How to respond to Atheist lack of free choice argument?

[Spirithound]

God does in fact demand worship. It is the first one of the two most important Commandments one can strive to follow

Love God with all your heart mind soul (this requires worship, God tells us this)
Love your neighbor as yourself

So, you were saying?

God deserving worship precedes him articulating the commandment.

 

[Xuan]

The cartoons seem to indicate that “free will” is the ability to decide whether or not to submit to an order given by an authority-figure.

That being the case, when the lion-tamer cracks his whip and orders the lion to get into the cage, does the lion have free will? If not, what’s the difference?

Xuan

 

[ThinkingSapien]

That being the case, when the lion-tamer cracks his whip and orders the lion to get into the cage, does the lion have free will? If not, what’s the difference?

Good question.

I don’t think there is a difference. Humans and many of the other animals that have brains (as opposed to animals with no centralized nervous system) can have their behaviour shaped by conditioning. When this is intentional we call it “training.” But it can be unintentionally shaped by the environment or people performing other actions.

People suffering from certain stress disorders (ex: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, among others) respond with action and emotion to certain stimuli despite not wanting to react that way and despite being able to intellectually recognize that the stimuli does not present a danger. What could be said of their free will in these situations?

 

[tonyrey]

I think you’ll have better success at taking this argument on after convincing the people to which you are speaking that there exists a god and that Yahweh is that god.

The existence of free will is evidence for the reality of the Supreme Being!

 

[edwest2]

Everyone has a choice. God will not force you to love Him. And a priest won’t be pounding on your door on Monday asking why you missed Church on Sunday.

The mission of the Catholic Church is to preach the Gospel (the Good News) to the whole world. As Father John Riccardo put it on Catholic Radio, Jesus is either a:

Lunatic
Liar
or Lord

Each of us needs to make a choice based on the Truth.

Peace,
Ed

 

[carn]

I think that presenting this to a person that presented the argument of the OP would only compound the differences between the interacting parties unless you first agree on how you evaluate what is “right”, what is “moral”, or what is meant by these words. But if you already had agreement on these things then you would probably already have agreement on the original issue too, making it a non-issue.

But the argument is based on the notion that the left guy is acting immoral. Then the supposed similarity of the right guys actions is used as an argument that the right guy is also immoral.
If there is no right and wrong the pictures are meaningless, especially as the left guy can only be limiting free choice in some way, if we assume survival to be preferable. Otherwise there is no threat and no effect on free will.

 

[Bobber90]

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lk2spoBHra1qdyvazo1_500.jpg

There may be two options but there is no free choice; all the weight of morality and godliness are on the one side and so only an ignorant or a stupid person would decide to separate himself from the correct path. If free will is considered to involve reasoned choice between plausible options, this is not it.

If we look at the functioning of democracy as an analogy, citizens are not exercising their freedoms if there is one experienced party and no credible opposition, or if there is no political awareness or only poor education. Yes they can still vote for the other party, but does the ruling group gain any legitimacy from the existence of this choice?

Just like with other Catholic concepts (eg marriage), I think if we want to keep them logically and consistently, they cannot be associated with the trappings of popular thought. Catholic ‘free will’ is remarkably different from my understanding of the concept!

 

[LaMBS]

I find that the biggest problem with the atheist’s argument is that they consider believing in God or not is the choice that either saves or condemns us. This choice is rather a choice which either enhances or inhibits our ability to make right decisions in the matters that do decide our fate. Belief in God without right action does not lead to salvation, to the contrary, it will cast us deeper into the pit.