> > > This is important. Is there some intrinsic nature of these souls that guides their interactions? Hrm. I don't know, and this where I have to ask a question of those who believe in souls and free will: if souls have the ability to make decisions that aren't influenced only by physical factors, what is the nature of this ability? Where does it come from? How is it used?
> >
> > It's called free will.
>
> Please describe to me exactly what you mean by free will. The ability to make decisions without the aid of past experiences (memory) and current physical brain conditions?

I consider physical factors to be the influence of the environment on your body. This can't be controlled hence if those were solely responsible for your decisions there would be no free will.

According to the Bible, He created us "in our own image (Genesis 1:26). Using your analogy, he created more programmers, ones with limited programming skill. Our "programs" only contain instructions on how to program our lives, not what to program them with. That is free will.

Hopefully that clarifies things.

> But god has also controlled how we are able to make decisions, so, in essence, he controls how we will make those decisions.

Essentially he created us by defining how we make decisions as "How I do it".

> Consider this argument:

> (2) Given: God creates and controls the intrinsic nature of souls.

Here's the problem, for God- create != control

-whitehelm