Questions for "Our Role(s) as Christians on Atheist Forums"

[SteveII]

Fine, I will clarify. However, libertarian free will is not "essentially uncaused choice." It is that the cause is internal mental processes that are themselves not physically determined.

That's kind of the way I understand it. I think everyone agrees that hard determinism means that everything you think, feel and do, is mechanically fixed since the beginning of time. To me, the only thing compatibalism adds is a causally inert epiphenomena whose subjective experience of choice exactly correspond with what would have happened anyway. Both assume that the universe is casually closed. At least the first makes some kind of sense within ontological naturalism.

SteveII, not sure how you conceptualize libertarian free will. As for me, I do not consider the physical universe causally closed, which regardless of how one defines free will is the crux of the matter. Causal closure has some merit in a mechanistic Newtonian universe, but we now know, scientifically, that's not how it is. Those who argue for either hard determinism or its bastard child, compatibalism, are pretty much stuck in the past and making arguments of convenience to close off any consideration of Divine Providence.

Libertarian free will simply views the physical universe as being open to the influences of agents that are not themselves directly subject to causal changes manifest in the physical universe. Those who object will usually say this pushes the problem back; however that assumes that those outside agents are subject to only material and efficient causes, which are the only ones physicalists will recognize. There is no reason to make that assumption which makes the objection to libertarian free just another argument from incredulity.

I don't disagree with anything there. I would only add libertarian free will requires holding to a mind/body dualism: mental processes are not simply the result of chemical/electrical processes in the brain. We are something more than the sum of our parts. It is how all of us live and perceive reality. Denying it seems to the intellectual price of ascribing to strong naturalism.