If “good actions are good because God alone considers these actions to be good” then goodness is as arbitrarily defined as the rules of a game, and god, in fact, is not good in himself because god exists independently of good and evil. God can only be good if there is a measure of goodness that exists separately from god. However, if there is such a measure it looks very much as though god isn’t actually good.

This is the Ashari doctrine. Previously there were two competing views, the first was the determinism school of thought (ie that God alone is the sole author of events) but the obvious rejoinder is where is the mercy of God if he punishes humans for actions that are entirely his own?

The alternative or Mutalizzite view (Aristotelean) was that man was an independent author of his own actions. The Islamic rejoinder to this is that if man is the creator of his own actions than God as creator has been limited.

The Ashari doctrine is that all matter at its core consists of single particles (or units of matter) and that these are created and vanish instantaneously ie that they have no duration, the doctrine is one of “occasionalism”

Thus there is no natural causality in the world, one can say that act a predictably gives rise to act b, because as a mercy of Allah to his creation , he acts predictably).

The Ashari theology is “scientifically” the most correct way to understand causation in the world. Stephen Hawking’s brief history of time sums up the new physics very eloquently, sub- atomic particles can not be spoken of as particles alone in time. Thus we cannot speak meaningfully of the generation of acts.

The next issue that arises is one of theodicy, or the nature of evil. The Ashari view is that there is no intrinsic good and evil to any action beyond what God considers these actions to be. ie good actions are good because God alone considers these actions to be good.

But surely that in effect means that the Godhead/Creator/Supreme Being/whatever that believers follow can be said to dictate even what we perceive as “free”? Specifically in the Abrahamic traditions, as you mentioned above.

To what extent in an Omnipotent and merciful God(Allah SWT) responsible for the actions of individuals and to what extent are they autonomous authors of their own actions?

The complete answer to that question is actually several textbooks long,( and I might add Islamic theology here is supported by our current understanding of Quantum mechanics)

I may get around to posting the answer as a separate post.

As for the science discussed in this article, the evidence base is not great and it would be best to describe it as a hypothesis which is supported by some evidence but contradicted by other evidence.