Understanding free choice by God

  • Thread starter Thread starter k5thbeatle
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
K

k5thbeatle

Guest
I know what I want to say but I often find myself at loss for words when debating an atheist acquaintance of mine. Here is essentially his argument;

*What choice? Believe without evidence or go to hell for eternity? Obey your parents or be stoned to death? Look straight ahead or be turned to a pillar of salt? Worship only me or endure my plagues and pestilences? Pray the gay away or die, pervert? These are not choices that anyone would consider benevolent.

If I offered my kids choices like this, would you consider me a moral person? “Do what I said because I said so or die”, “respect me or I will cause you physical harm”. *

In essence his line of thinking is that one really has no real choice about believing in God. If one doesn’t believe then they are essentially choosing eternal death which really is no choice. Hoping someone here can help me with some thoughts/words as to how to counter this line of thinking?

Thanks
 
The problem with his argument is that it’s one sided. It’s like free choice is a one sided coin. Ain’t no such thing.

The alternative to hell is Heaven, a beatitude so great nobody on Earth can understand it.

It’s llike God saying, “One dollar buys you a winning lottery ticket. I guarantee it.”
and you say, “Sorry. I want to keep my dollar, but I wish I had a roof to sleep under someday.”
 
This argument seems to be more about a complaint of the fact that our choices have consequences. God has made it so when we choose things in accordance with his will they have good consequences and when we choose things against his will it has bad consequences. Is he really arguing that the fact that there are consequences for our actions means there is no free will? It seems he wants to save his cake and eat it too. He wants to be able to choose to make decisions that distance himself from God, without distancing himself from God…
 
Nate13 said:
This argument seems to be more about a complaint of the fact that our choices have consequences. God has made it so when we choose things in accordance with his will they have good consequences and when we choose things against his will it has bad consequences. Is he really arguing that the fact that there are consequences for our actions means there is no free will? It seems he wants to save his cake and eat it too. He wants to be able to choose to make decisions that distance himself from God, without distancing himself from God…
Click to expand...
A true and appropriate festive analogy. Happy Christmas! 🙂
 
k5thbeatle said:
I know what I want to say but I often find myself at loss for words when debating an atheist acquaintance of mine. Here is essentially his argument…]
Click to expand...
What I’ve seen from interacting in these forums is that the semantics for the phrase “free choice” are not agreed upon. One usage of the term describes the ability to make a decision. Consideration of the expected consequences for that decision or something inhibiting ones ability to act on that decision are a side matter. Under other uses “free choice” entails the ability to make a decision and act on it without some one else willfully using force to nullify the act and without the use of coercive persuasion by another to shape the person’s decision. (There have been other definitions and semantics offered in this forum, but these are the two I have noticed the most). My suggestion: because of the different interpretations associated with this term you may be able to more effectively render your thoughts in a manner that the person you are speaking to can better understand by staying away from this phrase. Use some other description that you think will be less impacted by differences in semantics.

The other obstacle I expect you to encounter is at what point should something be considered the reasonable consequences of an action and at what point is it considered coercion? What level of of coercion is considered unreasonable? I don’t think there’s a solid answer here. This question is more subjective, though there are some criteria for this codified in some laws (crime of duress). But in many nations by today’s standards the consequences of actions prescribed by the books of the old testament may be seen as draconian.

I’ve got to ask what your goal is in engaging in debate with this person? Is it primarily to defend your stance? Is it to try to change his? Is this debate in which you too engage for fun? Are you both trying to get a better understanding for each other? Making known your motivation(s) for your interactions with this acquaintance may contribute to a more fitting answer.
 
k5thbeatle said:
I know what I want to say but I often find myself at loss for words when debating an atheist acquaintance of mine. Here is essentially his argument;

*What choice? Believe without evidence or go to hell for eternity? Obey your parents or be stoned to death? Look straight ahead or be turned to a pillar of salt? Worship only me or endure my plagues and pestilences? Pray the gay away or die, pervert? These are not choices that anyone would consider benevolent.

If I offered my kids choices like this, would you consider me a moral person? “Do what I said because I said so or die”, “respect me or I will cause you physical harm”. *

In essence his line of thinking is that one really has no real choice about believing in God. If one doesn’t believe then they are essentially choosing eternal death which really is no choice. Hoping someone here can help me with some thoughts/words as to how to counter this line of thinking?

Thanks
Click to expand...
You can turn it around and phrase it like this: To not know God is to be dead, which is why it can be said we taste death already in this life-because it’s basically a life exiled from God. To not believe in God is to be cut off from/unconscious of the source of our life. And since we’re born that way, we’re already one foot in hell now, like Prodigals experiencing life away from the Father. So God simply wants us to learn here what He already knows, that we need Him in order to have life and have it “abundantly” ; no lasting peace and happiness is possible without Him. Because here we literally know good and evil-the good of creation but the evil of being separated from the Creator.

We’re free to not heed* any* commands-that was Adam & Eve’s desire-to have no limitations-not even one obligation to God, and the ultimate command could be summed up simply by, ‘Thou shalt love’. And who can argue with that? St John of the Cross, a doctor of the Church, put it this way:

“At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love”

And St Basil said this:
If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children.

And love can be prompted and gifted to and drawn from us, but it can never be forced-and God doesn’t want it to be.
 
Thanks for all the great replies. Much appreciated. To answer a few questions brought up I think where he has a problem and where we disagree (we disagree on many points) is that he sees the choice to believe as more a “do this or be tortured” like being in a rock or a hard place where of course you’d almost have to be a fool not to believe as who wants to burn? Hence he sees this a more coercion versus a choice. The problem as I see it is he believes choices should be freely made with no consequences but again he sees it as being coerced? “Pick me or get your hand burned” in that when the opposite choice is greatly negative it really isn’t a free choice somehow??? I’m trying to phrase his thinking as best I can here.

Also to answer another poster I am talking with him to defend my position and yes, to maybe hopefully get him to change his thinking?

Thanks
 
Just one more observation (well ok 2 more :)) In the last mmm…say ten years or so it seems like I have met more and more people who claim to be atheists.😦 But what really surprises me (well not really) is how little these so called atheists really know about Catholicism or Christianity? I mean if your going to argue a point at least know what the opposing side really professes.
 
This section from the Book of Job to me is an excellent example of free choice made by God to satan. You may not clearly see the example of free choice, but in this short example there is a very good lesson on the topic. I hope you can share this thought with me. My heart is in 2 lines. First, 8 and then verses 11 and 12. Blessings on this year’s Christmas Season.
The Interview Between the Lord and the Satan.
One day, when the sons of God* came to present themselves before the LORD, the satan also came among them. 7. The LORD said to the satan, “Where have you been?” Then the satan answered the LORD and said,d “Roaming the earth and patrolling it.” 8.The LORD said to the satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him, blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil.” 9. The satan answered the LORD and said, “Is it for nothing that Job is God-fearing? 10. Have you not surrounded him and his family and all that he has with your protection? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock are spread over the land. 11. But now put forth your hand and touch all that he has, and surely he will curse you to your face.” 12. The LORD said to the satan, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on him.” So the satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
Click to expand...
 
Here’s something he always uses on me;

“You can choose to believe in me or take a sharp stick in the eye. So of course you don’t want the sharp stick in the eye so you choose to believe in me but not because you really choose that but because you just want to avoid injury to the eye, i.e. the negative. Given two choices where one was not so negative you might choose differently?”

I don’t know quite how to answer this?
 
k5thbeatle said:
Here’s something he always uses on me;

“You can choose to believe in me or take a sharp stick in the eye. So of course you don’t want the sharp stick in the eye so you choose to believe in me but not because you really choose that but because you just want to avoid injury to the eye, i.e. the negative. Given two choices where one was not so negative you might choose differently?”

I don’t know quite how to answer this?
Click to expand...
I too am finding more people proclaiming they are athiest with similar examples and questions. I also find that no matter how many answers to how many questions they can throw at you they will come back to you with another difficult question, to the extent that I question my faith as well.

Choose what you can’t see or go to hell… how do you respond to that with out being outlandish in your response. I find myself asking the same question. Only because I haven’t found a good enough answer.

Help Please!
 
chazcheh said:
… they will come back to you with another difficult question, to the extent that I question my faith as well.

Choose what you can’t see or go to hell… how do you respond to that with out being outlandish in your response. I find myself asking the same question. Only because I haven’t found a good enough answer.

Help Please!
Click to expand...
Just to clarify, I am NOT questioning my faith and am sorry if I gave that impression despite never having stated such. I just find that on such occasions my thoughts are difficult to express verbally in response. 😉
 
k5thbeatle said:
Just to clarify, I am NOT questioning my faith and am sorry if I gave that impression despite never having stated such. I just find that on such occasions my thoughts are difficult to express verbally in response. 😉
Click to expand...
I understand, and you never gave that impression. These are just my thoughts only. I guess I may be in early stages of learning about my faith, and sometimes the answers to some of those questions are just not convincing enough for me, let alone someone who totally doesn’t believe. The more I delve into my faith the more questions I have
 
I think the fact that religion forces us to make that choice is the problem.

Essentially Christianity is ‘turn or burn’ in it’s outlook. If you don’t make that decision you burn. It’s a form of coercion which personally doesn’t sound like a loving god.
 
I think the fact that religion forces us to make that choice is the problem.
Click to expand...
Essentially Christianity is ‘turn or burn’ in it’s outlook. If you don’t make that decision you burn. It’s a form of coercion which personally doesn’t sound like a loving god.
Click to expand...
I suppose you hate your parents for forcing you to live in this valley of tears? :confused:
 
Spyral said:
I think the fact that religion forces us to make that choice is the problem.

Essentially Christianity is ‘turn or burn’ in it’s outlook. If you don’t make that decision you burn. It’s a form of coercion which personally doesn’t sound like a loving god.
Click to expand...
That might be OK if it wasn’t for the moral evil that has it’s way in this world. The bottom line message is that, without God and on his own, man won’t necessarily do the “right thing”; he may in fact do a great deal of harm to his fellow human, even more than might make sense for purely selfish reasons. Animals can be savage out of instinct but humans can be deliberately much more savage for no good reason at all.

So maybe a choice *is *in order for humans. Maybe making a choice would tend to alleviate a condition that opens the door to moral relativism and all the evil that it makes possible. The Church teaches that Adam & Eve didn’t want any limitations whatsoever, no moral obligation to anything superior to themselves that might claim to have a right to their obedience. IOW, they wanted to be God. This is why the first commandment is to have no other Gods before Him. And why the greatest commandments sum up all of the rest with, ‘Love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself’.

But we don’t even want the constraints that* love *would make upon us-we want no constraints at all, cuz maybe they’ll give us an inferiority complex or something, I don’t know, but I believe this is why we have the world we have in any case.
 
k5thbeatle said:
Here’s something he always uses on me;

“You can choose to believe in me or take a sharp stick in the eye. So of course you don’t want the sharp stick in the eye so you choose to believe in me but not because you really choose that but because you just want to avoid injury to the eye, i.e. the negative. Given two choices where one was not so negative you might choose differently?”

I don’t know quite how to answer this?
Click to expand...
This sounds very much like John Wesley. He is the founder of the Methodist in the early American religious movements. His sermons were the direct result of the translation from Latin to the King James Bible version. Wesley’s sermons were directed towards the persons who were coming out of pagan worships…many were having trouble letting go the ideals of a helping pagan god. The Roman Catholic Church was the first to make an effort in England to reconsider Jesus Christ as Lord, and John Wesley, in America, taught the same catholic principles to new Americans who were coming away from England for even more religious freedom.

These three are really good in what you wrote about above…
*The Almost Christian
A Caution against Bigotry
The Circumcision of the Heart * :yup:
 
I was recently on a website called godandscience.com and I found this site very helpful in answering this particular question. Let me know what you think
 
The problem is his argument is written from the point of view that God is saying “do this or die”, when in fact God is saying “if you do this you will live.” It’s an offer of salvation, not a threat of death. The entire point of the law was to teach us that sin meant spiritual death.

As to the argument that a just God wouldn’t send anyone to hell, why would a merciful God force someone who wants nothing to do with Him to spend eternity in His presence? Isn’t an act of love to allow someone to choose that if they want to spend their entire eternity away from God that they can do so?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top