Questions for "Our Role(s) as Christians on Atheist Forums"

[SteveII]

Then you are actually saying giving people free will was a mistake. The fact that you add negative actions we can choose is unnecessary. For example, your statement is logically equivalent to "Giving people 'free will' to love, appreciate each other, and make self-sacrificing decisions for their family was a mistake."

It would be but free will makes no sense anyway. Perhaps—even less so with an omniscient being that knows the future.

Well, to be more accurate I think it equally makes no sense either way but even many barely intelligent people can see how an omnisicent being rules out free will... but not many people can see how it's ruled out anyway.

No, omniscience does not rule out free will. You need to articulate how God comes to know the future. IMO, it is through a concept called "middle knowledge". That means that God can, without error, predict what a person will freely choose in any given circumstance--including counterfactuals. It is not that he has seen the future. There, the concept of free will endures. 

And uh yes duh... no free will to love and self-sacrifice and appreciate is an extremely small price to play if you also rule out rape, torture and murder.

Fuck freedom, freedom is nice and all, but better everyone to be 'forced' to be genuinely happy and healthy than to give some people the 'free will' to rape, torture, murder and enslave others.

You cannot be happy without free will. Happiness is dependent on contentment. Contentment is a choice. 

That's the thing you see... because incompatabilist free will is incoherent the only kind of 'free will' that matters is allowing people to express themselves freely but not when they harm others.

And God is omnipotent, so who the hell says he could only give free will, of the logically possible compatabilist kind, for every action or no free at all? Is it beyond God's power to allow people to have the freedom to do neutral and helpful acts but no harmful acts (or at least not extremely immoral acts like rape and torture and murder etc).

It is free will or not. There are no versions of freedom of choice--the concept is incoherent. Omnipotence does not mean can do things that are not logically possible. 

'Knowing' and 'planning' are two very different things.

Not when it comes to a God that is responsible for all of his creations. He knows what the beings will do and he knows that he instilled them with the nature that made them do the things he knows they will do. He gave them the very nature that guarantees how he know they will betray him. If he didn't want to be betrayed he could have instead knowingly made beings that will definitely not betray him rather than beings that definitely will. He clearly did it all on purpose (or perhaps not because perhaps I am right that incompatabilist free will is so incoherent that even God himself can't have free will?).

He gave us a nature that is free to choose. It is an ability that God created us with because it seems thinking, rational beings capable of choice, morality, and a real relationship between creator and creature seems to be the pinnacle of anything anyone could ever create--including God. No free will, none of these things.