Radorth

Well said all Christian.

However on the following point I disagree as well:

But how dumb would we be then? My dog has a will which she would excercise to the point of tearing the neighbor's cats apart and hurting herself (given my unfenced yard, hungry coyotes and other dangers). It seems we would be almost at the intelligence level of the ant to be without some sort of free will.

At least we are seeing all the problems of a simplistic viewpoint. And still no skeptic has presented a rational, sensible argument about how God would go about things without creating lots of other dilemmas.

Rad

Rhea

Bunch-a-quotes by Christian
I beg to differ. I sooooo strongly beg to differ. To me, this statement is truly ridiculous. And I don't mean to cast aspersions on you, I am trying to convey what that argument means to me. It makes me CRY with horror at people who actually think that is the worst the world has to offer. You actually think that?

Compare,
A grown man, who knows he is god, knows his power, knows he will not die, knows his purpose and sees it fulfilled. This includes a friend betraying him to the authorities, and a suffering which lasted 3 hours (or all day of you count the hard labor). He dies knowing why and (here's the kicker) knowing that he will be brought back to life.

Contrast:
She is ten years old. She has been raped almost daily since she was sold into slavery at 5. She was sold by her mother (who thought she'd be taken off to find a job). A betrayal? By your mother? Painful forced sex. Painful sexual diseases. Beatings. Starvation. Malnutrition. She doesn't know why. She doesn't remember anything else. Never the loving touch of a mother, not once the embrace of a loving husband. Nor ever for her the adoring gaze of a child she will raise to be good. Finally cast aside from the profession a diseased, weak, addicted shell of a human at 16 years old (she looks forty). After twenty weeks, she finally starves to death on the street, in the cold, her left leg gangrenous and rotting. (No one buries her).

And you can say that Jesus had it bad? The "very worst problems in this world"? You can say that without falling to your knees in wracking sobs? I can't.




You can say this without falling to your knees in wracking sobs? When I was a child I never thought I would meet someone who would consider the drowning of a baby - raising water over the baby's face as it struggles to sit up but doesn't know how, as it wonders what is going on but can't hold it's breath any longer, as it's mother tries desperately to tread water holding four children and the infant slips from her grasp to sink, pitifully trying to hold it's breath and cry at the same time, finally crying out for her mother - and inhaling the water that kills her... and she sinks to the bottom, still cognizant, but so confused, so panicked... thrashing... I never thought I would encounter a person who could call that "just". It honestly makes me cry. I can't tell you what little "Noah's Ark" baby room decorations do to me.



So if god was perfect, you wouldn't believe in him. I guess to me that all seems like hand waving and smoke and mirrors to avoid asking whether a religion is JUST and GOOD, not to mention feasible and reasonable and believable.



Noble. Noble. Noble?

But let me ask, try to drag you to the central point... if people can be made to always make the good choice, then what the hell is the hold-up?



What makes you think I could possibly talk to any more? I am surrounded by them. I talk to them daily. (My company takes good Friday off). Frankly, their beliefs make me cry. I don't have any need to talk to more christians.



I gave you an alternative. There are no dilemmas from it. It is sensible. What dilemma is caused by expecting God to reveal himself to every human? That would sure solve the problem. Boom-o. What dilemma is caused by equipping humans with the wisdom (or whatever key) to always making the right choice? What dilemma arises from skipping earth and going straight to heaven?

Radorth

He did that to the Israelites, enmasse and it made no difference at all, did it? Even if you do not believe the miracles, the story of their ongoing rebeliiousness rings true. (See nearest history book). It made no difference in their character, their rebellious ways, their desire to obey, did it? Jesus worked miracles in front of his disciples and some of them ran off when he said something that offended them. Right? Only the suffering caused by their own rebelliousness and failure to obey God makes SOME people willing to obey God.

Certainly God is willing to manifest himself to anyone, if not in the way they expect. Jesus says that "he who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him." (John 14:21) He also says "he who believes in me, as the scripture has said 'out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'" This is something quite tangible and real, which changes the inner being.

It wouldn't work, and I've heard several atheists assert they wouldn't change even if he did reveal himself.

All you have to do is ask. You will when you are ready. (Jas 1:5)

Our experience here will ensure we don't rebel in the future. This is how we will retain free will but not make bad choices, as I think Christian has said as well.

None of your "plans" would get God what he wants- people who truly love and appreciate him, i.e. willing servants. Actually such people serve each other as much as God, and ironie of ironies, the Communist dream of people serving one another freely will be realized. Not a bad idea Marx had. Unfortunately his disciples got impatient when people didn't get it, and their actions make the OT prophets and the NT apostles look like perfect angels, don't they?

Rad

Philosoft

It's nothing to do with an a posteriori probability. If the universe in question has at any time seen a bad state-of-affairs obtain, then, all else equal, your 20 good choices in a row do not necessarily constitute a violation of free will.

If the universe in question has never seen a bad SOA obtain, a strong inductive argument can be made that bad SOAs cannot obtain.

You, however, even go one step farther by asserting that heaven is a place wherein bad SOAs will not obtain. Thus, the a priori probability that a bad SOA will obtain in heaven is zero. In what sense, then, does a heavenly being have the ability to make a bad choice?

But you are putting a constraint on choice, it's just not clear what is doing the constraining. If time H is defined as the exact time my soul enters heaven, and the statement "I cannot make bad choices in heaven" is true at any time prior to H, there is unavoidably some constraint on my behavior, whatever it may be.

The obvious impossibility is that a bad SOA will obtain in heaven as a result of a bad choice. If you acknowledge a "transform[ation]," it seems that something is being done to our souls, presumably by God, that eliminates our ability to make bad choices - an apparent violation of free will. Unless I am misunderstanding, there seems to be a defeater built into your argument.

Philosoft

Maybe, but so what? A being without free will is still in no position to lament his ant-esque intelligence. We would not feel slighted if God had made us robots. The only one with a stake in the whole thing is God. If God had a reason for creating humans with free will, it is either that God prefers free-willed beings or that free will is objectively better that no-free will and God is bound by nature to do the better of two actions. The former makes God look selfish and the latter is just metaphysically silly.

And the thousands more in an ad hoc theology.
Hey, I'm no existential problem-solver. I'm content to snipe at the existing theological dilemmas.

Rhea

What does this have to do with him revealing himself to me? Am I being punished for the actions of others? Is that how you parent? If potty training is a struggle for the oldest, then you don't bother to train the younger ones? Is there some cosmic price God has to pay for revealing himself and he can only afford "so many" exposures so he has to ration them?

So believing in God - or not - makes no difference in human behavior?

Wait a minute, doesn't the Bible claim that if you just BELIEVE then the spirit of god will be in you and behaving will be easy? Doesn't the Bible explicitly say that?

Certainly he is NOT. The proof of that can be seen in scores of Atheist "testimonies". People who humbled themselves on their knees in true & fervent search for God and got... nothing. "Certainly"? No. Demonstrably no.
(But apparently doesn't work.) And goes right back to _what_ changes the inner being, are these people becoming robots? And if they are becoming happy robots why not make everyone a happy robot?

Once again, "Christians just do not act the way they would if Christianity were true."

There are a LOT of firm, absolutely unwavering faithful who do bad things. Tell me, what is up with that? Obviously they missed the "inner change", which is to say, that absolute unwavering faith does not bring about an inner change all of the time. So can it be claimed to "work" if it can't be counted on?

I maintain that most people are good. Some of them in spite of religion. In spite of worshipping a being who wants "willing servants". In spite of believing that "willing servitude" is a good thing. (Can you say "making slavery seem okay"?)

But your arguments attempting to reconcile the existence of a perfect heaven with the earthly state of affairs is not compelling. It is completely not compelling. It involves too much hand-waving. Too many "well he has to do this"s next to too many "except in certain cases"s.

As a parent, I am well aware of the love for a being more limited than me. And frankly, it NEVER involves being deceptive, being coy, being hidden. Not once. When baby does bad, we cuddle, we explain, we do it together, we talk it out. I do not leave my child to learn something on his own on the basis of having previously taught his sister. _I_ am the parent. I don't want my children parented by each other. I don't leave toddlers to learn about stairs by trial and error. I _personally_ am present and teach them how to climb down the stairs.

I know a lot of people who parent "God's Way". It horrifies me. People who put a breakable item out, let the toddler touch it, and then spank them for doing so. "That teaches them". And this is the way your God directs earth. Is _that_ your "inner change"? Maybe it does reconcile after all. The god beats the children, or makes children watch others getting beaten. The ones who learn to obey without questions are rewarded with hanging out among all the others who learn to fear the beating. They are all gloriously happy at the idea of living among others who avoid beatings.

heh. perhaps they are already "moral" and don't have any changing to do? "It wouldn't work" you say. You know this? You damage your credibility by making such a statement. One that you obviously are not qualified to make about the religious experiences of others. Are you throwing away your credibility on purpose?

Demonstrably false. Read the testimonies. People have asked. And received...nothing.

Some people learn by the wisdom garnered from research, observation and reason. We learn to a large degree from history (very few people espouse the flat earth dogma anymore). God does not see fit to use this method, or equip (all of) his beings with the capability of doing it. When we take math class, we don't have to be in on the discovery. We read about how it works and we build on that. No suffering involved. Good plan.


...


You know, all of this "he wants willing servants" and "being a robot is bad" and "free will to decide makes us worth living" and "noble" and all of that. It makes me wonder.

How does this juxtapose on a person with severe mental retardation. Or a Down Syndrome person. Are these people not happy? Are they living lives not worth living? Should their caregivers NOT stop them from stealing and hitting? I think we acknowledge that 1) they are VERY happy and 2) it is wise and appropriate to maintain boundaries around them for them to keep them from "misbehaving". Yet, the arguments you put forth for God is that we should not help force them to behave within society's rules and that furthermore they cannot possibly be happy or noble because of this.

Do you look at retarded people and pity them? Do you fail to see how happy and fulfilled they are? Do you think they have no feelings? Careful, that's what you've been explicitly explicitly saying here. "their lives are not worth living."


Heh. Radorth knows exactly what the Christian God "wants". And Sigh. Radorth thinks "willing servants" is a good thing to want. If you (and your god) weren't so keen on the "servant" part, I would recommend parenthood to you. It's not so hard, even with earthly human limitations, to get create/guide/attract people who truly love and appreciate you. Really, millions of people accomplish it. They do it by being THERE and being GENTLE and LOVING and APPROACHABLE and REASONABLE and PREDICTABLE. They do not do it, one can see easily from looking around, by being tyrannical, cryptic, distant and inconsistent.

Radorth, I am curious. Are you a parent? Christian? Are you?


No, nothing can make people willing to murder their sons look like "angels". Or rather, I guess they do. "Angels" have a history of being monstrously cruel. So I guess the shoe fits quite well. Yes, communism has it merits. Too bad some of the early proponents were trying to marry it to a dictatorship. That didn't work, did it. I'm not convinced communism can work as a national system. It seems as though maybe it needs to be a nation of small communes, not a communistic nation. But that's another debate, I suppose.

Stephen T-B

I was interested by this earlier (much earlier) statement from Radoth: “I do not take the Adam and Eve and creation story literally as there is not much reason to do so.”
Later he wrote: “He showed himself to all Israel, and it made absolutely no difference.”
So, there’s not much reason to believe the Adam and Eve and Creation story, but there is good reason to believe the stories in which god wasted his time showing himself to “all Israel.”
Didn’t he know it would make “absolutely no difference”?
He should have done, being god. And being god, if he’d wanted it to make a difference, then he’d have known how to do it in such a way that it would.
So he didn’t actually WANT it to make a difference?
Radoth: he “wants people who truly love and appreciate him, i.e. willing servants.”
I’d have thought the whole point about being god is that you’d know how to set things up in such as way as to give you EXACTLY what you want.
The evidence suggests he doesn’t want them very badly.

I like this: “Our experience here will ensure we don't rebel in the future. This is how we will retain free will but not make bad choices.”
So Mrs Smith is standing at the side of a busy road with her child and she says: “Hold my hand and cross when I do.”
But the naughty little thing slips its hand and makes a dash for it. Mrs Smith, when she’s crossed safely and caught him, takes out a baseball bat and beats him around the shoulders with it until it’s lying on the ground, crying piteously. This happens every day for a week, but on the eighth day, when Mrs Smith says “Hold my hand and cross when I do” the child obeys, and he obeys ever after.
In doing as he is told, what sort of free will is he exercising?
The same, I suggest, as we all exercise every time we have the opportunity to make a choice between two or more courses of action. We consider, as we far as we have the capacity,, what consequences will flow from doing A, B or C, and the choice we make is determined by the expected rewards weighed against the expected costs. Mrs Smith’s little boy eventually does as he is told because the pleasure of running wildly across the road, making cars hoot and swerve and drivers scream, is outweighed by the pain of the beating he’ll get when his mother catches up with him.
Of his own volition he has now limited his freedom of action: when he stands at the side of the road with his mother, what choice does he have?
None. He has eliminated the alternative.
That is what we all do, throughout our lives. Free will becomes steadily more and more illusory, the more experienced we become.
“Our experience here will ensure we don't rebel in the future. This is how we will retain free will but not make bad choices.”
We will not, in fact, retain free will if our “our experience here will ensure we don't rebel.”
Nothing would remain of free will save the illusion of it.

Rhea

Christian said (and Radorth seems to also say)
I wonder why, if that is clearly the best way to be and clearly God's plan, and clearly, of course, a good christian tries to emulate God's Plan as much as possible...

How do you guys feel about Humans removing Free Will from other humans? Since this is obviously, unequivocally UnGodly, why would any Christian forcibly remove the ability to exercise Free Will from any other human, thereby "playing God" and undermining God's Own Plan to create (or identify) Willing Servants for eternity?

Is it UnChristian to take the teen football player who was arrested for kissing his boyfriend in his car in Vermont and putting him in jail without removing his belt? Should all prisoners be allowed to keep their belts so that they are not denied Free Will and the ability to Be Noble?

How about drunk driving convictions. Is it UnChristian to take away their licenses? Court-ordered drug treatment. Child predator registration. Anti- death with dignity. Arrest of any kind. Involuntary hospitalization. Mandatory education. Building codes. And, I take it, you support abortion rights?




Is God's clear plan the best one? Are the few deaths that would occur a "just" price for the nobility of Free Will? It is Obvious that uncontrolled Free Will is The Best choice, because it is God's Choice. What's a good christian to do with that obvious knowledge?



Really, I'm perplexed thinking this thing through. Do you guys think it is UNCHRISTIAN to have laws, and courts and jails? Is any attempt to remove choices from people UnGodly?

When does nobility stop and humanity start? How many deaths are acceptable?

Bumble Bee Tuna

Radorth, you wanted to hear a better plan. I have quite a few.

1. Make humans smarter so that, while they would still have the choice to make bad decisions, they are smart enough that they don't.

If you think God's power is limited, however, and he can't make people smarter, how about this:

2. When someone dies and they were not a Christian, do not send them to Hell. Instead, finally reveal yourself, explain the newly dead soul's choices in complete detail, and THEN let the soul decide based on unadulterated facts. The soul still gets to choose, but they get to choose based on facts instead of unproven hypotheses.

If, once again, you think God's power is limited and he cannot do anything about souls once they have died, how about this:

3. Do not send those who choose to not follow God into eternal hellfire. After all, God loves these people. Instead, simply send them to a substitute heaven where they can still be happy but do not have to submit their wills to God.

I'm anticipating a "perfect justice" type response to #3, though I fail to see how eternal damnation is justice for choosing not to believe something that doesn't make sense.

But please, respond to all 3.

-B

Radorth

Huh? Yeah and if they don't you lock them up permanently. You apparently would have us give them lobotomies to prevent them from being anything but robots. Now you're trying to change the premises here and misrepresent what we are arguing for.

I've heard more than a few atheists admit they will rebel no matter what. How telling. God gave us commandments we ignored, prophets we killed, and finally a benevolent Christ which we mocked and disdained. Few of us deserve anything but judgement and suffering.


The creation story has no eyewitness. The writer is relating legend, or perhaps an allegorical revelation. In the case of the Exodus, he is a witness and/or relies other witnesses of recent events. The difference is infinite.

God does all kinds of gracious things, maybe for the sake of a few sincere people. Also, he was getting them out of Egyptian slavery for a specific purpose other than getting them to believe in him. The point I was making is that seeing God appear or do a miracle makes no difference in character, or tendency to rebel. So your post misses the point entirely.

What's so ironic is how skeptics react to any hint of "programming" or control of people's thoughts and actions, then say that is what God should do!

Unbelievable. It keeps me coming back though.

Gosh, Bumble Bee, it's nice to see someboy actually thought for ten minutes about this.

I'm not sure every person won't get to hear the "unadulterated facts" and get to choose. However if they still have no moral integrity or desire to admit their sins, it won't matter for many. Only confessed sinners get into heaven. BTW, I've never once seen a proud person come to Christ, and stay that way. They were, by God's grace, always in the process of questioning their own righteousness and were ready to give up their pride altogether. They see the world for what it is, a fool's paradise, and that they are one of the fools. Some other people are like the college professor in Lewis' example, who gets back on the bus to hell after leaving heaven. He's upset because everybody gets tenure and he considers himself more worthy than they.

I firmly believe people will go get to live in varying degrees of hell with other's like themselves, but mainly hypocrites and what I call "hypercrites." Jesus said the rebellious and unbelieving are "appointed their portion with the hypocrites."

You may find it hard to believe people will still rebel, but some honest atheists here have already admitted that is the case.

Rad