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Okay. I have to interject here. Praxus and Bulgaroctonus are talking about nearly the same thing but can't agree on the meaning of morality and free will. I've thought about these issues before, and here's how I resolve them.
First, I agree with Bulgaroctonus that the universe is inherently amoral. And if human nature is simply a deterministic expression of the universe, then how can human behavior be labeled moral or immoral. The answer is simple. Morality is defined by humans, and is developed by consensus. People have different views on exactly what is moral and immoral, but almost everyone would agree that killing under most circumstances is immoral. So we see that morality is relative to the society that devolops it. This is a sort of limited moral relativity. For instance, a man who believes that stealing is not wrong is still committing a moral offense by stealing a purse, because the society which he is a part of believes stealing is wrong.
Finally, if we look at the development of morality along with society, we see certain trends are present in almost all societies. For instance nearly all civilizations deemed killing and stealing to be wrong. Why is that? Christians might point to that and say it is evidence of absolute morality. But how could this absolute morality exist independent of the physical world and affect it? It is more likely that morality stems from what is good and necessary for the development and survival of mankind. Therefore, morality is a social concept that has evolved to help increase the fitness of certain societies.
Hope that wasn't too boring... on to freewill...
If humans are composed of deterministic interactions between matter and energy, how can free will exist? The answer is that our *perception* of freewill is sufficient. What we perceive as free will is the ability to integrate lots of different sources of information, develop choices, and act on them. It doesn't matter if those choices are only because of different neurons in our brain firing at the same time. But then, bulgaroctonus can say, how can you blame a criminal for making the decisions that he did, given that he is composed of amoral matter just like the rest of us? The answer is that the criminal didn't give priority to the morality of the society that he lives in. Ok, but if that is just a deterministic process, how can we blame him? The point is that we are not laying down blame by imprisoning him. We are punishing him for a moral transgression. If we didn't do so, than other individuals would not consider obeying in a moral fashion a high priority, and the fabric of society would disintegrate.
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