The best way I understand it is the self is the little mental agent that you think you can control. It's connected to the illusion of free will, for me. I stopped believing in free will for years but the illusion was still there (or, more accurately, I thought it was). But as soon as that was gone I stopped trying to control my thoughts and ever since it's felt like living my life is like watching some sort of movie. Truly feeling like there is no free will, rather than merely not believing in it is, ironically, really freeing.

In my experience, the experience of the self and the experience of free will is the same thing. Or rather, the delusion that you experience it. There is no self to have a sense of. That's the point. You think you feel something that you don't. You might not call it that. But once the belief has gone you realize you never had it in the first place, you just thought you did.

You won't really know what I'm talking about until you lose it, as far as I'm concerned. Once the Buddha reaches enlightenment he realizes that it feels like he had enlightenment all along except before he didn't know it and didn't see it. You gain enlightenment only when you stop craving it.

You'll only really know what it is when you've experienced the alternative. I strongly think that losing your sense of self is basically this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choiceless_awareness

Which, believe me, is much much deeper than merely intellectually recognizing that there is no free will. It's when the phenomenology matches the intellect. That's the key.

And, by the way, I was just as confused about what Sam Harris was rattling on about as you are, until it happened. And boy is it great. Living without anxiety, basically. And not caring one iota about the past or future apart from when it helps you get through the day (I still pay my bills before their due date, I just don't worry about it anymore).

And, from what I see of Sam Harris ... he is still struggling a lot when it comes to egolessness. Just look at his relationship to Twitter. He's an intermediate at best!

Well, I took "is it immoral to do illegal drugs?" to mean "is it always immoral to do illegal drugs?"

And I should qualify my statement. Not all drugs are usually harmful. Just some. Heroin, for instance, is usually harmful. Some drugs are more harmful than others. Tobacco and Alcohol probably do more harm overall than, say, marijuana. Some are worse than others.

But it could be the case that prohibiting even the most harmful drugs causes more harm than permitting people to take them.

What does it mean to say an event occurs spontaneously? If it means for no reason at all or out of nothing, then no.

If it means through methods other than straightforward causality, sure. Something can happen in acausal way. But it's still not the same as for no reason at all because there probabilistic laws behind acausality.

No, you are not misreading it. No knowledge is possible at all without consciousness. Why?

Because to be conscious is to be aware. And you can't have knowledge of X without being aware of X. Because being aware of something and having knowledge of it is the same thing.

Our fundamental nature goes much deeper than virtues.

if you try to change the way you are that comes about through the way you already are, and if you try to change that it comes about through how you already are before that, and so on. Fundamentally we can't change our essence ... our essence changes by itself due to how our essence already was previously.

I don't have to "control" my argument in order to present it or believe in it. If determinism is true it doesn't mean we can't give arguments or believe things.

Existence is absolute in the sense that existence absolutely and objectively exists, has always existed and necessarily must exist.

And existence is absolute in the sense that there is one ultimate thing that necessarily does exist: the universe (or multiverse).

A better question is "Why is there physical matter?"

Consciousness doesn't require an explanation because no knowledge is possible at all without it. We couldn't be here asking the question without it. There's no evidence of anything existing at all outside of subjective experience.

What really requires an explanation is that assumption that physical matter exists apart from consciousness. Because there's zero evidence of that ... and there never can be any. In principle. Because evidence is empirical, empiricism is experience-based and experience is conscious.

The universe only has a cause if you consider the big bang to have happened before the universe. If the universe refers to the totality of everything then it cannot have a cause.

Time doesn't really go faster it just seems like it does because you're so focussed on what you're enjoying that you don't pay attention to the passing of time.

There's no reason why gods couldn't exist without religion ... they just couldn't be the gods of religion.

It's generally immoral to lie because lying generally causes harm.

Drugs are generally immoral because they cause harm too.

Neither drugs nor lying are necessarily immoral because neither are necessarily harmful. But they usually are.

An argument for the opposite would simply be the fact that children will run into the road and talk to strangers before they are taught not to.

Schopenhauer's philosophy is actually the most miserable.

Buttered bread is not relevant to optimism or cynicism.

Pain and pleasure can coincidence together but suffering and pleasure cannot. If you're suffering then your pain outweighs your pleasure. If you're in pain then you could still cope with it provided that the pain is not too bad. If you're suffering then it already means that the pain is too bad.

Lying is only bad when it causes harm.

Lying usually causes harm but it still causes nowhere near as much harm as murder.

Anyway, to deal with the OP's attempt at a rebuttal of the common critique.

It's true that it's a false dichotomy to say that you either have to lie to the murderer or let him murder someone. But the thought experiment specifically deals with a situation where the only way to stop the person being murdered is to lie to the murderer. In such a case it is certainly preferable to lie because lying causes a whole lot less harm than murdering does.

Consequentialism is ultimately the only metaethical position that makes sense because if following certain rules or having certain virtues led to more harm than good then we wouldn't think such rules or virtues were ethical at all.

As David Benetar would have it: Suffering is bad and pleasure is not bad. One good example he gave is the fact that it's very much a good thing that there isn't extreme suffering on Mars ... but the fact that nobody is there enjoying themselves doesn't really matter.

Once I stop suffering there's no real urge for me to enjoy myself. It's only the unpleasantness of boredom and restlessness that strives me to enjoy myself.

Pleasure is only really good as a way to cope with suffering.

This is from a moral perspective though. In terms of axiology, pleasure is intrinsically good in the same way that pleasure is intrinsically bad. They're both good and bad experientially. It's merely that from a strictly moral perspective it's only suffering that matters. And there is no real striving or desire without suffering either. If we're perfectly satisfied we don't actually want anything.

The OP is only describing one half of subjectivity/objectivity. Namely, the epistemological half. There's also the ontological half.

Causeless effects are not possible because if an effect has no cause it's by definition not an effect.

Conscious experience is the source of morals ... because something is moral/immoral if it causes happiness/unhappiness and happiness/unhappiness only exists where there's conscious experience.

Opinions are only immoral in a consequentialist sense. Namely, if having certain beliefs/opinions have the consequence of causing us to harm others or ourselves.

"How do these people deal with this problem, because I never saw them deal with it. They usually just discuss the brain, Libet, neuronal levels etc. and how physics (causation, randomness) governs all of that so that we are also governed by it, but they seem to fail to deal with the fact that it seems self-refuting to believe in unfree will (determinism)."

Free will is impossible with or without determinism and it's not circular reasoning ... it's a basic argument. Namely:

(1) Ultimately, to control your actions you have to control your fundamental nature.

(2) But you can't control your fundamental nature.

(3) So, ultimately, you can't control your actions.

This is true with or without determinism.

"My first question is do you believe that the illusion of free will was a necessary evil for the advancement and survival of the human race?".

No, because belief in free will is a religious idea that is used to justify ideas such as heaven and hell.

"My second question for now is if the fact that our biology controls everything becomes so obvious through advances in science that everyone accepts it as being true, I wonder how does that affect what we would do for fun/entertainment in the future? Do we get the same kind of enjoyment from playing/watching sports or games knowing that everything is predetermined? Do we still enjoy tv shows/movies where there's a good guy and a bad guy knowing that there's really no such thing as "good" and "bad." Do we still enjoy comedy even though most of the time someone is the dope or the fall guy in humorous tv shows/movies?"

No, because life is actually more fun after we lose our false belief in free will.

We're conscious beings because consciousness itself is fundamental to being itself.

Mind and matter are one and the same thing.