The free will argument demonstrates that christians don't understand free will.

[Aisha]

Here, have some free will.

Now that you have free will you can decide on anything you want to do for yourself.

But if I disagree you will go to hell for all eternity. Now, let me tell you about what happens to people in hell...


Seems legit...

[Esquilax]

Not quite Esq. Theists (or at least Christian and Muslim theists) say that the reason God had to allow for evil was because unless one can legitimately choose to do good, it is not moral. Put more clearly, they're saying that if one's actions are determined, morality looses all meaning. Hence, if God wanted a universe with actual moral goodness in it, it must necessarily allow for the agents to choose to do evil too.

Two thoughts occur: one, the absence of good isn't evil, it's indifference, so even in a world without evil the choice to actively perform good actions would still exist. A world free of evil would still have those good works, but since the metric for heaven or hell is belief and not deeds anyway, I hardly see why god is so interested in whether we choose to do good or evil in the first place.

Secondly, since it's the thought of sin that'll convict me and not the act, we're still left with a scenario in which god could prevent evil actions but not thoughts; he knows what we think anyway, and the only result of this system would be a net reduction of needless suffering.

Which was sort of my point all along: your ability to freely choose one thing is most of the time not impacted by your ability or inability to choose the exact opposite.

[Clueless Morgan]

I don't really understand this whole free will thing either. I recently talking to a new poster about it, asking if we have free will in heaven, despite that we can't sin. Apparently we still do, but we just choose not to. Still, I don't understand why that can't happen down here too.

If free will exists in heaven without any pain or suffering or evil then that same set of circumstances could exist in this world right now, but it doesn't. Why?

If you have to understand or experience hate or evil or pain in order to understand love and happiness, then love and happiness would be meaningless in heaven because there is no evil or hate to contrast it against.

If you have to have free will in order to choose between love and hate, good and evil, then free will wouldn't exist in heaven because because everyone is loving and happy and there is no pain or suffering. It's simply not probably that every single entrant into heaven EVER always only ever chooses the good, happy, loving option; someone would eventually come along that would game the system.

If everyone in heaven always only ever chooses the happy, loving, good option, then a hell of a lot of people in heaven would have to undergo personality transplants or lobotomies or something in order to fundamentally change the way they operate and interact with the world around them; no one always only ever chooses the good, happy, loving option. And if you do undergo a personality shift upon entering heaven, are you really still You, or are you then someone different?

Yeah, the "best" answer I've heard regarding that is "it's a bad translation, and God wasn't affecting anyone's free will, because I believe God would never do that".

God always agrees with whatever the believer believes, even if the individual believers disagree.

It has been argued that there is no free will, just the illusion. It is impossible to prove whether it exists or not. Just like god.
Personally, I don't believe in either.

That's my problem with invoking the Free Will argument for God: no one ever even bothers to demonstrate that free will even exists, they just start with the presupposition that it does and argues from that point.

But what if it doesn't exist?

What if we are all psychic puppets of some mystic psychic puppet master who makes us believe that we all individually have free will but this puppet master is actually controlling every single thing we do or think?

What if the universe is some kind of predestined wind-up clock with every action everyone would ever take being predetermined in some mechanistic, chemical way and if we only understood the chemistry, physics and biology of every individual personality more fully we could actually determine every action that person would take in their whole lifetime?


I've found that demanding evidence that we have free will is a fantastic conversation stopper if every you want to end a conversation with a theist who is harping on about free will and trying to get somewhere with it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

A couple of problems with the OP. "Free will" is a term of art and the OP doesn't seem to narrow in on how it uses the term. Second, given a god that knows all things possible to know and able to do anything fully conceivable, could such a god create an ideal world. I don't know. No one knows so any argument that takes that premise as given is not sound.

As for me the issue centers around whether relationships based on mutual love, including both brotherly love and love between a creator and its creation, have meaning if they follow inexorably from the presumably random initial conditions of the universe.

[Esquilax]

A couple of problems with the OP. "Free will" is a term of art and the OP doesn't seem to narrow in on how it uses the term.

That's because I've never heard a theistic use of the argument that does so, either; "free will," has become a kind of rote catchcall to excuse the problem of evil, but that's where the conversation tends to stop, not start.

Second, given a god that knows all things possible to know and able to do anything fully conceivable, could such a god create an ideal world. I don't know. No one knows so any argument that takes that premise as given is not sound.

Don't you guys tend to consider heaven to be an ideal world?

As for me the issue centers around whether relationships based on mutual love, including both brotherly love and love between a creator and its creation, have meaning if they follow inexorably from the presumably random initial conditions of the universe.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "meaning," ironically.

[truthBtold]

Free will is often trotted out by christians as a response to too many theistic problems to mention, but often the way in which it is used displays a complete lack of comprehension of how free will works, even within the bounds of the argument the theist is making.

God allows evil, the theist says, because without doing so we wouldn't have free will! But this argument seems to have curiously limited applications; if the theist wanted to, say, go swimming, but found themselves in the middle of the desert, would they complain that their free will is being impinged upon? No, that would be madness, and the theist would most likely simply recognize that they aren't in a position to do whatever they want at any time. But the premises of the free will argument can be slotted just as easily around "going swimming," as they can around "doing evil." They're both actions, and they both are only possible or not possible, according to christianity, because god allows them by keeping them conceptually open and creating the attendant physical forms and forces that make them happen, and yet our free will is only curtailed by the removal of moral actions, and not aquatic ones?

God doesn't allow you to swim in the desert and your free will is fine, but if he doesn't allow you to drown a person your free will is compromised?

Besides, we already live in a world where, under the premises of christianity, our free will is restricted; god created the physical universe and made conscious decisions as to the physical laws of it, after all. That's something he did without needing to, but the free will excuse submits that subtracting one more set of actions from the pot irreparably damages our freedom in some way that the theist refuses to elaborate on. Why is that so?

Perhaps we might draw a distinction between moral thought and moral action, but that doesn't resolve the issue either, given how much the christian god and religion concerns itself with thought crime to begin with. If our beliefs alone can convict us then clearly the actions don't matter to god; if I can commit adultery merely by looking at a woman lustfully then what use is physical adultery in that scenario? In that case god could curtail every evil moral action and still maintain his metric for who goes to heaven or hell, and in the process cut out a huge amount of suffering from the world. After all, our free will isn't dependent on succeeding at every act we attempt, anyway; if I fail at something, my free will hasn't been imposed upon, I just wasn't successful in my attempt.

Is this just missing the point, or do they really not get it?

But the heat from the desert will make a Christian delusional! Wait... they already are... doooh!!!!

[fr0d0]

Not quite Esq. Theists (or at least Christian and Muslim theists) say that the reason God had to allow for evil was because unless one can legitimately choose to do good, it is not moral. Put more clearly, they're saying that if one's actions are determined, morality looses all meaning. Hence, if God wanted a universe with actual moral goodness in it, it must necessarily allow for the agents to choose to do evil too.

Two thoughts occur: one, the absence of good isn't evil, it's indifference, so even in a world without evil the choice to actively perform good actions would still exist. A world free of evil would still have those good works, but since the metric for heaven or hell is belief and not deeds anyway, I hardly see why god is so interested in whether we choose to do good or evil in the first place.

Secondly, since it's the thought of sin that'll convict me and not the act, we're still left with a scenario in which god could prevent evil actions but not thoughts; he knows what we think anyway, and the only result of this system would be a net reduction of needless suffering.

Which was sort of my point all along: your ability to freely choose one thing is most of the time not impacted by your ability or inability to choose the exact opposite.

1. Yes, indifference is the absence of good and evil. There is no choice to do either.

2. The thought is the prime mover, so is all that concerns us. The act merely follows the thought.

[John V]

@ OP:

First, as was already mentioned (I believe by MFM), free will in context of religion is generally referring to moral free will. This is/should be so obvious that people don't bother with qualifiers regarding swimming in the desert or flying like superman.

Second, this moral free will does not need to be (and in fact isn't) absolute in extent. God can and does overrule people at times, but if they've been given some free choices in their lives, they can be justly judged on those choices.

[Little lunch]

@ OP:

First, as was already mentioned (I believe by MFM), free will in context of religion is generally referring to moral free will. This is/should be so obvious that people don't bother with qualifiers regarding swimming in the desert or flying like superman.

Second, this moral free will does not need to be (and in fact isn't) absolute in extent. God can and does overrule people at times, but if they've been given some free choices in their lives, they can be justly judged on those choices.

What's the difference between normal free will and moral free will? I always thought that morals was just the religious version of ethics.
Basically a watered down version of how to act humanely, but in a world where your watched 24 hrs a day by a big baby in the sky who never acts humanely.

If god knows the future, does he have free will?

Where does all this information about heaven, hell and free will actually come from?
I've read the bible a few times and never seen fuckall on that stuff.

[MindForgedManacle]

Not quite Esq. Theists (or at least Christian and Muslim theists) say that the reason God had to allow for evil was because unless one can legitimately choose to do good, it is not moral. Put more clearly, they're saying that if one's actions are determined, morality looses all meaning. Hence, if God wanted a universe with actual moral goodness in it, it must necessarily allow for the agents to choose to do evil too.

Two thoughts occur: one, the absence of good isn't evil, it's indifference, so even in a world without evil the choice to actively perform good actions would still exist. A world free of evil would still have those good works, but since the metric for heaven or hell is belief and not deeds anyway, I hardly see why god is so interested in whether we choose to do good or evil in the first place.

I agree that the lack of good isn't evil. That is, however, a common belief amongst Abrahamic theists.

Anyway, I don't think you're quite right, and slightly missed the point. For theists who use the Free Will Defense, the point is that without being capable of choosing to do immoral, there are no such thing as as moral actions, because then you're merely determined to do anything but immoral deeds because you're incapable of doing them.

As for why Abrahamic theists believe God is interested in whether or not we're moral, I can dust off my former Christian self's thoughts on this matter. :p Basically, we needed Jesus' execution and resurrection to redeem our sins, because we apparently weren't able to do so ourselves through animal sacrifices, so we needed the ultimate sacrifice of one who did no sin to atone for ours. That's the general theological stance as to why belief is central to salvation. However, there are some Biblical suggestions that accepting Christ as your Lord and savior are not all one must do, but that one must also repent for one's sins', and that good works are still expected of you (at least in terms of them giving credence to the idea that you are in fact saved).

Secondly, since it's the thought of sin that'll convict me and not the act, we're still left with a scenario in which god could prevent evil actions but not thoughts; he knows what we think anyway, and the only result of this system would be a net reduction of needless suffering.

Huh? I think you're referring to Jesus' statement that even contemplating sin is still sin, but Jesus does not say - as far as I remember - that such means that actually doing the act is not also a sin.

Which was sort of my point all along: your ability to freely choose one thing is most of the time not impacted by your ability or inability to choose the exact opposite.

For some reason I can't understand this. Man, I need a beer... :p


Lol, someone reading this thread might think I'm a Christian. xD

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What's the difference between normal free will and moral free will? I always thought that morals was just the religious version of ethics.
Basically a watered down version of how to act humanely, but in a world where your watched 24 hrs a day by a big baby in the sky who never acts humanely.

He wasn't saying that there was a difference between 'regular' free will and moral free will, he was saying that one should not confuse free will with the ability to do absolutely anything.

Oh and I'm fairly certain ethics and morality mean the same thing.

If god knows the future, does he have free will?

Depends on what kind of free will you're talking about.

Where does all this information about heaven, hell and free will actually come from?
I've read the bible a few times and never seen fuckall on that stuff.

New Testament, bro.