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The Problem Of Free Will


Lerk

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In "The Case for Christianity" C.S. Lewis wrote:

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.

 

"Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.”

 

Can you see the problem here? He says "God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way." According to the Bible, there was no "if." Jehovah purposed to send the redeemer before the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1:3-5 says:

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love

5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will... .

 

 

Christians who don't believe that Jehovah predestined each individual who would be saved, such as those in churches of Christ, believe that this is saying simply that Jehovah knew people would sin so he predestined the method by which they would be redeemed, and it seems to me that the wording supports that view.

 

Let's dissect this: The definition of "sin" is simply doing one's own will instead of Jehovah's will. Jehovah cannot sin, by definition, because whatever he does is his own will. Without free will there is no sin, so when Jehovah gave the angels free will he created sin. He didn't sin himself, because that is impossible by definition, but also by definition sin virtually came into existence the moment the option was opened up.

 

The ironic thing here is that it says he predestined us to adoption according to the kind intention of His will. The "kind intention of his will" is that he was going to create a class of eternal beings, give them the ability to choose to follow their own will instead of his own, knowing full well that's what the majority would do and that he would have no choice but to send them to Hell, which he created for the Devil and his angels (to whom he had also given free will, by the way), and he did it anyway! So according to the Bible Jehovah created two classes of eternal beings -- angels and humans -- and gave them the ability to sin. He apparently had better luck with the angels, since only a portion of them chose to do their own will (but without the avenue of redemption), whereas every last human ever born chooses to rebel against him. Does that definition of "kind" seem different than the one you normally use?

 

This cannot be stated too strongly: According to the Bible Jehovah knew ahead of time that the majority of humans would wind up in that place that he supposedly didn't intend them to be in.

 

This discussion is not intended to say that Jehovah is evil or malicious or anything of the sort. This discussion is intended to make the reader realize that Jehovah is a not-well-thought-out concept of a god that obviously does not exist. And while C.S. Lewis wrote this in defense of Christianity, does he not himself sound full of doubt? It's as if he's saying "I don't know why Jehovah created free will; it doesn't seem to be a good thing, but he's God so he must know what he's doing."

 

There's another quote that is relevant here. It's reputed to be by Epicurus, although that seems doubtful since his Greek culture was polytheistic and the quote is about a monotheistic god. Nevertheless, it presents something that through the ages has been referred to as "the problem of evil," and it's about as good of an argument against the existence of the god of the Bible as I've ever read:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

 

 

Why indeed? Why even think such a being exists?

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