Free will and humans

[Whateverist]

Beautiful.
I had that same thought,now I know it's called libertarian free will but I don't understand why you think it's false. 

Jörmungandr has already explained - very nicely, I might add - a big part of the problem here. Let me add a bit more:

In a nutshell, the problem with the libertarian conception of FW is that it requires our decisions to be neither determined nor ultimately random. If your decision to write the post was determined - so that, given the totality of the situation at the time, it had to happen - then obviously you don't have LFW. (In case it's not immediately obvious why, recall that LFW means that there is more than one possibility available to you; determinism, however, means that there is only one possible outcome.) If, OTOH, your action was ultimately random - a matter of chance - then that too is incompatible with LFW, because then it wouldn't really be something that you were in charge of; instead, it would be something that just happened. 

LFW, then, requires that there be a third alternative, something in between the determined and the random. But the problem is that logically, there can be no third alternative. If an event can either happen or fail to happen in the same exact situation, then there cannot be anything in that situation that explains why it happened or failed to happen. And that is what it means for the event to be random.

BTW, in ch. 7 of my book THE TRUTH ABOUT GOD, I explain this further and then use it as part of an argument for atheism.

So your consistently sharp posts made me curious. So I went back through other of your posts until I came to this one. Which sent me searching for your book. Being newish to the forums you are not allowed to link it directly yourself, but I am allowed to. http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/book-...about-god/ Oh, this is a favorable review by the way, not a link to a book seller.

Now I haven't read it myself of course and I'm not sure I will. But given the quality the posts you've made here so far I can see why people might enjoy it. But there is something which gives me pause.

I worry about how you are defining "god" (or "God", which ever you use). That has always been a stumbling block for my reading any of the new atheists .. and I haven't. So I'm wondering if you've managed to define God in a way which Christians generally recognize as what they have in mind - while also defining it in a way which takes sufficient account of the pervasive existence of god belief across continents and millennia? If "god" turns out to be literally the omni-everything cosmic watchmaker the Christians have in mind, then I think you will fail to ground the concept of "god" in any naturalistic way which can account for the pervasiveness of god belief. Before I order my copy I need to know how you resolve that tension. [Pro tip: declaring that god belief was just failed science from the days when we were stupider won't sell your book .. to me.]