(November 22, 2014 at 4:25 pm)Nope Wrote: When I was a Christian, I thought that freewill was a lovely concept. Of course, the god that I worshiped didn't want his followers to be robots! As I got older, I began to follow some of my ideas to their logical conclusion.
Most Christians will say that their god gave humans free will so that they would freely decide to worship and love him. Awww....who could be upset with that
However, the same free will is responsible for humans doing sometimes unimaginably horrible things to one another.
For a time, I was happy with the answer that a perfect god does not allow evil but that human's free will is the cause of cruelty. Then one day I made the connection. We have free will, according to Christians, because god wants love. That means that babies are raped because god wants love. That is really sick.
After that, I could not believe in the Christian concept of god and that was one of the many things that started my slow movement away from faith.
I was just curious if any of you had considered how twisted the idea of free will and its consequences are?
There are some (and I count myself among them) who do not accept that free will exists, but that what is important is the belief that it exists.
Free Will by its nature invokes metaphysics, that there is something more created when balancing the chemical reactions we are made of, that somehow our brains are greater than the sum of their parts.
Personally, I don't buy that at all. I'm not saying we don't need the illusion of free will, I think the illusion is extremely important to us, but it is no more than an illusion.
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
