PandaPirate Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 So, according to them, I have free will. But, God has a plan for my life and if I deviate from his will for my life then things will not go right. So, basically, God is punishing me. How is this free will? I am sure there are threads about this already, but I can't get this out of my head. Those fuckers really know how to brainwash people. Oh, and guess what? Our local baptist church is hosting Kirk Cameron. Yay!!! I'm going to throw up now. I gotta get the hell out of the bible belt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 So, according to them, I have free will. But, God has a plan for my life and if I deviate from his will for my life then things will not go right. So, basically, God is punishing me. How is this free will? I am sure there are threads about this already, but I can't get this out of my head. Those fuckers really know how to brainwash people. Oh, and guess what? Our local baptist church is hosting Kirk Cameron. Yay!!! I'm going to throw up now. I gotta get the hell out of the bible belt. "Free will" is just Christian propaganda. Nobody asked God to be born. We didn't sign an agreement to live for a few short years on Earth and risk eternal torment in hell. None of the people God struck dead the Old Testament willed for that to happen. Free will is false doctrine and makes as much sense as the Christian "free gift" which translates into a life of sacrifice. MM 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thought2Much Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 I would reply to this thread, but it's not the Lord's will right now. I'm going to have to pray about it until I hear his still, quiet voice. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBluegrassSkeptic Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Go a step further with the argument, there is a section where it is said that you are already to be in the Book of Life OR NOT before you even existed...Wish I could find it, but I don't have my Bible verses on speed dial in my brain...thankfully! But yes, free will is defined as having the right to make decisions without being aware of what said consequences are....ummm I think that takes free will completely out of the Bible. It is my free CHOICE to deny religion/gods, but I am aware of the supposed consequences of such a decision...therefore no free will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Morontheists commonly claim that their gawd is omniscient and that it created the entire universe, including every single one of us of course. Translation: There is no free will. Assuming that the above is true, jehoover knew how you would live your life before it put the first few molecules in your body together. If you leave the cult, it must have known in advance (being omniscient)... and if that would not be okay with it, it would just have created you differently. It surely would have known (being omniscient, again) how to do that. From their own claims it follows logically that we might think we have free will but that really everything that happens is just what jehoover wants to happen. I have yet to see any morontheist come up with even a half-reasonable reply to that. "Do you ever disagree with a morontheist's claims?" "No, why should I? I just wait a while and they'll do it all by themselves..." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duderonomy Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Wow you guys. What if there was a God and he gave you free will, and punished the rebels until they complied? Do any of you do any different with your own children? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Wow you guys. What if there was a God and he gave you free will, and punished the rebels until they complied? Do any of you do any different with your own children? If that punishment happened in this life then that would fill the role our justice system covers (and demonstrate God exists). I don't see what good it would do to punish people in an afterlife when they can no longer change what they do in this life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Wow you guys. What if there was a God and he gave you free will, and punished the rebels until they complied? Do any of you do any different with your own children? Punishment should be for the purpose of teaching, which means that the punishment is temporary, and the person can learn and do rigth next time. Hell is just a torture chamber to please God's sadisdic needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatrickG Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 I know a fundamentalist who tells me that God gave us free will to choose heaven or hell. I told him that his god was everywhere present, and that his God was merciful. Sooner or later his god would have to have mercy on one who cries for it. I have always viewed god as being for mankind rather then against mankind. God always brings us to a good place. If our choices are harming us, then the resulting harm is the teacher, that leads to a better place. Hell would work the same way. God would never torment forever. Only until the lesson is learned. I kind of freak my fundie buddy out a bit, because I do have answers to his horrid view of God. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator buffettphan Posted November 6, 2011 Super Moderator Share Posted November 6, 2011 Do any of you do any different with your own children? Not brutally for all eternity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Free will is the only excuse the Christians can make for their God. It isn't sufficient. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystery Posted December 2, 2011 Share Posted December 2, 2011 Free will concepts have been full of contradicting terms even in the Bible itself. Such as: Romans 9:17-19, Exodus 9:16, Hell concepts, Acts 4:27-28, and 2 Thessalonians 2:11 A majority in the New Testament. The biggest violation of free will is Hell. To say hell is real and God is loving is hypocrotic and ridiculous. What if your own father said this to you: "You can believe in me and what I say without question and live in my house peacefully, or you can not, and live life for yourself and walk out of my house. But oh yeah, if you walk out... I have a group of people outside ready to chase you down, beat you, rape you, and set your body on fire until you fall over lifeless." This is not free will, and according to this we have zero choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrotherJosh Posted December 2, 2011 Share Posted December 2, 2011 You should go and hold up the Crocoduck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sirelien Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 Indeed, Christianity is incredibly inconsistent and confused when it comes to the issue of free will. It has long been an accepted fact in any basic legal justice system that if someone puts a gun to your head and says 'Do x' and, surprise surprise, you do x, you are not exercising free will! Similarly, if someone says 'You have free will to follow me - oh but by the way if you don't, then you'll be tortured for eternity' - that isn't free will! Indeed, Christianity is absolutely hopeless on this matter. So grateful are we supposed to be to Jesus for dying for us, we are effectively supposed to agree to become his slaves and devote our entire lives to him. Why? We didn't ask to be born. We didn't agree to accept God's impossibly high standards of behaviour! In fact God's conduct is rather like that of a parent who takes their child and chains them up in a cellar. The parent then tells the child that they can eat just as long as they can make their way to the Dining Room and sit down at the table. Of course, given the chains this is completely impossible. Eventually recognising this fact, the parent then brings the food to the child - and then expects them to be so grateful that the child will devote their whole life to them and proceed to do anything and everything the parent says. Of course, we can all see that the child has no reason to be grateful at all! The fault is entirely that of the parent, who put them in such an impossible situation to begin with! Similarly, if God is so incompetent that he put us all in such an impossible situation that somehow only his 'death' could solve, then that's his problem! In response, Christians often mumble something about how God is all-powerful and he has the right to make the rules and who are we to question him. They might have a point actually. Maybe such an all-powerful being does exist and we just have to lump it. And maybe that being is completely free to whatever he likes, in the same way that a parent is free to do whatever they like to their little child - including locking them in a cellar. But for crying out loud, don't call such a being good! Don't insult your own intelligence by pretending that such a being is good! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMo Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 Free will is not a Biblical doctrine, but an interpolative argument. Free will as the doctine we understand today is found only in the Apocrypha in the book called Sirach. In the Old Testament, the word freewill is one word, and is only used in relation to circumstances, all but once in regards to sacrificial offerings, which took place beyond the obligations of the Law. The specific word "predestinated" comes up numerous times in the New Testament...it is the Biblical doctrine. For God to have predestinated all things from before the foundation of the world, and for there to be freewill in the world is a conceptual contradiction. I personally renamed the topic predestinated will. I tried to construct parables for this problem. The first has to do with Man being in the image of God. How can Man sin in the first place, except that it was predetermined by God or God sinned? If you look in the mirror, then what can your mirror image do except exactly what you are doing? This makes your mirror image entirely dependent upon you. What if your mirror image became independent and walked off the mirror without you? And this is the problem of the doctrine...is that God had to have predetermined for his image to become independent of his likeness. If this were not predetermined, then we have to conclude that Man sinned because God sinned, since Man is in the image of God...just as if you waved your hand in the air, your mirror image would wave its hand in air. The second has to do with computer programming...designing inputs to produce outputs. If the program was designed to produce a particular output based upon specific inputs, do we call it freewill? If you enter something into the search engine, do we say that the search engine has freewill and thus it produced the specific output based upon your given input? Or do we say it was programmed in such a way? If the program came with errors, then I would blame the programmer for negligence, and not the program. And if the programmer intentionally made the program with errors, then I would hold the programmer as a criminal. The truth is that God is maintained to have foreknoweldge of all things...and yet many Christians fail to conclude that he created all things through his foreknowledge, so that every action is consistent with his predetermined will. They act like the creation is mysteriously separate from his foreknowledge. Yet it was by his foreknowledge that the creation came. So, there is foreknowledge, and then the fulfillment of foreknowlege, which is the will of God,or the effect of his creating action. Furthermore, sin is described as slavery, so that no Christian should call anything "freewill," except for those who are freed from the slavery of sin through Christ. Everyone else should be described as having enslaved will, which was inherited from Adam. So, there is predestinated will consisting of freewill through Christ and enslaved will apart from Christ. Think about this too...sin originated from the mind of God, where the division between good and evil exists for eternity. God is like a schizophrenic, who created upon the division in his foreknowing mind...the world is the revelation of the mind of God, and nothing more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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