Let’s assume evolutionists and materialists are correct and we all began with the Big Bang. We’ll set aside for the moment the fact that they have no idea whatsoever about what came before that or how the laws governing the universe came to be.
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After the Big Bang, when stardust atom ‘A’ combined with stardust atom ‘B,’ they did so not out of choice, but because they moved to the bidding of physical laws. Everything that presently exists, including us, was set in place at the moment of the Big Bang. Hawking, in his book, A Brief History of Time, concludes, “Science seems to have uncovered a set of laws that, within the limits set by the uncertainty principle, tell us how the universe will develop with time, if we know its state at any one time.”
 
Materialists and evolutionists believe that the universe is comprised of matter obeying physical forces, and that’s it. There are laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear forces. These supposedly dictate wholly how things behave.
 
As the materialistic evolutionary story is told, out of the Big Bang explosion came stars, planets, and a variety of chemical elements. From these elements emerged nucleic acids and amino acids that subsequently formed genetic material and proteins. These, in turn, were the precursors to cells, organs, bodies, and brains. All of this moved to the tune of law. It was supposedly deterministic, there were no choices involved.
 
The turn of the Earth, sun rays, wind, volcanic activity, heat and cold—all these manifestations of matter and energy were predetermined since they dance to only one tune, natural law. Which atom was where and when determined which atom was where and when elsewhere on down the line ad infinitum. If the state of a system is known at any one time, then it is mathematically fixed at all later and earlier times by inviolable law. The entire history and future of the universe would be locked in with no surprises.
 
Materialism demands that physical reality be like an elaborate set of dominos stacked at the Big Bang and then precisely falling one onto the other ever since. The course of all events would be like placing a ball on the top of a plank that has one end elevated. If the ball is released, it rolls down the plank. It doesn’t choose to do so; laws demand that it does and dictate how fast it goes and precisely when and where it will stop.
 
Now then, if we are just an assemblage of such material atoms, atoms that ultimately came from the “flash and smoke” of the Big Bang tearing the fabric of the universe, our existence and everything we do would be predetermined by the action of physical laws as well. We are all just rolling down planks. I am not deciding to write these words. I have no choice in the matter. My actions are just an effect of underlying chemical reactions that are the inevitable end result of a long chain of other chemical collisions, all interlinked and cascading from one to the other since the Big Bang. If one atom anywhere since the beginning of time would have been in a different spot, or one of its quanta had a different spin, that would have impacted all other atoms through time and I would not now be me writing these words and you would not be you reading them.
 
That is how the story has to go if one accedes to the materialistic and evolutionary arguments. If we were to say materialism and evolution are our cause and explanation, we cannot then argue that we have free will. On the other hand, if we believe we do have free will, we must also believe that we are something other than, actually beyond, matter and the physical forces that govern it. We can’t have it both ways.
 
Do you have free will? Your answer is yes, correct? Do atoms have free will? Your answer is no, correct? Now then, with that agreed to and signed under oath before a Notary Public, follow along. If we are mere matter, then we are nothing more than an agglomeration of atoms. Yet if atoms do not have free will, then how can a pile of them (us) have it either? Therefore, free will is proof that we are something other than matter.
 
This chain of logic defeats materialism and evolution at their core. It also defeats the materialistic philosophy that holds sway in our modern world. If that philosophy is incorrect, then it should not be used to guide our lives, our health, our ambitions, and our hopes.
 
Additionally, think about this. If you were to define yourself, it would be by the way you think and the choices you make. That is to say, your free will. If free will cannot be reduced to matter, then you are something other than matter.
 
That you, therefore, is not defined by your physical body, nor can it end when the physical body does.
 
(When I get into such things it is often picked up on the web and I am labeled a “creationist” or religionist. That’s what evolutionists who don’t like the arguments do to easily cast them aside by ad hominem labeling me as a religious nut. But note that I have said nothing about any human created religion. I have simply gone where evidence and logic lead. This blog is about the open-minded pursuit of truth, not an attempt to convert you to some fixed religious dogma. To learn more, read Solving The Big Questions As If Thinking Matters.)