Koyaanisqatsi

I think this is how most cult members misinterpret it, surely.

But, like so many other things about the dogma, it is not the case, since there is no choice involved and certainly not a choice from "an option" of many.

It is a dictatorial decree that you believe in Jesus as God or be condemned to eternal punishment. No choice, regardless of the "or" in that sentence that makes it seem as if there is a choice involved.

According to the dogma, God is doing something to you in either scenario; rewarding or punishing.

Luvluv gave an excellent example of what I'm talking about:

"If I give you..."

Believe or burn eternally in hell is a threat, plain and simple, in which you have no freedom and certainly no will. Either way, God is forcing something upon you.

For any of us to actually have free will, absolutely no punishment whatsoever--no consequences whatsoever--can result from the application of that will or else we were not "free" and did not apply our "will."

It is irrelevant that there are differing interpretations. You can have all the interpretations you want, but if it's all based upon an invalid, logically inconsistent core as this is, all subsequent interpretations based upon that core will fail.

In order to truly exercise (and thus have) free will, no adverse punishment either directly or indirectly can be inflicted upon us as a result of applying that free will to the question of belief (regardless if it is claimed that the punishment is inflicted by ourselves or, as the Bible unquestionably declares, God inflicts it upon us).

If there is any adverse effect of exercising our free will, then the whole thing is a sham and a lie and ultimately a threat, no matter how heavily veiled in the misleading terminology of an "either, or" it may be.

There just is no way around that, no matter who is doing the interpreting, Calvin or Hobbes .

And I don't want to hear any crap about "there are always consequences of our actions," because we're discussing Free Will and God, arguably the ultimate question involving our "eternal souls" in cult dogma and it has nothing to do with action/reaction, unless, as I outlined, it is all a sham and a lie and ultimately, incontrovertibly a coercive threat.

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

jenn

We had free will before we came into existence as a human being. There is a contract we have with God to fullfill our obligation in this cruel and negative world.Because our souls have all of eternity to learn and grow as perfect souls, we choose to come into this negative world to experience something that we can only experience in negative energy.There is no fault, and there is no hell, only freedom to be the director of our own life here on earth....just a thought.

DRFseven

There are "other ways" of defining everything; your statement means nothing.

Must you be taken by the hand and led down the explanation? At any moment, the choice we make feels more appropriate than any other alternative that presents itself. Women in love with men who beat them are getting a dopaminergic reward, which is what determines the desire of the moment. The reward circuitry is tied to memory with what is known as "valence tagging"; action potentials are tagged with degrees of attractiveness. It's the same for the dieting person who must pass the picture of the hot fudge sundae on the door of the ice-cream shop on the way in to the grocery store to shop for celery and apples. Her mantra may be "I want to avoid fattening foods; I want to stick to my diet", but whenever the anticipating pleasure zap for ice-cream (instant reward!) outweighs the anticipating pleasure zap for losing weight (distant, tedious, iffy reward), she will want the ice-cream. At any moment in time, we can only want what we want (as is evidenced by the 5% long-term success rate of dieters in general).

But what the actual argument to nontheists is, is whether we are free to choose belief in God. Obviously, we are not. Reasons compel us to believe or not, not any heavenly or local god.

No, not contradicted; you just don't understand it. People change when their circumstances have provided the means to tag certain possible behaviors as rewarding in relation to other behaviors. The closer to the same value two possible alternatives are tagged, the harder the decision. When we deliberate over decisions, we are weighing alternatives, not "freely" choosing. There is a neural mechanism by which this happens.

They "willfully and consciously" refuse only in regard to what their belief systems already are and the fact that alternatives and evidence don't seem contradictive to them. Usually this is because intuitive beliefs carry so much weight that it is hard for anything to outzap them.

Of course, but before that can happen, the individual must experience some reward for the action of challenging his/her beliefs.The likelyhood of this happening will be a function of genetics/learning experience.

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: DRFseven ]</p>

unworthyone

Since all the atheists believe there is no choice in free-will, each one of you see how long you can sit and make no choices whatsoever. Sit....and do nothing.

You have to make choices. There is no such thing as not being able to make one is there?

You are FORCED to make choices. It doesn't make a difference in my mind whatsoever to know that God knows what I'll do. I'll still enjoy the fact that he made me feel like (sort of) the one in control.

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: unworthyone ]</p>

Philosoft

Notwithstanding your blatantly incorrect stereotype, what does this have to do with anything?

<strong> What's your argument? That you're happier being intentionally ignorant? That feeling is better than knowing? I'm not begrudging you any of these choices, I'd just like to know.

Gurdur

Wrong.
You gave one definition as being implicitly the right one; I pointed out that there are other definitions (in use in science and philosophy).

My statement means you are trying to use a simplistic definition of the soft free will positions.
Get it ?
Oh puh-leeze, I have been professionally trained in one neuroscience.
Try patronizing me some more, I can really dig it.

Which leads to a circular definition of what is "attractive", otherwise people would never sacrifice themselves or agree to being martyred.

IOW, your definition of:
Whatever one does, one does it because it is the most attractive option
is simply a circular argument.

Oh dear, I think this theory has every chance of beating the controversy on E.O. Wilson's one-paragraph "definition" of the origins of homosexuality hands-down !

Women may often stay with men who abuse them simply out of fear of not getting another man -- this is at least what many such women report.

Correct, though there are some other theories on memory, and this in any case does not explain all.

Speak for yourself.
I regard my atheism as a conscious and free choice, and I believe I could become a theist out of free choice, should I so desire (unlikely though that is).

You haven't been speaking to Cavinists, have you ?

Their position is quite opposite to yours, which was my entire point.
Dear me.
And all you've done here is to put in different words my own stance - limited free choice (within a range of options).
So ?
Which is why fundies often deliberately avoid contradiction ?
No.

Again, this seems very simplistic to me, and so simplistic as to be worthless.
You ignore the existence of future and therefore imaginary rewards, which play a large role in human behaviour.
Again, this quickly becomes a circular argument - something I pointed out long, long ago.

Koyaanisqatsi

I fail to see how this addresses anything any of us have posted. I, for one, pointed out that there is an illusion of choice that is actually nothing more than a dictatorial threat obfuscated by invalid "either/or" terminology.

Free will is supposed to be the "granted" independence from God's will. In order for God to be absolved of ultimate blame in our faulty creation, the Vatican constructed the doctrine of free will in order to apologize for such a glaring logical inconsistency in their dogma.

We are therefore supposed to be "free" to determine of our own will independent of God's will (aka, coercion) whether or not we believe or do not believe.

For us to be considered truly "free" however, as I pointed out previously, there can therefore be no punishment whatsoever (either directly or indirectly) that happens as a result of exercising that independent will to believe or not believe. If we are punished in any way (either directly or indirectly) by the exercising of our free will, then the whole thing was a lie to begin with and retroactively establishes that we were never truly free nor independent from the beginning; that it was nothing more than a lie and a sham.

Not by God when it comes to the decision to believe or not believe, allegedly and according to the doctrine.

It does, however, make a profound difference in my mind to know that the entire construct--if true as alleged--would constitute little more than a gigantic lie deliberately perpetrated by an Omniscient God for no other discernible purpose than to pointlessly punish his parishoners (I went for alliteration).

Then you are simply happy to be duped; aka, a sheep.

In case you had forgotten, sheep are ultimately shorn, bludgeoned and then eaten.

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Gurdur

Hey, hey, hey, unworthyone, go back and re-read what I've been writing in this thread - and then take into account that I'm a hard-line atheist.

unworthyone

Maybe a duped sheep, but still a sheep, and generally the best sheep are used for their wool.

Its funny how you state sheep will be killed, but the wolves are destroyed by the sheeps master.

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: unworthyone ]

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: unworthyone ]</p>

luvluv

"This is Christian Free Will's big problem. The Christian doctrine of Free Will says that we have hard free will; that we can believe what we wish to believe."

This is not what Christians believe (or at least not what this Christian believes). We believe that, WITH GOD'S HELP, you can believe anything you are WILLING to believe. I emphatically do not believe you can come to belief purely by an act of your will, but you can through your own free will be OPEN to a belief.

For the record, of all the terminilogy you are using, I think Christian free will (except for Calvinists) would be soft free will. I personally believe that all free will means is that we have choices (as Gurdur says, within a limited range of options) and that God will not interfere with our choices to ensure that we choose the correct ones.

By the way my atemporal statement is not something I made up on the spur of the moment. Many Christians believe that God is not simply everywhere; He is everyWHEN. That is the implication of Jesus's statement: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the begining and the end." Science itself, I am told, postulates several other dimensions of time besides the one we are able to observe. At any rate, Christians have always believed that eternity was not a matter of simple DURATION of time but of a specific NATURE of time, namely, timelessness. Heaven is not a matter of infinite duration but of being outside time. Which is why I say that some of your "when did He know it statements" are nonsense statements when applied to the God of Christian theology.