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Goodbye Jesus

Free Will


Castiel233

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I suffer from OCD, I did not choose to have it, where is my free will on the matter.

 

Christians say we have free will, but I'm not sure we do.

 

Thoughts on Free Will? 

 

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If someone points a gun at you and says "Your money or your life." you may have a choice, but it's not a free choice. If you are threatened with Hell for not believing,  then it's extortion. There is no Free Will at gunpoint. If "god" is All Knowing, then everything we say or do is predetermined. Still no Free Will. We are actors in a drama, reading from a script.

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"Free will" is how you respond to your circumstances. You have OCD, but you have the choice whether to control it/take meds or not. Christians' idea of free will is them  God coercing people into worshipping him, while not actually physically forcing them to do so. (Although everyone will be forced in heaven and hell to acknowledge god. Worship will be mandatory.) Free will is not the ability to choose circumstances such as whether you have OCD.

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Seems that free will means different things to different people. Are you allowed to do anything you want? No. Do you have the ability to do anything you want? No. 

 

If God allows us free will then it is my will to be King of of Everything! 

 

Anything less is just a limited autonomy. :)

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I suffer from OCD, I did not choose to have it, where is my free will on the matter.

 

Christians say we have free will, but I'm not sure we do.

 

Thoughts on Free Will? 

Define "free"

 

Define "will"

 

Define "free will"

 

Regardless of the definitions, there will always be things, events, desires and choices that cannot be made by humans.  For example, I cannot choose to live forever, or cause the Earth to slow its rotation to 12 hours per day.  

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Of course we have free will; we have no choice but to have it.

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Of course we have free will; we have no choice but to have it.

I see what you did there... ;)

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Do fish have free will?  Do birds have free will?  A human brain reasons as best it can based on the DNA

 

and environmental factors that went into creating that brain along with the experience that programed that

 

brain.  Christians try to paint the God-human relationship as the parent to rebellious toddler relationship.

 

But God is a myth created by ignorant primitives.  There are plenty of people alive right now who are

 

smarter and better educated than Bible God.  So no free will as Christians define it.

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At one extreme, I've heard it said that everything we think, say and do is a matter of personal choice.  I suppose that sort of thinking lies behind christianspeak justifications for saying that people are responsible for their sexuality.

 

At the other extreme I've heard it said that we are basically automatons - everything that we think, say or do is just the behavioural response of the human machine.  If that is correct the Christian has no choice but to follow his religion, the atheist his irreligion, the jihadi his violence, and the idea that a person can be held responsible or can in any meaningful sense be "persuaded" seems to me to be redundant.

 

The reality, I suspect, is somewhere between the two - maybe on a sliding scale where some are more or less "free" than others.

 

Quite how to ascertain where that point of freedom is to be found, or what precisely it is, I have no idea.

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