(October 26, 2011 at 9:29 pm)SeekerOfTruth Wrote: How is it not free will? You have a choice in the matter free from God swaying you one way or the other. However, there is a consequence. There are consequences for every action we do whether the consequence is good or bad. I a parent says "clean your room or your grounded." their child still has the free will to decide to do it or not but being grounded is the consequence for choosing not to, just like not being grounded is the consequence for cleaning your room. Having free will has nothing to do with the outcome of the choice you make.
I'll extend the analogy a bit to make it more like the situation being analogized: You're a child in an orphanage with no adult caretakers, in fact, you've never seen an adult. Some of the other kids say that if you believe their story about the 'adopters', someday you'll be adopted by kind parents who will take good care of you; but if you don't, you'll be adopted by mean parents who will beat you every day. However, the other children who want you to believe them have different stories, and got them from different old books. Only one of the stories can be true, but all of them could be false, and there are no adopters revealing which story is true.
Assuming one version of the adopters really does exist and knows what is going on at the school, and really will punish anyone who does not believe the correct story; we would have to conclude that they are playing a very sick game. Even if the adopter was a super-advanced alien as intellectually advanced over the children as they are over ants.
