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From a religious perspective, the assertion that human free will and the concept of an independent self are illusory rests on the foundational belief in the absolute sovereignty of God or ultimate reality. If God is understood as omnipotent and omniscient—as in Christianity, Islam, and other theistic traditions—His will must necessarily encompass all events, including human actions. Scriptures such as Ephesians 1:11 (“He works out everything in conformity with His will”) and the Quranic principle of qadar (divine decree, as in 54:49: “We have created all things in due measure”) frame human existence as inherently subject to divine orchestration. In Calvinist theology, predestination negates the idea of autonomous choice, arguing that salvation is predetermined by God’s will alone (Romans 9:16), while Islamic occasionalism posits that even apparent human agency is ultimately an expression of divine causality. These doctrines suggest that free will, as commonly conceived, is a limited and human-centric illusion, akin to characters in a novel who “choose” paths scripted by an author. Eastern traditions deepen this critique: Hinduism’s maya describes the material world—and by extension, individuality—as a veil obscuring the unity of Brahman, while Buddhism’s anatta (no-self) dissolves the notion of a permanent, independent identity altogether. The self, in these frameworks, is either a transient construct (as in Buddhism) or a fragmented reflection of the divine (as in Sufism’s fana, the annihilation of the ego to realize oneness with God). Thus, to claim autonomy or a separate self is to misunderstand reality: every thought, action, and identity emerges from and returns to divine will, rendering free will and the self mere shadows cast by the light of ultimate truth.