Given that we have volition, the problem is to reconcile that with the physical universe as we know it. An axiom that I simply accept is that there is a God. I've got "reasons" but for now we'll just accept that axiomatically. I need that because I want to get quickly to my "wild and crazy" theory that reconciles volition with the physical universe. I suppose most atheists don't think this is necessary for someone who makes the universe "easy" by inventing God. But like St. Augustine, I have to understand what I believe.

My own theory of volition

Quantum mechanics says that underneath it all, at the lowest levels, probability rules. God does play dice. The universe is orderly because on the macroscopic level Newtonian mechanics works "on the average". But on the microscopic level, whether two particular electrons decide to exchange an photon is purely a matter of chance.

At least it appears to be chance. That's the part that bothers both me and Einstein-I don't really believe that God plays dice. For years we've modelled things we didn't understand stochastically. But these were only models. Eventually, enough is learned about these complex processes so that we can replace the stochastic models with better, deterministic models. We find the "hidden variables." The problem with quantum mechanics is that there are proofs that say we cannot ever know the "hidden variables" in quantum processes. This is unsatisfying. And I'm reluctant to accept that these processes really are stochastic.

Enter God. In my own radical theory these processes are not stochastic, but determined by the mind of God. This is how He maintains the universe. This is how He controls the universe. This is how He inserts His will into the universe. Perhaps for the majority of the quantum interactions He declared, "Let them be normally distributed." (He couldn't say "Gaussian" because, of course, Gauss hadn't happened yet.) (And I apologize for anthropomophisizing God, but it's easier to explain things that way.) But where He wants to make changes or to insert His will into the universe, He skews the probability density functions to produce the desired effect. This is very appealing to me because I don't really believe in the "supernatural". I've always wanted to believe that every miracle is done "by the rules" because to do otherwise--to break His own rules--seems to make God devious, or misleading, or a liar. This willful skewing of density functions could have been used to give evolution a needed assist at various times in history; it's difficult to accept otherwise. Of course, it would take a great deal of intelligence to know how to skew the density functions for bajillions of quantum interactions needed to produce a desired effect.