Better reasons to quit Christianity

[Mister Agenda]

You might be right about the story, Mister. But please let me ask you this: How can freewill be free if it excludes the possibility of choice? You are saying it is possible to create people who will freely choose to love God and others, but who (at the same time) are not free to not love God and others. Or are you?

That's a good question if precognition is involved, but I'm ignoring that for the moment. Say you're going to be saved and I'm not, I exist in 'possibility-space' as a sinner whose going to go to hell if I'm instantiated in reality. So God makes sure you are born and I am not. You freely make all the choices that will lead you to becoming saved, while I, who would be doomed to hell if I lived, just don't live in the first place. You still get to make choices freely and will make the ones that land you in heaven. Why instantiate possible people who will freely get themselves thrown in hell when you know that's what is going to happen to them? They're not needed. If I'm needed as a prop for your journey to salvation, Yahweh could just make a predestined robot with no soul in the first place to play that role for you. Granting Yahweh, this is a possible world. Granting Yahweh, it could be the ACTUAL world.

I'd say that the God described in the scriptures is one who loves love, whose goal is that we love, and who will love those who want his love and want to love him and others more.

It's hard to believe you've read the Bible and can still claim this with a straight face. The God of the OT who allowed Satan to plague Job, orders Hebrew soldiers to slaughter children, tests Abraham's willingness to butcher his own son, arranges for the eternal torment of those who don't love him, and drowns the world when it doesn't turn out the way he always knew it would; is all about love? I hear there's a Christian church that jettisons the OT, it may suit you better than the RCC.

Freewill is not the end, but a means to the end of love. Freewill is necessary for love. Without it, love is not love, for love is an absolutely free choice to have concern for someone, affection for someone, and a desire to see the needs, or desires of someone met.

You define love as requiring free will to justify God giving us the free will not to love. Have you not been in love? 'Absolutely free choice' is not the phrase that first comes to mind. There's a reason why we use words like 'blind' and 'chemistry' and 'falling' to describe the process. There's a reason why your friends can see that you've made a bad choice in whom to love and you can't. Much of what influences who we love happens at an unconscious level. To make an absolutely free choice we have to know our options and be able to evaluate them dispassionately. That doesn't sound like any love I've witnessed.

To have the freedom to choose love is to have the equal freedom to choose hate, or indifference, or selfishness, or malice of some kind.

If I were a benevolent deity who really was all about love, I'd have stopped at indifference as an alternative to love. Fear would still generate all the human evil I would need for my divine plan.

Do you think I'm right when I suggest that without freewill, love cannot possibly be love? If not, then please tell me what you believe love is.

Love is an emotion. We are very likely not the only species to have the capacity for that emotion. The only thing needed for a feeling to be genuine is for you to really be feeling it. What the God you're describing wants is love PLUS the feeling of being chosen. That's a very human desire, indiscriminate love isn't worth much to us, it doesn't make us special to think the person who loves us loves everyone else just as much...we might admire such a person's capacity for universal love, but it would be a bit...impersonal. For the same reason, it would not be very satisfying to have someone love us because we slipped them some kind of love potion: they would be loving us because of the potion and not because of 'us'. Our egos lead us to be dissatisfied with love that is forced or indiscriminate. We might enjoy it for awhile, but eventually it will turn sour. If the God you describe exists, apparently he has the same emotional need for people to 'love him for himself'. And the power to throw anyone who doesn't into eternal torment. One of the problems with hell is not only that it is unjust on the face of it, it gives the lie to the notion that God values free will. If he really wanted us to choose freely, he wouldn't use the carrot and the stick to influence our choice, would he? 'Son, you can live with me or your mother, the choice is entirely yours, it's all up to you, but if you pick me, we're going to Disneyland'.

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So you are thinking time is already static, and nothing anyone decides to do and does will change time. You might be right. Time might be like a stained-glass window with an outcome that is as changeless as Calvin said God was changeless.

You seem to be misrepresenting Rhythm. I doubt this is his belief. He is merely pointing out the logical consequence of believing in precognition. Since he doesn't believe in precognition, no need for him to believe the future is static.

Then again, time might be constantly changing. Rather than like stained-glass, it might be more of a kaleidoscope. If you, or I were to travel to the future, and return to the past, the outcome we witnessed ahead of time might not be the outcome that actually turns out to be when the future arrives. The outcome we see in our time traveling holiday might be only one of many possible outcomes.

Then precognition is impossible.

But I've asked myself, "What if Rythm is correct and time is changeless and free choice is merely an illusion?

I don't recall Rythm claiming that time is changeless and free choice is an illusion. I recall Rythm arguing against precognition because of these implications. You are the one who believes in precognition.

Would this be proof that God does not exist?

Depends on the God.

The reason why I ask is because Calvinists and others who hold to the tenets of Reformed Theology would agree with you and say freewill is false, and all that we say, think and do, all that was, is and is to come, is predetermined by God. (Yes, I understand you disagree that anyone or anything caused time to be static, but I'm wondering how time being static and freewill being an illusion is any proof that God cannot possibly exist, since this is exactly what Calvinists believe.)

So become a Calvinist.