this is the way

if you haven’t noticed by now, im an incompatibilist (i do not believe determinism is compatible with free will)

we fundamentally disagree on what a ‘decision’ is. you believe that logical possibility is enough for free will, i don’t.

The agent made its decision based on knowledge, reasoning, experience, the risks, the morals

i argue that if you accept determinism, this is an illusion. you believe you are making a decision based on free will because it is logically possible that you can take any of the available options, but it in actuality it is no different than the marble, you are physically bound to a specific outcome.

there is a bit of a shifting of goalposts here with respect to how you define making a ‘choice’ with regard to logical and physical possibility/impossibility.

suppose i place a marble on a slope and let go. the marble rolls down due to gravity. did the marble ‘choose’ to roll down? it does not seem so.

is it possible for the opposite to occur, that is, the marble to roll up?

• logically? yes, there is nothing logically contradictory about the marble rolling up after i drop it
• physically? no, due to the laws of gravity

the logical possibility that the marble can roll upwards does not mean that it is a free will choice. replace the marble with an agent ‘choosing’ between options A and B, supposing the agent ‘chooses’ B. because you claim to be determinist, i take it you believe physics completely dictates the universe’s events, thus it is physical necessity that the agent ‘chooses’ B. however, it is logically possible for the agent to ‘choose’ A as choosing A does not entail anything logically contradictory.

what is the difference in the case of the agent vs. the marble? or do you actually believe the marble ‘chooses’ to roll down?

It’s not that you didn’t have a choice, it’s that you would’ve made that decision no matter what based on the laws of physics

in your view, what is the difference between having a forced decision and not having a choice? and why exactly would this forced choice be punishable in the same way a free one would be?

the point was that it was a test, god should already know who’s going to be selected, if there’s no free will, this is still all pointless.

a calvinist would not agree that the point is a test. read up on the ‘doctrine of unconditional election’ if you are curious. in brief, god makes decisions about who is saved and who isn’t not based on conditions they follow in their life, but based on his own purposes and goals.

If it’s predetermined, why did god make all these evil people that were just going to be miserable in hell anyway?

this is the problem of evil, there are numerous responses and the literature is extensive. again, a calvinist would probably say that he created evil people for his glory and grace. notably, jesus dying on the cross for humanity’s sins as a display of god’s grace does not make sense without the existence of evil.

not a christian, but it is a problem for atheists depending on your framework of morality

traditionally, determinism is not compatible with moral responsibility since all actions are predetermined and it is not obvious that one can be held morally responsible for them. you have to do some mental gymnastics with either the nature of causation (see hume), or the nature of morality (see error theory), or the nature of what exactly ‘freedom’ is (see john stewart mill) to resolve this incompatibility

to the problem of the theist test, standard christian doctrine is that your fate in heaven is predetermined and individuals have been pre-chosen by god (theological term is ‘the elect’). in that sense, your worldly life is not a ‘test’, but the idea is that the holy spirit reveals god to those who have been selected.

there are philosophical problems with all of these, but just wanted to make the point that both theist and atheist philosophers have been debating this for hundreds of years and it is not at all actually obvious accepting hard determinism solves everything.