Is free will a trick of the mind?

I am a firm believer in Determinism, the view that every event, including human cognition, behavior, decision, and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. Determinists believe the universe is fully governed by causal laws resulting in only one possible state at any point in time.

This, in theory, means that freewill is a trick of the mind. It may appear that we are able to control our day-to-day functions, but the factors that go into how and what we decide to do is already locked in. You can only make the decisions you were going to make in that period of time, anyway, given the preceding events. So what does that say about freewill?

KEEP IN MIND that when we talk about preceding events we aren’t talking about what you did yesterday and how that effects today, (though that does play a small role) we are talking the development of the universe and it’s causal laws and how they lead to, and effected human cognitive development. So please don’t write to immediate action because that really isn’t what we are going for and it would show that you clearly don’t understand the theory.

Does this make life just on big hamster wheel?