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

[Neo-Scholastic]

I think this goes back to Esquilax's opening post. Free will doesn't mean your choices are unconditional. In Esquilax's opening example, the choice to swim is conditioned upon whether water is present.

No one is arguing otherwise. The point is that despite restricting circumstances the number to potential choices is unlimited. You cannot calculate the odds of someone doing something if they could do anything within their power to do.

…somebody who is trapped in poverty is more likely to seek wealth through illegitimate means, such as stealing. This doesn't mean they couldn't choose not to steal; it just means the probability of them choosing to steal was conditioned upon their circumstances.

I think there is a difference between potential and probability. Saying that someone is conditioned to behave in a certain way just because they have the ability and opportunity to do so…that’s a big leap. Again, humans do not just conform to their circumstances. Humans change things to create opportunities that never before existed. For example, there is a scene in Ender’s Game in which Ender plays a video game. In the game, a giant presents Ender’s mouse character with a choice between two goblets, one leads to fairyland while the other is poison. In a display of genius, Ender chooses neither. His mouse character leaps into the giant’s eye socket and kills him. We create choices every bit as much as we make them.

…Whether evil exists or not, God gave us the freedom to make our own decisions. We can make whatever choices we please. What's so hard to understand about that?

You're stripping out all the bad parts of the issue so that only the good remain and then acting confused at why people have a problem with it.

And you are ignoring your faulty premise. You merely assert that God could have made the world better than it already is while still providing space for humans to exercise their own volition. That need not be that case and if not your whole argument falls apart.

Yes he does

No he doesn't.

Yes he does. *sticks out tongue* “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,…” - Joel 2:25. On earth we suffer, but an Heaven our wounds are healed and our hurt soothed.

Your nature does not determine your choices; but rather, your choices define your nature.

Anecdotally, I can tell you you're wrong. Any time I see money sitting out in the open with no one watching it, I don't steal it. Now yes, the fact that I didn't steal it means I'm not a thief…It's literally against my nature to steal that money, so I don't steal it.

From an existentialist point of view, the choice to steal makes you a thief. The choice not to steal makes you honest. You have no essential nature until after the choice has been made. The counterpoint made by anglo-american analytic philosophy assumes physical monism, which I find problematic, but still open question.

…studies in neuroscience show that we make decisions before we're consciously aware of them. Whether this is our nature determining our choices or us simply making them faster than we realize, there's something happening there beyond conscious, cognitive decision-making.

That particular study is very controversial and there is much debate about whether the interpretation matches the data. If, for the sake of argument, I accept the study’s interpretation, the question gets shifted as to whether the logical left-brain voice in your head is the fullness of your personal identity. Most experienced meditators, like myself, will tell you it is not. You can strip away many fluid parts of self that unceasingly change, but there is always a small fundamental piece that remains; your own internal unmoved mover. I doubt anyone has yet found the neural correlates for that, if it is even possible to do so.

[Coffee Jesus]

…somebody who is trapped in poverty is more likely to seek wealth through illegitimate means, such as stealing. This doesn't mean they couldn't choose not to steal; it just means the probability of them choosing to steal was conditioned upon their circumstances.

I think there is a difference between potential and probability. Saying that someone is conditioned to behave in a certain way just because they have the ability and opportunity to do so…that’s a big leap. Again, humans do not just conform to their circumstances. Humans change things to create opportunities that never before existed. For example, there is a scene in Ender’s Game in which Ender plays a video game. In the game, a giant presents Ender’s mouse character with a choice between two goblets, one leads to fairyland while the other is poison. In a display of genius, Ender chooses neither. His mouse character leaps into the giant’s eye socket and kills him. We create choices every bit as much as we make them.

I'm not saying they're conditioned to behave that way. I'm saying their behavior is conditional, just as your forum membership is conditional because it is conditioned upon your adherence to the code of conduct. However, I'm saying that this conditionality is inherently probabilistic (see conditional probability). Instances of absolute conditionality, i.e. the choice isn't even possible, are just instances where the conditional probability is 0.

Humans can respond in novel and unexpected ways, but those responses still fall within general categories. Either you swim or you don't swim: this set of choices is exhaustive. You can swim in a novel way, and you can avoid swimming in a novel way, but you're still swimming or not swimming.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I think there is a difference between potential and probability. Saying that someone is conditioned to behave in a certain way just because they have the ability and opportunity to do so…that’s a big leap. Again, humans do not just conform to their circumstances. Humans change things to create opportunities that never before existed. For example, there is a scene in Ender’s Game in which Ender plays a video game. In the game, a giant presents Ender’s mouse character with a choice between two goblets, one leads to fairyland while the other is poison. In a display of genius, Ender chooses neither. His mouse character leaps into the giant’s eye socket and kills him. We create choices every bit as much as we make them.

I'm not saying they're conditioned to behave that way. I'm saying their behavior is conditional, just as your forum membership is conditional because it is conditioned upon your adherence to the code of conduct.

Humans can respond in novel and unexpected ways, but those responses still fall within general categories. Either you swim or you don't swim: this set of choices is exhaustive. You can swim in a novel way, and you can avoid swimming in a novel way, but you're still swimming or not swimming.

Or you could walk away, yoddle, pick your nose...really I could go on and on forever. There isn't even a limit on the number of general categories. Your point has now been fully refuted. Next.

[Coffee Jesus]

No! Those decisions still involve not swimming!
If you walk away, then you didn't swim.
If you yodled rather than swim, then you didn't swim.
If you picked your nose rather than swim, then you didn't swim.

The dichotomy of swimming or not swimming is exhaustive, encompassing all typical choices and all novel choices.

---

By the way, I had just decided to add this part before you responded.
"However, I'm saying that this conditionality is inherently probabilistic (see conditional probability). Instances of absolute conditionality, i.e. the choice isn't even possible, are just instances where the conditional probability is 0."

[Mudhammam]

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?

I think the Free Will argument is usually trotted out to 1) Explain the problem of evil, as it relates to the behavior of human beings, and 2) "the fallen state" of Nature, which they trace back to human action somehow, in a manner that at best can only be disregarded as extremely illogical and far-fetched.

[RobbyPants]

No he doesn't.

Yes he does. *sticks out tongue* “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,…” - Joel 2:25. On earth we suffer, but an Heaven our wounds are healed and our hurt soothed.

That verse is saying that he will restore bad things that happen... but they still happen.

Now, if your wounds are healed in heaven, then it means you're capable of an existence with these problems fixed. So, by definition, God can fix the problems...

...but he doesn't, here on earth. He lets us rape and be raped as part of some test. My point is that test is arbitrary. He doesn't have to test us. He chooses to, which is weird. Supposedly he can see the future.

You're stripping out all the bad parts of the issue so that only the good remain and then acting confused at why people have a problem with it.

And you are ignoring your faulty premise. You merely assert that God could have made the world better than it already is while still providing space for humans to exercise their own volition. That need not be that case and if not your whole argument falls apart.

You already admitted that better world exists: heaven. You already said that we can have all those problems fixed. Now, either we have free will in heaven, but only do good, or we don't have free will in heaven. Either way, Christians assert that heaven is better than earth and whichever existence it is (free will but we're always good, or no free will) is by definition better.

The only conclusion here is that we only suffer because God wants us to. The test he administers is arbitrary and he has no limitation to allow us to live without suffering and evil.

[Neo-Scholastic]

No! Those decisions still involve not swimming!
If you walk away, then you didn't swim.
If you yodled rather than swim, then you didn't swim.
If you picked your nose rather than swim, then you didn't swim.

The dichotomy of swimming or not swimming is exhaustive, encompassing all typical choices and all novel choices.

Stop talking nonsense. There's always an infinite number of things you are not doing. So neither the list of things you could do nor the list of things you didnt do is exhaustive. That doesn't help you at all.

[Coffee Jesus]

retracted

[fr0d0]

Yes he does

No he doesn't.

Here, I'll even put in a little more effort than you did: people suffer here on earth in ways that they don't suffer in heaven, or people remember their suffering in ways they're not supposed to in heaven. If you're saying that what we have here is what we get in heaven... then I'm not sure why Christians get so exited about heaven.

I didn't waste time in case you weren't interested in replying.
Heaven on earth is brought about by you letting God.

I don't see the distinction with heaven as you do. There are examples of persons transferring between heaven and hell. There's still a choice.
What we have here on earth is the heaven and hell we choose. After death we take another form, not limited by a physical body.
God forgives everything and brings everyone to himself.

He is capable of wiping away our tears, and he does.

[Foxaèr]

He is capable of wiping away our tears, and he does.

A comforting concept is one thing.

The reality is that God is not real and therefore he does not actually do anything except in the person's mind.

The theist for some reason cannot logically differentiate between the concept and reality.