Majody

Would anyone happen to know the quote that supposedly disproves the existence of the Xian god by talking about free will? Sorry if this isn't very descriptive but that's all I can think of. Thanks for any help.

Magus55

Um, nothing disproves the existence of the Christian God. How would a quote about free will prove it?

fried beef sandwich

Majody, I don't have any punchy soundbites or quotes that would disprove the existence of God. Have you checked out the IIDB Library? They have an entire section re: that subject, I believe.

Magus55, I don't have any punchy soundbites or quotes that would disprove the existence of God. But have you checked out the IIDB Library? They have an entire section re: that subject, I believe.

winstonjen

"Nothing proves the existence of the Christian God. How would a quote about free will prove it?"

A perfect being would not be described by the sort of things mentioned in the bible. It would not need to rely on blackmail, intimidation or eternal torture to appease its own anger.

diana

Magus,

I must say, I admire your tenacity. Really. You are undeterred by requests for evidence and logic. You are not to be swayed from your standard gainsaying of pretty much anything we utter.

Do you know how so many politicians get elected to office? They plant those annoying "vote for me" signs everywhere. After a while, a funny thing happens: people who have been bombarded with the signs eventually stop wondering about the political platform of the candidate. They just start feeling comfortable with the name. After so much sheer repetition, they just begin to feel like they know and therefore can trust the person.

It's a psychological phenomenon. Or, more to the point, a psychological trick. The person doesn't deserve to be elected any more or less than when they began their campaign, and the voters needn't know anything more about them for it to work.

Let's call it Argument from Sheer Repetition, although calling it an "argument" is without doubt poetic license. This is essentially what you're doing, Magus. You continue to say stuff like "nothing disproves God" but have not offered any actual support for your statement.

Perhaps there are some who will be drawn to your unrelenting banal repetition and interpret it as "faith" and call it a beautiful thing. They won't be any more right or wrong than you, though. Beauty isn't about truth, you see. Beauty is a concept related to emotion. And once you begin to follow your emotions, you've left the honest search for truth and have embarked on search for what feels good.

I find your unrelenting repetition of what you believe moving--but unconvincing.

d

diana

Oh...Majody. Free will arguments are best found in EoG. I know you haunt those environs, so I'm wondering why you came here with this question.

Many argue (and I am one such) that free will is incompatible with omniscience. If God already knows what I'll do, there's no way I can do anything else, and therefore I don't have free will.

I've also argued that there is no real free will if one has the choice of reward or punishment for each action. Threatening someone if they do one thing and promising them riches and glory if they do another interferes with true free will.

Then there's the problem with characters such as Judas (if you're arguing against the Judeo-Christian god in particular) who had no choice but to do what they did "so that prophesy might be fulfilled." Pharoah and God "hardening his heart" is another fine example. No free will for them.

Or even Adam and Eve, who are central to God's "plan" from the beginning to have Christ save the world. They had to do exactly what they did.

Maybe I've been out of that forum for too long. No quotes, per se, spring to mind.

d

Majody

I didn't mean that it actually disproved it, more than it attempted to disprove it. Sorry for not clarifying...

schu

Here are some quotes I have found convincing.


"Either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all-powerful. All the scholastic subtleties have neither added anything to nor subtracted anything from the acuteness of this paradox." --Albert Camus



A Question of Free Will
In the realms of religious debate, we frequently come upon the subject of free will. Whenever something bad occurs, sensible people ask the question, "Where is God when things like this happen?" Where is the precious almighty when good people are hideously killed, crushed to death in cars, slammed to the ground in airplanes, or tortured and murdered by psychopaths? The only answer the God-apologists can come up with is that God gave us "free will."

What a nice idea! We have FREE WILL. These are words to soothe the masses and explain away the atrocities that could not happen in a world that was truly under the care of an omniscient and omnipotent deity. Yet, under this totalitarian system of government proposed by inane God-cheerleaders, free will is NOT allowed, because we MUST believe in Him or suffer all eternity in the fires of hell! If we "free will" humans do not slavishly follow God's commandments or "believe unto" him, his silly son or some other such fiddle-faddle, we will be severely punished. So much for free will.

Now, this is schizophrenia, plain and simply. The masses are running about squawking out of both sides of their mouths, "We have free will" and "We have to go to church/temple/ mosque/synagogue, or God will be mad at us." The God-fearers' motto is "Have free will, but be sure to mindlessly march off to church because someone else has told you to!" They are addled robots, not free-will beings. To claim that God rules everything and we must submit to his will, yet we have our own free will, is broken-brained behavior and thinking. How do proponents reconcile these irreconcilable concepts? What bizarre quirk of their minds is able to do such an illogical thing? You can't have it both ways.

Indeed, while they may be saying "free will," they are fanatically following a book purportedly written by "God" that says, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." (Romans 13:17) Does this sound even remotely to intelligent people that God gave anybody "free will?" How about this exhortation at 1 Pet. 2:13-18:

"Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing right you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext of evil; but live as servants of God. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

"Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to the kind and gentle but also to the overbearing." (Emphasis added.)

Other authoritarian messages include:

"Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed." (1 Tim. 6:1)

"Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and give satisfaction in every respect . . . " (Tit. 2:9)

"Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls." (Heb. 13-17)

At 1 Pet. 3:1, "God/Paul" commands, "Likewise, you wives, be submissive to your husbands. . . ."

"Paul" is relentless in his anti-free-will dictates:

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. . . . Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord . . . . Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters . . ." (Col. 3:18-22)

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands."

And 1 Tim. 2:11-15 exhorts:

"Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty."

Blah, blah, blah. Does any of this twaddle resemble free will? Slaves obeying masters and women being forced to be submissive, quiet and bear children to redeem their supposed transgressions? Of course, the Adam-Eve fable is just another sexist device propagated by men, as is the rest of this anti-woman gibberish.

How about God making his stiff-necked people eat their offspring because they did not love and fear him? (Deut. 28:53, et seq.) Or Abraham being commanded to murder his son? Like the New Testament, the OT is glutted with authoritarian demands on the part of God, as is the Koran. Is that free will?

Of course, there are words interspersed here and there to soften such messages, such as "live as free men," but these are quickly followed by anti-free-will dictates such as "live as servants of God . . . Fear God. Honor the emperor" (!). It is obvious that vested interests such as priests and emperors are at work here. And it is equally obvious that "free will" in religion is not free will at all. It's all a grand mind-game, to be polite.

And why do religionists constantly apologize for their ridiculous Lord, who, according to them, is not participating at all in creation, unless it is convenient to their arguments that he exists? When a plane crashes, the survivors thank "the Lord" for allowing them to live. What about those who died? Did the Lord let them die? And where was the Lord when the plane was hurtling out of the sky, terrifying its passengers to the point of psychosis? Oh, he's not involved in that aspect of it, only in the saving of certain people, with whom he is apparently well pleased. Did the other deserve to die? Apologists offer their typical pablum when confronted with this flaw in thinking: the Lord has called them home, for reasons only he can understand. In other words, the slippery canard: "God works in mysterious ways." Now, this is a sadistic god, who, although omniscient and therefore able to see what is going to happen ahead of time, and omnipotent and therefore able to prevent it, allows the shit to hit the fan again and again, never lifting a finger. Hey, how 'bout letting us in on the plan? Don't we "free will" beings deserve to be treated with some respect?

And what about the absurd thinking behind the notion of some guy dying on a cross thousands of years ago somehow absolving us of our sins today? What do he and his death have to do with us? Somehow the blind believers can reconcile these illogical concepts as well. What does this mean? Does it mean that so long as we believe in Jesus Christ, we can do whatever we wish, because we cannot sin? Are we free to rape, pillage and murder then, as long as we are "good" Christians? Why don't we all just do that then, because we will automatically be absolved of such heinous behavior if we would just "confess the Lord Jesus Christ with our mouths and hearts" or some other such drivel? Hey, we can get away with anything! Cool!

Indeed, vast armies of "good Christians" have done just that, freely and with clear conscience marauding and slaughtering all who got in their path, merely because they held up the banner of Jesus Christ. Do you think ol' JC, were he real, would be pleased by this disgusting behavior? If so, why is anyone following him, who sheepishly "turned his cheek" yet violently overturned the moneychangers' tables? If he would not be pleased, why has not his Omnipotence put his foot down and made an appearance, setting his idiotic followers straight? Oh, he gave us free will! That's the ticket.

If we have free will, then we are also free not to believe in the white, male Jewish-Arab-whatever God or Jesus in the first place, without risking eternal hellfire or any other sadistic punishment by the megalomaniacal and tyrannical Almighty. We can be free not to believe in some hallowed god person separate and apart from a wretched creation but, rather, to perceive the entire cosmos as divine. Out of our free will, we can choose not to harm other sentient beings (and even humans), regardless of what so-called religious leaders, like so many serpents, beckon us to do. We can choose to reject being part of a herd of panicky sheep who turn into wolves when it benefits them. Out of free will, we can be "free agents" who do not belong to religious cults of any sort. Indeed, without "God's plan," we can be free to create our own vision, one of a world that is not divided by spurious creeds based in myth and used to justify racism and sexism. With our boundless free will, we can create a utopia of unified humanity. Free of our god-addiction, we can be free to just be.

"Let my freethinkers go!"

© 1997 Acharya S. acharya_s@yahoo.com

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