[Borodog]

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I know this has been done before, but I really want a good answer to this challenge; a philosophical/hypothetical one, not a scriptural one. (link me to one if it already exists)

Let us say that there is another planet, identical to Earth in every concievable way, down to the molecule. Same people, same animals, same families, etc. etc. etc.

Person A (who resides on Earth) and Person A' (who resides on our parallel planet) are both born into identical families with identical genetics and identical environments. God gives each a soul, and the power of free will.

Twenty years later, A and A' mature and walk down the street where they are hassled by person B and B' respectively. A gives B some money; A' kills B'. Different choices were made, because they each had free will.

Something must cause an action. Either 1) the soul of A had a different quality than the soul of A', or 2) the souls act at random.

Explain how another possibility could exist that explains this phenomenon.

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I think your example is less useful than it could be. Your hypothetical is that person A(A') will either 1) give B some money or 2) kill B'. If A' kills B' for hassling him on the street there is clearly something wrong with him, and by your setup, the same thing is wrong with A. I'm not saying it well, but my gist is that "give a bum some change" and "kill total stranger on the street" are not events that are likely to be chosen at random if such a thing exists.

A better example would be A and A1 after 20 years of identical life in every way down to every molecule going to the Waffle House and sitting down to look at the menu. A chooses pancakes, where A' orders a waffle. A/A' like waffles and pancakes equally well. He is just as likely to choose one as he is another. Why does he choose one over the other?

Frankly, I think free will comes down to randomness and probabilities. Somewhere down at the molecular level in your brain totally random quantum mechanical processes occur until an emergent pattern (a thought, a decision) says, "Waffles."

So free will is random, yes? Well, yes and no. I think that even though the decision process is fundamentally random, the weighting of various options is not. For example A/A' may prefer waffles much more than pancakes, but still enjoy pancakes occasionally. The resultant decision is random, but one choice is made more often than another. We can shape these probabilities, for example, in our children as we raise them. But aren't the decisions about what behaviors to reward or not (how to shape the probabilities) based on random decisions and previously set probabilities. Yes, I suppose so. So is free will an illusion? Is it all just random? Maybe. But I don't see how it matters to me. I'm the robot in the second example, say. Do I really care that my decisions are coming from some emergent random process? No, not really. I still get to eat pancakes. Or waffles. I haven't decided yet.