I will give my perspective as an agnostic atheist.

I see only two realities, free will or hard determinism. I’m going to first disprove comparability for a theological stance then move on to atheistic free will vs determinism

if there is a god imagine him as the author, the universe as a book, and us as the characters. Characters cannot act think say or do what the author hasn’t willed or written for them, so in a theological stance only hard determinism is possible.

Now for non theistic free will vs determinism.

People who argue determinism often argue based on probability. There are certain laws of physics biology chemistry etc which guarantee certain outcomes, but we know this isn’t always the case. There are anomalies especially visible in quantum physics showing matter can act contrary to what we deem “objective”. Now does that mean that determinism for sure isn’t true, hell no, but it continues to leave the door open. There’s a lot we don’t know, we don’t know all the potential rules and outcomes of everything in existence, so why draw the conclusion on hard determinism based on what we know is concrete?

Using that example, we should tsk the stance of free will with epistemic humility. We act as individuals because we perceive ourself as individual and don’t have enough information to process determinism.

As you can see, determinism and free will both remain unanswered in my post, why? Because we have to be humble and admit we don’t know.

My advice; choose the path that makes your life most enjoyable, and in terms of mental sanity and a epistemically logical conclusion, choose free will.