Mark Quayle said:
What makes you choose it is the strongest and most prevalent influences, affecting your mental and physical desires. I don't see how you can think that any choice is made out of a void. There are always causes. Even God chose out of his desire (if "desire" is a worthy descriptor).
For God to have his choices predetermined would imply a lot of false things —most notably, that God answers to a power higher than himself. I think you and I both agree that is not the case. He simply IS, and we do not simply exist, but had a beginning; we are creatures. We are not on any scale of responsibility compared to him.
Mark Quayle said:
Of course it cannot. Particularly libertarian freewill in the creature! At best that is a metaphysical proposal. And more to the point, it is a false construction, self-defeating. It invokes either secondary first causes, or the force of mere chance, both of which are self-contradictory.
No, of course, science doesn't even know what consciousness is.
Mark Quayle said:
I think that you would agree that compared to God, our consciousness and sentience and self-awareness hardly figures on any scale.
No, I have no way to calculate such a thing as how God makes all his intentions come to pass, nor do I care to attempt it. I only hold to that belief because of the logical chains of causation —well, that, and the fact that God says much to that same effect.
Mark Quayle said:
Then, as I said, you invoke secondary first causes, which is logically self-contradictory.
There can be only one first cause. Agreed? That would be God, the only "uncaused causer", maker and ruler of all that is not him. Yet libertarian freewill proposes uncaused causing by those who choose, because (according to the libertarian) they are not caused to make any particular choice. So these choosers —supposedly uncaused causers— who were at least caused to exist, and whose existence is maintained at every moment by their Creator, somehow out of nothingness make choices, beginning their own chains of cause and effect with no preceding causes.
Mark Quayle said:
Do me a favor and watch the first half, if not the whole thing, of this video. In it, you will hear described in extremely condensed manner, enough of the story of our redemption, beginning with the account of Joseph's coat of many colors, a whole series of seemingly 'improbable' events, where I have to imagine, from your POV, that you would see many many multiple interventions by God to keep history steered toward the cross, (which I think you will agree that the cross, at least, was predetermined by God) —enough of the story, I say, that it seems to me impossible to not see God's providence and causation throughout. And in the whole story, are human creatures making choices, that inexorably result in the Cross.
I wish I knew how to put this, that comes instinctively to me. And I can't remember the term I heard from a scientific source that made a study on causation, that, though I don't think it conclusively proved the point, demonstrated the intricate interrelationship of what may otherwise seem to be unrelated events impacting all other identifiable "events" or facts. Instinctively, I know that all things are interrelated, (though I'm not so clear that the butterfly's wingbeat in China is part of the Hurricane simultaneously occurring on the other side of the globe. That is, instinctively, I think the wingbeat must precede the hurricane by some given period of time). But, the point is, all fact (but the One) must descend causally from the One Fact, who is "Cause Itself". Even the principle of causation is of HIS derivation, and is not itself raw fact.
So while it may not be logically necessary —to our minds, at least— to see that "micromanaging cosmos....is necessary....for God to do to have His will come to pass", it does logically follow, and is according to accepted principles, unlike the notion of absolutely self-derived individual potential of God's creatures. Sure, God could go around "flying by the seat of his pants", so to speak, to correct things gone awry, and working all self-generated fact out for his ends, but that denies an awful lot of the logically necessary attributes of God, to include Omnipotence, Simplicity and Immanence.
To add to this, and like it, IF it is universal fact that God "micromanages cosmos", then things are entirely logical as I have described, and not as libertarian freewill does. But IF it is not universal fact that God "micromanages cosmos", then all sorts of chaotic and self-contradictory notions ensue, that imply both 'chance' and 'secondary first causes'.
As for personal responsibility, consider this, if you need to, as cold hard fact, created fact and not simply philosophical considerations, that God is altogether pure, whose burning purity will not endure rebellion against himself, but must destroy it. (And, any departure from "cold hard fact" is not found in God's creation, but in God himself, and his purposes.) Then, in this kind of consideration, we are not malleable creation, but only the vessels made for his purposes, described in Romans 9. But some of these vessels, he created for the purpose of demonstrating his mercy and his glory, quite apart from anything they did or deserved. (While that picture is not the whole story, it does demonstrate the force of causation as generated by God alone, and demonstrates the creature as being only another "cog in the machine-works", incapable of libertarian ability to cause). Thus, morality is simple "did this and compensation for lack of purity resulted"— we have "fallen short" of the glory of God, and God will destroy us, but for his mercy and his purposes.
I'm not presenting the above paragraph as fact, but as simply a way to look at things, that does demonstrate the huge difference between where we figure on the scale of personal responsibility, and where God is. That we "should have done" and did not, can fall within the huge range of causation, without contradicting personal responsibility. God's creating necessarily implies that absolutely all fact, specifically in this context, absolutely all ability and choice by the creature, is established by God, and impossible without him having established it. God's creating also necessarily implies that our level of morality is nowhere near his. This is not about our ability to 'be good', but about our need for the power of his purity —our distance from him, vs being 'in him'.
I see once again I have rambled on. I hope something here is useful to you. Thanks for the fun.