[You can't have it both ways. If animals "praise" by living their lives, so do atheists.]

NO!--given their refusal to love and obey their Creator thereby fulfilling the reason for their creation, atheists have no lives--they merely exist.

[And when you say animals "joyfully obey", it is because they have no free will to do otherwise.]

Yes, this is true. Without freewill, animals can do no more than follow their programming. Man, with his God-given gift of freewill, alone in the universe has the ability to love his Creator and do His will out of Love, rather than programming. This is the essence of "humanity" given that man was created in the image and likeness of God. (Genesis 1:27)

By turning their back on their Creator to the point of, against all evidence and reason, even denying His existence and thus their own humanity, atheists, in effect, become animals controlled by their instincts--which, of course, is what Darwin said in the first place and explains his position as the atheist messiah.