You don't need to be religious to believe in free will (in fact many religious zealots throughout history have said the opposite), in my opinion it is self-evident. When judging the actions of any individual you should of course take into account environmental factors, but to ascribe all actions to them wholly and reduce the individual to a deterministic automaton is not a well-balanced view, and personally I find it dehumanizing and cynical. I'd rather be 'stuck' in the 'folk psychology' of personal responsibility and free will than progress into the fatalistic materialism of these Europeans you speak of, sounds like they've got a sophistry problem over there