HumanisTim

I'm going to try my hand at a little analogy here. To explain why IMO, The Xtian concept of freewill can't exist. Or at least is not justifiable.

Suppose you're walking down the street and you get stopped by someone. The person tells you he has a gun. You never see the gun but you decide its best to listen to him. He asks for all your money. You hand all the money over. The next thing you do is you go to the police. Imagine if the police then tell you. That you handed the money over under your own freewill. So there for no charges will be filed. That would be totally ludicrous.

With Xtians having the threat of hell looming over them. Much like the threat of the gun in my analogy. Even though it isn't totally known if either does exist. Freewill can't fully exist then, as long as there is a threat implied. When you have threats. Like in blackmail cases as well. You are coherced into doing something.

mac_philo

Well, that and the fact that our brain and nervous system must obey the causal laws of the universe. And if they don't, they obey indeterminate quantum laws, which would negate responsibility.

ManM

Tim,
What 'heaven' could make everyone happy? I am not threatened with hell, but with heaven. Furthermore, I do not fear heaven or hell. I simply look forward to the life of the age to come.

ex-preacher

The threat of heaven is indeed horrible. Imagine a place where all desire is ended. Where you can do nothing to improve yourself or your environment. Where no growth of any kind is possible since that would imply a lack of perfection. Imagine a place of ultimate boredom. Imagine a place where your memory is wiped clean of most of your life on earth (which had lots of sadness) and the remembrance of loved ones who are burning in hell. Imagine a place with no free will.

I find it more comforting (and reasonable) to imagine there's no heaven (it's easy if you try), no hell below us, above us only sky.

Gurdur

Bit of a non-answer, no ?

Free will to a limited degree is quite possible, free will being meant here in the popular sense of the phrase, as the facility of control over one's actions and thoughts (again, to a limited degree).
Debates on hard or soft determinism versus free-will always seem to devolve into tediously solipsist stances that, while internally coherent, are circular in definition and often semantically conflated or confused
The evidence is cogent and multifarious that we are often able to change our behaviour through long-term and persistent changes in our attitudes, owing to the evolution of self-aware consciousness and "overseer" neural cognitive circuits.
Determinist appeals to neurology do not succeed, since evidence, for example, showing initiation of motor acts before awareness of the putative volitional nature of those motor acts only pushes back the question of free will into the so-called unconscious part of the mind, i.e. the non-ego part of consciousness, and moreover does not disprove or obviate whatsoever the fact of being able to change over time behavioural patterns (often without a change in external enviroment).

christ-on-a-stick

Hi Tim,

My thoughts EXACTLY!!! In fact, I posted a similar analogy a while back (that didn't get many replies for some reason) using an analogy I had sprung on my fundy mother asking what her thoughts would be if she were attacked at knifepoint then raped, and the police said "well did he cut you and force your legs open?" and she said "no" and they said "well technically you let him have sex with you, he didn't force your legs apart, so if we caught him we could charge him with threatening you with a weapon but not with rape".

She didn't have a reply!!! I think it is a GREAT point... when and where in a (supposedly) "civilized" society do we consider choices made under threat of bodily harm to be "free choices"? Are bank tellers who are held up charged for "giving money to the robbers"? Do we not proscute rapes unless the victim actually gets knifed, shot or otherwise incapacitated first? Do we tell the victim of a carjacking, hey, you GAVE your car away willingly?!

And yet millions believe that a God who would torment us eternally would be justified in doing so (and moreover be "perfectly loving" because "we made our choice". Reminds me of the "perfectly loving" husband who, while beating his wife to death says "I just love you so much, why are you making me do this?"

Gurdur

precisely put, and thanks !

ManM

ex-preacher,
Good lord man, that heaven of yours sounds horrid! Why not just imagine yourself in paradise? Why not imagine yourself living in a place where the conditions of sin are no longer present? There will be no fear of death, no ignorance. We will finally be free to love and be creative without worry. There is no boredom in that. There is no memory loss. The only difference between heaven and hell will be our reaction to this place. Just imagine what will happen when all those self-righteous fundies see you standing in paradise beside them. Don't you think they will be upset? They may trap themselves in their own hardness and anger, and paradise will be hell for them.

I cannot emphasize it enough: heaven and hell represent a personal state of mind, not separate places. They are used in a metaphorical sense so that everyone can understand, even the unsophisticated. Philosophically, taking the metaphor literally leads to all sorts of absurd notions. The old Saints and theologians of the Church knew this, but nobody seems to read about it anymore. Instead they go as far back as the reformers and call it good. My fight here is not against your atheism, but against the popular fundie view of Christianity.

Mad Kally

Good gawd! Another one that knows the Truth!

I can not emphasize it enough:
God is the only childhood myth carried over into adulthood!

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Mad Kally ]</p>

ex-preacher

Please tell me, what exactly are the "conditions of sin"?

<strong> I guess I'm in paradise already then!

<strong> Please forgive me for not understanding and remembering each theist's unique (and uniquely bizarre) interpretation of heaven and hell. Could you guys all get together and agree on it? Maybe if you all used the same sourcebook?

<strong> Ah, yes, the ol' "my version is the true one as seen by the old guys I selectively quote." Don't you grasp that every Christian uses this argument?

<strong> Yay!