Hayden

God, please stop me submitting this post. I surrender my free will to you. Simply stop me posting this and I will believe in you forever.

Thanks,
Hayden

Ensign Steve

God loves you and wants you to have free will. He will not take it from you even if you surrender it too him.

God hates that you have challenged him with such a cheap test. You will burn in hell forever for that.

Repent now and you will go to heaven.

Hayden

Okay, there was actually a serious point to the OP. I guess it was a little obscure. :P

Anyway, would the appeal have worked, if a god existed?

Is it possible to surrender your free will (assuming you have any)?

HR

Godot

Would it have worked? Only if a god that existed bothered to concern itself with the mundane actions of a heretical nonbeliever.
As for free will, I'd feel more comfortable if you first defined the limitations to be applied to the term surrender in this context.
Do you mean the ability to oppose the will of another physically, the ability to do so mentally, or do you mean something as mundane as involuntarily acting (ie sneezing) in opposition to a dictate? It would help keep the discussion tightly focussed on the OP.

justashooter

when Christ stood on the mount and the angel of darkness tempted him saying, "Throw thyself down upon the rocks, for surely His angels will bear thee upward.", what was His answer?

your argument is spurious, brother. if there is a God universal, He is not intertested in your validation by test. His word alone and the power of creation is in and of itself effacing.

this from a guy who does not believe in God, and yet sees the silliness of your pose.

Ensign Steve

If a god existed, it wouldn't necessarily be the god of the bible. Since we're talking about a non-entity, how can we make a judgement like the above, about what he would or would not be interested in?

My answer to the original question, "if there was a god, would he ..." is, I suppose it depends on the nature of the hypothetical god. But there isn't, so it's moot.

It is the nature of the god of the bible not to fall for tests like that. Those who made it up had to make that god's nature, because it will never fall for the test. It can't fall for anything, if it doesn't exist.

If I am wrong, may god strike me down!

RUG

Assuming you actually exist, Hayden , let's say you had a son. And let's randomly make your non-existent son a teenager, say, 14 years old.

Now, let's just say for the sake of argument, and within the framework of those envisaged parameters, that your imaginary teenage son were to confront you with the same little test you put forth here.

And if you'll forgive me for putting words into your imaginary teenage son's mouth, let's imagine him saying something like this:

"Daddy, if you exist, I challenge you to stop me from confronting you with what I'm saying to you right now. I want to be obedient to you, I surrender my will to yours. Simply stop me from talking and saying this to you, and I will believe that you are my father forever. Thanks."

Two questions:

How would you react to such a thing?
In other words, what kind of a "god" would you be to such a son?
My point is, instead of speculating about the existence of a god, and ruminating further about the nature of such a god, "if there is one", let's backtrack first and simply discuss your very own particular nature, and how you would react to such a thing if you were a parent.

Secondly, and I'm reiterating in essence what Godot brought up, wouldn't it be safe to argue that if you truly had surrendered your will to such a god (which in my view entails a sincere desire to be obedient to that god), whose reaction were anything like your own might be toward an imaginary teenage son in such a scenario, that none of us would be responding to this post, because it never would have been?

These comments/questions are intended to raise the question as to whether some people might simply choose to be atheists out of convenience.

That is, whether they basically choose not to believe in the existence of a supreme being who takes an interest in creation and those created, simply because that might mean they would have to be obedient to something, i.e. truly submit their will.

But, and I'm just speculating here, isn't it possible that since surrender of the will is out of the question for some from the outset, that in reality, an inner proclamation is made along the lines of "God does not exist anyhow, so I'm off the proverbial hook".

I think that this is at least one thing your test actually is effective in proving!
RUG

Michaelson

I think the Douglas Adams argument applies here:

If God had stopped you from posting, then he would have prooved his existence. If God had prooved his existence, then he would have removed the need for faith. Without faith, God is nothing. Therefore all you would have prooved is that God doesn't exist.

Hayden

I'm not sure exactly what I meant by "surrender". Surely if I have been given free will, I then have the power to surrender it. Otherwise, my free will would be violated

I suppose the surrender of will, in this context, is to the extent that I could be prevented from clicking the "Post" button (or whatever it says).

HR

Hayden

For the sake of argument, let's assume I do

Your analogy isn't, quite. I'm not supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful, despite what parents tell their children. To answer your question (s?):

I guess I'd have to persuade my son by another method that I was in fact his father. Of course, I could communicate directly and succinctly with him, as opposed to how God (or gods) have communicated with me (not at all).

On the other hand, I typed my post into a text editor, copied it to my clipboard, pasted it into the New Thread form, and pressed "Post" (or whatever). Any decent god should have been able to see this and prevent my doing so, as opposed to your teenage son analogy where I would not be able to act until after the fact.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, the OP is, and you have been replying to it. The point is moot.

That's actually kind of insulting, but I'll assume you meant no offence. It's insulting because it equates atheists with stubborn children, disobeying their parents out of pure spite (no more parent/child analogies!). While I'm sure this is true in some cases, it's very hard to deliberately disobey something you don't believe exists.

I'm not sure I follow you here. My personal inner proclamation goes something like: "If a god exists, and he'd damn me for not believing in him, then I would not worhip that god." That's probably something for another thread though.

Hey, it's a change from arguing about the invasion of Iraq!

HR

PS I see this was your first post. Welcome to II! If you like, you can introduce yourself here.