Perhaps it is the illusion of choice and the choice you make was always going to be that one due to all of the events that shaped you and the events that shaped the people that shaped you etc all the way back to the big bang.
I contemplate this from time to time.
Yes, that's the question: if our acts are predetermined all the way back to the big bang, as you suggest, why do we feel that we determine them?
Simple: We cannot predict the future. If you don't know what's going to happen nor whether it is being controlled, you do not know whether your actions are predetermined. Every movement you make might be the result of universal programming. What I'm typing, have sent, and you are reading might be the sequence of events that was always supposed to happen.
Free will is, IMO, as unknowable as whether an almighty being exists. That "almighty being" might have created this existence, but might also exist in its own realm that was created by another "almighty being". The chain might be infinite and it might not be. Asking these questions is like asking "can we reach infinity".
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