title: Free Will Explained: How Science and Philosophy Converge to Create a Beautiful Illusion
author:  Dan Barker 
description: Do we have free will? And if we don't, why do we feel as if we do? In a godless universe governed by impersonal laws of cause and effect, are you responsible for your actions? Former evangelical minister Dan Barker (God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction) unveils a novel solution to the question that has baffled scientists and philosophers for millennia. He outlines the concept of what he calls "harmonic free will," a two-dimensional perspective that pivots the paradox on its axis to show that there is no single answer--both sides are right. Free will is a useful illusion: not a scientific, but a social truth.
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  “Free will is an illusion so convincing that people simply refuse to believe
  that we don’t have it. In
  
  
  Free Will, Sam Harris combines neuroscience and psychology to lay this
  illusion to rest at last. Like all of Harris’s books, this one will not only
  unsettle you but make you think deeply. Read it: you have no choice.”
  
  
  > —JERRY A. COYNE, Professor of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago,
  > and author of Why Evolution Is True
  
  
  
  
  
  A BELIEF IN FREE WILL
  
  
  touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think
  about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships,
  morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first
  imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and
  actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.
  
  
  In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human
  mind does not undermine morality or diminish t