(June 25, 2015 at 1:14 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: But we wouldn't be US if we didn't have free will. We wouldn't be human beings. We would just be puppets without a mind of our own or control over our bodies or minds. I would not be me, and you would not be you.If the only benefit of free will is that it gives me the option to condemn myself to hell for an eternity, then it's not very useful. If "me being me" can only result in eternal damnation, what good is free will?
Presumably, you believe that god's rules for our behavior are for the best, and that if we do what he wants and avoid what he doesn't want, then our lives are better. Possibly even measurably improved, even if he does not intervene directly. If this is the case, then free will only serves to allow some (most, it seems) of us to miss out on salvation. Free will is all risk. Why wouldn't I be better off if I was unable to sin?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
