i got into this same conversation with a friend of mine and he being religious brought up the notion of having a soul and that granting humans free will.
i lean more towards the determinism theory but i could see where his idea would make sense (his examples were animals driven by instincts rather than actual thoughts and contemplations etc) in other words to him the human conscious is in fact the soul. but anyway i do think that humans do not have free will in a sense that everything we do, think etc is driven by chemical and electrical reactions from our environment and inner workings, but i dont think that gives anybody an excuse to do whatever they want just to get away with it, but what if that attitude would be nothing more than a chemical and electrical....ugh im gonna stop the said conversation i had was like 3 or 4 hours long and i dont wanna keep going in circles .