I heard a discussion the other day about “free will” and whether or not it actually exists. It’s a fascinating question and really got me thinking. Here’s my own hypothesis.

The Big Bang is our current best model for how the universe was created. According to that theory, all of the particles we find in nature – all of the matter and energy, space and time – everything in our universe was forged in the singular moment of the Big Bang. In that instant, everything that makes up the stars and the planets, you and me, all of it burst forth into existence. By definition, “free will” must have also emerged from somewhere within that cataclysmic event. But when?

We’re all made up of particles – atoms. These atoms make up molecules, which make up cells, which make up tissues, which make up organs, which are combined into systems, which make all living organisms. But at the root of it all is atoms. (There are smaller particles than that, but we’ll keep it simple). These atoms – these particles – are constantly flying around the universe, interacting with each other according to the laws of Nature.

No particle is capable of acting on its own. No atom can spontaneously decide on its own to change its speed, to stop its motion, to bind or not bind with another atom. A particle can only act when acted upon. Therefore, the actions of every particle in our universe must necessarily have been the direct result of every action before it. When one particle acts on another particle, this sets up a chain reaction. Every series of events that have happened in our universe since the beginning of time can all be described as links in an infinite number of chain reactions. The universe contains countless numbers of particles all influencing one another, all inseparably intertwined by the chain of cause and effect. Every single thing that exists is involved in some sort of chain reaction, every single link in that chain having been caused by the one before it. The origin of every action is therefore traceable and explainable by stepping backwards one reaction at a time, and can be done as far back as you like, even all the way back to the very first reaction – the Big Bang.

Eventually, under the requisite conditions, some of these lifeless particles mixed together in such a way that, somehow, from the lifeless came life. We don’t yet know how this happened. We don’t know what the very first life forms looked like, what they were made from, how they behaved, or how they literally crossed over from death to life, perhaps the only creatures to have ever done so. For our purposes, it’s not important to understand how life emerged. All we need to know is that in the beginning there was no life, and that eventually sometime thereafter, there was.

Along with life, we assume there eventually came free will. But what is free will? It is the ability and freedom to make any choice, regardless of the events leading up to that choice. The question then is this:

Can the chain of cause and effect – a chain that has been reaching back unbroken since the beginning of time – can that chain now be broken by the advent of free will?

Essentially that is what’s happening when we talk about free will, is it not? If you are absolutely free to make any decision between Option A and Option B, regardless of everything that has happened to you in the past, doesn’t the chain of cause and effect essentially end the moment you exercise free will?

I believe that it does not.

A human being is a collection of what seem to be infinitely complex systems, the mind being the most complex of them all. Perhaps consciousness itself can be defined as that which emerges when an organism reaches a state of infinite complexity. Nonetheless, all of these systems – including the mind – are composed of the same elementary particles that exist everywhere in the universe.

I believe, on a microscopic level, that each one of these particles is still involved in the unbreakable chain of events that have been ongoing since the beginning of time. Whatever state each one of these particles is in – particles that comprise all of the human body and mind – they are completely dependent on the state they were in prior to that. Over billions of years, they have evolved to form ever more complex systems, but a system can never be so complex that it transcends and no longer obeys the laws of Nature – no longer adheres to the fact that every action is the necessary result of some prior action. The human mind is indeed a complex system, but the state of that system is the result of the collective state of the particles that comprise it. Those particles are all part of the unbroken chain of events since the Big Bang, and it is impossible for them to act in any way other than in the way they must according to what happened to them prior to now.

Free will – if it exists – is a product of the actions of mind. The actions of the mind are driven by the actions of the individual elements that make up the mind. Every action is the necessary result of some action before it. Therefore, every action – every thought, every decision – that springs forth from the mind is itself part of that unbroken chain of cause and effect. You may perceive that you have the freedom to choose to go left or go right, to buy this car or that, to go to college or not. But what you perceive to be free will is in fact the cumulative result of all other events leading up to the moment of that choice, and it could not be anything else other than what it must necessarily be as a result of the past.

Nothing can come between a cause and the necessary effect, not even free will. Nothing can break the chain of cause and effect that begins with every particle in existence and stretches back to eternity. Every cause produces a necessary effect – there is no choice in the matter. Every effect is the necessary result of some other cause, and no amount of free will could make it any other way. The universe reaches us through our senses (cause), and these produce some reaction in our brain (effect). As a result, it seems to me that free will really is an illusion – something that we feel like we have, but that is actually just a complex manifestation of a necessary chain reaction that has been ongoing since the beginning of time.

So I believe that everything – the birth of every star, the death of every species, the fact that you are reading this sentence right now – everything that has ever happened is the direct result of the singular moment of the instant of the Big Bang. The events within our universe have been unfolding ever since that moment, falling like dominoes, falling as they must according to the way they were first set up. Every event – every choice made by every human being – every result of the outcome of what we call “free will” continues to unfold with every passing second, all the while unfolding exactly as they must. The wheels of the universe were set into motion at the moment of the Big Bang, and they have been turning as they necessarily must ever since then – everything moving and interacting, living and dying, deciding, thinking, choosing – each in a precise way that was perhaps set in stone for all eternity at the very instant the universe was born.