My Christianity: Free Will

[Mempho]

I decided to try and put some of my concepts of Christianity in words for the forum to debate. It is not my contention to make this a thread of evidence for or evidence against but rather one of concepts that are often on the minds of people.

The concepts presented build upon each other successively so it is best not to engage in a game of “Whack-A-Mole” apologetics. The reason that I decided to bring this up was that many of the questions were questions that I had.

These concepts are, to the best of my knowledge, congruent with the Bible. If you happen to stump me, I’ll do my best to research the correct answer and get back to you. If I don’t know an answer, I may have to tell you that. What I would ask is that you don’t go off-topic immediately and start bombarding me with questions that aren’t relevant to the topic at hand. If we’re talking about free will-determinism, then don’t go asking me questions like:

-What about the Muslims?

-What about the Egypt?

-Why didn’t the Egyptians believe?

-Don’t you consider it to be an oxymoron that good and loving God would send someone to hell for eternal punishment?

All of these are valid questions and I will do my best to cover them. The problem that I run into is that these debates often get dragged off topic so quickly that the main point, which is critical to understanding the successive questions, gets buried before the truth of it can be fleshed out.

Further, I expect some people to say something along these lines:

“Well, that’s not what Pat Robertson teaches.”

---OR---

“That’s not the Christianity that any church teaches.”

That’s all fair and good, but I am not Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or any other guy with a television ministry or even so much as a Sunday school class to lead (maybe for a good reason).

I don’t go along completely with any denomination or leader per se. I just took what I could read from the Bible. Alright, on to the first topic:

Free Will and the Origins of Good and Evil

God Gave Man Free Will

This is extremely important and it is not rocket science. People make it out to be rocket science and I don’t know why.

God gave humans free will. If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots. God desires a voluntary loving relationship with each of us. If our plan is determined, then choice does not exist.

That freedom of choice means the freedom to choose God’s way, which is the way of absolute truth, or any multitude of other ways. One must choose light or dark. Any other choice besides light is automatically dark.

There is one way for truth and multiple ways of darkness. If Bill asks you, “What is favorite food?” and your favorite food is pizza, you have a myriad of choices, but only one of them (pizza) is the truth.

Since God gave man free will, he has to allow for the possibility that the choice made by man will be something other than the choice to follow the truth and the light. This affects everything around us for both good and bad.


God Can See the Future

Now, the determinism people will point out very quickly (and quite correctly) that God can see the future. They think this presents a conundrum for the concept of free will. It does not.

Suppose that God is on his throne, peers through time into the future, and one day and sees Susie being born. Susie is a wonderful child and grows into a beautiful, young woman. She is beautiful, smart, giving, and caring. She donates time to feed the poor and is an avid churchgoer. She gets engaged to a young man who loves her very much named David. Her life is a blessing to all around her. One night she comes home from feeding the poor and finds Tom in her house. Tom has made a dark choice and proceeds to rape and kill her.

Would God not think of this as a terrible tragedy? Of course he would. After all, it was not Susie’s fault and she was a blessing to all around her. It was Tom’s fault because he made the wrong choice. God could’ve intervened but he did not. If God intervened every time that something bad happened, he would eventually end up removing Susie’s capacity to love all of those around her because all of the opportunities for everyone who ever lived to make a wrong choice would be extinguished. Love is a choice. Without that choice, humans are nothing more than biological material. With that choice, however, the door for evil is always open.

There is a prominent theory about the origin of Satan, but it is not easy to extract from the Bible. The more common story is extracted from Ezekiel 28 and it refers to an angel with free will who, due to pride, started thinking of himself as God, and ultimately revolted against God’s sovereignty in an attempt to become God.

[Subfallen]

[ QUOTE ]
If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots.

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you know what a "biological robot" would experience life as? Your inability to imagine consciousness as a biological phenomenon DOES NOT say anything about the true nature of consciousness.

How do you know that our experience of love is anything more than a psychological elaboration on chemical pair-bonding? Again, your inability to imagine what psychology+chemistry can account for does not constitute an insight into the necessity of free will.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots.

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you know what a "biological robot" would experience life as? Your inability to imagine consciousness as a biological phenomenon DOES NOT say anything about the true nature of consciousness.

How do you know that our experience of love is anything more than a psychological elaboration on chemical pair-bonding? Again, your inability to imagine what psychology+chemistry can account for does not constitute an insight into the necessity of free will.

[/ QUOTE ]


Free will is a nice god of the gaps concept. Sadly, it doesn't help you understand anything, and by doing so actually holds you back in understanding these things.

[bunny]

[ QUOTE ]
God Can See the Future

Now, the determinism people will point out very quickly (and quite correctly) that God can see the future. They think this presents a conundrum for the concept of free will. It does not.

Suppose that God is on his throne, peers through time into the future, and one day and sees Susie being born. Susie is a wonderful child and grows into a beautiful, young woman. She is beautiful, smart, giving, and caring. She donates time to feed the poor and is an avid churchgoer. She gets engaged to a young man who loves her very much named David. Her life is a blessing to all around her. One night she comes home from feeding the poor and finds Tom in her house. Tom has made a dark choice and proceeds to rape and kill her.

Would God not think of this as a terrible tragedy? Of course he would. After all, it was not Susie’s fault and she was a blessing to all around her. It was Tom’s fault because he made the wrong choice. God could’ve intervened but he did not. If God intervened every time that something bad happened, he would eventually end up removing Susie’s capacity to love all of those around her because all of the opportunities for everyone who ever lived to make a wrong choice would be extinguished. Love is a choice. Without that choice, humans are nothing more than biological material. With that choice, however, the door for evil is always open.


[/ QUOTE ]
This doesnt address the supposed conflict between free will and omniscience, it addresses the problem of evil.

In your scenario, the argument would be that Tom had no choice to rape Susie as God already knew he was going to. If he got to that moment and then chose not to, God would have been wrong (which is impossible). Therefore, at the moment he made his choice, he was choosing between only the one option that God had already seen. (Furthermore, God could have made Tom such that he wouldnt have chosen rape at that moment. When someone is shot, it's not the gun's fault.)

It also avoids the problem of why didnt God make us able to choose between a whole lot of good choices? It doesnt have to be rape vs not rape. Tom could have been exercising his free will on a much more benevolent scale - God could make a world where we went around choosing "Do I give Susie one birthday present or two?" Why allow us the ability to do such awful things that some of us do? He could make the dark just a little gloomy rather than pitch black.

[Mempho]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots.

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you know what a "biological robot" would experience life as? Your inability to imagine consciousness as a biological phenomenon DOES NOT say anything about the true nature of consciousness.

How do you know that our experience of love is anything more than a psychological elaboration on chemical pair-bonding? Again, your inability to imagine what psychology+chemistry can account for does not constitute an insight into the necessity of free will.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is off topic. Yours is a philosophical question about the nature of conciousness. That's a complete other thread. I'm trying to explain Christianity.

[ibluffoldladies]

Why would a God create a rational, logical thinking human, and then punish his creation for not taking the irrational and illogical step of having faith? Are you saying that your God likes to play mind games with his creation? This isn't exactly on topic, but does tip toe around free will.

I guess my question to you is, why would God design our brains to think with logic, but ask us to go against logic and believe in him by faith? Not only that, but in your case, sending people to hell for eternity by rejecting their natural design.
Good luck in your journey. The truth shall set you free.

[Mempho]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots.

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you know what a "biological robot" would experience life as? Your inability to imagine consciousness as a biological phenomenon DOES NOT say anything about the true nature of consciousness.

How do you know that our experience of love is anything more than a psychological elaboration on chemical pair-bonding? Again, your inability to imagine what psychology+chemistry can account for does not constitute an insight into the necessity of free will.

[/ QUOTE ]


Free will is a nice god of the gaps concept. Sadly, it doesn't help you understand anything, and by doing so actually holds you back in understanding these things.

[/ QUOTE ]

God of the gaps is a negative explanation that assumes that science has the potential to explain all that ever is, was, or will be. It may be incorrect and, therefore, its usuage is often misguided. Back to free will.

[Mempho]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
God Can See the Future

Now, the determinism people will point out very quickly (and quite correctly) that God can see the future. They think this presents a conundrum for the concept of free will. It does not.

Suppose that God is on his throne, peers through time into the future, and one day and sees Susie being born. Susie is a wonderful child and grows into a beautiful, young woman. She is beautiful, smart, giving, and caring. She donates time to feed the poor and is an avid churchgoer. She gets engaged to a young man who loves her very much named David. Her life is a blessing to all around her. One night she comes home from feeding the poor and finds Tom in her house. Tom has made a dark choice and proceeds to rape and kill her.

Would God not think of this as a terrible tragedy? Of course he would. After all, it was not Susie’s fault and she was a blessing to all around her. It was Tom’s fault because he made the wrong choice. God could’ve intervened but he did not. If God intervened every time that something bad happened, he would eventually end up removing Susie’s capacity to love all of those around her because all of the opportunities for everyone who ever lived to make a wrong choice would be extinguished. Love is a choice. Without that choice, humans are nothing more than biological material. With that choice, however, the door for evil is always open.


[/ QUOTE ]
This doesnt address the supposed conflict between free will and omniscience, it addresses the problem of evil.

In your scenario, the argument would be that Tom had no choice to rape Susie as God already knew he was going to. If he got to that moment and then chose not to, God would have been wrong (which is impossible). Therefore, at the moment he made his choice, he was choosing between only the one option that God had already seen. (Furthermore, God could have made Tom such that he wouldnt have chosen rape at that moment. When someone is shot, it's not the gun's fault.)

It also avoids the problem of why didnt God make us able to choose between a whole lot of good choices? It doesnt have to be rape vs not rape. Tom could have been exercising his free will on a much more benevolent scale - God could make a world where we went around choosing "Do I give Susie one birthday present or two?" Why allow us the ability to do such awful things that some of us do? He could make the dark just a little gloomy rather than pitch black.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, if he makes the worst case a little gloomy, then he eliminates the choice for total darkness.

[bunny]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
God Can See the Future

Now, the determinism people will point out very quickly (and quite correctly) that God can see the future. They think this presents a conundrum for the concept of free will. It does not.

Suppose that God is on his throne, peers through time into the future, and one day and sees Susie being born. Susie is a wonderful child and grows into a beautiful, young woman. She is beautiful, smart, giving, and caring. She donates time to feed the poor and is an avid churchgoer. She gets engaged to a young man who loves her very much named David. Her life is a blessing to all around her. One night she comes home from feeding the poor and finds Tom in her house. Tom has made a dark choice and proceeds to rape and kill her.

Would God not think of this as a terrible tragedy? Of course he would. After all, it was not Susie’s fault and she was a blessing to all around her. It was Tom’s fault because he made the wrong choice. God could’ve intervened but he did not. If God intervened every time that something bad happened, he would eventually end up removing Susie’s capacity to love all of those around her because all of the opportunities for everyone who ever lived to make a wrong choice would be extinguished. Love is a choice. Without that choice, humans are nothing more than biological material. With that choice, however, the door for evil is always open.


[/ QUOTE ]
This doesnt address the supposed conflict between free will and omniscience, it addresses the problem of evil.

In your scenario, the argument would be that Tom had no choice to rape Susie as God already knew he was going to. If he got to that moment and then chose not to, God would have been wrong (which is impossible). Therefore, at the moment he made his choice, he was choosing between only the one option that God had already seen. (Furthermore, God could have made Tom such that he wouldnt have chosen rape at that moment. When someone is shot, it's not the gun's fault.)

It also avoids the problem of why didnt God make us able to choose between a whole lot of good choices? It doesnt have to be rape vs not rape. Tom could have been exercising his free will on a much more benevolent scale - God could make a world where we went around choosing "Do I give Susie one birthday present or two?" Why allow us the ability to do such awful things that some of us do? He could make the dark just a little gloomy rather than pitch black.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, if he makes the worst case a little gloomy, then he eliminates the choice for total darkness.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes - which would be a more benevolent thing to do.

Do you have a response to the bolded part?

[Mempho]

[ QUOTE ]


I guess my question to you is, why would God design our brains to think with logic, but ask us to go against logic and believe in him by faith?

[/ QUOTE ]

You assume that our brains only work on logic. I don't agree with that.

[ QUOTE ]

Not only that, but in your case, sending people to hell for eternity by rejecting their natural design.


[/ QUOTE ]

That's something I'm going to do in another topic. I will get to that and I think you'll find it interesting.