Atheists, like Richard Dawkins, believe free will is an illusion.

Since humans are no different than any other animal, man has no more free will than other animals. The majority of the population disagrees, which is why atheists such as Dawkins refer to free will as an illusion.

To atheists, free will must be an illusion. If man has something unique that exists nowhere else in all creation, it proves them wrong. Not only did God create all life, but God created man different from everything else.

Firewalking is one of many activities people do that disprove the atheistic view that free will is an illusion. Only through free will can a person walk on hot coals, since animals will never do it. The action must be purposefully taken since instinct calls out for something else.

Parkour is another activity people take to prove man has free will. No animal would ever do what those people do. Instinct would never allow it to happen.

Other things prove free will exist, beyond what I have already written, which I have no interest in trying.

The ability to write is uniquely human. Not just having a written language, which exists nowhere else in nature, but intent of words.

When I write, there is no randomness to the letters I choose. Each has a purpose to help me bring about the intent of what I am writing about, like this blog. To write requires analytical thought, which comes from my free will.

Atheists believe there is nothing unique about writing. Given enough monkeys with enough typewriters, it is believed the entire works of Shakespeare can be typed out. It is called the Infinite Monkey Theorem.

It has been tried with both real and computerized simulations, both of which failed.

From IFL Science:

Researchers, “attempted to simulate the monkeys using random text generators. One of the first attempts, in 2004, saw a tiny bit of success when one of the monkeys bashed out the phrase 'VALENTINE. Cease toIdor:eFLP0FRjWK78aXzVOwm)-‘;8.t', the first part of which was in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona… That took the simulated monkeys 42,162,500,000 billion billion monkey years.”

From the same article, real monkeys were used to get a better idea of what would happen, since randomly generating numbers is not the same as having monkeys type anything.

“As for actual monkeys, they have actually been given the task before, just to see what they would do. In 2002, the University of Plymouth got funding to put a keyboard in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in Devon, England. The monkeys, and we're really being fair to them here, were awful. After a month, all they had produced was a string of letters, mainly the letter 's', and there was only one vowel in the whole document – 'a.’”

Since a computer was used, rather than typewriter, it is not an accurate comparison to the original line of query. There was no typewriter included.

With an infinite number of monkeys and typewriters, not one would load a single piece of paper. Or take the additional steps free will requires, like lining it up, and using proper punctuation from the first letter to the last.

There is a lot more than just loading paper into a typewriter that requires analytical thought, which is our free will. Everything from pulling back two keys that got stuck from hitting them too quickly, to changing ribbon would be beyond any monkey.

Free will is no illusion. It exists and is a part of everything man does.

Bob Ryan is a writer who has an MBA. He is an American Christian Zionist who staunchly supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. He has been a weekly blogger at the Times of Israel since 2019.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License