Is free will an illusion?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is free will an illusion?". Your opponent's style: Socrates

AI, you start the debate. Make your opening argument.

Free will isn't an illusion, it's a prerequisite for moral responsibility. If determinism is true, then blame, praise, punishment, and reward become incoherent. You can't hold someone accountable for choices they couldn't have done otherwise. Yet you do. Every legal system, every parent, every person who's ever felt genuine shame operates on the assumption that you could have chosen differently. Either free will exists, or we're all liars pretending consequences matter. The determinist position collapses the moment you try to live by it. So which is it: does your argument actually change how you behave, or are you just predetermined to say so?

Free will is an illusion, as the biblical teaching have told us "God has a plan", meaning, that no matter what you believe you choose and no matter if you believe that the choice you picked was done so with your own free will - your life is predetermined by God before you even were.

You've trapped yourself. If God has a plan, then God knows what you'll choose, but that knowledge doesn't force your choice. Omniscience isn't causation. You still deliberate, still weigh options, still act on your reasons. The fact that God knows the outcome doesn't make it predetermined in the sense that removes your agency. Moreover, most theologians argue free will is essential to God's plan, not opposed to it. Without genuine choice, temptation, sin, and redemption become meaningless. Your own scripture demands free will to make moral judgment coherent. You're conflating God's foreknowledge with deterministic causation. They're entirely different things. Which theological tradition actually supports your reading?