The constructor and free will

[marty1818]

Hitetlen:

I wish you would not have taken the word “complain” in literal sense. He is not supposed to be “disappointed” either, disappointment comes from unfulfilled expectations, and if God already knows the outcome, he is unable to have “expectations”. The word “complain” means that God is dissatisfied with the result. He has no right to be dissatisfied, because whatever happened, happened according to his will. If he still does not like it, he has only himself to blame.

What I was getting at was that God is not necessarily that he is disappointed with the outcome because He knows what it is, however, He still desires for everyone to choose Him, even though not everyone will.

How do you define “just”? If your definition is “whatever God wills”, that is an incorrect definition. “Just” means that the punishment is commensurate to the deed. A finite “crime” can never be punished by an infinite punishment and still be called “just”.

If God is just why would his punishments not be just? Simply because you and I cannot understand God’s just punishments doesn’t mean they are unjust.

No, he could have denied free will, or could have restricted it, so we would be able to make selections, choices (meaningful ones) but not choices he does not want us to make. In a very good sense, true “free will” is more of a burden than a gift - but only if undesirable decisions are punished.

You must have free will in order to having a loving relationship. You cannot force people to love you. In only allowing us to choose things that are pleasing to God, He would be restricting our free will because we can’t choose anything unpleasing to God. If we have restricted free will we can’t be in a loving relationship with God and a loving relationship is what God desires.

No ones wishes to be tortured forever. If “hell” would mean whatever the person enjoys most - outside God’s presence, it would be an acceptable doctrine. But hell is for punishment, plain and simple, for deeds that God could foresee, could have prevented and still allowed to happen.

The person doesn’t have to enjoy hell. They won’t because it is not a pleasent place, however, they used their free will to commit acts that would send them there so hell was a willful choice for them. God knows all that will happen, but that doesn’t mean he will prevent it from happening. To prevent us from doing bad things, God is infringing upon our free will. Free will is a must in order for God to have a loving relationship with us. If you don’t understand or accept that statement, you won’t understand what I am explaining.

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

Hitetlen:

I wish you would not have taken the word “complain” in literal sense. He is not supposed to be “disappointed” either, disappointment comes from unfulfilled expectations, and if God already knows the outcome, he is unable to have “expectations”. The word “complain” means that God is dissatisfied with the result. He has no right to be dissatisfied, because whatever happened, happened according to his will. If he still does not like it, he has only himself to blame.

How do you define “just”? If your definition is “whatever God wills”, that is an incorrect definition. “Just” means that the punishment is commensurate to the deed. A finite “crime” can never be punished by an infinite punishment and still be called “just”.

No, he could have denied free will, or could have restricted it, so we would be able to make selections, choices (meaningful ones) but not choices he does not want us to make. In a very good sense, true “free will” is more of a burden than a gift - but only if undesirable decisions are punished.

No ones wishes to be tortured forever. If “hell” would mean whatever the person enjoys most - outside God’s presence, it would be an acceptable doctrine. But hell is for punishment, plain and simple, for deeds that God could foresee, could have prevented and still allowed to happen.

I have seen someone stating that hell is the manifestation of God’s love and mercy: he “allows” us to be free of him, if we so desire. Never in my life have I seen such a perverted rationalization. Why not say it with the Bible: God is jealous, vengeful, angry? At least it would be intellectually honest.

The Bible is a book about God’s wisdom. As such, understanding of it can only be gained through prayerful reading, through humility and listening to the shepherds appointed by Christ (The Catholic Church)

I understand your frustration. I had a similar frustration with the book of Deuteronomy and the things that it relates God saying and doing. The Bible is authentic, but all language is interpreted through the reader and the reader’s thoughts and prejudice.

The Bible is the most dangerous book in existence for what it is and for what people assume it means.

The Bible also says that God is love. How do we reconcile? First with humility and then with an understanding that we have an eternal destiny. Also in context of the scriptural authors, divinely inspired.

I claim the Catholic Church as my church precisely for the difficulty with which you struggle: specific issues with the nature of Him. Only the Catholic CHurch has that explicit–very very explicit mandate from Christ. No other Church has this. Its where protestants and muslims fail, because books are only as good as the minds who read them, not the authors who write them.

Believe you me, I hear you. It seems like their are two Gods one angry and jealous and one of Love. I believe God is Love, but he is also the Way and the Truth. Thos are some heavy concepts and it does not, nor should it surprise us that we are gonna be mystified on occassion.

But the practice of the Catholic faith yields good fruit. Devotions yield good fruit; I believe it–I know through this action we get a better understanding of Him, too. I stood and prayed in Church and I thought to myself–now I worship, whether I make it or no, now, now I choose Him. And I knew in my heart that the choice was all about His love. This is experiential knowlege and not valid for you, but . . .heh, heh… you can try it for yourself as we discussed in another thread

peace

 

[Strider]

I’ve got to jump in, here. As with most scenarios athiests try to set up to demonstrate the “flaws” in the Christian God, there are so many holes that the analogy immediately breaks down.
As has been posted above, God didn’t just “make us,” give us free will and turn us loose. The Natural Law, (I think I referred to it as the “don’t hit the girl” law) is written in every heart. We all know it instinctively. Like all laws, we have the ability to violate it.
Another concept all of us have is conscience. It tells us that we
shouldn’t break the law, but doesn’t prevent us from doing so.
It also informs us that there are consequences to our actions.
Then there’s Divine Revelation. Start with the Ten Commandments, if you like and go from there.
Better yet, start with Adam and Eve in the Garden. Time & space does not permit a description how perfect Adam and Eve and all or creation were. God gave them only one commandment. They were tempted and blew it for all of us. Not only did The Fall affect all subsequent humans, but creation as well.
“But that’s not fair!” many say. “I didn’t do anything wrong. How come I have to suffer for what Adam did?”
It’s absolutely fair. Adam, the prototypical man, disobeyed the only command God gave him. I refer to the result as a “spiritual mutation.” We are all only shadows of the creatures God created and honored by giving them free will.
Since then, God has been giving us the rules to follow if we want to return to that original state. They’re all written down. They are demanding, but that’s to be expected. We also still have that free will.
“But bad things happen to good people through no fault of their own. That’s not fair!”
Blame Adam. In the universe God created, no Tsunami’s or hurricanes occurred. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, creation itself was affected. Besides, we have no idea what happens to those good people after death, or the bad ones, for that matter, though there are hints.
I have noticed that this is the sticking point for many athiests – the “bad things happen to good people,” observation. And yes, bad things do hapen to good people.
And if God had limited or tampered with free will in any way, that would have negated the value of the reward or the severity of the punishmnent. What kind of a test would that have been: “You can do x and y and still go to heaven, but z will send you to hell, so I will not permit you to do z.”
But do you want to talk about unfair? How about if God, because he loves his creation so much and knows there is nothing they can do by themselves to save themselves, humiliates himself by going through the entire life of a man, from conception, development, birth, learning, ect. and then, being ABSOLUTELY PERFECT AND SINLESS, takes all the sins of man of all time to himself and voluntarily goes through a sadistic torture and agonizing death to atone for every one of those sins if only those who committed them will ask for forgiveness and absolution in the way he prescribed, or even just as best they can.
**That’s ** unfair – to him. That’s the God I believe in.
And, please, start a new thread if you want answers to how “cruel” God seems to be in the Old Testament. That’s a whole new topic .

 

[Hitetlen]

frogman80:

What rule do you (Hitetlen) define that which is good, and that which is bad? For us Catholics this boils down to “Choosing God”, “Not choosing God.” Again, I realize you don’t accept this, but you do have some basis for what you consider good and bad… what is this basis?

As a matter of fact, I understand it and accept that for you this is the ultimate decision. Where we differ is that there are other decisions which are also very important. To define “free will” as freedom to do the ultimate decision only is a logical error of oversimplification.

Lets refine the problem: even if this ultimate decision would have been left free, and the rest would be somewhat restricted, the world as we know it today would be incomparably better: no murders, no hate, no despicable acts - not because they are “forbidden” or “impossible”, just because no one would be inclined to do them. Everyone would be left free to believe or disbelieve in God (observe that I don’t use the words “accept” or “reject” - they both require actual knowledge about God’s existence! Faith is simply not enough.) This world would be filled with philanthropy, with worldly love, helpfulness, no misery, no poverty. And your concept of free will would be left alone.

Please don’t even attempt to say that such a world is impossible. It would be an insult to all the good people who unselfishly live their lives without hurting others. To say that only believers are capable to live such a life would be worse than an insult. It would be a deliberate falsehood.

---

The basic problem as I see it is mostly linguistical in nature. Believers call God “loving”, and do not mind that anyone else doing things God allegedly did would condemn that person to be called absolutely evil.

Belivers call God “just” and if a court would mete out sentences God allegedly does would resort in uproar about the injustice of these sentences.

This is the basic problem: we attempt talk to each other, and there is a mutual misunderstanding. I blame the believers: they wish to assign positive attributes to their God, and in doing so they steal words and twist them out of their proper meaning. Word have meanings to allow mutual understanding: they cannot be used arbitrarily just for the fun of it.

 

[RobNY]

Hitetlen:

Lets refine the problem: even if this ultimate decision would have been left free, and the rest would be somewhat restricted, the world as we know it today would be incomparably better: no murders, no hate, no despicable acts - not because they are “forbidden” or “impossible”, just because no one would be inclined to do them.

Without free will, acts have no moral value. The world could not be ‘better’ or ‘worse.’ Those terms are meaningless in lieu of any moral agents to be making good or bad decisions.

Everyone would be left free to believe or disbelieve in God

As everyone currently is. The problem you have with it is that these actions have consequences.

(observe that I don’t use the words “accept” or “reject” - they both require actual knowledge about God’s existence! Faith is simply not enough.)

The very fact that we are arguing about God shows that we have knowledge about Him. Faith necessitates knowledge, but it bars certainty (of the empirical sort).

This world would be filled with philanthropy, with worldly love, helpfulness, no misery, no poverty. And your concept of free will would be left alone.

And a world full of machines might be filled with these things too, but these actions have no moral value apart from the decision of someone’s free will to act them.

Please don’t even attempt to say that such a world is impossible.

Impossible? No. Pointless? Yes.

It would be an insult to all the good people who unselfishly live their lives without hurting others.

There is more to being unselfish than not hurting others.

The basic problem as I see it is mostly linguistical in nature. Believers call God “loving”, and do not mind that anyone else doing things God allegedly did would condemn that person to be called absolutely evil.

What exactly are we talking about now? The free will to make choices on one’s own? This is absolutely evil? To the contrary, it is free will and the ability to love that gives us dignity, what makes us ‘in the image of God.’ For us to be in the ‘image of God,’ in this way is to necessitate that we can reject the good as well.

Belivers call God “just” and if a court would mete out sentences God allegedly does would resort in uproar about the injustice of these sentences.

A court is not God. It would be outrageous because a court is not a perfect being, nor does it have the authority to mete out such sentences. It would likewise be outrageous if I was tried for a crime in the courts of Yugoslavia for a crime committed in America, if simply for no other reason than jurisdiction. God has jurisdiction over our souls; your court does not.

This is the basic problem: we attempt talk to each other, and there is a mutual misunderstanding.

I agree, it’s difficult for each of us (that is, each side) to talk.

I blame the believers:

Color me surprised.

they wish to assign positive attributes to their God, and in doing so they steal words and twist them out of their proper meaning.

With all due respect, Catholics have had definitions of terms such as free will, natural law, good and evil for far longer than modern athiesm has. If anything, your defintions are the twisting.

But it is nonsense to claim anyone is ‘twisting,’ definitions. Some of us simply have different definitions of terms. That is why it is customary to define terms before a debate starts, not because either side is ‘twisting,’ terms, but because they mean different things by them.

Word have meanings to allow mutual understanding: they cannot be used arbitrarily just for the fun of it.

There is a difference between the meaning of words and of terms. Terms are going to be different based on who you speak to. This is why we define terms.

 

[Hitetlen]

Flopfoot:

Not you again Hitetlen! I should stop reading your threads, they make me think too much. But, I’ve read it now, so maybe I’ll try forming a response, see if that helps. Ohterwise, you might recieve the dubious ‘honor’ of being the first person to go on my ignore list.

Now I am confused. Was this first paragraph a praise or a put-down?

Flopfoot:

Ok, so basically to translate your analogy - this following paragraph is according to you. Therefore the car is not really choosing to obey the engineer if it does drive safely - it is just doing the only thing it can do.

Excellent way to put it.

Flopfoot:

Basically (IMHO) God is not just concerned with what his creatures do, but in a way He is concerned with their will - why they do it, sort of. Animals all act out of instinct and can’t actually ‘sin’, hence they can’t offend God, But it doesn’t give any glory to God for an animal to act out of instinct, because that’s just the way it was made. If humans acted out of instinct or even limited free will, it wouldn’t give any glory to God that they choose not to sin, since there are no choices to sin. God wants humans to do good because they love, which is an act of the will - not just do good because that’s how they were programmed.

What “glory” can there be from the worship of vastly inferior beings? This idea is very anthropomorphic. An intellect of God’s magnitude could not care about such mundane things. He might be interested in the way we “pan out”, by giving us freedom, but that is all.

Flopfoot:

God wanted to make man in His own image. How can a creature be in communion with God if it is not in some way like God? If man had limited free will then he would be like an animal. Animals can’t talk to God. They don’t go to heaven or hell, because they can’t make any decisions. You know? Man is not a car. If I was an engineer making driverless cars then I wouldn’t give them the free will to crash. But God making humans is a different matter.

In his image? In what way? Does God have a body? Obviously not. The only way we could “resemble” God is in our intellect, but that resemblance could not go very far, given our vastly inferior abilities. Not to mention that God forbade us from tasting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, lest we become “too much” like him.

If you were designing that car, you would not allow it to crash. That is a commendable decision. I would not allow it either.

 

[Hitetlen]

MichaelTDoyle:

The Bible is the most dangerous book in existence for what it is and for what people assume it means.

I could not agree more with you. Anything and everything and their opposites can be substantiated based upon the Bible, if one searches diligently enough. In my eyes that is the ultimate proof that it is NOT of divine origin. How could a perfect being be the source of such confusion? A text which can be used to support anything you want? It is just a mildly interesting semi-historical collection of tales (some of which can be interpreted to convey generally accepted morally good statements, which are not unique to the Bible).

MichaelTDoyle:

The Bible also says that God is love. How do we reconcile? First with humility and then with an understanding that we have an eternal destiny. Also in context of the scriptural authors, divinely inspired.

How is that possible? If “love” means something different when applied to humans and when applied to God, all we have is confusion. It is a logical error to try to substantiate God’s existence based upon the Bible, while also asserting that the Bible is God’s word. That is circular reasoning.

MichaelTDoyle:

Believe you me, I hear you. It seems like their are two Gods one angry and jealous and one of Love. I believe God is Love, but he is also the Way and the Truth. Thos are some heavy concepts and it does not, nor should it surprise us that we are gonna be mystified on occassion.

Well, at least I can understand you, even if we disagree. That is a very good outcome of these conversations.

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

Hitetlen:

I

How is that possible? If “love” means something different when applied to humans and when applied to God, all we have is confusion. .

Love has the same meaning, but human love I believe is a reflection of the Divine. Perhaps think of it as a subset, or as imperfected. How this is expressed for Christians is most clearly in the Passion, which if you want to know more I would reccomend praying the Rosary (ewtn.com/Devotionals/prayers/rosary/ click on the how to pray link). There’s no logical error. A blind man can be forgiven for touching an elephant and thinking it a snake, though he did find out some data about the thing he touched, e.g. it was alive.

So we can not wholly comprehend God, but can come to know Him better through what we have discussed.

It is a logical error to try to substantiate God’s existence based upon the Bible, while also asserting that the Bible is God’s word. That is circular reasoning

Absolutely. The Bible is not a prooftext; it is a book concerning God’s wisdom. Wisdom does not easily yield to just reason, never yields to arrogance.

peace

 

[Strider]

Hitetlen:

What “glory” can there be from the worship of vastly inferior beings? This idea is very anthropomorphic. An intellect of God’s magnitude could not care about such mundane things. He might be interested in the way we “pan out”, by giving us freedom, but that is all.

Trying to define what God cares about is really beyond our abilities.

Hitetlen:

In his image? In what way? Does God have a body? Obviously not. The only way we could “resemble” God is in our intellect, but that resemblance could not go very far, given our vastly inferior abilities. Not to mention that God forbade us from tasting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, lest we become “too much” like him.

Like him in the sense of having the dignity of a person, of having self-knowledge and self-possession; capable of freely giving oneself to another person; of having an intellect and a will.
And it wasn’t the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge,” that he forbade, it was the fruit of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” that was off-limits. That’s the reason Adam and Eve were embarrassed by their nakedness as soon as they’d eaten the fruit. They exprienced lust (evil) for the first time.
I still don’t think we are on the same page when it comet to “Free Will.” Let me try Peter Kreeft’s example, with my own experience thrown in.
I have five grandchildren. I have an old, out-of-tune upright piano in the basement. At some point, usually around five years old, every one of those grandchilodren, in turn, asked if they could “play the piano.”
They would bang away on the old keyboard, making the most goshawful racket until my ears couldn’t take the abuse any more and I told them to stop. They were completely free to strike any key or combination of keys in any sequence they wanted. This is not freedom: it is license and, on a piano, it is unpleasant noise.
Now assume that my oldest grandaughter, who is sixteen now, began taking piano lessons at age six. She spent numberless hours learning notes and playing scales and drills and practiced music until she trained her muscles to play an entire Mozart symhony, thus producing beautiful sounds. This is true freedom: Follow specified and restrictive rules, work very hard, be disciplined of your own accord, persist and you will have the freedom to make beautiful music, dance beautiful ballets, write better software, do better research…you get the idea.
Or, mess around and never play anything but a sour note.
In Catholic theology, I will to submit myself to God’s demands as best I can.
That’s really all he asks: that we trust him completely. If I turn away from him, I am making myself my own god. That’s against one of those rules he gave us.