Yes, like I said fate decides. I'm not saying we have control and I wrote responses but they're dead. I think they're still good responses and even if fate decided.
> Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept
How so? I assume the opposite when it comes to what's simpler. A person sees creation by God as cause & effect. The free will concept doesn't even make sense if thought about. Your actions are cause & effect from the summation of all events experienced.
I don't see how that would give me comfort in a society that is conditioned and even manipulated to think contrary. I see people in prison and even if they're innocent (in the traditional sense) of the crime. Your rhetoric is typically voiced from people assuming it's not good to understand reality and I typically think what nonsense. I guess similar to how some people preferred everyone assuming the world to be flat. Simply, assuming it's better to think contrary doesn't make reality not so.
Those three positions are substantive? How so.., I assume if you're that loose with the word.. the most widely shared definition of free will should be substantive to you. Even one could say free will rejects the idea that we are imprisoned by a physical nexus of 'cause & effect' and typically what people follow from reading the bible. Evil fairy tales that delude a person. Anyhow I wish I knew of cause & effect very young because then I wouldn't have been grossly taken advantaged of and I assume is the reason the majority of people are conditioned to stay deluded.