Is physical determinism reality?

Flipping Molinist dominoes

Molinism

Since CCFs do not depend for their truth values on God's will, and God is omniscient, God knows the field of CCFs "ahead of time," that is, in a way explanatorily prior to his decision to create. He can therefore foresee exactly what world will result from any set of initial conditions he might choose to create. Thus, Molinism is a No-Risk view, and it offers wide scope for divine providential control. For example, supposed it is true that if Eve were offered an apple by a snake, she would freely take and eat it. If God wishes Eve to eat such an apple, all he has to do is arrange for a snake to offer her one. On the other hand, if he wishes Eve to avoid this action, he simply sees to it that no such offer is made. In either case, God exercises providential control by  managing, so to speak what conditions free agents find themselves in rather than by making things happen directly as a result of his will, and either case Eve acts only on her free will. 

Theological determinism

It follows that determinism in this model is exclusively theological, and there need be no causal determinism in the created order. God can create as random a universe as you like, in the case that he can create a universe where, for example, there is no set of simple natural laws that describe all or nearly all of the events in the universe. On the other hand, it will not be random at all in the sense that it will be exactly the universe God intended to create. Heath White, Fate and Free Will: A Defense of Theological Determinism  (Notre Dame 2019).

This is interesting because it means Molinism is, in its own way, even more deterministic than Calvinism. If it's certain that the agent will respond in a particular way in a particular situation, then the initial conditions predetermine the outcome. Flip the first domino and all the other dominoes fall in a particular, inevitable sequence.

In Calvinism, by contrast, it's possible for the same outcome to eventuate from different initial conditions because it's not deterministic in that way. Rather, it operates more like dramatic logic, where the plot unfolds in a particular way, characters act in a particular way, for teleologically and psychologically plausible reasons. Not a mechanical domino effect, but because God prefers one world history or cosmic narrative over another. 

The card you draw

Debates over Calvinism and freewill theism often revolve around the allegation that Calvinism is committed to "causal determinism". In my experience, freewill theists rarely if ever define either term. 

It's interesting to compare determinism to causation. What does it mean to cause something? Suppose I'm in a poker game. If the deck is randomly shuffled one way, I'll draw a particular card, and if it's randomly shuffled another way, I'll draw a different card. If we keep all the other variables the same, there's a sense in which changing that one variable makes the difference. Depending on the card I draw, I will bet, bluff, call, raise, or fold. 

But in a larger sense, that's not the only thing that causes me to play my hand a particular way. Depends on the other cards in my hand. Depends on how I read the other players, which in turn depends on the composition of the players. Depends on whether I'm in a good mood because I'm savoring a nice bourbon, or whether I'm in a bad mood because I just broke up with my girlfriends. Depends on how much money I can afford to lose. 

We might say they don't make the difference in the sense that if we just change one variable, then that's what makes the difference. But we could change one of those variables, instead.

So there's no one variable that causes the outcome, but the combination. They all make a difference to the outcome.

Determined to Come Most Freely

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/determined-to-come-most-freely/

The disconnect problem

There is a certain well-known problem facing libertarians–the so-called "luck problem." If an event is undetermined, then it is random, and random events are not within anyone's control. A tad more carefully, if an event is undetermined then it is not determined by the agent's reasons, and this disconnection has the consequence that it is just luck when an undetermined event appropriately corresponds to the agent's reasons. That, in turn, seems to have the consequence that the undetermined event is not something that the agent controls or for which the agent is responsible. There is a standard response to this problem–an agent can control her actions by virtue of her reasons "influencing without determining" her decisions. I will propose that if some influencing is good, then a little more influencing is always better. I will further propose that that leaves the libertarian with no explanation for why influencing is good but determining is bad. 

The disconnect problem can be stated thus: if an event E is undetermined, then it is not sufficiently connected to A's reasons to qualify as being within her control, up to her, or something she has a choice about. 

Her resulting behavior would look just like what she should have done on her own, but it would not be in her control because it was coming from "without". It is this externality to the self that is carried over through Case 7. If the start of a chain leading to a volition is disconnected from Agent A's character, then moving that start inside the head will not stop it from being disconnected. 

We need to distinguish different ways in which one might lack free will–different ways in which it might not be possible for one to perform an act. The difference I have in mind has to do with the counterfactual effectiveness of my deliberation…If I were to believe that I lacked free will with respect to which door to exit through on the grounds that I believe that one of the doors is locked, then I would not and should not deliberate about which door to exit through. The deliberation would be pointless. Regardless of the outcome of the deliberation, my exit would be through the unlocked door.

…The determinist chain that produces that action produces it by way of the deliberation. Determinism is not fatalism. If I were to deliberate to a different outcome or fail to deliberate at all, my action would be different. As long as deliberation makes a difference it is not pointless. Mark Heller, "The Disconnect Problem and the Influence Strategy," John. Keller, ed. Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter Van Inwagen (Oxford 2017), chap. 5. 

Circumstantial luck

On a number of occasions I've proposed counterfactual guilt as a justification for eternal punishment. Here's a striking illustration:

What we do is also limited by the opportunities and choices with which we are faced, and these are largely determined by factors beyond our control. Someone who was an officer in a concentration camp might have led a quiet and harmless life if the Nazis had never come to power in Germany. And someone who led a quiet and harmless life in Argentina might have become an officer in a concentration camp if he had not left Germany for business reasons in 1930. 

The third category to consider is luck in one's circumstances. I shall mention it briefly. The things we are called upon to do, the moral tests we face, are importantly determined by factors beyond our control. It may be true of someone that in a dangerous situation he would behave in a cowardly or heroic fashion, but if the situation never arises, he will never have the chance to distinguish or disgrace himself in this way, and his moral record will be different.

A conspicuous example of this is political. Ordinary citizens of Nazi Germany had an opportunity to behave heroically by opposing the regime. They also had an opportunity to behave badly, and most of them are culpable for having failed this test. But it is a test to which the citizens of other countries were not subjected, with the result that even if they, or some of them, would have behaved as badly as the Germans in like circumstances, they simply did not and therefore are not similarly culpable. Here again one is morally at the mercy of fate, and it may seem irrational upon reflection, but our ordinary moral attitudes would be unrecognizable without it. We judge people for what they actually do or fail to do, not just for what they would have done if circumstances had been different. Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck," Moral Questions (Cambridge 1991). chap. 3.

i) It's a matter of "circumstantial luck" that some people commit atrocities while others lead decent lives. If their situations were reversed, their conduct would be reversed. 

ii) In addition, this often involves circumstances beyond their control. The situation in which they find themselves. They didn't create the situation. 

iii) I don't quite agree with Nagel's conclusion. As a matter of penology, we punish people for what they actually do or fail to do, not for what they would have done if circumstances had been different. That's in part because, unlike God, we lack counterfactual knowledge. In addition, penology is largely practical. About social incentives and disincentives rather than ultimate justice. 

iv) But from the standpoint of eschatological justice, which concerns itself with meting out what people deserve, the considerations are different. It's not so much that they are directly judged by what they might have done or failed to do, but what counterfactual scenarios expose about their character defects. 

Random determinism

1. One of the dividing lines in historical theology is the difference between freewill theism (e.g. open theism, simple foreknowledge Arminianism) and predestinarian traditions (e.g. Calvinism, classical Thomism, Augustinianism, Jansenism). Molinism tries to split the difference, combining elements of predestination and meticulous providence with libertarian freedom. 

In my experience, freewill theists, at least the internet variety, typically classify Calvinism as committed to "causal determination". That's become a rhetorical trope. 

Conversely, there's an attempt in some quarters (e.g. Richard Muller, Oliver Crisp) to promote "libertarian Calvinism". I think that's confused on both historical and philosophical grounds.

2. Determinism and indeterminism are usually treated as opposites. Contrasting or contrary principles.

On the one hand, the natural world generally–perhaps invariably–operates according to physical determinism. Like a machine.  

A possible exception is quantum events. There are, however, deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. And even if quantum events are physically determinate, they could still be predestined (since predestination isn't a physical determinant). 

In the popular imagination, dynamic systems are indeterminate. However, from what I've read, the key distinction in chaos theory isn't indeterminism but nonlinearity. Dynamic systems are, in fact, deterministic, but nonlinear:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chaos/

Indeterminism is often related to randomness. A classic example is throwing dice. The outcomes are random in the sense that if the dice are fair, each throw of the dice is causally disconnected from the preceding or succeeding throw of the dice. 

However, the outcome isn't uncaused. It's unpredictable because there are too many variables to consider. Yet the outcome remains determinate. 

3. At the other end of the spectrum, God is the freest entity in the world. God's actions are indeterminate in the sense that nothing absolutely causes God to choose one way or another–although God has reasons for his choices. 

This is sometimes taken to imply that God's choice of which world to create (or not create) is arbitrary. However, God isn't forced to choose between different options, since God can instantiate multiple options (i.e. a multiverse). So there's no dilemma. 

4. One neglected consideration is that the same outcome can be both random and determinate. That might seem counterintuitive, but it's a familiar principle. Consider algorithms to generate randomized outcomes. To my knowledge, that's central to encryption technologies.

Or take a state lottery, which is random by design. Computerized randomization. 

But that's deterministic randomness. The system is designed to ensure random results. You might say it's "rigged", but rigged to guarantee random numbers. In that respect, randomness isn't synonymous with indeterminism. In theory, the world might contain genuinely random events, but still be thoroughly deterministic. 

Hard determinist on the outside–softie on the inside

http://www.proginosko.com/2014/07/determinism-soft-or-hard/

Is determinism unlivable?

I think that you’ve successfully identified a problem with determinism in general, Leif, of which Calvinism is but a specific instance, given the Calvinist’s view that God determines everything that happens.

A determinist cannot live consistently as though everything he thinks and does is causally determined—especially his choice to believe that determinism is true! Thinking that you’re determined to believe that everything you believe is determined produces a kind of vertigo. Nobody can live as though all that he thinks and does is determined by causes outside himself. Even determinists recognize that we have to act “as if” we had free will and so weigh our options and decide on what course of action to take, even though at the end of the day we are determined to take the choices we do. Determinism is thus an unliveable view.

This presents a real problem not just for the Calvinist, but for the naturalist. For insofar as naturalism implies that all our thoughts and actions are determined by natural causes outside ourselves, free will is an illusion. But we cannot escape this illusion and so must go on making choices as though we had free will, even though we don’t. Naturalism is thus an unliveable worldview.

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/calvinism-and-the-unliveability-of-determinism

i) It's hard to find much of an argument here. Even if libertarian freedom were true, some aspects of human experience are undoubtedly deterministic. For instance, when Craig hit adolescence, he found himself attracted to females. That's naturally caused by hormones. Is it unlivable to be casually determined to find women physically appealing? Empirical evidence would seem to suggest that men have found that pretty easy to live with!

ii) Or consider the role of habit in human behavior. We train our minds to remember certain tasks so that we don't have to consciously think about them. Like learning a foreign language, learning to play a musical instrument, learning to sightread music, learning to play a sport, learning the route from one place to another, learning to read a text. Much of this operates at a subliminal level. We've programmed our minds to do certain things automatically. 

Now, if we had to stop and think about what we were doing, about how to do it, that might have a paralyzing effect–but of course, that defeats the purpose of forming mental habits! The whole point is to delegate that to the unconscious part of your mind so that you don't have to consciously execute every step in the process. 

Is that kind of mental self-programming unlivable? Hardly. To the contrary, it would be unlivable if we couldn't free up our conscious attention span. It works because we don't have to be aware of it. 

iii) How does Craig's argument actually disprove determinism? If determinism is true, then agents do in fact live consistently with that reality. They have no alternative. If determinism is true, then what they feel about it has no impact on the reality of their determinism. Their actions will be determined whether they know it or not. 

If my beliefs and actions are determined, this doesn't imply that I know what the determinants are. I just make up my mind based on the conscious and subconscious factors that feed into belief-formation and decision-making. 

If I knew ahead of time what I was determined to do, then that would introduce a countersuggestive dynamic. But a determined agent doesn't know in advance what he's been determined to do, so abstract belief in determinism has no particular impact on the outcome. And to the extent that belief in determinism affects the outcome, that in itself is just another determinant in the outcome. 

iv) The fact that we consider alternate courses of action doesn't mean those are all viable options. After all, we can imagine many unrealistic courses of action. And their impossibility may not be apparent, if we don't act on them. In some cases their impossibility becomes apparent when we attempt to act on our choice. It turns out our choice was shortsighted and oversimplified the variables. In reality, there were many impenetrable barriers in the way of realizing our chosen pathway. Surely that's a commonplace of human experience. Has Craig never found his plans frustrated by uncooperative factors beyond his control? 

The "freethinking" argument

Tim Stratton recently attempted to refute Bignon's book:

http://freethinkingministries.com/excusing-sinners-blaming-god-compatibilism-the-consequence-argument/

Thus, the Calvinist assumes that the means by which God predestines all that He has decreed is via causal determinism.

i) Since predestination is deterministic, it's redundant to say the means by which God predestines all that he's decreed is via causal determinism. That's like saying God determines everything via determinism.

Stratton denies that predestination is deterministic, but he's attempting to state what the Calvinist assumes. 

ii) Moreover, there are no means by which God predestined anything. Rather, there are means by which the decree is implemented. Predestination is not a result of means. Rather, everything happens as a result of the decree. 

Predestination is God's plan and resolve for world history. Nothing "causally determined" what God predestined. Rather, predestination predetermines whatever happens. 

iii) It's unclear what Stratton means by "causal determinism." According to his definitions, what's the difference between causing something, determining something, and causally determining something? What does "causal" add to "determine"? What does "determine" add to "causal"?

iv) How does Stratton define causation?  

This claim is quite significant. In fact, I believe it is a game-changer! Since Bignon affirms that determinism and libertarian free will are logically incompatible and mutually exclusive concepts, then it follows that if one of these concepts is true, then the other is necessarily false. Since Bignon affirms compatibilism, he also affirms that divine determinism is true and that nothing is un-determined by God and yet — somehow — we are still responsible.

By Bignon’s own admission, libertarian free will is incompatible with determinism. Also, his view of compatibilism entails that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Although I disagree, the salient point here is that Bignon affirms that determinism is true! 

Stratton acts as if that's a damaging admission or "game-changer", when in fact it's just definitional. Determinism and libertarian freewill are typically defined as contrary positions. 

The Omni Argument 

1. If irresistible grace (the “I” of T.U.L.I.P.) is true, then for any person x, if God desires to, has the power to, and knows how to cause x to go to Heaven and not suffer eternally in Hell, then x will go to Heaven and not suffer eternally in Hell.

2. If God is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient, then for any person x, God desires to, has the power to, and knows how to cause x to go to Heaven and not suffer eternally in Hell.

3. There is at least one person who will not go to Heaven and suffers eternally in Hell.

4. Therefore, one cannot affirm both (i) that irresistible grace is true and (ii) that God is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient (a maximally great being).

5. God is a maximally great being.

6. Therefore, irresistible grace is false.

7. Therefore, divine determinism is false (God does not causally determine all things).

8. God is completely sovereign and does predestine all things (Romans 8:29-30; Ephesians 1:5,11).

9. Therefore, predestination and determinism are not to be conflated.

Regarding (1):

That's ambiguous. For instance, God can't save the future John Zebedee if he saves everyone (in this life) prior to John Zebedee, because John Zebedee won't exist in a future with a different past. That past won't lead up to John Zebedee, but to an alternate future. 

Regarding (2):

i) I don't know what Stratton means by "omnibenevolence". To assert that God would not be good unless he desires to save every evildoer he's capable of saving begs the question. 

ii) Apropos (i), is Stratton attempting to refute Calvinism on its own grounds or on his grounds? Is he attempting to show that Calvinism is internally inconsistent, or that it's inconsistent with his own assumptions? Calvinism doesn't grant that God isn't good unless God desires to save all the wicked. 

If Stratton is assuming his own viewpoint, then it's incumbent on him to argue for his assumptions before he argues from his assumptions.

Moreover, it's not a given, even on freewill theist assumptions, that God isn't good unless God desires to save every evildoer. A good God is a just God. A just God is suppose to punish evildoers. Justice is obligatory in a way that mercy is not. If mercy were obligatory, it wouldn't be mercy. God is merciful to some evildoers in spite of what they deserve. 

iii) Furthermore, Stratton assumes that libertarian freewill is consistent with divine omniscience, but that's highly contested, even by many eminent freewill theists.

Regarding (8):

If predestination is indeterministic, then what does predestination effect or affect? What's the difference between indeterministic predestination and no predestination? 

The Freethinking argument

1- If humans do not possess libertarian free will, then humans do not possess the ability to gain knowledge via the process of rationality.

2- Humans do possess the ability to gain knowledge via the process of rationality.

Therefore

3- Humans possess libertarian free will.

Regarding (1), is Stratton assuming that a "process of rationality" is the only way to gain knowledge, and libertarian freewill is a prerequisite? If so, what about adaptive behavior in animals? What about the ability of lab rats to learn from experience? Did they gain knowledge by a "process of rationality"? Do they have libertarian freedom? 

In defense of his "freethinking" argument. Stratton quotes John Searle:

“Actions are rationally assessable if and only if the actions are free. The reason for the connection is this: rationality must be able to make a difference. Rationality is possible only where there is a genuine choice between various rational and irrational courses of action . . . If the act is completely determined then rationality can make no difference. It doesn’t even come into play…” (Rationality in Action:2001:202)

Several problems:

i) Searle's contention poses a false dichotomy. Determinism doesn't imply that choice is independent of reason and evidence. Why can't determinism operate through reason and evidence as a necessary means? Why can't evidence be rationally compelling? Why can't an agent be determined to find the most reasonable choice the most appealing choice? Where's the dichotomy? Rationality comes into play by sifting evidence or mentally comparing and contrasting hypothetical courses of action, for their respective advantages and disadvantages. Why can't determinism use a process of deliberation? An agent isn't choosing in spite of the evidence but because of the evidence. Why can't he be determined to recognize the facts or recognize a logical rationale?  

ii) Apropos (i), if reasons can't be determinative, then choices are irrational. If reason and evidence are indeterminism in choosing, then choosing always has an arbitrary or surd element. So it's indeterminism rather than determinism that undermines reason.

Put another way, if choices are caused by rational determinants, rational considerations, then isn't that the definition of rational choice? Conversely, if choices aren't rationally compelling, if reasons are at best one factor in choice, but the agent is free to disregard reason and evidence when making a choice, then isn't that the definition of irrational choice? It's libertarian freedom that makes choice independent of reason. 

iii) What about coin-flipping in sports? The coin toss is nonrational. There are two (statistically) equiprobable outcomes. The outcome is physically determinate (given specific antecedent conditions). Yet that makes a difference. 

iv) Keep in mind that there are different kinds of determinism. Naturalistic evolutionary psychology undermines rationality because the determinants are mindless. The "blind watchmaker". But that's hardly equivalent to predestination, where God's wise plan is the ultimate determinant. 

v) Bignon already responded to this general objection:

http://theologui.blogspot.com/2014/08/can-calvinist-determinists-trust-their.html

God's crystal ball

In my personal encounters, freewill theists are so conditioned to the notion that Calvinism is deterministic while freewill theism is the antithesis of determinism that they're incredulous when I point out that freewill theism is deterministic too, just in a different way. 

Say the God of freewill theism gazes into his crystal ball. He seems the future. To be precise, he sees what will happen if he creates the hypothetical world, as shown in the crystal ball. 

Now, there's a philosophical argument that foreknowledge alone makes the future unalterable. I think that's correct. But that's not my argument here.

The point, rather, is that if God goes ahead and makes the world he sees in his crystal ball, then at that stage it's too late in the game for the future to be other that what he saw in his crystal ball. Once he creates the initial conditions which eventuate in that foreseen outcome, the outcome is fixed. 

To take a comparison, suppose I'm scheduled to drive a friend to the airport tomorrow. That night I have a dream. I dream that I drove my friend to the airport. Along the way, I see an accident at a landmark. I'm unable to find parking space on the first two floors of the garage. The first opening I find is on the third floor, C137, between a yellow Karmann Ghia and a red Alpha Romeo. As we approach the terminal, I see airport security speaking to an agitated man. As we walk through the concourse, I see a beautiful woman stride past me. 

I accompany my friend to the gate. After he boards the plane, I catch up on some email and text messages before leaving. I glance up and see the plane explode in midair, killing all aboard. 

Then I wake up. I pick up my friend at his house and commence our ride to the airport. But everything begins to repeat itself, just like the dream.

Suppose I have libertarian freewill. This story has two possible endings. On the one hand, I might choose to do nothing different than what I did in the dream. Although I find the resemblance to the dream spooky, I chalk it up to coincidence. It was just a dream. As a result, my friend dies in the conflagration.

On the other hand, when we arrive at the gate, after everything up to that point happened just like I saw in my dream, I tell my friend about my dream and warn him not to board the plane. He shrugs it off. So I tear his boarding pass into pieces, causing him to miss his flight. 

My friend is furious and yells at me. Airport security intervenes. At that moment the plane explodes just after takeoff. The security guards leave, having more urgent matter to attend to than our little fracas. My friend is dumbfounded. 

Now, up to a critical point, I could "change" the future. It could still go either way. If, however, my friend boards the plane and the plane takes off, then it's too late for me to change the outcome. I can't save him. He crossed a line of no return. My failure to intervene before that juncture renders the foreseen future unalterable thereafter. 

Calvinism and hard determinism

I'm going to comment on an article by self-styled Calvinist Theodore Zachariades

https://www.reformingamericaministries.com/single-post/2017/11/20/Consistent-Theological-Determinism-A-Challenge-to-James-White

I have not met an Arminian that concedes this compatibilist view of freedom. To them only libertarian freedom is real.

Why should Calvinists use Arminian views as the standard of comparison? 

What is the point of using Arminian arguments about supposed freedom to plead for Calvinist conclusions?

Since, by his own admission, Arminians reject compatibilism, appealing to compatibilism is inimical using Arminian arguments about supposed freedom to plead for Calvinist conclusions.

God is a planning Agent.

Free will is thereby an illusion, as our lives have been scripted and planned before by God. 

At the end of the day, we live out a script that God has decreed. He asked no counsel or took anything into consideration but His own will in this eternal decree. Meticulous providence rules out free will. Calvinists that affirm their truncated version of free will do so to maintain human responsibility. But the Bible does not use free will as an explanatory category to sustain human responsibility. We are responsible or accountable because we are created beings. God’s character, as indicated in His prescriptive law for humans, is the standard by which human behavior will be judged. 

If predestination is true, and it cannot be doubted in face of so much evidence, it must follow that free will is false. There is no free will in a universe directed and upheld by the Lord God Almighty. There are those who wish to maintain a semi-Calvinist or hypo-Calvinist view that asserts that free will is compatible with determinism. That still leaves one as a determinist, an inconsistent one, however. I prefer to stress theological hard determinism.4 Take the fall of Adam. Was it a free action or was it determined? I believe you cannot have it both ways. If determined, then was Adam truly free? This problem has a long history. I side with God’s decree including the fall of Adam; indeed, even the fall of Lucifer! Free will in a compatibilist-determinist worldview is only free in name. 

Libertarians, of all stripes, renounce these arguments by compatibilists, and thereby they win the argument by the definition. If free will is compatible with determinism, why not claim that libertarian free will is compatible with determinism? The reason one cannot is that the determinism side weighs too heavily and truly precludes libertarianism or true free will. Compatibilists like to use the language of free will without having the substance.

i) Let's begin with some standard definitions of hard determinism (or theological hard determinism) from the philosophical literature:

Hard determinists (William James’s term) are also incompatibilists, but they accept determinism and deny that we have the sort of free will required for moral responsibility. Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will (Cambridge 2003), xiv.

Hard determinists are incompatibilists who take a harder line: since determinism is true, free will does not exist in the sense required for genuine responsibility, accountability, blameworthiness, or desert. Robert Kane, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (Oxford 2002), 27. 

But another option, typically only hinted at, is to endorse theological hard determinism, according to which theological determinism is true, but as a result we are not morally responsible in the basic desert sense for our actions. Derk Pereboom, "Libertarianism and Theological Determinism," Kevin Timpe & Daniel Speak, eds. Free Will and Theism: Connections, Contingencies, and Concerns (Oxford 2016), 116.

On that definition, Calvinism is antithetical to hard determinism. That humans are morally responsible agents whose actions are potentially blameworthy or liable to just desert is a Reformed essential. Zachariades is operating with an idiosyncratic definition of hard determinism that doesn't correspond to standard usage. He doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. Certainly his claim is uninformed. 

ii) When compatibilists say that human agents are "free" in some respects, what does that mean? The definition of "freedom" in the compatibilist sense depends on the point of contrast. "Free" compared to what? To take one representative example:

We typically make distinctions in the law and in morality between individuals who have been coerced and those who have not. Indeed, we distinguish between agents who have been manipulated (in certain ways), brainwashed, deceived, subject to clandestine subliminal advertising, and so forth, and those who are morally responsible. John Martin Fischer, "Semicompatibilism", Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith, & Neil Levy, eds. The Routledge Companion to Free Will (Routledge 2016), 5. 

On that definition, compatibilist freedom means freedom from certain types of manipulation, coercion, deception, brainwashing. So a compatibilist can specify the sense in which determinism is consistent with freedom. Does Zachariades deny that human agents are free in that sense? 

Likewise:

Semicompatibilism is the view that even though some freedoms–for instance, the ability to do otherwise–are incompatible with determinism, moral responsibility is compatible with determinism J. Campbell, Free Will (Polity 2011), 29-30.

Does Zachariades imagine that Calvinism is inconsistent with compatibililism (or semicompatibilism) in that sense? On the face of it, Zachariades appears to be ignorant of what hard determinism and compatibilism (or semicompatibilism) even mean. Yet these are terms of art. These are philosophical concepts. He needs to show some understanding of what they represent before he's in any position to assess them. As it stands, his discussion is incompetent. 

iii) Finally, determinism does not entail premeditation. For instance, the sequence of a randomly shuffled card deck is determinate, but unplanned. If you take a deck of cards, which has a preexisting sequence, bisect the deck, then randomly shuffle the cards so that a card from one half alternates with a card from the other half, the recombined deck has a determinate sequence even though the order of the cards is random rather than planned. 

Determinism is equally consistent with intended and unintended outcomes. Although determinism may be a necessary condition for premeditated events, it's not a sufficient condition. Zachariades needs a more discriminating category than determinism to articulate how everything happens according to a master plan. 

The argument from reason

Elizabeth Anscombe, then an up-and-coming Catholic philosopher, had a celebrated disagreement with C. S. Lewis at the Socratic Club. As a result, Lewis reformulated one of his arguments in Miracles. Years later, Anscombe offered her assessment of Lewis's reformulation:

There is one thing I will say, which is that there is a quotation by J. B. S. Haldane...The quotation runs like this: "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true...and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

Now I want to consider the quotation all by itself. Let us suppose that it makes sense to say that mental processes–and this means everything they are inclined to call mental processes–are determined, determined wholly, by the motions of atoms in one's brain. That is, let us forget about the difficulties that might be raised about this. I mean the difficulties of taking about mental processes and when they are supposed to be determined.

In order to keep any such difficulties out of view, let us consider an analogous supposition, namely that it makes sense to say that linguistic marks–that is, marks that are parts of a language as they occur in a printed book–are wholly determined by the machinery that printed the book. Well, it might be a book. I don't think this book [in my hand] has got any pencil notes in it or anything that might be linguistic matter that isn't printed.

This analogue has the advantage of certainly making sense, that is, that the linguistic marks occurring in this book are wholly determined by the machinery that printed the book. And indeed, it's got the advantage of not just certainly making sense, but of being true. Only we wouldn't dream of saying: if that is true, we have no reason to suppose that any of the things said in the book are true or are false, or anything like that.

Well, this illustrates the way in which a thought–a thought that somebody puts forward–trades on a mysteriousness about its objects. In the case of Haldane's remark, the mysterious objects are "mental processes"; "If every bit of every mental process is determined by motions of atoms, then I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true". If we change the example to something lacking the mysteriousness of "mental processes", for example to the existence of the print in a printed book, as I have in my analogue, then we observe two things. First, that the supposition that this is wholly determined by the machinery, the printing machinery, is true. And second, that that has no bearing whatever on whether anything said in the book is true, or whether we have reason or no reason to think so. Elizabeth Anscombe, "C. S. "Lewis's Rewrite of Chapter III of Miracles." Roger White, Judith Wolfe, & Brendan Wolfe, C. S. Lewis and His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society (Oxford University Press 2015), 15-16.

I think both she and Lewis are right in different respects:

i) She's right to point out that determinism as such doesn't undermine reason. It depends on what lies behind the determinate outcome. And her example nicely illustrates why it would be fallacious to infer that determinism per se undermines reason. 

ii) However, I don't know that Lewis intended to show that determinism in general undercuts reason. In context, he's targeting atheism. He uses Haldane's statement as a frame of reference. Haldane was an atheist. Lewis's contention, as I see it, is that determinism in combination with naturalism undercuts reason. In particular, that blind physical determinism undercuts reason.

I think his intuition is sound, and subsequent philosophers like Victor Reppert (i.e. the argument from reason) and Alvin Plantinga (i.e. the evolutionary argument against naturalism) have developed more sophisticated versions of his rudimentary argument. 

Apple-bobbing

Choosing is paradoxical. In the nature of the case, choices are future-oriented. It's too late to make choices about the past. So we deliberate and decide with a view to the future.

However, our actions in striving to achieve the goal impact the very future we aim for. We're reaching for a goal, yet the act of reaching for the goal disturbs the goal. Like apple-bobbing, where the very effort to pick an apple pushes the apple way.  

So the future becomes a moving target. By perturbing the future, the future we end up with isn't the same future we began with. 

Richard Muller’s Divine Will and Human Choice: First Impressions

https://analytictheologye4c5.wordpress.com/2017/05/27/divine-will-and-human-choice-first-impressions/

Drawing straws

Although I've spent a lot of time over the years critiquing freewill theists like Roger Olson and Jerry Walls, because they have a popular following, they're hardly the most able exponents of that position. Far higher on the food chain is Peter van Inwagen. Let's consider his argument. 

When I myself look at contemplated future courses of action in the way I have described above, I discover an irresistible tendency to believe that each of them is "open" to me…I find myself with the belief that sometimes more than one course of action is open to me, and I cannot give it up…I don't find the least plausibility in the hypothesis that this belief is illusory. Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics (Westview Press, 4th ed., 2015), 282-83.

In a sense I agree with PVI, but not with the conclusion that he draws from his experience:

i) He's describing a psychological impression, but psychology isn't conterminous with ontology. Our psychological impressions don't necessarily map onto the extramental world.

ii) Apropos (i), surely it's possible to imagine future courses of action that seem to be open to us, but are in fact infeasible. For one thing, when we contemplate alternate courses of action, that's very sketchy. We don't entertain of all the intervening links that chart a pathway from the present to the future outcome. We don't know enough. There are too many variables. Rather, we take our current situation as the frame of reference. We contemplate different outcomes. But in many cases, those imaginary trajectories may not be open to us, because they depend on many independent variables lining up in one particular direction, and we don't control most of the variables. Sometimes we can manipulate circumstances to achieve our goals, but in many cases our goals are stymied. In fact, after writing this paragraph, I read the following observation:

We all use our imaginations to foresee the future, whether we're planning the rest of the day or the rest of our lives; and despite our best efforts, nothing guarantees that what we imagine will come to pass. Indeed, rarely does the future heed our plans. Each morning I plot the coming hours, and seldom to my designs unfold without a hitch. On most days, unforeseen circumstance interrupt, and I end up improving, deferring activities, changing course. The same is even more true of my long-term planning: the further into the future my imagination has projected itself, the less prescient it's been. Indeed, only rarely have I seen the far future approximately as it's come to pass. My life illustrates chaos theory: I can't predict or control things because there are always too many variables. The result is that most of my personal goals have turned out to be useful fictions. They've given me something to shoot for, but they've rarely been realized, at least in the forms I'd first imagined them. D. Allison, Night Comes (Eerdmans, 2016), 81.

Suppose C is my objective, yet I can't achieve C unless and until I do B, and I can't do B unless and until I first do A. But that means the effort to achieve the goal may break down somewhere in the process. 

So there is, in fact, an illusory quality to many of these future courses of action. In some cases they aren't coherent, because they depend on a chain of events that is in conflict with actual and inexorable causal chains that are already in place. 

Perhaps what he means, as he expresses himself elsewhere, 

It is at least very plausible to suppose that Jack is not, during the course of his deliberations, able to hit the right-hand side and is not able to hit the left-hand side. But such cases are not decisive, since they involve the concept of success or at least the concept of result: they are cases in which in which an agent is now faced with a choice between doing A and doing B, and in which, if the agent should endeavor to do A or should endeavor to do B, whether the agent would succeed in either endeavor is now undetermined. The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd ed. (Kane, ed.).

This would also dovetail with his denial that access to alternate possibilities is a necessary condition of libertarian freewill. If, however, freedom of choice reduces to mental acts of choosing between one contemplated future course of action and another, without corresponding, extramental forking pathways, then it's unclear what is meant by the claim that future courses of action are open to the agent. If his position boils down to the psychology of choosing, with no matching ontology of doing, then the "courses of action" are imaginary. Figments of the imagination. If you can't act on your decision, then the whole framework of forking paths and future course of action seems to be a rhetorical flourish.  

iii) From a Calvinistic or compatibilist standpoint, these aren't illusory in a deceptive or useless sense. The process of deliberation is how we settle on a course of action. By comparing and contrasting hypothetical alternatives and considering the respective consequences, contemplating of the alternatives is what induces us not to opt for any of the alternatives. Their practical value is to make us see that the course of action we actually settle on is preferable. 

iv) In addition, there are many situations in which we don't deliberate, either because we don't have a range of options to consider, or because the alternatives are so unappealing. Only one option is viable or attractive.  

The way he defends freewill theism seems counterproductive. On the one hand he raises a familiar moralistic objection to determinism. On the other hand, he seems to concede that on his view, indeterminism takes the decision out of the hands of the agent:

If it goes to the left, that just happens. If it goes to the right, that just happens…There is no way to make it go one way rather than the other…It is a plausible idea that it is up to an agent what the outcome of a process will be only if the agent is able to arrange things in a way that would make the occurrence of this outcome inevitable and able to arrange things in a way that would make the occurrence of that outcome inevitable. If this plausible idea is right, there would seem to be no possibility of its being [up to the agent] what the outcome of an indeterministic process would be (278).

But how is the agent responsible for such choices? He toys with agent-causation, but finds that opaque.  

The judgment that you shouldn't have done X implies that you should have done something else instead; that you should have done something else instead implies that there was something else for you to do; that there was something else for you to do implies that you were able to do something else; that you were able to do something else implies that you have free will. To make a negative moral judgment about one of your acts is to evaluate your taking one of the forks in the road of time, to characterize that fork as a worse choice than at least one of the other forks open to you. (Note that if you had made a choice by taking one of the works in what is literally a road, no one would say you should have taken one of the other forks if all the other forks were blocked.) A negative moral evaluation of what someone has done requires two or more alternative possibilities of action for that person, just a surely as a context requires two or more contestants (268).

i) That sounds plausible. Indeed, it's the primary argument for libertarian freewill. However, it fails to draw an elementary and fundamental distinction between psychology and ontology. Even if, metaphysically speaking, alternate courses of action are available, that doesn't mean an agent is able to access those alternatives if he's psychologically ill-disposed to avail himself of the opportunities. Take a psychopathic killer. He's too morally hardened to do the right thing. He's lost the capacity for virtuous action. If we view freedom as a relation between deliberation and opportunity, there are two sides to the relation. Even if (ex hypothesi) freedom of opportunity were a necessary condition of freedom, it's not a sufficient condition unless the agent is open to the pathways that are open to him. That's why we say some people are in a state of diminished responsibility. Take a person with senile dementia. They may have the same objective opportunities, but they've lost the capacity to make rational decisions. Or take someone acting at gunpoint. 

ii) Predestination or determinism doesn't imply that if (ad impossibile) you were to attempt do something contrary to what you were predestined to do, a mysterious invisible force would block you or impede you. Hypotheticals and counterfactuals aren't illusory in that sense. 

In some cases, there are hypothetical pathways that have no obstacles. There is a coherent alternate plot or alternate timeline. But that's represented in a possible world rather than the actual world. Or, if something like the multiverse is true, in an actual parallel universe. 

Ask yourself a question. What would happen if some supernatural agency–God, say–were to "roll history back" to some point in the past and then "let things go forward again"? Suppose the agency were to cause things to be once more just as they were at high noon, Greenwich mean solar time, on 11 Marsh 1893 and were thereafter to let things to on their own accord. Would history literally repeat itself? Would there be two world words, each the same in every detail as the wars that occurred the "first time around"? Would a president of the United states call "John F. Kennedy" be assassinated in Dallas on the date that in the new reckoning is called "22 November 1963"? Would you, or at least someone exactly like you, exist? If the answer to any of these question is No, determinism is false. Equivalently, if determinism is true, the answer to all these questions is Yes. If determinism is true, then, if the universe were "rolled back" to a previous state by a miracle (and there were no further miracles), the history of the world would repeat itself. If the universe were rolled back to a previous state thousands of times exactly the same events would follow each of these thousands of "reversions" (270).

i) I think that's generally a good way to expound the distinction between generic determinism and generic indeterminism. However, I'd point out that it can be misleading. There are varieties of determinism. In his essay on "How to Think about Free Will," PVI says "Determinism is the thesis that the past and the laws of nature together determine, at every moment, a unique future" (Journal of Ethics 12: 330). I'd just point out that this definition not only doesn't coincide with theological determinism (i.e. Reformed predestination), it doesn't even intersect with theological determinism. By that I mean, a Calvinist subscribes to exhaustive predestination and providence, yet that's not how he defines theological determinism. 

In Calvinism, for instance, predestination doesn't imply that all future events are caused by past events. No doubt many future events are caused by past events. But what makes predestination deterministic isn't physical determinism or nomic necessity. One thing doesn't follow another because there must be an unbroken causal continuum between antecedent states and subsequent states. Rather, it's more like screen play where every event is scripted. Or, to take a related comparison, it's like Alfred Hitchcock who said he filmed what he visualized. 

In fairness, his argument isn't directed at theological determinism (e.g. Calvinism). So it's not a flaw, in that respect, if his definition fails to map onto theological determinism. Even so, that's a huge omission. How would he need to change his argument if he were targeting Calvinism? 

ii) Notice an implication of indeterminism. On this view, you don't exist because you were a part of God's plan. If history was reset, you wouldn't exist. You don't have God to thank for your existence. If you're healthy, if you have a happy marriage, you don't have God to thank for your circumstances. Everything that happens to you is just the roll of the dice. If the dice were rolled a second time, you wouldn't even be here. Whatever happens to you is a matter of sheer luck. Good luck or bad luck, as the case may be. If indeterminism is true, there's no basis for pious gratitude.

iii) Apropos (ii), his view is that it puts future agents at the mercy of past agents. The options available to future agents, or whether some future agents will even exist, depends on which course of action past agents take. So the fortunes of future agents are enslaved to the often ignorant, capricious, or malevolent actions of past agents. To evoke an illustration he uses in chap. 9, freewill theism is like a situation in which your life depends on drawing the shortest straw, only the drawing in rigged in favor of past agents, because their choices impact the fortunes of future agents.  

Mind you, I think there's a sense in which this is true. The problem is if it's just up to human agents. If, by contrast, they are acting in accordance with a divine plan, then there's an ultimate wisdom and justice to how things turn out. 

PVI draws a distinction between touchable and untouchable facts. Paradigm examples of untouchable facts include the necessity of the past and the fact that 317 is a prime number (273-76). He compares that to other situations, like whether he has the freedom to stop writing a book (272). If determinism is true, then "all facts are untouchable facts" (276). This is the "hidden mystery" that "lies behind the facade of bluff common sense compatibilism presents to the world" (276). 

That, however, is a deceptive comparison. Determinism in general, and predestination in particular, doesn't mean all facts are necessary in the sense that mathematic truths are necessary truths or the necessity of the past is metaphysically necessary. In predestination, everything must unfold due to conditional necessity, not absolute necessity. In principle, God could predestine alternate outcomes. For all we know, God has predestined alternate outcomes–a multiverse. So these are not the same kinds of facts.