>In the Jewish and Christian traditions, free will has been foundational This is not correct in the case of Christianity, I can't comment on Judaism because I'

>In the Jewish and Christian traditions, free will has been foundational This is not correct in the case of Christianity, I can't comment on Judaism because I'm not familiar enough with it. In the Catholic tradition the importance and nature of free will varies a lot depending on the period, in Protestantism there's a significant emphasis on predestination. Starting with debates between Erasmus and Luther, but most strongly in Calvinism where ultimately fate is responsible for salvation alone. >It’s not easy to accept that someone else may have chosen to hurt you, and even harder to accept the fact that you have chosen to hurt someone else. It’s easier to claim that we had no choice. I think generally the opposite is the case. It's psychologically easier to accept that we're responsible for our actions because that imbues them with meaning. Hurt that is either inevitable or random is significantly harder to swallow because it renders us insignificant. A good example is probably the intentionality people ascribe to disease: "My cancer is punishing me and is the consequence of my actions", rather than accepting that your cells just went randomly haywire. It's easier to accept responsibility than to acknowledge you're powerless. Religion and psychology aside from a secular or scientific point of view free will is a very instrumental concept. It's very clear from the way the author talks about it, suggesting we end up with pre-crime divisions and top-down societies that he's simply afraid of the consequences in case our attachment to free-will vanishes. That in itself though is not evidence for the existence or usefulness of free-will as a concept, it's just motivated reasoning.