How Can We Have Moral Direction If God Controls Everything?

[RoadRunner79]

And as I said, if you hold to materialism, that there is just space, time, and matter governed by the laws of physics, then you have no free will of any kind.   You don't have a moral free will, or even the ability to think about logical choices.   It's just a falling of the dominos, with no way to choose.   X conditions, are processed, and given Y result; regardless of truth or validity of the matter.  So as to the other part of the post, it appears that for a materialist view, that along with having no moral basis which which to say what is right or wrong, you couldn't decide it if there was.

 

Free will has nothing to do with materialism or determinism.  It is merely a question of, is an entity able to react to the environment in a way that has value?  This implies that the entity makes a choice based on its values (whether they be survival, moral, etc.).

Free will is a mode of operation of a conscious being -- the ability to make choices that benefits it.  Whether that choice is metaphysically pre-determined is outside the realm of knowledge of the being.  It acts as if it is free.

Consider the alternative to determinism -- quantum-mechanical chance.  This does not make an entity more "free" according to my definition.  It merely adds randomness to the operation of the consciousness.  I would argue that randomness introduces errors in choice, and does not improve a being's ability to make a choice.  I could be wrong -- randomness could actually help if an algorithm is designed to use it (as in a monte-carlo or annealing simulation).

Now, what does anything non-material add to the discussion?  If there is a soul making choices (instead of the brain), on what rules does the soul operate?  Is it deterministic, or random?  How can some sort of "free will" agency exist without a logical framework such as a brain?  Postulating a soul merely creates a new problem, of how the soul operates.

I would tend to agree with most of what you said here. I think that a soul, is what adds the will to the equation.