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

[SteveII]

Here's a question for the Christian debate thread:: Just as pantheists, according to Christians such as yourselves, are misusing the word "God" my merely mislabelling the natural universe as "God"... is the reverse also possible? i.e. Is it possible to fully know God but mistake him for and mislabel him as something else? In other words: If God is X is it possible to know X but not realize X is God? Thank you for your time.

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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. 

You seem to not understand.

If God knows you will do X then that means he knows you cannot not do X. A choice between X and X is not a choice. A choice between X and not X is a choice.

The first sentence is just wrong. It is never the case that "will do" is the same as "cannot not do". You are adding some unnecessary connection to the definition of omniscience or free will (I don't know which). 

Definition of Free Will: A personal explanation of some basic result R brought about intentionally be person P where this bringing about of R is a basic action A will cite the intention I of P that R occurred and the basic power B that P exercised to bring about R. P, I and B provide a personal explanation of R: agent P brought about R be exercising power B in order to realize intention I as an irreducible teleological goal. (Moreland, Blackwell's Companion to Natural Theology. p 298)

In a nutshell, libertarian free will is choosing an action that is not causally determined by factors outside of ourselves. 

Outside knowledge of how a person will choose does not negate the choice. 

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

I don't see how contentment has to be a free choice at all. The 'choices' we have still exist without free will. Meaning the apparent choices. I can still, behaviorally, 'choose' (or pick) between chocolate or vanilla ice cream but the point is that ultimately I have no mental freedom or way for my self to ultimately choose which flavor I pick...

Compatibilist (which you seem to be) redefine free will into a meaningless phrase. 

Critics of compatibilism often focus on the definition(s) of free will: incompatibilists may agree that the compatibilists are showing something to be compatible with determinism, but they think that something ought not to be called "free will". Incompatibilists might accept the "freedom to act" as a necessary criterion for free will, but doubt that it is sufficient. Basically, they demand more of "free will". The incompatibilists believe free will refers to genuine (e.g., absolute, ultimate) alternate possibilities for beliefs, desires, or actions, rather than merely counterfactual ones.

Compatibilism is sometimes called soft determinism pejoratively (William James' term).[13] James accused them of creating a "quagmire of evasion" by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism.[13] Immanuel Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge" and "word jugglery".[14] Kant's argument turns on the view that, while all empirical phenomena must result from determining causes, human thought introduces something seemingly not found elsewhere in nature—the ability to conceive of the world in terms of how it ought to be, or how it might otherwise be. For Kant, subjective reasoning is necessarily distinct from how the world is empirically. Because of its capacity to distinguish is from ought, reasoning can 'spontaneously' originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists.[15] It is on this basis that Kant argues against a version of compatibilism in which, for instance, the actions of the criminal are comprehended as a blend of determining forces and free choice, which Kant regards as misusing the word "free". Kant proposes that taking the compatibilist view involves denying the distinctly subjective capacity to re-think an intended course of action in terms of what ought to happen.[14] Ted Honderich explains his view that the mistake of compatibilism is to assert that nothing changes as a consequence of determinism, when clearly we have lost the life-hope of origination.[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism#Criticism

 

Contentment may or may not be an apparent choice. But I don't see how it's actually an ultimate choice as it's ultimately determined by causes prior to one's self. (i.e. by God as if God exists then God is the uncaused cause that causes everything else).

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. 

Wait are you agreeing with me that the concept of free will is incoherent? 

Exactly, free will is logically impossible therefore God himself cannot have it.

No, that is not what I said. Either someone is free to choose or one is not. You cannot have a version that only allows a certain set of choices (as you were proposing). That ceases to be 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.

That makes no sense to me. All those things still exist without free will. The very fact that God has a nature that he did not determine that determines our natures that we do not determine that determines every so-called 'free' action we take just shows that our actions are not freely determined.

Again, compatibilism relies on a "quagmire of evasion".