Jamie_L

In this thread, Radorth posted the following, which is a good summation of an arguement I've heard from many theistic sources regarding the impact of God intervening regularly to stop people from inflicting suffering upon each other:

I responded to this in the other thread, but that wasn't really the best place for it. So this thread is to ask the question:

Would regular divine intervention cause people who are currently motivated by love and righteousness to be unrighteous and only motivated by fear?

For that is the implication in the above quote. My arguement is people who are righteous now would still be righteous under the intervention scenario. The only people who would be motivated by fear to feign righteousness are those who are currently open about their unrighteousness. It seem to me that there would be no impact on the amount of righteous, God-loving people. In other words, God would have the same number of willing servants. He would just also have some unwilling servants, instead of having people who don't serve him at all.

Do some Christians actually believe that if God started intervening in day-to-day affairs that righteous people would become unrighteous? Would his willing servants become unwilling? If so, why?

Jamie

braces_for_impact

Brings to mine the Exodus story. God supposedly goes through all this trouble to save the Israelites. Ten plagues, parting the reed sea, etc. What's the first thing the people do after that? Worship a 'false idol'. So much for divine intervention taking away free will.

I mean really, you, a normal, primitive human being see all of that, and you still worship a golden calf and ignore this gods' prophet?

Gimme a break.

Also, why does an omniscient, omnipotent god need servants?

Ronin

Have you seen the size of his hamper?

Beetle

First off, I thought that christianity taught that everybody was unrighteous to the core to begin with, and only get a stamp of approval based on somebody else's work. "All have sinned" and all that.

Second, whether god's intervention would promote obedience by fear would depend entirely on the manner of his intervention. If god creates food out of the air to feed the starving, or gives everybody a puppy, how does that create fear? On the other hand, if he waves his arm and obliterates Utah (no offense, Utahans) then his people might start wetting themselves. But even that shouldn't surprise, since (according to the bible) he either directly or indirectly wiped out a whole host of nations because they annoyed him. So where's the surprise?

The ten plagues of egypt are a problem for Radorth's argument because it shows that god did intervene directly. So why did he stop?

christ-on-a-stick

Excellent, Jamie_L, I was just thinking of starting a thread along these lines yesterday and you saved me the typing!

Indeed, many theists here - I'm thinking specifically of spurly, among others - have argued that A) God desires for us to be "willing servants" (not based on fear) and B) Consistent divine intervention and/or tangible *proof* of God's existence would interfere with our "free will".

For them, I would have 2 simple questions in keeping with this topic...

1. Were the OT Israelites, who saw God's many miracles, interventions, etc., robbed of their free will? (If not, why not) AND the NT people who knew Jesus and witnessed miracles?

2. In many OT stories (Exodus as already pointed out), the people were shown "God's power" over and over again - and they *still* rebelled against him; does this contradict the idea that if God showed himself plainly, everyone would choose to follow him out of fear?

Philosoft

The other thing is, it is demostrably untrue that proof of God's existence would necessarily entail worshipping him. As you so ably point out:

fishbulb

Why don't you ask Radorth if his motivations would change if he were given proof of the existence of God.

Why not ask people who are utterly convinved that God must exist and, yea, even provides ample proof of his existence what their motives are?

If someone is absolutely convinced that you exist, even if there are no rational grounds on which to justify that existence, then they will behave as though you did exist. If someone strongly suspects that you exist, they will act as though you likely did. If someone believes you exist and they will be punished for not doing your will, they will necessarily operate under the fear of the threat of punishment.

You cannot believe in a stern and vengeful god without believing that you will suffer his wrath for disobedience. And you cannot worship a being (sincerely) whom you do not believe exists. If God wants people to believe he will punish them horribly for disobedience and yet serve him without fear of punishment, he is bound to be sorely disappointed.

Jamie_L

Hmmm.

No takers to defend this position. It seems like I can't have a discussion involving divine intervention without people lining up to hit me over the head with this defense. No one wants to defend the defense itself?

Is my thread title not catchy enough to draw people in?

*sigh*

christ-on-a-stick

[zen mode]

Can one defend the indefensible defense?

[/zen mode]

christ-on-a-stick

But seriously, I'd really like to see spurly enter this discussion. He has expressed on several occasions the sentiment that if God intervened in our lives/showed himself plainly, that would interfere with our free will. So I would like to know if he believes that the OT people who saw God's miracles, and the NT people who *knew* Jesus, did not have free will. And how he explains the fact that according to the Bible, plenty of OT Israelites who witnessed God's power *still* chose to rebel against him (obviously not being robots).

/broken record (for now! )