RE: The free will argument demonstrates that christians don't understand free will.
April 29, 2014 at 1:51 pm
(April 29, 2014 at 12:45 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(April 29, 2014 at 12:40 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Not quite Esq. Theists (or at least Christian and Muslim theists) say that the reason God had to allow for evil was because unless one can legitimately choose to do good, it is not moral. Put more clearly, they're saying that if one's actions are determined, morality looses all meaning. Hence, if God wanted a universe with actual moral goodness in it, it must necessarily allow for the agents to choose to do evil too.
Two thoughts occur: one, the absence of good isn't evil, it's indifference, so even in a world without evil the choice to actively perform good actions would still exist. A world free of evil would still have those good works, but since the metric for heaven or hell is belief and not deeds anyway, I hardly see why god is so interested in whether we choose to do good or evil in the first place.
Secondly, since it's the thought of sin that'll convict me and not the act, we're still left with a scenario in which god could prevent evil actions but not thoughts; he knows what we think anyway, and the only result of this system would be a net reduction of needless suffering.
Which was sort of my point all along: your ability to freely choose one thing is most of the time not impacted by your ability or inability to choose the exact opposite.
1. Yes, indifference is the absence of good and evil. There is no choice to do either.
2. The thought is the prime mover, so is all that concerns us. The act merely follows the thought.