Question

Hello, in a discussion with a friend, we arrived at two ideas regarding free choice, and I’d be glad to hear your opinion.
1. This is a claim that is more scientific: for thousands of years, human beings have invested great effort in trying to predict two main systems: the weather and the behavior of other people. The weather is a very complex system, yet it is clearly completely deterministic. In the field of weather forecasting, significant progress has been made over the years. By contrast, in the ability to predict human behavior, no progress has been recorded at all. Despite advanced computer systems and large databases, the ability to predict other people’s behavior has remained as it was—dependent on the experience, intuition, and familiarity of the person trying to predict. If human behavior were also deterministic, we would expect to see some measurable progress in this area.
2. The libertarian and determinist camps, for the most part (not always, but 99 percent), are divided into two groups: believers and atheists (by the way, I’ve heard that there are atheists who believe in a spiritual force without God, which is interesting).
What I see is that the atheist side often tends to behave immorally and with great arrogance. Whether online or face to face, the overwhelming majority of atheists are very arrogant and condescending. (It is important to me to clarify: I personally know a very supportive atheist/agnostic, who does a great deal for others and is a pleasant person, so I can’t generalize about everyone, because this is not a mathematical statement that can be proved about a person with a certain trait) — but that is the impression I’ve formed from the number of atheists I’ve met. At the same time, most believers, and specifically the religious people I’ve met, are very nice and moral people (according to my morality), though here too, as everywhere, there are people who are X and Y.
The explanation I arrived at is this: in the two societies there is an opposite principle—in one, the person’s ability to choose is emphasized, and in the other, it is seen as something mechanical (or at most random) — and therefore it seems to me that on the atheist side this behavior is a shirking of responsibility, because there is really no person who denies the ability to choose in significant matters, except when it comes to a purely philosophical discussion.