Determinism

Determinism is the belief that every event, including human cognition, decisionmaking and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior or concurrent events.   No wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur.   The principal consequence of determinism is that free will is an illusion.   The First Cause was the Big Bang that inleashed mass, energy and momentum that led to the current state of the universe and everything in it.   This matter, energy and momentum will continue into the indefinite future.   Indeterminism, by contrast, is the belief that there are events that are not caused.

Here is a theological view of free will:

"That God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal, and infallible will.   By this thunderbolt, 'Free-will' is thrown prostrate, and utterly dashed to pieces.   Those, therefore, who would assert 'Free-will,' must either deny this thunderbolt, or pretend not to see it, or push it from them." (The Bondage of the Will, Martin Luther)

Luther's conclusion was correct, but his mechanism was incorrect.

The Big Bang was the First Cause that provided our universe with the initial mass, energy and momentum that led to its present state and will continue to produce future states.   A small part of the present universal state are humans, each with its central nervous system (CNS = brain + spinal cord).   Each brain has several cognitive functions, two of which are willing (volition) and memory.   Willing (and all other brain functions) is mediated by neurons, neuronal pools (networks), molecular neurotransmitters (e.g., acetylcholine, glutamate, norepinephrine) and neuromodulators (e.g., hormones, neuropeptides) operating at chemical synapses, and ions operating at electrical synapses.   The signal pathway in the CNS is as follows: Sensory (afferent) neurons detect changes in the environment (stimuli) and transmit this information via the synapses to the CNS, which is passed to brain interneurons that integrate the information with memory neurons.   Volition (willing) "decisions" are made at brain synapses that determine how the body responses to the stimuli.   This information is passed from the interneurons to the motor (efferent) neurons, (muscles, glands, heart, etc.) via the synapses that produce actions, thoughts, speech, and feelings.   Neural science presumes cause and effect throughout these pathways.   There is no "freedom" (spontaneity) anywhere at the neural, molecular and ionic levels that any neurologist or neural physiologist has ever detected.   Not likely that there ever will be.   On the contrary, it is likely that neural physiologists eventually will determine a more precise "decisionmaking" mechanism in the brain.   That event certainly will be a scientific tour de force.

Conclusion: Volition (willing) is caused at the cellular, molecular and ionic levels.   (Subatomic particles are irrelevant to the study of this subject.)   There is no "free" (uncaused, spontaneous) volition.   No "free" cognition of any kind.