Determinism, Free Will, and A Thought Experiment

[Angrboda]

A few observations. First, I find Craig's objection persuasive, or would, if I believed in such things. In your first thought experiment, I would suggest that Robert and his will are both functions of his brain chemistry, so in order to speak as if these things were capable of acting independently encounters serious mereological difficulties. (The kind compatibilists keep trying to solve by fiat.) Second, I'm unfamiliar with the properties of causal determinacy which apply to a god and its will. As a Hindu, I'm likely to come to very different conceptions than those of a Christian, and those of a Kaballah Jew. Ultimately, I simply have no way of knowing anything really definitely. As I've thought about the Semitic god over the last year or so, I am inclined that, in order for the accounts to be consistent, then he must be essentially a single will, unfolding itself through time; he is not an agent in the classical sense, because he takes only one action, and he is never not that action. Beyond that, since god is commonly postulated as uncaused, it's unclear what it would mean to say that he is determined. Determined by what? He's uncaused. His will isn't determined by anything outside himself; if any being is a candidate for a meaningful compatibilist position, it's Him, as he is the alpha and omega of all his acts.

Oh, forgot one point. You say that Robert/Him is capable of A or not-A, but the ability to do not-A has no bearing on his ability to choose A. You see them as exclusive because you've put them in logical opposition. It would appear a truism that the fact that I can't fly doesn't preclude me from choosing chocolate ice cream, even if you were to put me in a context in which I could only do one or the other. God's will doesn't need to be free to do any and all acts, only that it be free to choose among some alternatives in any given situation. There are many things we can't choose. Suppose, for whatever reason, that we cannot possibly do not-A. Our freedom is still preserved if there is an alternative to A that is not the hypothetical not-A. If we can choose either A or B, our inability to choose not-A does not make us not free.