[What about Bob?]

that the human soul, insofar as it can be said to exist, may be a mortal and broadly comprehensible product of material forces

You have to wonder if the author understands the implications of a statement like this. By this statement alone he is asserting indirectly that his free will is the product of material forces, and as such, he did not choose to write this article, nor did he choose what would be in the article, nor what the article would even be about. Instead, by his own admission, the material forces caused his body and grey matter to bring about this article on their own. You see, when you embrace materialism, you throw free will out the window. With no free will, human beings are drones subject only to the laws of physics and chemistry- nothing more. So apparently material forces caused him to write an article about material forces implying that he was caused to write about material forces and so on ad infinitum. Ouroboros.

[donh]

You see, when you embrace materialism, you throw free will out the window

I see. If nobody created us for any purpose, and our choices are the result of complex processes that are, at their lowest levels, non-deterministic, than we don't have free will. Whereas, if a being created us for a reason, we do have free will. I hate to be a party pooper, but that makes no reasonable sense, if anything, the opposite would be more likely.

[Physicist]

You see, when you embrace materialism, you throw free will out the window.

Garbage. If your mind were made of clockwork, why would you expect it to *feel* any differently from how it does now?

Free will exists by definition. We define it as "that process by which humans make conscious decisions". That leaves the question of how we make those decisions completely unaddressed. How do you think we make those decisions? Just what exactly do you think our brains do, anyway? (No homunculus, please.)