Quote by Carl Sagan

Both I and Penny were majorly vexed (a good thing, according to Dr. G) last week when we were part of a debate between free-willers (as opposed to Free Willy-ers) and predeterminationists -- do humans have free will to make choices, or is the future predetermined and free will and freedom of choice is nothing more than an illusion. Both I and Penny were on the side of the free-willers, and we lost the debate with the predeterminationists for the latter fell back on the argument ad nauseum that everything was predetermined -- no proof or logic needed.

At the friends of the library booksale I picked up The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Flipping through it I came to the chapter 'The Dragon in my Garage' and preceded to scan the first page of the chapter:

"Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so." (Emphasis mine.)

We free-willers could not invalidate the hypothesis of the predeterminationist:

1. Everything is predetermined, and;
2. Free will and choice are illusions.
   

But that doesn't make the hypothesis of the predeterminationists any more true than the hypothesis that we have free will. Both of these claims cannot be tested, for we cannot take ourselves outside of our three-dimensional universe where space and time are related in order to see "time" as a separate dimension of its own. We experience the passage of time as a linear succession of 'nows' with a fixed history (though memory is malleable) and an unknown future that may or may not be predetermined.

Both assertions are also immune to both disproof and proof. There is no way of proving that the future is predetermined: if the future is predetermined then there is no such thing as free will and choice -- both are an illusion, for our choices are all predetermined. Likewise, I cannot prove or disprove the assertion of free will and choice. I might say I have free will, but again this might be an illusion.

The Many Worlds theory postulates that for any decision that a person makes, all possible outcomes of that decision are also realized -- basically Schrodinger's theory that the cat is both dead and alive simultaneously spawns two universes: one where the cat is dead, one where the cat is alive, and it isn't until the box is open that one universe is actualized -- the one where the cat is dead or alive -- but the alternate universe is also just as real. In theory we are all surrounded by an infinite number of universes where all our potential choices are in existence -- we just can't get to them.

Perhaps this Many Worlds theory also expands to the future: there is an infinite number of potential futures spawned from all of our possible choices; when we make a choice we bring a specific future into being. This would take into account both free will and predetermination: you are free to make a choice about the future and all possible futures have already been determined. You made choice A, parallel-you made choice B - both predetermined futures are made real within their respective universes.