These two issues, determinism and moral judgement, go to two basic flaws in our culture.

For one thing, as mobile, intentional organisms, with a narrative based culture, we think of time as the point of the present, moving past to future, yet that totally overlooks the effect of causation. Which is what is turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no physical “dimension” of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it. Causality and conservation of energy.

So there is just this physical state of presence and time is emergent from the activity, like temperature, pressure, color, etc.

Consequently the future cannot be determined, because the process of determination is what occurs, as the present, of which we are part.

So not only doesn’t determinism make sense, but neither does free will, because if our decisions were free of cause, they would be equally free of effect and the entire premise of will is to affect. We are part of nature’s process of selection.

The future is both continuation of and reaction to the present. Feedback. Fluctuations.

As for morality, it is naively assumed to be good versus bad, as though it is some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, that our religions have taught. The reality is that good and bad are the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of biological causation. Greed and fear. Even bacteria sense this dichotomy.

The problem is that all the other moral values, such respect, responsibility, trust, love, empathy, sympathy, etc, etc, are emergent from this basic attraction/repulsion.

So when our moral modeling treats them as ideals to be sought, rather then elements from which human sensibility has emerged, conflicts tend to quickly become a race to the bottom, than each side being able to hold the other to any higher standards of decency and responsibility, where the various complexities and necessities can be objectively analyzed, rather than emotionally responding like spoiled children grabbing the toys.

Since we are still group oriented creatures, this goes tribal and anyone daring to look at the nuances is shunned and excluded from decision making.

Civilization is still in its formative age.