The Determinism vs. Free-will thread

This thread is not merely to a debate about determinism, but more particularly a debate about the validity of determinism against the concept of free-will. Free-will limits itself to the question of choice, whereas determinism can include the inanimate happenings of a non-sentient universe as well; therefore, we should concentrate on the former.

I am under the impression that every philosophy forum should have innumerable threads dedicated to this issue--let this be the first one.

Determinisim, Fate... They all seem to say 'what is going to happen was always meant to happen'... But... This is a childish thought to dwell on because it is completely obvious... Unless frewill and choice leads to multiple outcomes across an infinite number of realities (i.e. other universes, blah blah blah), there will only be one outcome...

That singular outcome is naively claimed by fate but in actuallity driven by free will....

Fate and determinism have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Fatalism is a concept that implies all or some events are meant to happen because of some objective meaning inherent in them; determinism merely states that multiple causes engender multiple effects.

The one situation that puts all of these concepts to the test is decision-making. If a human can make a free choice, free-will is the only valid concept. Yet think about what goes into making a choice: consideration of options. Every decision that a person makes will either be random (which has nothing to do with will) or based upon the present state of the universe in accordance with the power of the decision-maker for consideration and his effort allotted to the process (which itself is caused--by the importance of the decision or the brain state of the decision-maker). Decision-making is thus a simple dichotomy of caused and uncaused choices, the former of which are necessitated by the immediately preceding state of the universe and the latter random. Free-will attempts to be caused and uncaused at once, partaking in the consideration of options yet ultimately claiming that consideration itself is a function of free-will. If you analyze your own consideration you will find that it is a habitual process of being influenced by the external universe and the internal machine. Free-will is nowhere to be found; we don't know what we're even looking for.