Do Determinisms in Material Processes Leave Room for Free Decisions by Souls or God Over Matter?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Sabine Hossenfelder Studied in Mainly Non-Catholic Schwalbach am Taunus · somewhere else: Do Determinisms in Material Processes Leave Room for Free Decisions by Souls or God Over Matter? · New blog on the kid: Angels chosing orbits = no violation of laws of physics ?

Accessorily, I may also be answering the idea of Eternalism, by which Joe Schmid / Majesty of Reason criticises via prima. He claims that all times are eternally actual, so there never was an actualisation of a potential. That's a very strong claim for determinism.

But anyway, atoms clash or attract and in doing so, they react according to certain laws. Same thing can be said for larger than chemistry assmeblies of atoms known as bodies and for smaller than atoms particles dealt with by particule physics (which is by the way not directly empiric - in a water molecule an electronic microscopy allows you to see the molecule as two smaller balls attached to a larger ball, nothing smaller than that is directly observed in itself).

Sudokus also follow deterministic laws. I know, nothing in gravitation or electromagnetics forces me to fill in a sudoku according to the rules rather than simply filling in a string of unrelated letters or numbers whatever flows through my head, but once I have started a sudoku (which already has a solution) or even when I am constructing one (i e constructing a solution) I use rules that kind of mimic deterministic laws a bit.

It's a fact that despite very deterministic rules, a sudoku can be left "underdetermined."

Sudoku Tuesday, 21 July 2015 has a solution that is fully determined, while sudoku Wednesday, 30 March 2016 has a solution underdetermined at four cells, and sudoku Monday, 20 January 2020 has a solution underdetermined at eight cells.

This is because the actual impulses given from the beginning would leave out certain areas while being worked out. Sure, it helps that the sudoku as such is undetermined to begin with, until a solution has been worked out (after which a grid can be made so that solutions can be worked out again from the grid by the one solving it as a puzzle). But even so, all of the working out except the choices follows, and even the choices take heed of, the deterministic rules of sudoku.

A sudoku fully filled in, i e not grid puzzle but solution, is certainly fully determined. But this means that the second of these two sudokus has two equivalent solutions and the third of them four equivalent solutions, from which the one solving can freely chose.

So, similarily, all it takes for God, angels, human souls to control material bodies / in the case of souls their bodies with freedom, without violating any laws of nature governing the laws of physics, is that the laws of physics underdetermined, while only the choice of a human will, an angel or God, defines the full determination of what movement happens.

The deterministic philosophers have not taken this into account.

Why? Because in order for any event to actually happen, the causality needs to be fully determined for it. And their philosophy of denying substantiality to mind, therefore of denying souls and angels and God are substances, forbids them to credit this full determinism to a non-material agency working with the underdetermination of materially determined factors at their disposal. They need to credit full determination to non-choice, to the deterministically acting particles, because on their view, that is all that exists. If it isn't all that exists, this means that things can be genuinely underdetermined from the material point of view and fully determined only by the extra actions involving free choice.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Octave of St. Lawrence
17.VIII.2023