Concerning Free Will

Most religions take Free Will as a given and make it an unconcious cornerstone of their faith. For example, why does a perfect god allow sin to exist, why did he create satan, etc. etc. are typically explained away along the lines of "because free will is so important."

I have two, if not questions exactly, then points of discussion:

1. Modern information and artificial intelligence theories (particular those concerned with "agents") indicate that any useful "thinking" system would necessarily need to assume itself to have free will. That is, it creates a model of the universe in its head, including itself, then makes predictions inside the model about the effects various actions will have. In this model, assuming causality is useful, up to the limits of the model of oneself, at which point assuming pure causality can lead to some really tricky infinite regression problems.

TLDR for 1): whether we actually have free will, it is most likely we need to be built to think we have it, in order to operate as thinking beings as all. For me, this is strong evidence that feeling like one has free will is no indication either way. Thoughts?

2. Even if we "feel" like we have free will, something has always bothered me. Free will is typically defined along the lines of "being able to do whatever you want" but what about "wanting whatever I want". How can I have truly deeply metaphysical free will when I am assailed, constantly with wants that are beyond my volition to control? I should think that if I truly had free will, I should be able to turn on/off (or at least the volume of) any want I ever experience, from hunger to boredom to sexual interest to addiction etc. etc. Thoughts?