Christianity; the World's Most Violently Persecuted Religion

[Thumpalumpacus]

But please address my point: if your choice is made under threat, are you really exercising free will?

What you choose to perceive as a threat does not make it so.

Holding one's eternal soul hostage is a threat by any normal standard -- assuming for the sake of argument that said soul exists, which is itself highly doubtful.

If your choice is made with a prior warning, are you really exercising free will? I think everyone would answer, "Yes - obviously."

Nice that you deny that hell is a threat, yet you use the word "warning" -- which is advance notification of a danger. You can't eat your cake and have it too.

Anyway, the advance warning actually reduces the free will, because the more in advance the warning comes, the more time it has to play upon the mind of the soon-to-be victim. No warning at all would mean that decisions will be made in the absence of any knowledge of consequences, and thus give the most play to free will.

The bottom line is this: you worship a god who feels the need to compel your worship by threatening you with an eternity in hell. You use free will in order to exonerate this god from its evil-doing, and deny any compulsory aspect of hell as a consequence of not worshipping this monster. I feel sorry for you. You've rented your mind out to others who do not have your interests at heart.