ya silly donkey

Now, measuring will interfere
With what is measured, that is clear
At subatomic levels, so
So you cannot know all there's to know

Such is Heisenberg's assertion.
(I'll take the veal, but hold the gherkin)
If there's a choice point, I can't see it
It just happens, and so be it

now of course quantum effects will cancel out each other
at the daily macro level where we choose one thing or another
and mental operations are even more holistic
so it's unlikely free will is merely quanta-probabilistic

All we use is the speed of light
from looking at the stars at night,
and decay of U238 and 5
to find when we were first alive.
Also sometimes scientists date
by measuring salt into water rate.

If god is a variable in the equation
predestination is the persuasion
but if we choose organic debate
man alone is the master of his fate

"Measuring will interfere" -- yes,
that of course impedes the clearness
("clearness"??... hang on... clarity)
of our view of what may be --

But what we may or may not see
is not the test for reality --
The imperfections in our prism
don't nullify Determinism.

The problem with determinist thought
is, well, what then? That's all you've got?
What should I do with this new knowledge?
Loot? Rape? Drop out of college?
Determinism paralyzes.
Even if "free will" is clearly lies, it's
at least an excuse to get out of bed.
Otherwise we lie and wait in dread
for fate to rear its ugly head
and roger us until we're dead.

Well that has surely happened to me
And more besides, so I agree:
Ups and downs and lefts and rights
Moments of ignorance, moments of insight

But the way I see it, Casuistry
Is that, if one has no will free
One never wonders what do do
One waits to see what'll happen to you

Or when one will go today, and how
Without expectations, living here and now
Strange and interesting things unfold
One's body moves, without being told

And hence there is a sense of magic
Even when one's life is tragic
And tragedy is ours, let's face it
Till time and causality erase it

If I lift the lid, the cat dies.
In this conundrum the answer lies.
If human perception is our limit,
then there can be no Free Will in it.
Because it has all been ordained
by synapses in the brain;
and where we think we have a choice
we really have no voice.
Doomed to choose only among things we know.
Reflecting how we were reared, the culture and society show
that culture and neurology intertwine
to produce gray matter in search of Mind

But it's all a construction,
of logical deduction

So here is where the Mystic must enter,
Stand and become the center.
At the altar of experience internal
Free Will becomes tiny, flowing, infernal.

Inside the stuff of mind and thought
the Mystic switches "should" for aught
Free Will beomes just one part
of the paradox upon the human heart.
Neither remarkable nor ordinary,
yet worth conversation over sherry.

Man was made perfect by God
and its a little bit odd
that perfection does include
the ability to choose

Surly chaos has the answer,
For physics and life are not fancier
Than a set of deterministic rules
That people teach in basic schools.

Deterministic-chaos as its known
allows free-will all on its own.

Although the system seems quite random
a deeper plan works in tandem.
The ins and outs are constrained
wherein our free will is contained.

Condemned to freedom, Sartre said
But what would he know? Dude is dead.
Freedom's derivation, I don't wanna screw with it --
I'm more concerned with what we do with it.

Mole: am I right to say that in your last retort
you suggest life is just a spectator sport?

I think it goes on automatic
And will is non-existent or static
Not us, but the universe, is the spectator
A sort of cosmic masturbator

(I'm being just a little flip
I hope I'm not souring anyone's trip)

But to come back to chaos, jc
Though it makes the cosmos crazy
Deep and complex, hard to manage
Like a woman of a large club sandwich

And above all, hard to predict
No free will is implied, or tricked
Into existence by this field
For complexity no chance will yield

And even if it did, what solace
Would that bring to us, man or mollusc?
For random actions are not free
We cannot choose what happens randomly

of = or (in the second stanza)
I must review my posts when I can, sir)

But that set of reactions in our brains
that make these choices for us: It's plain
that they are that which we call "us",
we are our body's chemistry, and thus
"we" make, for our own reasons, our decisions:
"Free will" lives within such definitions.

but those same chemicals inside our bodies, our heads
started life with the same bang that began the thread

Yeah uh-huh sure I guess but
I mean for reals now: So what?

well if there's no authentic choice to be had
and you ain't a veal fan, too bad

If this discussions is idle chatter
That would appear to settle the matter
For as Cas says, if it there is
No purpose, then the last point's his

(Or is it hers? I apologise
If I've Cas's sex falsely surmised)

No point to any action, nor
A point to the reasoning before
We may as well just let it rest
Or as the Krauts say,
Machen es fest

Then again, there'd be no point to that
So - why not continue this idle chat?
But then - talk of point is pointless too!
So - what to do? What not to do?

No need to wonder, things will happen
Some will leave, some keep on crappin'
I am in the latter camp
It's my nature to yatta until my jaws cramp