And do they also never sin?
Prompted by an earlier conversation I had here. I can't tell if the Christian I'm speaking to is agreeing with me or not.
Maybe you guys can weigh in. I was certainly under the impression that angels have free will and lack sin. I thought you guys agreed. What's the verdict?
Christians who hold to God's perfect, omniscient foresight are fine claiming that a world where everyone chooses to disobey God and eat the fruit is a world with free will. After all, that's the world of the Garden of Eden.
But they also believe a world where everyone chooses to be a Christian is a world without free will.
A world where The Poop Sandwich is always ordered is a perfectly fine world that is the result of human free will. That's fine. But a world where the Poop Sandwich is never ordered? Nope, not allowed. Free will only counts as free will if it's misused.
Given 2 options, 100 percent compliance is considered a violation of free will, while 100 percent failure to comply is considered an exercise in free will.
I suspect the core issue here is that responsible use of free will makes Jesus' sacrifice superfluous, so Christians instinctively discount hypothetical possible worlds where free will is used correctly. Ultimately, though, it's inconsistent. It shouldn't matter whether options A and B are good or bad, 100 Percent A and 100 Percent B should both count as violations or examples of free will.
Now, for the Christians who are consistent and actually agree with this, I still have a follow-up:
How many people need to pick the wrong option? For instance, both you and I have chosen not to murder. How many people need to choose to murder in order for our free choice not to murder to count as being free? 1? 10? 100 million?
If the answer is zero, then we've moved beyond free will as a theodicy. Clearly, murder is required, because murder exists when it could trivially not have.
Assuming the Christian holds to God's foresight and believes that he created humanity from nothing, it's a double bind.
If a Christian portrays the fall as a completely avoidable catastrophe that was caused by Adam and Eve's poor choice, and that they, the Christian, would have made a better choice, then they must explain why God didn't make them instead of Adam and Eve. Clearly, God could have set up a world without a Fall, had he only swapped them out with Adam/Eve. Kinda like Mark Wahlberg stopping 9/11. "If I'd been on that plane..."
If a Christian backs off that claim and admits that they would have eaten the fruit too and that anyone would have eaten the fruit, then the fall is inevitable. If there is no possible world where God is obeyed by any possible human, then the universe is deterministic and free will is an illusion. Humans are being punished for something they couldn't help but do. Obedience was never an option, and, as usual, the Poop Sandwich must be ordered.
Because every time I try and use foresight to solve God's problems, they tell me I'm denying free wil. I think this is a mantra and not a real belief.
God knew Satan would rebel and lead others into sin.
"Oh well, just make a different angel who won't "
!free will!
God knew Adam and Eve would eat the fruit
"Just make Allen and Emma instead"
!free will!
Whose free will is being denied here? Beings who don't exist?
I've seen some pretty silly ways at trying to get around this. Like God knows what everyone will do, but he decides not to know who he'll create, or he turns off his foresight, or he creates the universe and then time travels back to the start, or he lacks knowledge of someone's actions until the moment he makes them.
There's really only 1 solution though: God simply doesn't know. Anything else breaks down.
I think some of the confusion lies in forgetting that God makes people in the first place. Satan (and any specific sinner) is treated like a necessary being that must exist, and cannot simply be "swapped" out with any other possible being.
"If God creates at all, he must create Satan, and can't create someone else instead"
Why?
The Exodus narrative is not a meaningful anti-slavery narrative in the same way that US war films portraying US victories are not meaningful anti-war narratives.
Slavery was never the problem, because slavery came right back. The enslavement of God's chosen people by non-believers outside of the holy land, in accordance with laws and customs outside of God's covenant, was the problem.
Imagine if, after the US Civil War, emancipated African-Americans were given permission, by the federal government, to own slaves themselves. And I don't just mean the prison loophole. I'm talking slaves as private property. Perhaps a different group, like Natives or Asian immigrants. So long as the non-Black, non-debtor slaves came from "the nations that surround them". Sure, maybe they'd be required to treat these new slaves a little better than how they were treated, but they could still own chattel slaves.
And to extend the premise, make EVERYONE gay. God would have had a morally sufficient reason to create an exclusively gay creation.
"But how would we reproduce?"
Doesn't matter, God demands it of you. Figure it out. God is already in the business of asking you to do things you don't want to do.
"But we'd go extinct"
Doesn't matter; God can create humans from dirt. God's going to end the world anyway.
"But that sounds like a worse setup"
Doesn't matter, mysterious ways. Don't pretend to understand the universe more than god. It doesn't matter if it sounds like it wouldn't work, according to "evolution". God isn't bound by physics.
God can put the gay shoe on every foot, and you'd have to accept that if you were being internally consistent.
I'm being a bit facetious, but the point I'm trying to make is that the shoe ought to fit as well on your foot as it does on any and all others. Even if that foot is a little light in the loafers. Admittedly, I'm not gay, but I find the Christian position on homosexuality...really bizarre. Are they not gay because God preordained them to be so?
Wouldn't the naturalist position make more sense?
And for those who believe he does both simultaneously, can you give me an example of
Something God could do that would violate free will
Something God could do that would violate his sovereignty.
Which under normal circumstances, would be perceived as sinful and hedonistic. But when gambling is reframed as a leap of faith, now it's a good thing, apparently.
I think existentialists draw an arbitrary line between faith and hedonism. It's just another form of hedonism.
You get to indulge in the absurd as well as experience the rush of putting your chips on the table for a long shot that shouldn't realistically pay of, but boy and howdy would it be great if it did.
Probably sets off some of the same happy chemicals.
Refraining from making a decision because you don't have enough information is an icky feeling. Like blue balls. Faith havers are giving into temptation.
You get a pleasurable build up of stress, while engaging in thought terminating cliches that bring the sweet relief of temporarily comfort and assurance. Very seductive.
Dude just saved his ship from a black hole. I get it, black holes are a bit ambiguous when it comes to how close you are.
But this guy just moved a starship away from a black hole that was exerting at least some severe gravitational force. Enough to start tearing his ship apart.
This is insane in terms of feats, no? We're talking Legends Luke/Palp type stuff.
Isn't that that just...keeping people out of heaven? Why would someone who has already been saved have any need for being miraculously saved from terminal illness or mortal injury? (Note that I'm not talking about pain relief, I'm talking about making someone who was actually going to die, not die)
If Jesus is going to do magic healing, it would make more sense to just heal people who *don't* believe yet.
If a Christian objects to this on the grounds that their personal healing can help to convert others...see above. You can just cut out the middle man and heal the potential converts directly.
Even if it doesn't convert them, eh, keeps them out of hell for a while longer.
Healing *you*, someone's who already saved just delays your trip to heaven. I don't know why you'd br grateful for that unless you're also grateful when God gives you the disease in the first place.
If a Christian objects to this on the grounds that God needs your faith first in order to do his works on you...no he doesn't. That's a made up rule that God doesn't follow. Even if that were true, it would mean that faith is a prerequisite to...delaying heaven.
Humans are forced into existence without their consent, an existence that can be taken away by God at any moment (again, without consent)
That's...not how gifts work. I don't retain the right to take back gifts I've freely given. It's theirs, now. I also probably shouldn't force someone to accept a gift. If someone gifted me a kidney while I was in a coma or something, can they just take it back whenever?
Another user aptly compared God's "free gift of life" to a loan. A loan you have to accept, and whose terms and conditions God alone decides.
But calling it a gift just "sounds better"
In the same way, claiming everyone who is given the gift of life is given a "chance" at salvation "sounds better".
There's already a weird incongruence here; (why isn't heaven also a free gift that needs no consent? If life on earth is free, life in heaven can be too) But there's a bigger issue. Specifically with framing salvation as something that "everyone" has an "opportunity" for.
If God knows who will and won't be saved prior to that person beginning to exist, there is no "chance". The outcome is guaranteed. Someone who had an opportunity to be saved but wasn't also had an opportunity to outrun light. Both are incoherent statements because both alternative results are impossible. It was always impossible for a non-saved to be saved. Interestingly though, it wasn't impossible for them not to exist, since they're not co-eternal with God. Keep that part in mind, especially if you're fond of the "foresight doesn't = causation" mantra. Because causation does equal causation, and God causes non-saved to begin to exist, doing so with no chance for salvation. There is no room for "chance" in a universe designed by a fine-tuner.
If you look at the existence of a non-saved person, it's pretty grim:
Forced to begin to exist without their consent (an existence that can be ended at any time without their consent), with a 0 percent chance at salvation.
And this isn't someone who *needed* to exist either. God could have just forced someone else to exist instead.
Huge fan of the Rider vs Saber fight in Heaven's Feel and the Homura vs Mami shootout in the Madoka movie.
Not interested in "suprise Yuri" (uh, you're trying to kill eachother, stop blushing) or fight ruining fan service mid fight.
Prefer if the fight scenes aren't part of a love triangle. Just gals fighting with aura and motive.
If God has a morally sufficient reason to permit rape he should also have a morally sufficient reason to engage in rape.
Same with any form of suffering. If he can allow it, he should be able to inflict it without contradicting his perfect nature.
Doesn't matter if the theist can't think of a reason.
I run into this frequently when asking Christians about the OT "atrocities". I'm presented with the "knee-jerk" response that the victims of the Flood and the subsequent conquests of Canaan were Nephilim.
The assumption the Christian appears to be making is that such actions wouldn't be justified, but since the victims were fallen angel hybrids, it's fine. Necessary and "good", even.
Is this a sincere position held by Christians, or is the Christian in question running interference to avoid talking about something uncomfortable?
How seriously should I take Christian apologetics that revolve around the extermination of Nephilim? (A
"cryptid," if you will, that both me and even other Christians don't think exists)
If Christians are OK with God taking away life, why aren't they OK with God taking away someone's virginity? He made "both", after all.
If you can't imagine a reason why, well that hardly matters. "Morally sufficient reason" is good enough.
It's hardly like the behavior is unprecedented. The God of the Bible demonstrates "authority" over genitalia and sexuality hroughout Scripture. He orders men to cut off parts of their penis and cursed women to have painful childbirth. Morally sufficient reason for both, mind you.
God can kill you. He can curse you. He can torture you forever. But apparently he can't molest you? Or lie to you?
Why not? Romans 9:21 and all.
I hope we can understand there's a distinction between a football team or acolytes of Ben Shapiro claiming to have "utterly annihilated" an opponent and a group of warriors who actually do kill people claiming to have done the same.
Even if both are hyperbolic, only one group did any killing. There's a difference between a killer who fell short and an athlete who won an event.
There's also a distinction between "defamation" hyperbole, and "self-glaze" hyperbole.
Let's say the actual number of Aztec sacrifice victims is X. It means something very different when Spanish conquistadors inflated the figure to 10X than when the Aztecs themselves inflated the number to 10X.
The OT is "self-glaze" hyperbole. Even if someone fails to do the bad thing, the fact they reported themselves as having done the bad thing as if it were a good thing...
is a bad thing.
If a believer wants to handwave all this and say "that's just how people talked back then"
ok???
I thought the Bible was supposed to be a little bit more than that. Isn't it supposed to stand out? Don't believers go out of their way to point out the wisdom and wokeness of the OT (I recall a post about Deuteronomy and female empowerment a while back; that was weird...) so much so that it's just too hard to believe something so profound came from humans? Why is it ancient aliens until you notice a flaw in the pyramids, then we're just being too harsh?
"That's just locker room talk, boys will be boys." Yeah, well, when that "boy" is your husband, I think it's reasonable to expect better.
The fact that a group of warriors failed to carry out the complete destruction of their enemy doesn't make me like them anymore. It just makes them look incompetent.
Not that this is my main point, but I think it's worth noting how hyperbole is reserved for the bad parts of the Bible. But not the good parts. Bit suspicious that. Instead of doing the whole celebration parallax dance, what's stopping a true believer, someone who sincerely has faith in God, from standing 10 toes down and going "Yeah, so what? It happened, what are you gonna do about it?"
And to clarify, I mean, how far in would it take for you to become
Like if you could cite the specific verse, that'd be great, but I understand that's pretty specific.
I'm not sure I've ever understood what exactly a universe without free-will would even look like to theists.
For instance, if I ask why God didn't create people who he knew would obey him, I'm told that violates free will. But when I ask the theist if God knew that they, the individual, would obey him, they say "yes." See the problem? If you're not a robot, neither are my hypothetical people.
Here's another one:
If I ask a believer why God doesn't stop a certain specific, evil (a rape, a murder), I'm told "that would violate free will". Ok, but when I ask if physically stopping a rape or a murder violates free will, I'm told "no". Once again, same problem. If you can beat a rapist into submission, so can God.
Or how about this:
If I claim that God doesn't let me fly or teleport, I'm told that doesn't constitute a violation of free will because those are just physical impossibilities. If I ask why God didn't make murder and rape physical impossibilities, I'm told that would violate free will. It just. keeps. going.
Or (one more)
If I ask a believer: If I'm given a menu with two options, Fish Sandwich or Chicken Sandwich, do I have free will? The answer, initially, is usually yes. But three or four questions down the line, it's explained to me that dichotomies must be "morally significant," and it doesn't count as a free-will decision if you're choosing between two "kinda" (it's always ambiguous) good things, even if you have a preference. (The Poop Sandwich, sadly, must be ordered)
I'm not convinced theism has a coherent view of what "forcing" a decision even means, since a man at gunpoint can still ostensibly choose to take the bullet and die.
Like, I know this sounds gender warry, but I'm curious. Are Westerosi women given a death-sentence "out" like men?
Granted (more gender war stuff), females are probably less inclined to do death penalty-worthy stuff like rape, murder, and treason, but it's probably happened. What does a gal do?
Any theodicy that claims a "greater good" justifies any particular action or any particular person's existence gives up on any sort of argument from contingency or any claim that God is the only necessary being.
Because, apparently, subsequent necessary beings are needed in order for God to create the best possible world (the only world he can make)
Something other than God is necessary.