Athiest are the dumbest people. No Offence its just true.

[Randy Carson]

As it's almost one o'clock at night right now, I'm not going to rebuttle right now.
But I'd like to know, am I still waiting for something? Or am I good to go when I find the time?

You're good. Get some sleep and pick it up later.

[Randy Carson]

You know what I find funny about all this?  The idea that a world where we lack free will but are in complete bliss and happiness all the days of our lives is somehow taboo to Christians.  For some reason, free will is more important.  It helps them explain why bullshit happens on this Earth, and it's a get out of jail free card for God when things go bad.  "Oh a baby was murdered?"  That's free will!  God wipes his hands clean there, no fault of his cause, hey, he HAD TO give us free will! 

Really, though, I'd rather have pure happiness and no pain over free will any day.  And here's the big ol' kicker....In Heaven, you know, that awesome ending at the end of the video game of life....THERE'S NO FREE WILL.  That's right: in the most perfect place you can imagine, there's no fucking free will.  Yet, somehow, it's not good enough for Earth.  It's the perfect scapegoat for believers.  "Well, uh, see that child was raped cause of humanity and their free will.  But just wait til you're dead and everything is perfect in Heaven!  All we do all day is praise God and nobody sins.  No drug addiction, sexual deviants, sadness, pain...and the best part is, all your non-Christian loved ones will burn in hell!  That part sounds bad?  Don't worry, with lack of free will, you'll see things through perfect Jesus-goggles and won't mind, because you'll know you were right and they were wrong! You loved your wife for 50 years but she was a different religion than you?  She's probably feeling a little toasty right now, eh?  Grab the s'mores! LOL"

That's how this stupid fucking conversation sounds to me.  Amazing the crazy things people can do to their mind to try and cope with the pain and reality of life.  Jeez.

If God were to provide you with a world with no pain and suffering, how far would that go, exactly?

Would God be responsible for preventing ingrown toenails? Or just the big stuff like rape and murder?

And what about the psycopath who enjoys rape? Doesn't God violate his free will if he is not free to enjoy himself with some old lady behind a dumpster in a deserted parking lot?

Just askin'.

[Baruch]

Helping clear up a technicality ...

Predestination vs Predetermination

Predetermination - G-d as omniscient, and humans as free willed, knows what you will choose in the future, by your free will, but doesn't intervene

Predestination - G-d as omniscient, and humans as puppets.  G-d makes saints be saintly and makes sinners sin.

The first is allowable morally, the second is completely immoral.  In general context, this is "fatalism".

Quantum mechanics doesn't provide an opportunity for free will ... all it says is that shit happens, and you can't predict it.  Classical mechanics doesn't provide an opportunity for free will either ... all it says is that shit happens, and you can predict it.  Clearly the first one is correct, and the second one is wrong.  Our ability to predict, in any physical situation, is present, but extremely limited.  If you arrange a contrived situation (engineering) then your ability to predict that the bridge won't randomly or obviously fall down, is greatly improved.  But only in contrived situations that require an Professional Engineer license.

[Randy Carson]

There is also no free will because anything that otherwise qualifies is met with punishment. Noah's neighbors indulged the free will of not believing in god and got drowned for it; hence, no free will. We cannot move outside of our bodies. Any constraint given to us physically does not allow free will. We cannot move outside of the environmental and inherited characteristics of our life, hence no free will.

The idea of free will is ludicrous. we have debated that here many times. The concept of free will in religion-"you can do what you want, but boy am I gonna fuck you up if you disobey" is likewise ludicrous. Free will is a myth, but it sounds good to the believers. "I worship god of my own free will 'cause if I don't I'm gonna fry in hell." Right.

Sounds like I missed all the fun? Which side won? The side that says we have no free will?

[Baruch]

Sounds like I missed all the fun? Which side won? The side that says we have no free will?

Many materialists and some rationalists, think we have no free will.  I am not a materialist nor a rationalist.  So I have no problem with the concept.

Many atheists may be materialists or rationalists.  Clearly we have at least one regular member who denies free will.  I guess the conservation of mass-energy made him post what he did ;-)

[Randy Carson]

And ALSO, what about God's omniscience?  Doesn't he know the future?  How can we truly have "free will" if the choice we make is known already in advance?  How could we be punished for a predetermined future?

I know this is more philosophy-related, but I also question if we truly make decisions, or if we just "perceive" that we do.  Do we really know enough about how our bodies, brain chemistry, and environment shape what we actually do?

Too many questions.  I've been inactive here the last few years after being a fairly regular poster when I joined in 2010, but I've lurked and taken in a lot of the convos here.  A lot of what I'm asking here is kind of rhetorical, because I doubt Randy has anything of insight on this stuff.  Just more mental gymnastics.

You're sitting at a desk in an office on the third floor of a city high-rise. You look up just as a screaming woman hurtles past your window outside. What has happened to her? Is she dead? You have a report due in an hour...do you continue working? Or do you call for help? The choice is yours.

You pick up the phone, dial 9-1-1 and rush to the window. Just as the operator answers, you look down to see that the woman has landed on a giant airbag used by Hollywood stunt men, and you hear the director yell, "Cut! That's a take!" Apparently, a movie was being filmed and this scene will include her being thrown off the building by her jealous husband. Shaken and embarrassed, you hang up without saying a word, and go back to your report.

You have free will, and you chose to call 9-1-1 based on what you knew at the moment from what you could see out of your window. God, on the other hand, sees the whole scene (including your emergency call), but his knowledge of how it would end did not effect your free will decision.

[Baruch]

Definitely being omniscient would be a hellish experience.  Being the boss of a situation without free will would be devilish.

[FrogMan]

If God were to provide you with a world with no pain and suffering, how far would that go, exactly?

Would God be responsible for preventing ingrown toenails? Or just the big stuff like rape and murder?

And what about the psycopath who enjoys rape? Doesn't God violate his free will if he is not free to enjoy himself with some old lady behind a dumpster in a deserted parking lot?

Just askin'.

How far would it go?  Who knows?  It's all fantasy talk anyway.  Are there ingrown toenails in heaven?  How good can things get when we're talking about perfection, really?  Not sure your point about the rapist.  Wouldn't that be supporting my argument?  A rapist is the perfect example of why "free will" is such an odd thing to value and attribute to God as a "good idea".

I'm on my phone so I can't quote your next post, but regarding "God knows the result of your choice before you make it, but that doesn't change the fact you had free will to make it" (paraphrase).....

No.  If I was to pick a number between 1 and 100, and god knows I'm gonna pick 58, then when I pick 58 it wasn't my choice.  It was more or less part of his script, with that "illusion" of choice I referred to earlier.  I've argued this before on this site, so I'm sure this is going nowhere.  We just won't see eye to eye on this one.

[Baruch]

You are also assuming predestination.  But we get versions of that from physics ... but physics is wrong regarding people, but right about atoms?  The disconnect is believing in materialism, that people are made up of atoms.  This goes back to Ancient Greece, and Democritus' attempt to escape the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea.  Turns out Democritus was right in Newtonian materialism, but wrong once we have QM ... because if the vacuum is alive with activity, as there is air between myself and my computer screen, then there is no gap (necessary to avoid the paradox) except in my own mistaken perception.  Descartes was right about the plenum, as 19th century mathematicians were right about the number line being a continuum ... it is that very continuum that makes QM possible ... you can't separate the experiment from the experimenter.   There can be no G-d of the Gaps ... because there are no gaps.

[Mr.Obvious]

"Illogically possible?" Did you mean "impossible"? Or just "illogical"?

Yeah, my bad. I meant 'Logically impossible', mirroring that you said God can only do what is logically possible. Messed up the words there, didn't notice when I was checking for spelling errors either.

I changed the sentence above by adding some punctuation to help me follow your thought. Let me know if I got it wrong. And here I disagree. You are proposing a Calvinist view which is often called "double pre-destination": some are predestined to heaven and others are predestined to hell.

Obviously, in the case of the latter group, there is no significant free will with regard to acceptance of God. They cannot accept God and be saved if they are predestined for hell. The Catholic view is that while God does predestine some to heaven, He does not predestine anyone to hell. I mentioned previously that this "double-predestination" is an error of Calvinism. Are you a former Calvinist?

Actually, I used to be catholic. Not very sternly though.
The sentence seems about right with the punctuation.
Now I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Calvinism. But if their view of God involves him being omniscient and -potent and  they say he chooses in advance who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, then their view of their God, whilst not any bit more grounded than yours, seems more consistent than yours. As long as that they don't say he's omnibenevolent and wants everyone to accept him, that is.

Your position, merely re-stated here and not proven, is that God could create a "perfect" world in which every single significantly free person would choose to accept Him without exception, and failure on His part to do so represents proof that He is deficient in one of the omni's. I agree this is what we're discussing; I do not agree that you have shown a compelling reason why this must be so.

Why this must be so? You won't like it; I'll just have to restate the my position. And I'll do so below. Tell you what, I'll even go all out this time, but do my best to keep it clear.  But seeing as I'm not the greatest with words, I thought a visual aid might help.

And by the way, you wrote, "caused them to do good" above. If God causes them to accept him, then they were not significantly free, were they? Isn't this something they have to choose? Now, we're typing...which can be tedious...so perhaps what you meant is that He gives them sufficient reasons to accept Him which "cause" them to do so. If so, then "cause" in that sense is merely shorthand. I just want to make sure we're in sync.

The thing to keep in mind is that I'm calling this free will and 'significantly free' because these are terms you claim to believe in and I don't see a reason to argue with you on terminology of something like this. If your God is omnipotent and omniscient then choosing to have someone become 'convinced'  through sufficient reasons or remaining 'unconvinced' through insuffecient reasons is no different from 'causing' them to do or not do something. Which is why if all would choose to not do good there would be just as much 'free will' as in a reality in which some would choose to do good and just as much as in a reality in which all would choose to do good. I don't care if you call it free will or 'significantly free beings', the most important point is that through God's omniscience and omnipotence, by choosing to create any world, he shapes it with no more or less of this 'free will' or 'significantly free beings' than in any other world he'd create.  Again, this will return down below.

No more than in a world he creates in such a way that not everyone would, as he still knows and chooses in advance what they will choose by choosing to create the reality he picks. â€" Mr.Obvious

Here we disagree. God issues an invitation to all; some accept and some do not. It is your contention that he could have created a world in which everyone accepted because he would have either only created that one world out of the infinite number of possible worlds or because he would simply have not populated any world with those whom He knew in advance would reject him.

So you understand that he could create different worlds or this world differently (matter of wording there). So is your point that he didn't create just one world, but that we are one of an infinite amount? If so, I can understand your position a little bit better. But again, God's supposed omniscience and omnipotence combined with the concept of infinite creations still means he can create an infinite amount of 'perfect' and different worlds.

I'm asking how this would be possible. People come to accept God for a variety of reasons and because their own very personal life experiences. Now, unless you are proposing a world in which everyone simply "knows" God from birth rather than coming to know him at some stage in life, then what you are proposing is that the "butterfly effect" is so meticulously arranged for every single person in the world that all come to accept God.

Either way is fine with me. Neither leads to less 'significant freedom' than in any other world he could create.
I'll be honest, I usually tend to think in the butterfly effect variant though. He knows how his creation will lead this way to his subjects to either choose to accept him, or not accept him. And he knows this of each and every of an infinite amount of butterfly effects. Does picking any of these over the other opress or coerce people any more than others? No.
And you agree it's possible, right here below.

Okay, He's God and He's all-omni, so this should be possible for Him. Easy, even.

Off course, then you go on with this:

But then I have to ask: Isn't it true that some people come to accept God after having exhausted all of their other options and reaching the end of their ropes, so to speak? And specifically, aren't there prisoners on death row who finally come to terms with their own misspent lives and personal limitations and character flaws but only after having their anger and hatred and destructive tendencies forced into an 8x10 room made of concrete and steel? Perhaps they are only able to hear that small voice of God in the long, silent hours of solitary confinement.

And you're right in that some people turn to religion through hardship in their lives. But an omnipotent and omniscient God could just as easily, without literally any effort, have them turn to him through a different path. A less difficult, argueous path. If you believe this is possible, as you say it's easy (actually seeing as he's omnipotent it takes literally no effort at all), then it should be equally possible and easy for him to have those who turn to him through hardship turn to him in a different way.

Fine. They eventually accept Him...just as you proposed that they would. So, what's the point?

You're the one who believes God wants everyone to have a personal relationship with him, accept him into their hearts and do good. So what's the point? Mission accomplished, that's the point. Without any less 'free will' than in any other, imperfect creation in which this target isn't reached.

My point is that on the other side of the prison door that leads to their spiritual freedom is the path of destruction, heart-ache, misery and human suffering that they traveled during the course of their lifetime. The road that led to prison was filled with sin and evil and pain...not just for themselves but for others who were the victims of their anger, greed and lust.

See what I mean with having to keep his omni-traits in mind all the time? Right there you limited him to his creation, instead of thinking of him as omniscient and omnipotent when creating his creation. You tried to show his benevolence can shine through, through hardship. But with omnipotence and omniscience in mind; it could've shone through just as well without that hardship having to take place. And if both options are available to God, it's quite strange that he picks the option with hardship.

So, while you're contemplating a utopian world in which God simply creates perfect "Stepford Wives" for himself, I'm envisioning a real world in which God is able to redeem those who are fallen and full of sin that resulted from their own free choices.

In which those choices are no more free than those of my 'Stepford Wives'. Again, if you can't understand this yet, I hope my visual aid down below will help.

And by the way, I haven't even begun to address the fact that the sins/crimes committed by the death row inmate may have caused others to call out to God in their pain and suffering and thereby be saved. (There may also be those who gnash their teeth at Him and say, "Why did you let this happen to me?", but I think He is prepared for this possibility, also.)

You don't have to begin to adress it. I'll just repeat myself here: See what I mean with having to keep his omni-traits in mind all the time? Right there you limited him to his creation, instead of thinking of him as omniscient and omnipotent when creating his creation You tried to show his benevolence can shine through, through hardship. But with omnipotence and omniscience in mind; it could've shone through just as well without that hardship having to take place. 

If God "chooses in advance what they will choose", then they have not chosen freely for themselves any more than a child chooses for himself what to eat after his mother has put food on his plate. Whatever he eats was chosen in advance for him.

Surely you didn't mean this?

Why yes! Exactly. God will always decide in advance what any subjects in his creation will choose if he were to exist exactly because he is the omnipotent, omniscient creator of everything. He knows any possible life he could have you lead and how to make you lead each and everyone of those lives before creating you. So by making the prime choice in creating you and the creation in the way he chooses to, you will come to choose 'a' or 'b' or 'c' or… and you choosing 'a' rather than 'b' or 'c' rather than 'b' makes you no less and no more a 'significantly free being' than any other choice.
Now if you don't concider the child in this example to be 'significantly free' than it would be 'logically impossible' for God to create 'significantly free beings'. Which is, as you've said before, a problem for you. Not for me, who doesn't believe in God.

I think that God knows what I need from Him in order to be saved. I exercise my free will to cooperate with God in that process. God knows what you need from Him in order to be saved. You may, if you wish, decline that invitation. As Christopher Hitchens famously claimed of himself, there are those who would not serve God even if He were to prove Himself to them.

And God supposedly chose to create this creation in such a way that you would cooperate and I would not. While in a world with no less free will, the roles could've been reversed. Or we could both coöperate.
And in partial disagreement with the Hitch, I could see myself 'serving' an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God. Heck, I could see me serving a non-omnipotent, non-omniscient omnibenevolent God. However, aside of the fact that the former seems to not be possible when we take a gander at the world around us, there is no proof for either of these deities. What 

A restatement of your position.

If it ain't broke...
Now, i do see we are going in circles here. But if you thought that was a restatement, check this out:



Here we have just a guy. Nothing special about him. But it shows you just how awesome my epic drawing skills are.
(So... sorry.)



Now look at this glorious deity. The big guy in the sky himself. Omniscient, as you can see he knows every possible; noted by the 'ALL' written in his head. Omnipotent, as you can see he can do anything; noted by the ALLs in his hands. And Omnibenevolent, as you can see he wants good and is the unlimited force for good; noted by the ALL written across his heart.
Now God wants to make a creation. He wants to make us. And he wants us to want to let him into our lives; to accept him. So; he creates.



And bam! One creation later; there's the reality around us. You can take the time-scale as 6000 years or a tad longer; I was sure not to mark it because the timeframe doesn't matter. There we have the big bang; the starting point. Then galaxies form. The earth. And look at those two handsome bastards; that's you and me.
Now note that I put a closed line around the creation. This is not there to say that God can't interract with his creation as it goes on; because that question does not matter here. What it is there for (and which will be important down below,) is that it signifies this is the reality he actually created. It also shows that he's not limited to the creation he made and is greater than that.
The marks around his hands are there to stress that he utilised his omnipotence to make his creation.



Of course, because he is omnipotent, he could've created the world in an infinite amount of different ways. (Think the butterfly effect you noted earlier.) If he'd changed the laws of physics ever so slightly or drastically... Had that Big Bang last the billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a.... moment longer or shorter. Have had the world form with one earthquake more or less... Had the sun be just a tad warmer or less warm... He is omnipotent, so he could have done these variations. In an infinite amount of them there would've been nothing or no-one. In an infinite amount there would be totally different beings than humans. In an infinite amount of them Randy the bee (or is it hornet?) and Mr.Obvious the Mantis would exist.

Note all the possible ways he could create his creation; they are unlimited through his omnipotence. Leaving us many possible creations, marked here with dotted lines, of which he created this one with the unbroken line.



If only we knew what was in that unlimited potential of worlds. But we can't know that, because sadly, we do not have unlimited knowledge.
But hey, guess who does. That's right: that guy. Omniscience.



Using his omniscience God automatically knows what any possible variation to his creation would through a butterfly effect started from the moment of creation lead his subjects to. Now let's only focus on the infinite amount of possibilities in which we come into being.

Here I've noted A to L, a handfull of possible outcomes of the infinite amount of realities God knows how to create.
With a finite paper as assistance; I had to invoke the 'infinite' symbol starting from L, to note that this is in actuality infinite.
(Why it jumps from G to K...? Well I'm an idiot. And even worse, when making this, an overstressed, sleep deprived idiot. I also have bad handwriting. So I think I put down an H which admittedly looks more like a K, so we'll go with K here, and then after a break, as I took many pictures in between drawing, picked up with L not noticing my mistake untill most of the work was done.)

In universe A, you can see the little bee (being you) is doing good things with his life. The little mantis (being me), is actually doing bad things with his life. Noted by the '+' over the bee and the '-' over the mantis. But neither have a personal relationship with God.

In universe D, for example, we both have; noted by the heart-symbol. And look, we're both doing good things in our lives.

In universe E however, only my path of life has lead me to accept the lord into my heart, whilst we still both do our best to be agents for good. (As I have a heart-symbol, but we both have a '+'.)

In universe F, we see we both don't turn to God. And we are both doing bad things with our lives. (As seen by the double '-' and the absence of a heart.)

And who knows what would come to happen in the infinite ones starting from L onwards? Well, as I'm no omniscient being; I decided to put question marks over our heads and a question mark after us; to indicate who knows what could be in that vast sea of infinite options available to the allmighty creator.



Now, bare in mind that he is not only omniscient; but also omnipotent. That's why we now not only mark the 'ALL' in his head, but also the 'ALL's in his hands.  So any of these possibilities lies within his grasp; due to his omnipotence. He can't just do everything, he knows how anything he does will influence each of the infinite amount of possible creations.
And when all of these infinite options are available to him, and none causing him any more effort than the other and he knows what each and every one would lead to if he creates it, then by making this prime choice...



There is no reality less free then the other. Or more free, however you want to look at it.
If you don't concider this 'significant freedom', then so be it. I don't care. I don't think any of this is true because I don't believe in God. But if you believe in an omniscient, omnipotent God who can't create what is logically impossible and concider 'significant freedom' something more than this kind of freedom for his subjects, then that 'significant freedom' is a square circle or a married bachelor.



Now, if you're still with me; D is the creation the christian allmighty, allknowing and ALL-loving God would prefer. It's also the one least cruel, because it doesn't send anyone to hell/has anybody send themselves to hell (scratch whichever you prefer, they are the same with an omnipotent, omniscient creator in place).
(And I'm sorry, I swear I didn't think it through making D the optimum one. I'm not saying God wants the D.)

Because no option is more free than the other; he has no reason not to pick the one in which most good would happen. He has no reason not to pick the one in which we would all accept him. And therefore he should, if he is also omnibenevolent.



But one of these, depending on how you see it, is the one he chooses.
I'd like to think I'm not evil. But if you were to concider me so, so be it. But that's why I opted for C, if you think we live in K, that's fine with me. The important thing here is that it's not D. So a triple-omni God (like the catholic one) does not mix with the reality we encounter.

[Unbeliever]

Human beings can maintain incompatible beliefs and behaviors indefinitely.  This is not a flaw.  Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds - Emerson.

That's "a foolish consistency."

[Baruch]

That's "a foolish consistency."

The amount of consistency is over-estimated.  Just like the majority of the universe is energy and matter that is not energy or matter as we currently understand it.  We imagine that we can understand stuff that is away across the Milky Way, or may exist in galactic clusters ... and that it is homogeneous with what we know in a volume smaller than the radius to Alpha Centauri.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Any 'Get God out of Jail Free will' card is a non-starter because it is quite clear that God has no actual respect for it. Yeah, he wants everyone to come get to know him... under penalty of Hell and shit. If you decide according to your free will â€"so goes the argumentâ€" to not know God (how?) before you die, then you are penalized for that by burning in hell forever. I cannot send myself to Hell. I don't have that power. There's nothing about the rejection of god that, in and of itself, throws you into Hell. It simply the game that God set up, that in order to be saved from this Hell he talks about, you must give up your reason.

God doesn't accept that some people not wanting/able to get to know him is simply the universe working as designed... as he designed it, and he's throwing a tantrum and punishing the people who are working as designed. That's simply childish. Yeah, God makes it quite clear that, between belief in him and free will, which one he holds more valuable.

As the Metallica song goes, "You can do it your own way/If it's done just how I say."

But if God doesn't value free will as much as he values belief in him, why make belief in him subject to free will in the first place?    Flaw in the design, there.

Meanwhile, the libertarian-type free will that this argument requires is not even defined in an operational way. It's just more magic to justify the magic that is God.

[JBCuzISaidSo]

Wait, now...did the OP somehow prove that life continues after death? Unlike how it is for every other species on the planet? If so, so many sorries. If not, so many pities lol.....

[Hydra009]

Wait, now...did the OP somehow prove that life continues after death? Unlike how it is for every other species on the planet?

Well, he has eyewitness accounts of people who may or may not have been there who conceivably might've said that Jesus came back from the dead.  Sounds like a pretty strong case to me.