Why the Free Will Argument Is More Important than the God Argument

As many of you know, I have a great interest in the free will debate, more specifically, the libertarian free will debate. I deny that an agent can really rationally and consciously choose to do otherwise in identical situations. What this means is that ever agent (you and I) will always do what they do in any given causal circumstance. If we "reran" the universe, the agent would do the same thing given every single variable being the same, down to the smallest wave function.

Now, many indeterminists (often people who aren't necessarily libertarian free willers, but who believe there is fundamental indeterminacy at the most granular level) will posit that quantum mechanics rescues humanity from hard determinism, that, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers sang, "This life is more than ordinary/...Can't stop the spirits when they need you/This life is more than just a read through".

But, even if I granted indeterminism at quantum levels (this is very much up for grabs at the moment - probably the area of science with the biggest disagreement over models and interpretations), this is no decent bedfellow for libertarian free will. If my choice may differ given identical causal circumstances, and this difference depends on quantum uncertainty, that is hardly me being consciously and rationally in charge of that different choice.

I don't want to sidetrack here in talking about quantum. My point in this post is something I say in my free will talks: That the God debate supervenes on the free will debate.

If we set deterministic Calvinism and any other such theistic beliefs aside and settle for the far more prevalent theistic beliefs, then we invariably have a judgemental god - a god who judges human actions as good or bad and rewards or punishes us accordingly.  The problem is that [the Christian] God [for example] requires us to really be able to choose otherwise in a given scenario so that we get rewarded for the good choice and punished for the bad choice. Heaven or hell (or similar) await. If we are always going to choose say, A in a given scenario X, then God punishing us for doing so is inherently unfair. Yes, we can replace God with society here, which is why I advocate the quarantine and rehabilitation approach for punishment. God sends us to hell/heaven for A in X, but all those external and internal factors beyond our control at X led to that decision A. It's the universe wot did it.

Atheists and theists alike spend so much time debating the existence of God, and invoking all sorts of high fallutin' philosophy, but they need to be arguing about libertarian free will. Without it, God makes no sense.

This is why everyone, from crazy commenters here like See Noevo, to sensible ones like Jayman, from thinkers like William Lane Craig to, I don't know, Craig Evans, need to establish libertarian free will. It is the chink in their armour. Except it's not just a chink, it's a gaping hole, or even a lack of armour at all.

And the challenge is that no decent explanation of libertarian free will has ever been given. By anyone. Ever. At all.