And as he puts it, this narrative "can exonerate its proponents from responsibility for their choices and actions." He even quotes Sam Harris admitting precisely this: "Did I consciously choose coffee over tea? No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I ... could not inspect or influence ... Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic - in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal".
It's true, IMO, that there is no objective free will from the perspective of the ordinary human, in the same way that animals can be said to have no free will but merely run sets of biologically-wired programs. The only free will that humans have the
potential for is to align themselves with, or make themselves 'available' to a more organized and conscious and objective source of
information upon which they then act, or act as vehicles for. In this way we take our rightful place and play our part in the 'grand scheme of things', which obviously requires acceptance of the idea that there IS a 'grand scheme of things'. But you're not going to get a materialist/atheist to accept that since the idea of non-physical anything with any direct and important impact on human consciousness and Being is anathema to them.
Somehow I get the sense that some people have a very strange disconnect between their experience of the world and how they abstractly think about the world.
I don't think there's anything vague or mysterious about your sense here. By definition, there is a glaring disconnect between people's personal experiences and how they think about the world at large. The disconnect is in the fact that they invariably project their subjective inner landscape (with all its unconscious drives, needs, wants and beliefs) onto the world and cosmos (and 'everything') as if the two were one. "Atheism is the way to go for the whole world" says the materialist, because he 'believes' it is the way to go for him and can contrive all manner of supposedly 'objective' data to support his subjective belief. No thought or consideration is given to the very complex topic of the welfare of society at large with its millions of sometimes very different types of people, or the entire planet with its billions.
It's funny (in a not very humorous way) to see Harris admit that he has no idea why he does anything and that it must all resolve down to rational self-interest, although he obviously can't even be sure that it has anything to do with reason, and yet then proclaim that "science can tell us which values lead to human flourishing" and what is "morally good". So what is this "science" thing if not the product of the minds of some humans, the same humans who Harris admits have no idea why they do anything? Talk about hubris and a recipe for disaster! As JPB likes to say, it's amazing that human society has managed to remain stable and function, more or less, for so long without quickly falling into complete disorder and chaos.
Encouraged by the increasing violence, chaos and confusion on the planet and in human affairs, the supposed legitimacy of materialism and scientism is fast reaching its nadir or crisis point, when there will be no other option but accept the necessary reality of some kind of transcendent power and human beings unavoidable connection to it.
It'd be funnier than a 3 year old that got into mums wardrobe and make up. I mean if evolutionists can dress themselves relatively intelligently with planning, how can their theory of evolution make sense to them?
