How can it be "freewill"

[The Sum of Awe]

FreeWill. How can it be so?

If you are punished for doing certain actions, can it really be called freewill? You have the physical potential to choose God and to not choose God, but you are pressured into choosing God by the threat of hell. This supposed freewill amounts to nothing more than a person who has a gun to their head, who has the freewill to decide whether to give the robber the money or not.


A lot of folks under Abrahamic faiths see that any direct interactions of God with man will negate freewill. If God were to show himself to the people on earth by taking the form of a big smiley face in the sky, it'd somehow contradict freewill. But I see it as rather the opposite. The fact that God is not obvious is negating freewill. It's foolish to expect a person to believe in your existence when all they have is a book that went through decades of mistranslation, misinterpretation, historic distortions, etc.

I'm in a world where things can be explained without God, where there are many different ideas of God, where many people have died because of other peoples' God, where myths of these Gods have the same nature but different character.

In my life, I have never been seeked by a God, so I am convinced there is no god out there that seeks me. I have found God and he is very different than how other people describe him. Why am I to believe in a God when I have no reason to other than one book, out of many, claims to be the truth and claims that all the others are wrong?

If God truly wants man to follow him, using freewill, he would have made it clear, and directly asked each of us. There is no freewill, just open ended strings that fall loose of man's grip. There isn't a choice until there are reasons.

 

[Gambit]

In my life, I have never been seeked by a God, so I am convinced there is no god out there that seeks me. I have found God and he is very different than how other people describe him.

Its' like you're playing hide-and-seek with your "self"'; you're not only the one who is seeking but also the one who is hiding. IOW, God's will is but your own.

 

[JayJayDee]

What makes you think that free will is "free" in the sense of doing whatever you please? It was never supposed to be used that way.

Free will was not a licence to do what you want without taking the Creator's will into account. There were parameters within which free will could be expressed, but not outside those parameters.

God is the rightful sovereign over all his creation. He has absolute authority over what is to be done....or not. We cannot argue with his laws any more than we can argue with the laws of the land. If we have been found guilty of a crime which carries a heavy penalty, we can expect that the penalty will be imposed on us, like it or not, we can't argue about it. Do we then blame the lawmaker for what we did of our own free will?

There was not a long list of rules in the garden of Eden....there was just one thing that was withheld from humans....something that would not benefit them in the slightest. And the prohibition did not create a moment's deprivation for them. Good and evil exist as equal opposites, but God originally withheld that knowledge and would only allow good things to come into the lives of his earthly children. Look at the start he gave them....what more could they have asked for?

Humans were free to make choices about many things in their day to day lives, but breaking a command that carried the death penalty wasn't one of them.

The abuse of free will carried heavy consequences for it not only broke God's express command, it brought sin and imperfection into human genetics; (Rom 5:12) it caused ageing, sickness and eventual death....something that humans were never designed for because it was never supposed to happen.
There was a "tree of life" also in the garden that guaranteed endless life in the flesh. (Gen 3:22-24) God made this tree off limits once sin entered the picture. Imagine wicked men living forever!

God does not send people to punishment in an afterlife. Death is death, the opposite of life....not life in another form. When humans are deemed to be incorrigibly wicked they will simply never see life again. But the Bible promises that even the "unrighteous" will gain a resurrection back to life on earth. (John 5:28, 29)

Adam was not sentenced to a fiery hell....he was simply told that he would die and return to the dust...nothing more. (Gen 3:19)

If Adam had used his free will within the parameters set by his Creator, he would still be here with us to this day, enjoying life with all his descendants in paradise.

 

[chinu]

If you are punished for doing certain actions, can it really be called freewill?

Of course, you have free-will to choose any punishments, or rewards by doing certain action.

If God truly wants man to follow him, using freewill, he would have made it clear, and directly asked each of us. There is no freewill, just open ended strings that fall loose of man's grip. There isn't a choice until there are reasons.

God doesn't want man to follow him, at all. Vice-versa its man's necessity/helplessness to follow him because the world in which we are residing is transient-world and correlated with that the happiness, or peace provided by it, is also transient. Thus.. in order to fulfill our desire of attaining permanent-happiness, and peace we need to follow God because there's no one other than "God" who has the ability to take us out from this transient-world and put us back into our origin which is the place of permanent peace and happiness.

The one who doesn't feel the need to follow "God", its just because the one has not yet realized that this world isn't a permanent-peaceful place to reside on. The true importance of "God" arise right from the time when one truly realize that this world and its happiness, and its peace is transient.

 

[Mycroft]

Since free-will does not exist, it can't.

 

[Nakosis]

The only requirements you have is what you choose to require of yourself.

Any God you come across is an illusion. This illusion will tell you what you want to hear or what you expect to hear.

It doesn't mean the illusion is bad, it's all illusion from my perspective. Just means there is little point in going about listening to someone else's illusion of God.

I fully believe these Prophets believed that they were speaking to some entity that existed separate from themselves. That's how convincing the illusion can be. That's why you get so many conflicting Gods and beliefs.

There is only yourself and yourself is all you really have to answer to.

 

[viole]

FreeWill. How can it be so?

If you are punished for doing certain actions, can it really be called freewill? You have the physical potential to choose God and to not choose God, but you are pressured into choosing God by the threat of hell. This supposed freewill amounts to nothing more than a person who has a gun to their head, who has the freewill to decide whether to give the robber the money or not.


A lot of folks under Abrahamic faiths see that any direct interactions of God with man will negate freewill. If God were to show himself to the people on earth by taking the form of a big smiley face in the sky, it'd somehow contradict freewill. But I see it as rather the opposite. The fact that God is not obvious is negating freewill. It's foolish to expect a person to believe in your existence when all they have is a book that went through decades of mistranslation, misinterpretation, historic distortions, etc.

I'm in a world where things can be explained without God, where there are many different ideas of God, where many people have died because of other peoples' God, where myths of these Gods have the same nature but different character.

In my life, I have never been seeked by a God, so I am convinced there is no god out there that seeks me. I have found God and he is very different than how other people describe him. Why am I to believe in a God when I have no reason to other than one book, out of many, claims to be the truth and claims that all the others are wrong?

If God truly wants man to follow him, using freewill, he would have made it clear, and directly asked each of us. There is no freewill, just open ended strings that fall loose of man's grip. There isn't a choice until there are reasons.

How can you possibly be pressured to believe in God by the threat of hell?

If you believe there is such a threat, you already believe in God.

Ciao

- viole

 

[catch22]

If someone walks up to you and shoots you in the face and you die, which was against you will, how much will do you really exert, anyway?

There's very little a person has control over. Your heart, on the other hand, is one of the few things and possibly the most important.

Consider that the wages of sin is death, and if death is merely a state of being prior to being alive (ie: you're just not around anymore), then what are you really sweating? Do you remember what it was like before you were born? Isn't this how atheist and other non-believers console themselves in their resolution on life and death?

Look, it's like this. Option #1 is the default situation. You live, you live the best life you can with what you've got, then you die. And that's just that.

Outcome #2 is like the uh, I don't know, the opt-in program where you do everything in option #1, but then get to live again forever with the God who made you in the way He intended from the beginning.

It's really not a gun to the head as you've made it out to be. You are right though, the choice is obvious. Hope you make the right one.

Blessings.

 

[lovemuffin]

I think the OP misunderstands the libertarian idea of free will, which certainly doesn't entail "freedom from the consequences of actions" but only supposedly the idea of contra-causal agency. That is the ability to choose to do X over Y regardless of the physical preconditions.

Whether or not libertarian free will is either logically coherent or metaphysically possible is a different question

 

[The Sum of Awe]

I think the OP misunderstands the libertarian idea of free will, which certainly doesn't entail "freedom from the consequences of actions" but only supposedly the idea of contra-causal agency. That is the ability to choose to do X over Y regardless of the physical preconditions.

Whether or not libertarian free will is either logically coherent or metaphysically possible is a different question

You're right, I had a different idea of 'freewill' in mind when creating the thread. But to look at it that way doesn't seem the same as how freewill is used by some religious folks. The difference that I see is that hell is a consequence made by God. Considering God created heaven, and everything else, it's logical to assume he also created hell, or at least created the path to hell (he made hell the result of certain actions).

It's a consequence, but it didn't have to be there. Libertarian freewill really only makes sense when there is absolutely no control over these consequences, and hell apparently is a consciously created consequence.

 

[lovemuffin]

To the best of my knowledge Christians who believe in eternal punishment in hell do believe that God created hell. They don't believe that God punishing people in hell contradicts free will because of what I said about what their concept of free will entails. I think the sentence "Libertarian freewill really only makes sense when there is absolutely no control over the consequences" is a non-sequitur, logically, as far as I can tell, but I'm not sure exactly why you think that.

I think maybe I used this analogy in another thread about free will, but it's analogous to a situation where a mugger threatens to kill you if you don't hand over your wallet. Under libertarian free will you actually still have a free (contra-causal) choice. You could choose not to hand over your wallet and be killed. From a compatibilist or legal standpoint, you do not have "free will" in this context because your action is coerced. There is no logical problem with either definition though, they are just different conceptions. There may be a metaphysical problem with libertarian free will in that it seems incompatible with naturalism and physics, but that's a different issue.

(N.B. I'm a wannabe universalist with regard to eternal punishment and skeptical of libertarianism, but I don't think the argument you're making against them really works)

 

[JayJayDee]

God created heaven, and everything else, it's logical to assume he also created hell, or at least created the path to hell (he made hell the result of certain actions).

I am curious as to where people get the idea that God punishes people consciously after death. (Eccl 9:5, 10)
There is no teaching in either the OT or the NT suggesting that "heaven and hell" are opposite destinations. In fact there is no scripture that says humans are conscious after death, let alone tortured for all eternity.

Jesus said...."And do not become fearful of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Ge·hen′na." (Matt 10:28)

Most people do not really read what this very familiar scripture says.....when they read certain versions of the Bible they see "Gehenna" translated as "hell" in this verse, but "Gehenna" is not "hades". And God "destroys" those he consigns to Gehenna, he does not torture them. Those in hades are not conscious either, since "hades" is the Greek equivalent of "Sheol".

Solomon wrote...."There is hope for whoever is among the living, because a live dog is better off than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all, nor do they have any more reward, because all memory of them is forgotten. Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they no longer have any share in what is done under the sun......Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, (Sheol, hades) where you are going." (Eccl 9:4-6, 10)

What God placed before humans was life or death. There was never a hell of conscious punishment even suggested in OT scripture and "hell" (Sheol, hades) was not a place where humans suffered for all eternity. It is a place where they slept unconsciously till it was God's time to resurrect them.

Those not considered worthy of a resurrection will remain in death forever (destroyed)....never to be seen again. God's perfect justice demands nothing more.

Everlasting death is the opposite to everlasting life. Simple.