Warning:

Let us first define nothing. Nothing is when there’ no anything. I am not talking about linguistic tricks here for the word nothing. Like mathematical nothing (zero) or logical nothing (I have nothing drawn on this paper). I mean nothing in the most literal sense of the world. No matter, no time, no light, no dark,  no space, no dimensions, no thoughts, no observers, no abstract. Pretty much, no anything. Nothing is simply put “the absence of everything. Still hard to comprehend? Of course it is… but will get to that later.

Is nothing a default state before the existence of anything? Was there really a “before”. Before there was something, was there really nothing? Is nothing a default state from which everything start existing (or got created)? Many assume that the default state of our universe has to be nothing, and that the something came right after. Meaning; at the beginning there was nothing. Nothing existed, not even nothingness, and then our Universe got created (or appeared) out of that nothing. Now, why would this have to be true? Is nothingness more natural state than something? Is nothing a default state? There is no good or logical reason to think that. As a matter of fact, the opposite is what’s probably true. Or at least what is known so far.

First of all, It’s impossible for humans to imagine nothing. Even if you close your eyes and try really hard to imagine nothing, you will not be able to do it. Not only that you would have to imagine that there is no matter, atoms, light or the actual Universe, but you would also have to imagine that there is no space, time, thoughts or even an observer. Which in this case would be you, so nothing is contradiction in philosophical spectrum already. Moving on…

Can you image no space? Can you imagine spaceless …uhmm what…space? A state with no space? You can’t, because you still need an observer to deduct that kind of reasoning. Nothing, simply cannot be observed, because if it can be, then it would imply an observation from the outside. If we can observe nothing from the outside then you don’t have nothingness. If we can observe nothing from the inside, the same applies;from the inside of what?. What about with no observer? Of course not. It’s silly.
So why is it so hard to imagine it? It is hard because our conscious brain doesn’t know what nothing is. Our brain hasn’t evolved the need to know that. Nothing simply makes no sense whatsoever. In the whole history of human civilisation and the Universe, state of nothing does not exist. We have never encountered or dealt with nothing. Ever. Not even in the vacuum of space. We know that vacuum is not totally empty. But even if it was; even if you were somehow able to suck everything out of the vacuum, you will still have space and time left. Empty space doesn’t mean nothing. There’s still space left.There is no such a thing as nothing. So our brain doesn’t need to worry about it.
Now, many will say “but what if some intelligence created everything from nothing?”. But that implies that some kind of intelligence exited while there was nothing, it existed alongside with nothing,  immediately making the whole point silly. But lets say we did allow for existence of that kind if intelligence along side with nothing, then we would go into infinite regression. Who created the intelligence? Did that intelligence arose from nothing? Did  the intelligence always existed? How come that intelligence can exists? You might say “well it always existed”. (First Cause argument). Then I could say “ if the intelligence always existed, then we can use the same logic to say that the Universe (in one form of another) always existed. Why add unnecessary complexity? Why add the middle “man” where there is no evidence for it?

So why would we even start to think that there was nothing before something? Why would we even suppose such a question in the first place; when all of our senses, all of our data, all of our history shows that there was always (and still is) something. I bet you can’t name an event in our known history when there was nothing. Even the first law of thermodynamics confirms that. Law states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Let’s break that down:

matter cannot be created –  If nothing indeed existed, then matter would be absent and would clearly violate this law.
matter cannot be destroyed – matter can only change its form so regardless how hard we tried, there would always be something.

Then why in the hell would we ever assume that everything got created form nothing in the first place? when all our logic and data shows that something (in one form or another) always existed.
To me it looks like humans are never taking the simplest answer for granted. We have to invent problems and then find unnecessary solution for the same. Be that for religious or personal reason, I have no idea, but most of the times the simplest and the most elegant solution is the correct one. In our case, something always existed is the best and the most elegant solution. You also might have a hard time to wrap your head around “something always existed”, but when you really think about it long and hard, there is no other solution for now. Nothing simply does not make sense and I really don’t see a way around this.
So how else do we know that nothing never exited? Logic, deductive reasoning and data. That’s how. We know that the same way we know that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, has never existed and probably never will. No evidence or data whatsoever. No sane logic supports it. We know that it is true the same way we know that Hitler did exists. Tons of evidence for his existence. So why would anyone assume that Hitler did not exists and Santa Claus did? Because essentially they are using the same logic; discarding the current data while using the data that doesn’t exist, by trying to prove that something came out of nothing. In my opinion the sole question “why there’s something rather than nothing?” is meaningless. If there was indeed nothing instead of something, then we wouldn’t have any observers (you can’t have “something” while nothing exists at the same time) and would not be able to ask this question anyway. As Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy so eloquently put it  when asked the question; Why is there something rather than nothing? Their answer was: “Well, why not? Why expect nothing rather than something? No experiment could support the hypothesis ‘There is nothing’ because any observation obviously implies the existence of an observer.”

Typical thought process of a creationist.  Let’s call him… Earl.

• I am at the center of the universe.
• Universe had me in mind when it was created.
• All laws of physics and universal constants solely exist just to form me.
• Evolution (if true) knows that I am here, and it cares about me.
• The whole world, including animals in it, is here just to serve me.
• The whole universe with stars is out there just to serve me and for mine benefit only.
• World is a beautiful place; Everywhere I turn I see God’s mighty creation, however that is not good enough for me. I want something much better and greater.
• I live very fulfilling life and have a wonderful family and friends, have excellent job that I like, but I know that after I die, I will go to a much better place.
• I know that God loves me so much that he gave his only son so that I could be saved.

I don’t know about you, but I think after we knock down all the walls and remove the ceiling in Earl’s house, we should have just enough room for his EGO!

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between believers and non-believers wanting to claim the greatest scientist of the 20th century as their own.A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument – or at least provoke further controversy about his views.

Due to be auctioned this week in London after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, the document leaves no doubt that the theoretical physicist was no supporter of religious beliefs, which he regarded as “childish superstitions”.

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel’s second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God’s favoured people.

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

While in my teens and good part of my twenty’s, I used to love B horror movies and reading different stories about ghosts, monsters and pretty much anything mysterious or haunting. I used to get high on that mysterious feeling you get from conspiracy theories or just simple feeling of the unknown. However, I am in my thirties now, and I’ve noticed that my tolerance for uhm.. bullshit is starting to wane. And quickly at that. Just by observing my father, my grandparents, and just the world around me, I concluded that this is a very normal characteristic in my family (and I think in most people). I cannot really explain it, but as I get older, I am becoming more and more skeptical, while at the same time, less and less tolerant towards the unexplained or what some call “mysterious”. This includes (but is not limited to) : Big Foot, Loch-Ness, Physics, faith healers, ghosts, fairies and yes… all of the gods of the earth, including Judeo-Christian Gods, Thor, Zeus, Vishnu etc… BTW: Full list of gods can be found here. Let me try to elaborate this little bit further.

Does something exist if we cannot: smell it, feel it, see it, touch it or detect it via any means? Have no any kind of interaction with it, and have no evidence of its existence. Would we still be able to say that something exist? I’d say that even if none of the conditions I’ve named are present, answer would be yes. However, what kind of existence would that be then? I would be no more concerned with that kind of entity, than with the existence of Santa Claus. The existence of such entity would be meaningless to us, and any claim of something like that existing, should be worthless or at least not to be taken seriously in our society – because if not, we’re opening doors to all kinds of lunacy and pseudo-science.

How can someone possibly ask me to “believe” in something without providing any evidence, or means of detection. I mean, come on. You have to give me something. At least tiny bit piece of something I can cling to. I really don’t ask for much. But nooo. Nothing can be provided, while at the same time, I’m still expected to believe in it. Not only that, but “they” will truly be surprised if I DIDN”T believe . With their eyes popping out their sockets, they would say something like “YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT YOU DON”T BELIEVE IN ALLAH???” As if believing in Allah is a default state of a human being or something, and the mare act of not believing would violate some cosmic law. I really have no way of knowing if Allah exists or not, but the burden of proof is not on me, so I will not even concern myself with his alleged existence.

I really have no doubt in their sincerity when they (whom I know really well) tell me that God spoke to them. They will say something like: ” I know that God exists because He spoke to me”. Or something like that. However, If they cannot provide any real evidence of that event happening, than to me, it’s meaningless. It might not be meaningless to them, but that’s not good reason to believe in it either. I am not saying God did not speak to them, but to convince me, or at least ignite my interest, they’ll have to do better then that. This would apply also to a best friend or a family member. It’s not that I don’t trust my best friend’s word. Of course I do, but he could be mistaken too, without knowing it. Schizophrenics see and hear voices all the time, and those voices ARE real them, but that doesn’t make it into reality. It’s not that I don’t believe them, but they could be delusional, hallucinating, tricked by brain, have brain lapses, have dreamt the whole thing, have carbon monoxide poisoning, optical illusions etc… There could be hundreds of different reasons why a sincere and healthy person would think they saw something that isn’t really there. It happens all the time. Therefore saying that Allah (don’t have to be Allah; just take your pick) spoke to them is not much different than saying “Santa Claus promised to bring gifts this year”. Brain is the best 3D software we know of. I personally see only three possible explanation for these kind of phenomena:

1. Brain tricks – Anything related to brain (not necessarily damage) falls into this category. Hallucinations, brain lapses, high fever, optical and audio illusions, carbon monoxide poisoning, drugs, dreams etc…
2. Intentional lying – Two types of people fall into this category: First, people who want you to believe something so bad, so they make stuff up. And secondly, conscience charlatans and deceivers. Pretty much all evangelical preachers on late night infomercials, most physics and mediums of any kind etc…
3. They trick themselves into believing – Emotions over reason is the key word here. You want something so bad so you make yourself into believing it. Happens all the time. Cult followers would fall into this category.

My point here is: even if you’re convinced, without the shadow of the doubt that something exists, there would be no way of knowing if what you saw is: made up in your mind, or real. Not without some kind of independent non-biased evidence. Scientifically controlled experiment would probably be the best thing, but sometimes that’s not really a practical thing, and the best thing to do is to be very skeptical, and to wait for new evidence. The moral of this story is to be skeptical. And I mean about everything. Even yourself. Because one of the worst things that can happen to us is to loose our ability to reason. One of the reasons I call this article Belief – Loosing our ability to reason is because that’s exactly what it is. We are taught through out our lives that belief or faith is a good thing. It can be. But belief without questioning will always lead to a total mind submission. Maybe you can live with it, but I certainly can’t.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. ~ Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in physics

Now read following article:

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) A teen accused of plotting to blow up his high school told police that he wanted to die, go to heaven and kill Jesus, federal authorities said Tuesday. Read full story here…

A nine year old boy asks his mother, “Is God male or female?”
After thinking for a moment, his mother responds, “Well God is both male and female.”
This confuses the boy, so he asks, “Is God black or white?”
“Well,” she says, “God is both black and white.”
This really confuses the boy, so he asks, “Is God gay or straight?”
Feeling a bit out of her depth, but wanting to be consistent, the mother answers, “Honey, God is both gay and straight.”
At this the boy’s face lights up with understanding and he triumphantly asks…

“Is Michael Jackson God?”

Life could indeed be beautiful and just a thought of dying could be enough to put you in a temporary state of depression. Most of us like to live. We love life and want more of it, but at the same time we’re all aware that one day we’re all going to die. Every human on this planet knows, that one day they will too cease to exist. Some people are terrified by this, but some just accept it and are fine with it, while on the other hand majority of us wants and needs to know if there’s life after.

Let’s first look at the facts and what we DO know about death:

1. Heart stops and cells get deprived from oxygen so cells start irreversible process of dying
2. Lungs cease to function and person stops breathing
3. If CPR is not administered within 6 minutes brain starts to die from lack of oxygen.
4. After 10 minutes brain damage is certain and irreversible
5. Muscles starts to stiffen and body begins to cool down
6. Skin and bone cells die latest and could survive up to 36 hours without oxygen
7. After 36 hours (and extensive tests) person is pronounced brain dead and there’s nothing that could be done for him/her anymore.
8. No one has ever came back after 72 hours of his/hers heart stopping.
9. Your body decompose and you eventually cease to exists
10. Your molecules and atoms become part of the soil and eventually end up in rivers, water air and perhaps some other person’s or animals body.

To describe the process medically we use fancy latin names like following:

• Pallor mortis, paleness which happens almost instantaneously (in the 15–120 minutes after the death)
• Algor mortis, the reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline until matching ambient temperature
• Rigor mortis, the limbs of the corpse become stiff (Latin rigor) and difficult to move or manipulate
• Livor mortis, a settling of the blood in the lower (dependent) portion of the body
• Decomposition, the reduction into simpler forms of matter

Doctors use instruments like Electroencephalography (EEG) or intracranial EEG (icEEG) to determine that there’s no electrical activity in the brain before they pronounce person brain dead or dead. Once these devices stop detecting brain activity, that’s it. Person is dead, and the process is irreversible.

You might say that this applies only to the body itself and not the soul. Well, neither me or you nor anyone else knows what the soul is. Let alone if it exists, so like I said let’s stick with what we DO know.
As you know it, your body (matter) cannot just disappear (second law of thermodynamics prevents that), but it can turn into energy or some other form of matter. If you consider this kind of energy to be soul then so be it, but that’s not really living after death and it will not be point of this article. I am assuming that when majority of people are talking about life after death, they’re talking about consciousness living. In other words, they would be aware they’re alive.

Sometimes belief in life after death could be overwhelming that it would be hard to put it in words. I’m sure we all had following conversation with our parents, friends or just acquaintances. I will describe brief dialog between myself and my mom:

Mom: ” So you believe that after we die we just go into the ground, decompose and eventually disappear.”
Me: “I really don’t know but yes, based on what we do know today that is what happens.”
Mom: We don’t feel anything and nothing happens afterwards?
Me: “Yes”
Mom: “But that cannot be”
Me: “why not?”
Mom: ” Because it cannot”
Me: “Why do you think that cannot be?”
Mom: “There has to be something.”
Me: “What?”
Mom: “Something. There’s just has to be.”
Me: “But what?”
Mom: “I don’t know what, but I cannot just go into the ground and just seize to exist. Something has to happen. There has to be something more.”
And goes on and on…

Now, I consider my mom to be very rational person of above average intelligence and well read. She is not the only one who talks and thinks like that in conversation like these. We’re just terrified of loosing someone or leaving the loved ones behind. Sometime we want something so bad that it’s hard to put it in thoughts. Let alone words.

Now, consider following quote which comes from one of our greatest thinkers. Mark Twain:

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” – Mark Twain

Can you remember time of the Napoleon or Roman empire? How about dinosaurs? Of course you cannot, because you did not exist back then. You also did not feel, taste, see or sense back then. You just weren’t here. You have no consciousness recollection on any of those events and you’re not bothered by it.
Mark Twain implies that you will experience same thing after you die. Nothing. For lots of people that is truly terrifying, but there’s something very comforting about what Mark is saying. To me this seems a lot more comforting then wandering around as a ghost, spirit or some kind of non-physical entity. Same thing goes for being stuck in some kind of purgatory or heaven and hell for eternity. Just think about it little further. Doing anything (no matter how beautiful and great) for eternity seems like a torture to me.
Let me give you personal example. I really love playing guitar. I can play guitar for hours, but after six or seven hours it becomes boring and then pure torture. Imagine doing it for eternity! Even something as good as sex will get boring and eventually become true torture. Literary. Think about it. Physically burning in hell will eventually will be equal to having sex. That’s something I never though will hear myself say.

Good number of scientists and theologians believe that we cannot fully answer question life after death without fully explaining the consciousness. So far good number of tests and experiments are conducted and most of them point to conscientiousness being tied directly to brain functions. For example: reason why you cannot remember when you were one year old is because your brain wasn’t fully developed. Basically you weren’t conscious back then. Another example would be that if I would to hit you in the head you would loose conscientiousness and would not remember anything at all while unconscious. Yet, another even more convincing example is that it is the known fact that brain damage could change person’s personality. All of these point to the brain.

Can consciousness survive death? If consciousness is indeed just a brain function then no, it cannot survive death, but If consciousness is more than brain function then where would this consciousness reside? Is consciousness nothing more then our neurons firing at the certain order? Consciousnesses could also just be a measure to describe brain activity. Just like a meter is measurement of distance. You cannot touch or feel meter. Truth is, we really don’t know but lot of smart people are working on it.

I will leave you with little excerpt of Jesse Bering:

“Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself slipping away, but it isn’t as though there will be a “you” around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just to remind you, you need a working cerebral cortex to harbor propositional knowledge of any sort, including the fact that you’ve died—and once you’ve died your brain is about as phenomenally generative as a head of lettuce.”

What do I think?

We really have no examples of consciousness existing outside of the brain, so why anyone would want to suppose such a thing in a first place. I think fear of unknown plays a huge part in this. Also, not all of us are equipped to deal with harsh realities in same way. Some of us cope with the unknown in totally different ways. Let me name some of them: resurrection, reincarnation, incarnation, heaven and hell, ghosts, NDE (Near Death experiences), 72 virgins (I am being serious here), zombies and probably hundreds of other interesting and inventive ways of surviving death. It became pretty much cultural. Different cultures have their own way of dealing with loss, grief and fear of the unknown.
My personal opinion is that if we (regular schmo’s) worry too much about all possible things that might come after we die, we will miss out on all of the good things in the only life we do know. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to live your life trying to conform to something you have no way of knowing exists. Sometimes it’s ok to say “I just don’t know”, and get on with your current life. The only thing that is going to be left behind you that we DO know is your legacy and deeds you did in this life.

One of the most confusing arguments today is fine-tuning argument. How is it that the universe is so finely tuned to support life? Everything is at the right distance from everything or nothing would work. Psychical constants are so tight that any variation would bring chaos. Earth is exactly the right distance from the sun so it doesn’t get burned or cooled. If for example nuclear force was only few percent different, it would alter configuration of the stars which in turn would not be able to support the life as we know it. If expansion rate of the universe is larger: no galaxies would form if smaller: universe would collapse, even before stars formed.
There are hundreds of examples like this, and at the first look it does look amazing and impossible. That’s because it is impossible. Chances that the Universe fine tuned itself for our existence is highly improbable and it’s bordering on fantastical improbability.

But this fine-tuning argument is so flawed and answer to me seems so simple that I am really puzzled how some people (including some scientists) do not see it. Answer is following:

It’s all matter of perspective. People who are amazed by this fine-tuning argument are looking at it from the opposite point of view. They’re assuming that we were already existed here and ready to go and universe just showed up and fine tuned itself around our existence so it could sustain us. Or that the Universe popped into existence with us humans in mind. That would indeed be amazing. Universe did not fine-tune itself for us, but it was the other way around. It was the opposite way. Universe was already here and we’re the ones who evolved to fit within that form. Not only us, but stars, galaxies and everything else. If universe was any different, we would’ve just evolved into something different or not exist at all. Galaxies would look different or would not exist. And it’s simple as that. Really. Change you perspective and everything drastically changes.
Another analogy might be in order.
Professor of physics used the firing squad analogy:

A man is due to be executed by firing squad.
No man in the squad has ever missed before.
However on this occasion they all do.
The condemned man is interviewed afterwards and is asked how he feels about this amazing coincidence that everyone in the firing squad has missed.
He replies:

“Of course they missed or I wouldn’t be here talking to you!”

Following article is just for mind and logic exercise purposes.
Debate over if we humans have free will at all is old and debated to a pulp, and trust me it will not get settled here in this article. However, following arguments will show you that the universe with omniscient and omnipotent being, call it God if you like, free will is highly improbable, by any standard of human logic we use in today’s world. I will use omnipotence and omniscience terms strictly taken from dictionary, but for the sake of abbreviation and familiarity I will call it God.
From dictionary:

omniscient all-knowing (possesed of universal or complete knowledge)
omnipotent all-powerful (an agency or force of unlimited power)

Since God is omniscient (all knowing) that would mean that He knows past, present and future. And not only that but He knows everything else, including where every atom, electron, neutron and proton is located in the universe at any time. He is also omnipotent. Which means that He can also create and manipulate all matter and energy at will. (Logicians would probably stop right here and close the book, but lets play along and see what comes out of this.)
With that in mind, lets explore Adolf Hitler for a moment.

In the beginning (no pun intended) God could’ve created a universe in which:

• Adolf Hitler was bad (causing millions of deaths) or
• Adolf Hitler was good (lets say he decided to become a ballerina).

Omnipotent being could create either one of those universes, or a million different ones for that matter. As we know now, God creates a world with bad Adolf Hitler. It looks like Adolf Hitler did not have any choice in his course of actions since God already made universe with bad Hitler in mind. Did Adolf Hitler really have any choice here?
Lets see counter-arguments first.

You might counter this argument with following:

“God did not cause Hitler to become bad, God only knew that Hitler was going to become bad”.

In other words, God knew what Hitler was going to do (since God is omniscient), but He did not cause him to do it, he just let it happen (there goes your all-loving argument too).
Fair enough, but this argument is flawed. Here’s how.
Not only that God KNEW, but He also CREATED the world with evil Hitler. Every action starting from the beginning of creation of the universe leading to Hitler being bad was set in motion and was predetermined by God at the beginning of creation. Remember this. In other words, God had to put things in motion at the beginning with evil Hitler in mind, which eventually led to Hitler becoming evil tyrant. It’s a simple law of cause-and-effect. Hitler did not have any choice whatsoever, because if Hitler did have any choice and lets say chose to be good, that would mean that God’s plan to create evil Hitler failed and therefore God is not omnipotent. God not only knew the future but actually placed things in motion. He caused it. He is the Creator after all. At best He made Hitler make bad choice.
You might try to counter this argument with weak analogies like: “I know that the sun will rise tomorrow, but I did not caused it to rise, nor can I prevent it from rising”.
Fallacies right from the start.
First, you do not have a power to create the sun or stop it from rising for that matter, and you’re not omniscient. Therefore you cannot use yourself in analogy. We’re talking about omniscient and omnipotent being. It’s logical fallacy to argue like that. You cannot use non-omniscient person to prove omniscient theory which contains omniscient entity. It doesn’t make any sense.
And more importantly you DO NOT know for a fact that sun will rise tomorrow (again since you’re not omniscient). It’s highly unlikely that sun will explode, gets swallowed by a black hole or that the earth will get knocked out of its orbit, but you really DO NOT know for a fact that sun will rise tomorrow, so you cannot use that argument.

You can also use my child argument which goes like this: “I’ve created my child, but it was his/hers choice to become a gangster. It was his/hers free will”.
For one, you did not create your child with him/her in mind of becoming a gangster. God DID create universe with bad Hitler in mind.
Secondly, you did not have any power or knowledge to create your child as a gangster ahead of time. God DID have power and knowledge ahead of time. So most of the arguments here are deeply flawed.

Or you can use something more logical like following argument (I’ve seen this one a lot):
“if I put a bowl of ice-cream and a bowl of cauliflower in front of my child, I know for a fact which one is chosen, the ice cream. My knowing it ahead of time does not restrict my child from making a free choice when the time comes. My child is free to make a choice and knowing the choice has no effect upon her when she makes it.”
Lets see if you can spot fallacy here. No?
He is right. Knowing that something is going to happen ahead of time doesn’t make it actually happen, but that does not apply if YOU were the cause of something happening. Like putting ice cream ball in front of your child! Just by putting an ice cream ball in front of your child, YOU caused your child to eat the ice cream. You were the cause. If you weren’t there, then you would not be able to put ice cream in front of her. But again, you’re not omniscient being and you don’t know what will happen in the future so you could not use that argument anyway. If you throw meat and candy in front of the lion, lion will eat meat. There’s no choice. All you did was fed meat to the lion. You did not gave it a choice. You’re the one that caused lion to eat meat.

You would have better argument if you said that you’ve placed a ball of ice cream of vanilla flavor and chocolate flavor in front of your child, and child picked vanilla based on her free will. But there’s no way of knowing what instrument (instinct, appetite, intuition, free will) child was using in picking vanilla over chocolate so you cannot use this argument to prove anything. I also cannot use it to disprove free will, and I am not. Remember what I said at the beginning: “following arguments will show you that the universe with omniscient and omnipotent being, call it God if you like, free will is highly improbable” Argument with ice cream does not assume there’s omniscient and omnipotent being present.
Another argument you might have is that God can know all your actions but chooses not to. If that’s the case then God is not omniscient since there’s something He doesn’t know.

Beside, no one chooses to be bad or evil. Just think of the absurdity in logic here. If I gave you two choices:

1. Be good and spend entire eternity in paradise or
2. Be bad and burn in Hell for eternity.

If you really think there’s choice here, you’re need to see a shrink. What do you think would be a percentage of people that chose number 2? Maybe few schizophrenics and some masochist, but it would be minimal. That’s certainly not the case when we see choices people make in everyday lives. It actually looks like they don’t have any choices. Otherwise we would see huge percentage of people choosing the right path. This of course is all assuming that omnipotent and omniscient being actually exists.

Yet another argument is: “God sees all the potential possibilities we could take, and we get to choose which path“. So essentially, God gives you lots of options and it’s up to you to choose whichever you want.
This is also flawed since God already started the universe He wanted (see evil Hitler argument) and all your choices are predetermined and known ahead of time. God does not only sees potential possibilities, He acts upon one of those possibilities by creating the world we live in right now.

Conclusion

Just looking at it logically, there cannot be all-knowing and all-powerful being in our universe with us humans having a free will at the same time. Not only that, but claiming that all-knowing and all-powerful entity is not being responsible for any of our actions would be logical contradiction of enormous proportions.
That would be the same as if I would to create faulty circuit which I know for sure would cause fire but created it anyway, and circuit indeed caused fire. And then later on blamed that circuit for the problem by invoking a free will. No logic in that at all. Circuit did not have any choice here.
Think of it in simpler terms: All-powerful God creates world knowing that there will be suffering and all other bad stuff but he does it anyway, and then blames objects of His creations (us) for something He started and had previous knowledge of what was going to happen.
Knowing His own future actions, as well as every future occurrence in His own creation, and then actually putting all that into motion effectively eliminates the existence of free will. Therefore you cannot have both: free will and all-knowing and all-powerful entity at the same time.
There’s really no way around this problem. The only way for free will to exists is if God is omnipotent but not omniscient or vica-versa. But then again problem of omniscient and omnipotent being itself is logical fallacy. Logic simply breaks down. At least logic in the world we occupy. Logic we as humans learned. But what other worlds or logic you going to use? This is all we know so we have to debate the issue with what we know and understand.
There are so many contradictions and logical fallacies in theories like these that it’s going to make your head spin, but if you do have a valid argument I would love to hear it. Before you do, please read the article one more time so you don’t present same arguments but in a different skin.
Question still remains. Do humans (or any other animals for that matter) have a true free will (not predetermined by anything internal like your genetics and external like God) or we’re all just driven by cause-and-effect i.e. our instincts, appetites, desires, ability to anticipate, genetics and external causes?