I cannot take credit for the fact that I do not have the soul of a psychopath. - Sam Harris

Everyone who has eyes to see can see that if the God of Abraham exists, He is an utter psychopath — and the God of Nature too. If you can't see these things just by looking, you have simply closed your eyes to the realities of our world.

contemplatives in many traditions claim to experience extraordinary depths of psychological well-being while living in isolation for vast stretches of time.

Losing a belief in free will has not made me a fatalist - in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn't draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn't do so on a basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system - learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention - may radically transform one's life. Becoming sensitive to the background causes of one's thoughts and feelings can -paradoxically- allow for greater creative control over one's life. This understanding reveals you to be a biochemical puppet, of course, but it also allows you to grab hold of one of your strings.