Existential Crisis...

I'm having an existential crisis. I've recently been reading about free will, morality, entropy, and astronomy. At first glance, not all these topics should be in the same sentence, or even blog post. Yet, here they are. 


I'll start with free will. Evidently, we don't really have it. I find it difficult to accept this, seeing as I am here seemingly free to debate whether or not there really is free will! Is it possible to have a debate about free will if we don't have free will? Can a being even describe the concept of free will it doesn't exist? How did the universe manage to progress to a point to evolve beings that could postulate the illusion of free will if the universe is deterministic? The paradox of this question blows my brain. Its like the chicken and egg on steroids. 

So if we don't have free will, are we morally responsible for our actions? I know one thing I do refuse to accept is that people do not know right from wrong. Everyone knows that it is wrong to murder, rape, steal, cheat, torture, etc. Frankly, I don't think that there are any circumstances when any of these crimes are justifiable. If everyone played by the rules, No one would feel compelled to steal, or to murder, or to cheat. 

So if our actions are deterministic, shouldn't the knowledge of the laws and punishments for committing crimes be enough to warrant giving punishment? My brain receives information. That information causes me to act in a certain way. A decision is made (evidently before I am even conscience of it), and I act. As long as the information my received is correct, the brain should make the right decision! (Overly simplistic I know, a book could be written.) So yes, you are morally responsible, even if free will is an illusion. 

Now with astronomy and entropy, I've learned a very sad fate to the universe. It will likely never end, all matter in the entire universe will end up in black holes, until the black holes themselves radiate away their entire mass, protons themselves will either decay or all energy and matter will reach maximum entropy and there will be no light, no matter, no motion, no energy. Just blandness. Indeed, this will not happen for many trillions of years. Even still, to think that there will be a time with there will be no shape at all to the universe, that there will not be any life to look and marvel at the wonders of existence, to peer into the past and examine its own beginnings, a sad fate indeed. 

Which brings me to my crisis. What is the nature of existence? Why is there a universe? What caused it? Is that even a valid question? How absurd is it to think it is that the universe doesn't have a cause?! 


OK, gotta stop now. Back to worrying about my retirement fund...