Human Intelligence is an Illusion

[Alan V]

As I stated, the secular idea of "Nature" is something purely deterministic, mechanical, algorithmic, or random. Something bound to a set of arbitrary laws or conditions, or something that arises from random chance without any form of mindful choice.

My bolding.

Chance combinations of materials, rather than deterministic laws of physics, lead to abiogenesis and biological evolution.  That being the case, there is no problem with evolution creating selves which make efforts to load the dice of chance events for their own benefit.  At more complex levels of evolution, reason is involved in that process of making choices.  Thus free will evolves from chance events.

Your confusions arise from the belief that all things we observe are reducible to the laws of physics, when they observably are not. Life is not. Consciousness is not. Free will is not.