Alethias

Well, that's certainly an interesting question. How do you define 'free'? A common definition seems to be 'the ability to make a choice with out any external influence'. I don't even think it's possible to make a 'free' choice under that type of definition. If you're a christian, and I believe you are, rhutchin, surely you believe that Jesus is the son of God, right? And that the bible is inspired? In what way is Jesus not God trying to influence our choices? And if the bible is inspired, it's certainly intended to influence man's choices. There is a loss of freedom. Even if it influences one to hate God, it's still an influence that an omniscient God would know about.A truer analogy would be one in which there is no discernable evidence that either the lifeline or the father that is offering it even exist, just other swimmers telling the children that their father, whom they can't detect is offering them a lifeline that they also can't detect and that they need to grab that lifeline. Doesn't it make more sense to turn and swim towards shore when the promised lifeline is nonexistent?

Alethias

MortalWombat

An even truer analogy is that the body of water doesn't exist either.

What we actually have is a group of people saying that they have access to a lifeline that your father, who you never met, is offering to you to save you from drowning in a body of water (that he created, by the way) that you can't see or detect, no matter where in the world you travel. And how do they know about the lifeline, your father, and the body of water? They read about them in a 2000 year old book.

Kassiana

Should a person be free to choose to go to the Emerald City in Oz? How about More's Utopia?

Choosing between fictions is fine for entertainment, but you can't go to a fictional place like hell or the Emerald City. They don't exist anywhere but in your mind.

Doug Shaver

Assuming hell is real . . . offhand, I don't see why not.

At the same time, I don't think they should be tricked into thinking it's not real and then told that if they go there, it's because that was their choice.

reddhedd

A further point is that your analogy is about children. I am not a child. I am indeed free to refuse to waste my time and energy looking for an invisible rope, and instead use my energy to swim, or float, or just put my feet on the sandbar and stand up.

notasheep

Remind me not to let you babysit my kids. What father is going to let his kids die, even if they choose to?

Harumi

I have an even better analogy:

The father throws his kids into a deep lake, but before he does that, he binds their arms and legs, then blindfolds them. Then he throws in a lifeline and demands that they try and reach for it. When none of them do, he determines that they all chose to die.

If that was a real scenario the father would be written off as a psychopath and locked up in a mental institution. Oh, and universally condemned. But since it's "god", that's okay.

Thankfully the lake isn't real. And thankfully such a bastard father as that doesn't exist either, or at least, in this society, such a father would be locked up.

Queen of Swords

This would be after the father stood by, doing nothing, as someone enticed his children into the water.

In your analogy, does the father have any control over the water, or the process of drowning? If not, does god have any control over hell or what happens in it?

I find it interesting how some christians portray hell as this powerful force of nature next to which god looks somewhat less than omnipotent. It's as though, when he created hell, god gave up some of his power regarding the terms and conditions of hell and was thereby forced to undergo peculiar contortions in order to save his few favorites from it.

If an embryo dies and goes to heaven, does it have the freedom to destroy itself in heaven?

Plognark

Loaded analogy.

Replace the word lifeline with "magic invisible flotation device thingy".

Then have the kids looking around saying "But dad, we're standing on dry land...are you feeling ok?"

and the dad goes on to say "BUT YOU'RE DROWNING MY CHILDREN! OH NOES, I DON'T WANT YOU ALL TO DROWN!! TAKE THE LIFE LINES BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!"

And then the four confused kids have their senile crazy old father commited, because he's obviously out of his gourd.

That's a more apt analogy.

Lixma

Well since the father is the one who threw the child in the drink in the first place you'd think the father would display a modicum of intelligence in understanding why the child wants nothing to do with him.

Regardless, the analogy is a bad one. It's emotionally leading and doesn't accurately represent the situation it pretends to.