Please evaluate the following argument strictly for formal logical validity. I am NOT interested in debating the content or in philosophical perspectives on the content. However, I AM interested in ways to tweak this argument to make it valid if it is not.
- All effects, big or small, are either caused by spontaneity (assuming it even exists), by other effect(s), or a combination thereof.
- There is no "real choice" in spontaneity, or in effects caused by other effects.
- If cause and effect are not linear, "real choice" must be judged by the same physical laws. (see NOTE below)
- "Real choice" is an impossibility. (conclusion)
- "real choice" is an impossibility.
- "gods" that require "real choice" are an impossibility. (conclusion)
"Free will" = "real choice" = "the idea that one has any, non-imagined, level of control over their actions or thoughts."
NOTE: "There would be no reason why you could not specify in your premises that if cause and effect are not linear then free-will must be judged by the same physical laws. With that you can then proceed to argue that God does not have free will at any one instance of time because he must either have been created by something else, created spontaneously without his will, or created by himself, but at another point in the cause-effect cycle which renders his current choices not free by our new definition of free will. A complex argument, but a sound one I think. – Isaacson"