the definitive disproof of the free will excuse

[Thales of Ga.]

:yes: As God has free will and can do no wrong and is not the Supreme Robot, it necessariy follows that neither would we be robots had we free will and could not do wrong,too. It is only special pleading to argue otherwise.A good parent puts children into good places and does not test them in bad ones.The tests are pointless as they crush so many. No! We should be more in the Imago Dei-more like God! Michael Martin and way before him, Fr. Meslier came out with this argument- the Meslier-Martin -Lamberth one.:candle:

 

[Random]

You have freewill only in the sense that you can perpetuate conflict. Every choice is based on a conflict of two or more objectively different things: thus, to select one and dis-regard the other(s) renders knowlege incomplete, seperates the whole and necessitates re-discovery @ some point to correct the anomaly. That is why all human systems ever devised are based on choice: it is the systems incorporated disclaimer for its failures and inablility to resolve that which it was created for, and for the inevitable rejection of it by human nature, which is divine.

Every human being is naturally anarchic and uninterested in choices unless there is a threat to the integral self. Thus the systems we create prompt us to keep making choices by proferring conflict and dis-harmony and constantly confronting us with it.

Where there is choice there must be conflict of one sort or another. This is the truth of it as long as the perception of Duality as foundational in creation persists. With seeing through the veil and coming to an understanding of egodeath, determinism and simulation one can come to a reckoning of the forces that move us and sweetly surrender to that which real-ly empowers.

 

[ChristineES]

Even if the parents don't test their children, they do have things in the house that they tell the children not to touch. Let's say the parents have a lamp in the living room. They tell the children not to touch the lamp because 1. It may be knocked over and broken 2. The lamp runs on electricity and the child may be harmed. The parents expect obedience from their children not to touch this lamp. They tell the children the consequences "if you touch this lamp you may be hurt or the lamp may be hurt". The child touches the lamp and it falls but it does not break and the child is not harmed. The parents send the children to their room for a time out or whatever. Those are not tests, the parents did not put the lamp there so they could punish the children when they disobeyed. They put it their for another reason. Couldn't you say the same thing about God and Adam and Eve?

 

[Thales of Ga.]

Following Michael Martin and Graham Oppy, I now call this the problem of Heaven.This is a key challenge for theists. I contend that theodicy is a series of rationalizations of the nonchalance of God toward evil.
Oppy notes:"f the absence of tempation and the presence of divinity are not incompatible wiht the existence of significant freedom, then what explanantion is to be given of the presence of temptation and the absence of divinity in the earthly existence of free human agents? Given these problems, it does not seem plausible to suppose that one ce can appeal to the nature of the heavenly enviornment in order to explain thae continegent absence of evil freom heaven."
...
"Given that it is a contingent matter whether there is evil in heaven, what reason do we have for believing that life in heaven is any way better than life on earth?"
Mere guesswork!
John Loftus adding to that notes in hs "Why I rejected Christianity..." that if God does allow that evil there, then as with Lucifer, there would be an eternity of expulsions.
And one begs the question in the soul-making excuse that there are indeed souls to make!
Both that exccuse and the free will one are just that-excuses,rationalizations.
However, following Oppy, we naturalists can expect theists not to succumb to this problem. We are fallibilists.
And if God knows our futures in detail, how can we really have free will! It is not that He controls them, but that He knows them such that they could not truly have been otherwise!
The tests can be overwhelming and pointless as there is pointless and inordinate suffeering.It is not a matter of John Hick's strawman ,relying ont the all or nothing fallacy, that we naturalists demand paradise but that we note that just a little wrongdoing would suffice to contrast with the good! We do not have have the ugly to apprecialte different levels of good-looking.It such as he who guess at a paradisical Heaven. He hoists his own petard that we challenge.
This is the challlenge to God's omniscience, omniptence and omnibeneficience. Not to use the first two shows conflilct with the third, showing the ignostic argument right.
Now Brightman and Bertocci allege that the "Given," analagous to our own feeble moral structure keeps Him limited. He is a limited god,not an omnipotent one. This finds root in the emprical find that there is indeed unrequieted evil and there are the imperfections .
Hartshorne states that He remembers our pains eternally and that we do not have a future state.That does not seem to be any sort of comfort!
Then perhaps, there are many gods at cross purposes with each other that account for the evils.
Yes, one can ever rationalize matters!

 

[harleydavidson]

to skeptic griggsy,,hi just a reply to your original post. One quick critique on your post,,you need to concentrate on simplicity,sometimes you become so obtuse,it's laborious to find your point. Your first idea " it necessarily follows ...",,very little necessarily follows" in life or in thought.Neither wld we be robots If we had free will and cld do no wrong!! If our activity is restricted to an inability to do wrong , how do we have free will ? isn't it a more restricted will? We can not will wrong, this removes a large part of activity from us.Wld . it not be better to deny that we even have free will?we cld say we have coerced will. That is , we are told do this and it's o.k.,,do that ,and you will be severely punished!,how is your will free if it is so influenced? Your last comment = reason saves,not a dead galilean, now seriously what is your idea of "saved"? Is salvation natural to man ?or is it above his nature,,and does it take a special something to elevate him to this position? Mans natural state is to follow his animal nature ,and perish at death. When he perishes his spirite that depends on his material for function also fades away,wldn't you agree?.simplicity an brevity are the essence of communication......harley davidson

 

[Francine]

Those are not tests, the parents did not put the lamp there so they could punish the children when they disobeyed. They put it their for another reason. Couldn't you say the same thing about God and Adam and Eve?

The difference is that not knowing the difference between good and evil is harmful. If Adam and Eve had been pre-programmed with this knowledge, they would have successfully detected the Serpent's lie and rejected him. To make your lamp analogy more closely fit events in Genesis, imagine the parents telling their children not to read the safety warnings on the base of the lamp, and making THAT the test of obedience.

 

[ChristineES]

The difference is that not knowing the difference between good and evil is harmful. If Adam and Eve had been pre-programmed with this knowledge, they would have successfully detected the Serpent's lie and rejected him. To make your lamp analogy more closely fit events in Genesis, imagine the parents telling their children not to read the safety warnings on the base of the lamp, and making THAT the test of obedience.

God told Adam and Eve what would happen if they ate of the fruit. The fact they did eat of it can't be put on God, since He told them what would happen beforehand. If He had not told them that they would die if they ate the fruit, then it would be different.

 

[Francine]

God told Adam and Eve what would happen if they ate of the fruit. The fact they did eat of it can't be put on God, since He told them what would happen beforehand.

Yes, but they weren't sure it was a good thing or a bad thing to disobey God, because that knowledge was imparted by the very fruit they were told not to eat.

 

[ChristineES]

Yes, but they weren't sure it was a good thing or a bad thing to disobey God, because that knowledge was imparted by the very fruit they were told not to eat.

OK, I see what you are saying.

 

[Thales of Ga.]

To meet the Eden problem I quote David Ramsay Steele:'
" God if he diecided to create other beings with free will, would also create them, with a guarantee against their ever committing evil. The theist who says that God has free will...cannot claim that free will and a guarantee against committting evil are metaphysically incompatible, and will find it hard to deny that God could have created humans with a gurantee against their ever committing evil."
There should not have, for the sake of argument, been such a command in the first place.This myth has no evolutionary reflection: we never were thus.
There should be John HIck's analogical virtues on Earth : one of his guesses is that we would have virtues in Heaven similar to ours here but without the tests .He also gueeses that there might be a kind of purgatory such that all end up in Heaven. Then why all the tests in the first place?
The problem of Hell adds more evil to the problem of evil : no rational being would have such a place for anyone whosoever!
So again why not as in Heaven the same on this Earth ? Note the last quote.
Thanks, all. I'll attend to my styles.

 

[harleydavidson]

to griggs:Lets get down to brass tacks,,there is no such thing as free will!. What we have is a coerced will,,that is to say we are told do this and you're ok,,,do that and you go to hell for eternity.This is a simplification of course,but lets proceed further. We stand in front of choice A,,or choice B. If we choose choice B, I will hit you in the head with a baseball bat,,if you choose choice A,I will not. Now are you really free in making a choice,or should we say you have a coerced will! Who but the village idiot would choose B. Frankly the only way we would have free will is to have no consequences for our choice,then we would truly be free...Harley Davidson

 

[Magic Man]

Harleydavidson, no offense, but I don't think you're one to critcize someone else's writing style on here. Yours could use a lot of work itself.

I tend to lump these ideas in with ideas like omnipotence. We can't fully understand them. According to Christianity, God is perfect, all-good, all-loving and omnipotent. The ability to do anything includes too many contradictions for our human minds. It's the same as the concept of free will and evil.

Christians will never accept the idea that God as they know him would never create us as we are. There are too many contradictions in their idea of things for it to be true. Anyone who has fully seen the opposing viewpoint either still believes because it makes them feel better, or doesn't believe at all.

 

[sandandfoam]

Christians will never accept the idea that God as they know him would never create us as we are. There are too many contradictions in their idea of things for it to be true. Anyone who has fully seen the opposing viewpoint either still believes because it makes them feel better, or doesn't believe at all.

1.Or aren't literalists.
2. God as they know him ? - I imagine there are as many God concepts as Christians.

 

[Magic Man]

1.Or aren't literalists.
2. God as they know him ? - I imagine there are as many God concepts as Christians.

I agree, but the traditional view of God as all-loving, all-good and omnipotent doesn't jive with our existence as it is.

 

[harleydavidson]

to mball 1297; Hi ,If you will note I did not critique Griggsys style,but addressed the matter of free will. You did not comment on that , so I assume either you missed the point ,or you choose to ignore it ,in either event OK..............harley davidson

 

[Magic Man]

to skeptic griggsy,,hi just a reply to your original post. One quick critique on your post,,you need to concentrate on simplicity,sometimes you become so obtuse,it's laborious to find your point.

simplicity an brevity are the essence of communication......harley davidson

This sure looks like you're critiquing his style to me. And he seems to have taken it that way, too.

As for the free will, I touched on it. Unfortunately, there is currently no definitive disproof of any theological question like this. Logically, it doesn't make sense that the Christian version of God would create the world as it is. That's the logical view. Christians will say, though, that it's about more than logic, namely faith. That's not something you can argue with, and so there will never be a definitive answer.

 

[yossarian22]

to griggs:Lets get down to brass tacks,,there is no such thing as free will!. What we have is a coerced will,

Free will is the ability to make a choice. That you are threatened with death and eternal suffering should your choice be 'unsatisfactory' is irrelevant. The option is there.

 

[Don Penguinoini]

Wrong section, i believe hell for eternity is a Abrahamic thought?

 

[harleydavidson]

Hi: to mb1297,,you quote a critique I had of Griggsy's long diatribe way back on 12/30!! that's old hat!....to Yossarian22,,I didn't say you did not have a choice,I said the free will [choice] was coerced. The choice was influenced,therefor it was not entirely free,,that was my point.,,,harley davidson

 

[Magic Man]

Harley, sorry, didn't realize this thread went back that far. :sorry1:

As to the point of free will being free: It doesn't matter whether you assign consequences to either choice, you can still choose either one. If you decide you want the good consequences, you choose one way. If you decide you want the bad consequences (or that they're worth it), you choose the other way. If you're held up at gunpoint for your money, you still have a choice. You can either give them your money or die. Granted they will still get your money if they kill you, but at least you won't have given it to them. As Rush says "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice".