Ok, time for some philosophical tought.

  In the physical world as we know it, at macroscopic levels, every action
is deterministic: Every event is just a deterministic consequence of some
earlier events. Every effect is the product of some causes. They happen that
way because there's physically no other way they could have happened. The
link between causes and consequences can be so intricately complicated that
it can be nearly impossible to see the whole chain of events, but the events
are nevertheless deterministic and predetermined. In theory every single
event can be perfectly predicted from earlier events all the way to infinity.

  This changes at atomic scales, where quantum effects can be truely
non-deterministic and unpredictable, in other words, random. This is the
exact opposite of determinism and predetermination: Here the outcome is
purely random (in the absolute and ultimate sense) and there is no physical
way of predicting it (as far as we know).

  Sometimes quantum effects can escalate to macroscopic scales, and thus
affect macroscopic events. What this means in practice is that these random
quantum effects may change an otherwise deterministic chain of macroscopic
events in a completely unpredictable way. In other words, the purely
deterministic and predetermined chain of events is sometimes disrupted
at random, resulting in a different chain of events from that point forward.
(How often this happens, I have no idea, as I am no physicist.)

  Now we come to the philosophical concept of human free choice. By its
very definition free choice is necessarily something which transcends both
deterministic and random behavior. In other words, free choice can change
a deterministic chain of events non-randomly. Thus it overrides both
determinism at macroscopic levels and randomness at quantum levels.

  Thus if human free choice exists, it means that the human mind which is
making this choice transcends both the deterministic macroscopic and the
random quantum physics.

  There are only two possible conclusions we can make from this:

1) The human mind does not transcend beyond the physical world, which means
that free choice does not exist. Everything the human mind comes up with is
predetermined by deterministic events, sometimes garbled by random quantum
effects. This is not free choice.

2) The human mind does transcend beyond the physical world as we know it,
and is able to perform true choices which change deterministic chains of
events in non-random ways. In other words, the human consciousness is more
than just the electric impulses in our brain.

  The religious (and possibly agnostic) point of view chooses option number 2.
The atheist point of view must therefore choose option number 1, unless an
explanation of how the human mind can affect deterministic events in a
non-random way is given. Free choice is just an illusion.

  (And no, this was not an argument promoting religious thinking, even
though it might have unintentionally came up sounding like that. It's not
my intention. It was just some food for thought.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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