Read the essay, it is likely to remove No.2 from Your list. (Or You can try to refute it – if You succeed in that task (very unlikely!), please email me how. )

Similarly, though the “Militant Agnostic” bumper sticker IS very funny and makes something of a point, that point is overextended. Though we may not be able to say with 100% certainty (for instance) that a god doesn’t exist, we can try to estimate the probabilities AND can certainly explore something about what existence or nonexistence would imply about the Universe in which we seem to live, and about the characteristics such a god would seen to have. This can lead us to some pretty strong conclusions, even if they’re not absolute in the pure mathematical sense. I can’t say for sure that all the laws of aerodynamics are correct as we know them and I KNOW that our understanding of the laws of fluid dynamics is incomplete in principle, but I’m convinced that–barring mechanical failure–a huge metal craft of a certain common type can carry me through the air at dizzying speeds between two points thousands of miles apart safely and pretty comfortably. I have many times staked my life and the lives of loved ones on that conviction. So far so good.

Do not cloud the argument against evolution with alternatives to the question. Just evaluate it critically and objectively. Start with the pre “Big Bang” period. Where did all that matter come from? Can atomic particles evolve?

I think you probably can prove it, actually. It brings to mind the famous incident involving Dr Johnson’s and James Boswell leaving a Bishop Berkeley sermon questioning whether matter can be “proven” and Boswell asking Johnson how precisely he can refute Berkeley’s arguments…

Johnson retorted “I refute it thus” and banged his foot against a large rock.

Our ordinary practice is to ascribe “free will” to beings which are conscious and intelligent. “Conscious” meaning that they have an internal (“mental”) model of the external world, which they use to anticipate the consequences of different “imagined” courses of action. “Intelligent” meaning that their model is complex and sophisticated, and their imagination likewise, so they can find courses of action that will serve their purposes even in novel situations. “Free will” in such cases means that the great bulk of the IMMEDIATE causes of their actions lie inside their “skin” rather than outside, AND that their actions are not easily or reliably predictable by an outside observer.

This use of the term “free will” does not require denying the hypothesis of “universal causation”, nor does it depend in any way on whether “causation” is always a single-valued function (i.e. whether the same inputs always produce the same output, or whether instead the output may be any of several values with some statistical probability for each.) In other words, this use of the term “free will” is fully compatible with “determinism”. Beings with “minds” sufficiently sophisticated to have “free will” may operate their “minds” deterministically.

We assign “moral responsibility” to beings with “free will”, we assign praise and blame, rewards and punishments, to such beings, because that is the easiest (often the only) way we know to intervene in the causal chain. We want them to behave in one way rather than another, so we initiate some causes that we hope will have the effect of modifying their behavior. We hope they will include in their “mental” model that we will respond to their actions with praise/blame, reward/penalty, and that they will therefore “choose” a different course of action. The hypothesis of “universal causation” is irrelevant to this.

If we gain some ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE of the causal chain affecting their actions, then we may intervene at a different place. For example, if we find that childhood exposure to high levels of lead in the environment leads to neurological damage that results in a lack of ability to control impulses, i.e. their ability to control their own behavior by “rationality” is impaired, then we may seek to reduce crime by banning leaded gasoline, lead-based paint, lead solder in water pipes, and so forth. But this is not the same as “determinism”, considered as a philosophical hypothesis.

“Determinism”, the hypothesis of Universal Causation, says that “all events have causes; there are no uncaused events”. This is a universal claim. The critic may offer as a counterexample some event with no apparent cause. The believer in Determinism will reply “the cause may be unknown at present, but there must be one”. This is not something that can ever be proved or disproved, by any amount of evidence, short of complete examination of the entire Universe throughout all of Time. It is a starting assumption, a working hypothesis. Some have claimed that it is a NECESSARY assumption for the practice of science, but I don’t think so. Science can be practiced perfectly well under the assumption that many/most events have causes.

So: I see no reason to spend one more second debating the question of “free will versus determinism”.

The universe (matter, volume & physical laws), appears to be a vast machine that turns hydrogen into complete sentences. Whether these sentences are the end product or just another middle stage is yet to be determined.