FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM. Free will is a moral, religious, and social concept that is central to philosophy and most religions. It has been argued that the basis of freedom lies in the contingency of natural events. Though this line of reasoning has been by and large abandoned, for freedom to exist at all the concept of strict universal causality will have to be suspended, at least in the moral sphere. Another line of thought sees the foundation of freedom in spirituality: The soul, as immaterial, is not subject to the deterministic laws of nature. Whatever the explanation, belief in free will amounts to the conviction that, as individuals, human beings are endowed with the capacity for choice of action, for decision among alternatives, and specifically that, given an innate moral sense, humans can freely discern good and evil and choose the...