I have considered myself an atheist since high school but I feel like I have been forming my own beliefs about how the universe works and I'm curious about if there are others who think like me.

I have started thinking about free will a lot and how I don't believe we actually have it (depending on what you want to define free will as.) This has caused me to think about how in reality we are not much different than a rock. We have just as much agency in our decisions as a rock does when it is pushed down a river. I've thought about our perspectives and why we see life like we do. What if we are just appendages of some greater energy based being kind of like cells are a part of us. We have cells in our body that are a part of us and perform tasks, but we cannot really manipulate them freely. What if life is like that but the other way around. Energy cannot be created or destroyed and it powers everything. The neurons in your brain are powered by energy it gets from glucose. I feel like everything sort of works like a puppet to this greater energy and when we die maybe we just realize we are a part of it. It feels like I have almost stumbled on my own relgion, but I am willing to accept that it probably isnt really like this and I am not intellegent enough to truly understand how everything works. Its just what I like to believe

There is an argument that free will doesn't exist because there is an unbroken chain of causality we are riding on that dates back to the beginning of time. Meaning that every time you fart, scratch your nose, blink, or make lifechanging decisions there is a pre existing reason. These reasons might be anything from the sensory enviornment you were in the past minute, the hormone levels in your bloodstream at the time, hormones you were exposed to as a baby, or how you were parented growing up. No thought you have is really original and is more like a domino affect of neurons firing off in reaction to what you have experienced. What are your thoughts on this?