Some Sunday Questions for Christians

[AlexanderG]

Your Premise4 and Premise5 are incorrect. Below they are correctly stated.

Premise4: God's infallible knowledge does not prevent anyone from ever choosing other than what he foresees, and God did not intentionally determine anything when he created humans exactly as they are, with free will to make choices.

Premise5: Therefore, everyone has free will.

Moreover, if humans did not have free will they could never be held accountable for their moral choices, and we all know that humans are held accountable in courts of law. The entire justice system all over the world is predicated on free will.

“Everyone wants to hold criminals responsible for their actions. This “responsibility” has its foundation in the belief that we all have the free will to choose right from wrong. What if free will is just an illusion, how would that impact the criminal justice system? Free will creates the moral structure that provides the foundation for our criminal justice system. Without it, most punishments in place today must be eliminated completely. Its no secret that I’m a firm believer in free will, but I’m also a firm believer in arguing against it when it helps my clients. That’s what we lawyers do (call me a hypocrite if you like, I can take it). Now, let’s delve into the issues and practical effects of eliminating free will.

We only punish those who are morally responsible for their action. If a driver accidentally runs over a pedestrian–there will be no criminal charges in the death of the pedestrian. This is what we call an “accident”. However, if a husband runs over his wife after an argument, that same pedestrian death now constitutes murder. It was the driver’s “intent” that made one pedestrian death a crime, and the other not. But, what if we examine the husband’s brain, and an MRI discovers a frontal lobe defect that could explain his deviant behavior? Is he still guilty of murder? If such a defect “caused” the husband’s actions, our criminal justice system has laws in place that would label the husband “Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity”......

As you can see from the appellate opinion above, our criminal laws are founded on the notion that if a person is not acting by his free will, the law cannot hold him “accountable for his choices”. There are plenty of other examples of Florida criminal laws that would benefit my clients, should everyone agree that free will is an illusion. For example, confessions cannot not be entered into evidence unless they are made of the defendant’s “own free will”. The term “free will” is contained right there in the definition of numerous legal concepts. Other criminal law concepts would lose their meaning as well, like “premeditation”. Is it realistic to speak of premeditation if freewill doesn’t exist? Is a robot on an assembly line in China premeditating the building of an iPhone? The mere fact that a robot takes several distinct steps to complete a task doesn’t render its actions ‘premeditated’. Such concepts should be purged from our criminal justice system if we’re all just biological robots.

Should science convince the world that free will is an illusion–we must move past notions of “punishment” and “sentencing”. This is not just intellectual musings; concepts of free will impact the criminal courts on a daily basis....... The bottom line here is best expressed by Professor Shaun Nichols in his lectures entitled Free Will and Determinism: “if science convinces us that free will is an illusion, we seem to face a moral conclusion that is difficult to accept: that all criminals should be excused for their crimes.”

Free WIll, Determinism, and the Criminal Justice System

I think my argument still stands. Or are you saying god does not have infallible knowledge of the future and could be wrong, because I can choose to do something other than what he has foreseen? You can't have it both ways. God is either not omniscient, or we don't have free will.

I'm hearing a fallacious argument from you, now. Essentially, "My theology requires humans to be blameworthy for their actions and deserving of punishment, instead of god, therefore we must have free will. Also, if we didn't believe in free will then our traditional legal system would be awkward, so we must continue to believe in free will." You're begging the question in the first case, and making a fallacious argument from consequences in the second.

And we could absolutely still convict and imprison people even if we didn't believe in free will. We can simply acknowledge that we humans are determined to desire to live cooperatively in safe communities, and that a small subset of humans have predilections, personalities, or upbringings that predispose them to intentionally harm people due to causal inputs that don't trigger harmful behavior in most other humans. Therefore we can justifiably sequester those exceptionally harmful people away from the rest of us, because that is how we protect ourselves given our practical limitations. This isn't difficult.

If a god intentionally creates people with a certain nature, with perfect foreknowledge of how they will harmfully behave, and he could have created them with a nature not to do this harm, then that god is responsible for the resulting harm, not the human.

 

[Trailblazer]

I think my argument still stands. Or are you saying god does not have infallible knowledge of the future and could be wrong, because I can choose to do something other than what he has foreseen? You can't have it both ways. God is either not omniscient, or we don't have free will.

That is completely illogical but I already stated what I believe which is logical (see quotes below). Foreknowledge of what is going to happen in the future does not cause anything to happen in the future. The fact that you will do what God knows you will do is because God knows what you will do, not because God caused you to do it. God does not plan anything out for anyone.

“Every act ye meditate is as clear to Him as is that act when already accomplished. There is none other God besides Him. His is all creation and its empire. All stands revealed before Him; all is recorded in His holy and hidden Tablets. This fore-knowledge of God, however, should not be regarded as having caused the actions of men, just as your own previous knowledge that a certain event is to occur, or your desire that it should happen, is not and can never be the reason for its occurrence.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 150

“the knowledge of God in the realm of contingency does not produce the forms of the things. On the contrary, it is purified from the past, present and future. It is identical with the reality of the things; it is not the cause of their occurrence........

The mathematicians by astronomical calculations know that at a certain time an eclipse of the moon or the sun will occur. Surely this discovery does not cause the eclipse to take place. This is, of course, only an analogy and not an exact image.”
Some Answered Questions, pp. 138-139

I'm hearing a fallacious argument from you, now. Essentially, "My theology requires humans to be blameworthy for their actions and deserving of punishment, instead of god, therefore we must have free will.

No, this is not coming from my religious belief system, it is coming from my logical mind. It just so happens that my religious belief system is congruent with my logical mind. God deserving punishment? I have never hear anything so ridiculous in my entire life! God is infallible so God cannot make mistakes so God can never be blameworthy. By contrast, humans are fallible so humans can and do make mistakes for which they are blameworthy.

Also, if we didn't believe in free will then our traditional legal system would be awkward, so we must continue to believe in free will." You're begging the question in the first case, and making a fallacious argument from consequences in the second.

No, that is not my argument. The legal system us based upon free will because everyone (except some atheists) know that people are responsible for the choices they make, and that means they MUST have free will to make those choices. This is logic 101 stuff.

And we could absolutely still convict and imprison people even if we didn't believe in free will.

So we should hold people accountable for choices they did not freely make and throw them in prison, often for life?

We can simply acknowledge that we humans are determined to desire to live cooperatively in safe communities, and that a small subset of humans have predilections, personalities, or upbringings that predispose them to intentionally harm people due to causal inputs that don't trigger harmful behavior in most other humans.

I can hardly believe I am hearing this.
Oh, so it is not their fault they chose to murder a spouse for insurance money or because they wanted to run off with another person who they got into an affair with? It was their upbringing and their personality.
Where does that end? Who is to blame and who isn't or is everyone just a victim of their childhood upbringing?

Therefore we can justifiably sequester those exceptionally harmful people away from the rest of us, because that is how we protect ourselves given our practical limitations. This isn't difficult.

So even though they had no choice because of a bad childhood or personality it is justified to lock them up for life... How is that just, or does justice even matter to you?

If a god intentionally creates people with a certain nature, with perfect foreknowledge of how they will harmfully behave, and he could have created them with a nature not to do this harm, then that god is responsible for the resulting harm, not the human.

God intentionally created humans with two natures and gave humans free will to choose between these two natures. The reason some people have the propensity to do evil is because we all have two natures, a spiritual or higher nature and a material or lower nature, and we can choose to act according to either nature. If we choose to act according to our lower material nature we will do evil acts. If we choose to act according to our spiritual nature, we will become more spiritual.

“In man there are two natures; his spiritual or higher nature and his material or lower nature. In one he approaches God, in the other he lives for the world alone. Signs of both these natures are to be found in men. In his material aspect he expresses untruth, cruelty and injustice; all these are the outcome of his lower nature. The attributes of his Divine nature are shown forth in love, mercy, kindness, truth and justice, one and all being expressions of his higher nature. Every good habit, every noble quality belongs to man’s spiritual nature, whereas all his imperfections and sinful actions are born of his material nature. If a man’s Divine nature dominates his human nature, we have a saint.” Paris Talks, p. 60

To read more: THE TWO NATURES IN MAN

 

[AlexanderG]

That is completely illogical but I already stated what I believe which is logical (see quotes below). Foreknowledge of what is going to happen in the future does not cause anything to happen in the future. The fact that you will do what God knows you will do is because God knows what you will do, not because God caused you to do it. God does not plan anything out for anyone.

“Every act ye meditate is as clear to Him as is that act when already accomplished. There is none other God besides Him. His is all creation and its empire. All stands revealed before Him; all is recorded in His holy and hidden Tablets. This fore-knowledge of God, however, should not be regarded as having caused the actions of men, just as your own previous knowledge that a certain event is to occur, or your desire that it should happen, is not and can never be the reason for its occurrence.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 150

“the knowledge of God in the realm of contingency does not produce the forms of the things. On the contrary, it is purified from the past, present and future. It is identical with the reality of the things; it is not the cause of their occurrence........

The mathematicians by astronomical calculations know that at a certain time an eclipse of the moon or the sun will occur. Surely this discovery does not cause the eclipse to take place. This is, of course, only an analogy and not an exact image.”
Some Answered Questions, pp. 138-139

No, this is not coming from my religious belief system, it is coming from my logical mind. It just so happens that my religious belief system is congruent with my logical mind. God deserving punishment? I have never hear anything so ridiculous in my entire life! God is infallible so God cannot make mistakes so God can never be blameworthy. By contrast, humans are fallible so humans can and do make mistakes for which they are blameworthy.

No, that is not my argument. The legal system us based upon free will because everyone (except some atheists) know that people are responsible for the choices they make, and that means they MUST have free will to make those choices. This is logic 101 stuff.

So we should hold people accountable for choices they did not freely make and throw them in prison, often for life?

I can hardly believe I am hearing this.
Oh, so it is not their fault they chose to murder a spouse for insurance money or because they wanted to run off with another person who they got into an affair with? It was their upbringing and their personality.
Where does that end? Who is to blame and who isn't or is everyone just a victim of their childhood upbringing?

So even though they had no choice because of a bad childhood or personality it is justified to lock them up for life... How is that just, or does justice even matter to you?

God intentionally created humans with two natures and gave humans free will to choose between these two natures. The reason some people have the propensity to do evil is because we all have two natures, a spiritual or higher nature and a material or lower nature, and we can choose to act according to either nature. If we choose to act according to our lower material nature we will do evil acts. If we choose to act according to our spiritual nature, we will become more spiritual.

“In man there are two natures; his spiritual or higher nature and his material or lower nature. In one he approaches God, in the other he lives for the world alone. Signs of both these natures are to be found in men. In his material aspect he expresses untruth, cruelty and injustice; all these are the outcome of his lower nature. The attributes of his Divine nature are shown forth in love, mercy, kindness, truth and justice, one and all being expressions of his higher nature. Every good habit, every noble quality belongs to man’s spiritual nature, whereas all his imperfections and sinful actions are born of his material nature. If a man’s Divine nature dominates his human nature, we have a saint.” Paris Talks, p. 60

To read more: THE TWO NATURES IN MAN

This has been a very interesting discussion, but I think we've reached the natural end. We have fundamentally different ways that we think about logic, reason, and epistemology. I still don't think you've addressed all the elements of my point about the impossibility of free will, and I think you've grossly mischaracterized my point about how we can judge people worthy of incarceration even without free will. I don't think I'm going to make any more headway, though.

You did say that, "God does not plan anything out for anyone," and I find this a remarkable statement given what I've heard basically every other Abrahamic type say they believe about god and god's ineffable and perfect divine plan for us all. It may be that I've been strawmanning your particular beliefs by referencing more conventional Christian views. Again, I'm less familiar with Baha'i beliefs. Either way, thanks again for the chat!

 

[Trailblazer]

This has been a very interesting discussion, but I think we've reached the natural end. We have fundamentally different ways that we think about logic, reason, and epistemology. I still don't think you've addressed all the elements of my point about the impossibility of free will,.

Sorry if I have been a little brusque in my speech. I have been under a lot of pressure lately.

To add to what I said, if we had no free will we could not choose anything, in which case we would be programmed robots, and whether you believe in determinism or God controlling all our actions, it's the same outcome - we have no choice.

Here is my little write-up on free will which is not from my religion.

I do not believe we are free to do anything we want to, but I believe that we can make choices based upon our desires and preferences. Our desires and preferences come from a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. We cannot do everything we might want to do because we either don't have the ability or the opportunity or there is something else we have to do instead or because we choose to sacrifice what we want for another person.

How free we are varies with each situation we find ourselves in. However, we have the ability to make our own choices unless we are incarcerated. Otherwise, we are looking at determinism, blaming all our actions on our past experiences and our heredity and having no moral responsibility for our actions.

You did say that, "God does not plan anything out for anyone," and I find this a remarkable statement given what I've heard basically every other Abrahamic type say they believe about god and god's ineffable and perfect divine plan for us all. It may be that I've been strawmanning your particular beliefs by referencing more conventional Christian views. Again, I'm less familiar with Baha'i beliefs. Either way, thanks again for the chat!

No, Baha'is do not believe what Christians believe, although Christians are not a uniform group so they have different beliefs. In short, Baha'is believe that God has a Purpose for humanity as a whole, but we do not believe that God "plans" out our individual lives. What Christians believe is "god's ineffable and perfect divine plan for us all" is similar to what Baha'is believe about God's Purpose for us all although Christians and Baha'is definitely do not agree as to how this divine plan will be achieved.

“God’s purpose is none other than to usher in, in ways He alone can bring about, and the full significance of which He alone can fathom, the Great, the Golden Age of a long-divided, a long-afflicted humanity. Its present state, indeed even its immediate future, is dark, distressingly dark. Its distant future, however, is radiant, gloriously radiant—so radiant that no eye can visualize it………

What we witness at the present time, during “this gravest crisis in the history of civilization,” recalling such times in which “religions have perished and are born,” is the adolescent stage in the slow and painful evolution of humanity, preparatory to the attainment of the stage of manhood, the stage of maturity, the promise of which is embedded in the teachings, and enshrined in the prophecies, of Bahá’u’lláh. The tumult of this age of transition is characteristic of the impetuosity and irrational instincts of youth, its follies, its prodigality, its pride, its self-assurance, its rebelliousness, and contempt of discipline.”
The Promised Day Is Come, pp. 116-117

Read more: God’s Purpose

 

[PearlSeeker]

1. If there are two possible worlds, one where only a perfect god exists who lacks for nothing, and another one that contains this god and also sin, corruption, non-believers, and infinite suffering, which world do you think is better? Why would a god create this way, rather than just choose not to create?

Your question is not about two worlds. It's about world or no world. "To be or not to be" as Shaespeare said. For me it's better to be.
Why do you think there is infinite suffering?

2. If a god is all-powerful and all-knowing, with perfect foreknowledge, then how can we have free will? If this god had an infinite number of ways to create someone, and knew how each way would turn out, and chose a specific way to create that person, then how can any choice that person makes go against god's foreknowledge? God chose in advance all the choices you would make. Doesn't god choosing and knowing exactly how your life will play out mean that your life is completely deterministic? How can a person be deserving of punishment if they are created in this way?

Maybe applying theory of mind on God doesn't work. What if God decided not to know everything - what if he left some room for suprises?

4. If a being demands to be worshipped, and hurts everyone who doesn't worship it, how does it actually deserve to be worshipped (by which I mean "the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration")? How can you freely choose to adore someone because otherwise they'll hurt you?

(Also answering question nr. 7.) That's an anthropomorphism. Worship is not demanded. It's a natural reaction out of overwhelming awe.

5. On a related note: How can you fear someone that you love? How is being afraid of someone in any way compatible with love? Doesn't this sound unhealthy and abusive?

Yes. "There is no fear in love." But there is respect. That means you don't want to hurt, disappoint, be unthoughtful, careless ... You don't want to cause these things even if you know you will be forgiven.
It can also mean the tremendous feeling of awe in the presence of holy (see Numinous or "mysterium tremendum"). In some languages the word for awe (great respect) contains also the word "fear".

Bahya ibn Paquda characterized two types of fear as a lower "fear of punishment" and a higher "fear of [divine awe] glory." Abraham ibn Daud differentiated between "fear of harm" (analogous to fear of a snake bite or a king's punishment) and "fear of greatness," analogous to respect for an exalted person, who would do us no harm. Maimonides categorized the fear of God as a positive commandment, as the feeling of human insignificance deriving from contemplation of God's "great and wonderful actions and creations." (Fear of God, Wiki)​

6. If a group of people wronged me, and the only way I could forgive them was to first take my child (who had nothing to do with the situation) and torture and kill them, making sure plenty of blood was spilled, then what would people think about me and my character? How should people really feel about a god who does this?

Agree. I don't see why blood sacrifice would be necessary.

8. How can someone be perfectly just and perfectly merciful? Mercy is the suspension of justice, and so these two concepts are logical contradictions.

Are you a parrent? Perfect parrenting is a balance of justice and mercy.
See also "tiferet" - a concept in Jewish mysticism.