(November 9, 2011 at 2:25 pm)salty Wrote: This is the use of freewill, but the choice has not resulted in evil, nothing sinful happened, it is not a sin to ignore strangers, it is not a sin to refuse to obey people you do not trust

Go ahead and put "god" in place of "woman" in your analogy, and I agree completely. He fits your qualifiers, he's a stranger and I don't trust him. Nothing evil is happening in my life. Looks like I'm in the clear.

(November 9, 2011 at 2:25 pm)salty Wrote: You see, we (believers) have waited our whole lives to see the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the place where he declares there will be peace, joy, love, forgiveness and righteousness.

This is why I have to feel sorry for you guys. You waste the one life you have waiting to get to a promise land that doesn't exist. The good news is you'll be dead so you won't be able to recognize how disappointed you'll be.

I'm stepping into this discussion late, and while I've read about a third of it, if I'm reiterating existant points, let me know please.

The issue I have with free-will in heaven is this would seem to make the concept of heaven either non-sensical or pointless.


Let us assume first that heaven and hell exist (topic of discussion). Let us also assume that when people go to hell, they remain there for eternity. Here, eternity literally means forever, or infinity in time.

so...

1. If people have free-will in heaven, then people can act as they wish and do as they wish.
1.a. If they can interact with others, this means potentially people can sin against others if they desire.
1.b. If they can't interact with others, then they can sin against made-up people if they desire.
1.c. While a person may be able to want to do something bad, they are not allowed to.

2. If there is free will, this allows the possibility to act against God.
2.a. When a person acts against God's will, they are sent to hell for eternity.
2.b. When a person acts against God's will, they can apologize and remain in heaven.

3. There is no free-will in heaven.

This presents several odd results.

1.a
In the case of 2.a, this means a person may hurt another, then be sent to hell for eternity. Given that the afterlife continues for eternity, the possibile opportunities for sin grow with time and the probability that an individual will go to hell approaches 100%. This results, as time gows to infinity, in all individuals going to hell. This makes life and heaven little more than a temporary break from the punishment God will to enact on everyone. Furthermore, there is little difference as time goes to infinity in going to heaven and not going to heaven as the relative time spent not being punished goes to zero. It would therefore then also seem that God wants everyone to go to hell.

In the case of 2.b, this means people remain with other people after doing them harm. This gives heaven little conceptual difference from Earth in that it allows continual violence between people. However, battles may continue with people constantly doing harm but feeling no pain.

1.b
In the case of 2.a, this is the same as above. A person may break the laws of God, only with imaginiary people.
In the case of 2.b, this would seem to mean that the rules God asks people to abide by are meaningless. They are not based on morality, but are simply arbitrary guidelines he doesn't care about and it is alright to break them later, just not now. This would also indicate that heaven is little more than a giant video game, and we don't actually interact with our loved ones.

1.c
In this case, free-will is rather meaningless and heaven is little more than sitting around thinking to oneself.

3.

In this case, heaven consists of not being the individuals we are and simply being forced to do what God wants us to do. This sort of seems to defeat the purpose of going through existence in the first place.



As a humourous but somewhat serious side-note. 1.a/2.a actually would seem to explain why God doesn't bother to show himself to anyone. They all end up going to hell anyway.

Thoughts?

I don't "believe" anything Tack. I defer to what we can observe, demonstrate, and (in theory) falsify. This is the beginning of a dialogue. If you can't provide anything in support of your claims than who is stalling the dialogue? Is it impossible for you to have a conversation about this unless one simply accepts all of your assumptions at face value? You make claims, and then when asked to substantiate them you state that this is an attempt to obfuscate or derail a thread? I agree, by you, because you seem to have nothing to provide as evidence. The notion that these things, as described by religious tradition, are relics of superstition isn't my position, it's the position of demonstrable evidence. Why on earth would I accept your opinions over demonstrable evidence? Again, if I'm going to allow opinions to occupy the same realm as demonstrable evidence, why should they be your opinions as opposed to Salty's (or anyone else of any faith dead or alive)?

So...you think that faith is required to do good?

Hunh, and I always thought good was what was necessary to do good.

LOL, no, I don't want to quibble. I want you to substantiate the answer you gave because I don't feel that it has any value or merit if this can't be done. It's a non-answer. A platitude.

(November 10, 2011 at 4:35 pm)tackattack Wrote:

(November 10, 2011 at 10:31 am)thesummerqueen Wrote: So...you think that faith is required to do good?

No I think faith is necessary to do the good God wants you to do. You could do what you consider good as well without faith in anything but your own moral standard.

Kinda makes me suspicious, Tack.