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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Rose]

Fused on the subatomic level.

[Descan]

snip

That is a very good explanation. Quick question: When you said God wanted us to become as close to him as possible, what did you mean?

I'm gonna answer for him for this, though of course he can answer this himself:

My favourite interpretation of religion, and one I'd follow if I were inclined towards magical thinking.

[Orange Wizard]

I quite dislike the "with or against us" attitude all the Christian mythology has.

It's even funnier because Jesus said "if they are not against us then they are for us", which is a slightly awkwardly phrased way of saying that everyone who doesn't persecute Christians is our friend.

...

snip

That is a very good explanation. Quick question: When you said God wanted us to become as close to him as possible, what did you mean?

I only skim-read it, but it sounds like he means close to God in the tradition Christian sense of closeness to God - i.e., abstaining from sin, engaging in prayer and suchlike.
Honestly, I don't agree with that interpretation, but tbf most people don't really want to get behind the idea of a god who is notably cruel.

[Frumple]

I do agree with this though, angels appear to have free will.  While "free will" is a weird and nebulous concept, surely beings without free will can't rebel.  Like, by definition.

They can definitely be forced to abandon their positions of authority and whatnot, though. Go through all the motions of rebellion even if their will is set against it.*

Not really sure you can make the argument they couldn't have been forced to rebel outright as well, either... that (unfortunate) bit of retconning with the pharaoh paints the christian god as something entirely willing to strip something of its free will and screw with its head when the godcritter feels like there's a need. It may have been that the angels had free will, did not want to rebel, and was not given a choice. Or that they left heaven on god's command, or any number of things along those lines.

And yeah, the whole teaching/testing/responsibility thing kinda' falls apart in... quite a great number of situations. At least unless reincarnation is actually a thing (which, to be fair, some christian denominations hold to, to various degrees) -- soul can't exactly pick up much in the way of lesson from dying in utero, or starving before they can walk, or so on. Plus the thing's own actions flies in the face of that pretty hard -- there's not exactly a lesson to be learned from getting genocided, having your children murdered, your pregnant wives ripped apart, etc., etc., etc. If th'thing's intent is teaching it's really gorram bad at it. Either that or the people that wrote the text really screwed up the transcription, heh.

... it'd make a sort of sense that instead of cruel, the thing's just incredibly incompetent, though. Like, all powerful, all knowing, all good, but... kind of stupid (to the point of not figuring out how to use that omnipotence to fix the problem), and not really that good at using the tools available. Would explain a hell of a lot. Would also kinda' slot in with how we're really bad at dealing with information overload -- maybe we were substantially made in its image, and it's basically spent the last ever being mostly crippled by the omniscience. Less cruelty, more flailing migraine seizure.

*E: Well, set against it or nonexistent. As always, it's possible the people writing the text misinterpreted what happened, and saw rebellion or abandonment where there was only obedience.

[Telgin]

*snip*

Using punishment to improve someone's behavior makes sense under the circumstances you described, yeah.  If you don't have complete control over someone and want to discourage them from being bad, then it makes sense.  So, if you're trying to raise humanity to be more mature and refuse to just manhandle them into it, then that's a valid option.

The spanking analogy kind of falls apart if you believe in an eternal afterlife though.  To me at least, it seems extremely cruel to allow someone to have less than eternal bliss in exchange for misbehaving during a finite period of their life, when you could have stopped it completely by intervening directly.  If you don't believe that Hell is a place that humans go, or believe that all humans go to Heaven or nowhere, then it's not such a big deal.

That's the difference for a parent disciplining their kid.  Even if they set up a situation just to teach their kid a lesson, they have only limited control over their future and are just using the best tools they have.

Anyway, the thing about all of this is that it still kind of leaves open the questions of why God created us and why He thinks it's so important for us to find our own way in the universe.  Why not just show us the answer / program us to know it instinctively?

Ultimately it's unknowable I guess.  Why God does anything is unknowable, kind of like how His definition of good is probably very different from any human's, as terrifying as the thought is.

[Rolan7]

I do agree with this though, angels appear to have free will.  While "free will" is a weird and nebulous concept, surely beings without free will can't rebel.  Like, by definition.

They can definitely be forced to abandon their positions of authority and whatnot, though. Go through all the motions of rebellion even if their will is set against it.

Not really sure you can make the argument they couldn't have been forced to rebel outright as well, either... that (unfortunate) bit of retconning with the pharaoh paints the christian god as something entirely willing to strip something of its free will and screw with its head when the godcritter feels like there's a need. It may have been that the angels had free will, did not want to rebel, and was not given a choice. Or that they left heaven on god's command, or any number of things along those lines.

Yeah it could all be theater, with God pulling the strings...

The bit with Pharoah had a clear purpose, though.  Vindictive and atrocious (the firstborn) but a purpose:  Demonstrating God's power to the Israelites.  And to the Egyptians (except that they conveniently kept no record of the Jews ever even being present).

The war in heaven wasn't observed by mortals, though.  And demons don't show up much in the Bible...  I think they possessed some pigs, and drove a man into a raving fit?  Which Jesus took care of in front of witnesses.  But surely there was more to this elaborate production than *that*...  Maybe not though.

[Frumple]

The heart-hardening bit more than the rest of it, heh, and just as an example of the thing's willingness to violate the supposedly sacrosanct free will thing. Realistically, we're well aware at this point that the original writing had Ra doing that, but for those who believe the bible is infallible and/or correct-as-written-currently, it doesn't fly. Sort of an unfortunate catch twenty-two -- either there's more than one god (and the whole monotheism thing is wrong) or free will isn't actually that important to God, and a fair amount of common religious rhetoric is made vacuous. And neither is particularly palatable to a number of christian denominations, ha.

[Rolepgeek]

Where did the idea that angels had no free will but humans did come from anyway?  Was it supposed to be part of the explanation on why God created humans when angels already existed?  I don't remember it ever being stated in the Bible anywhere at least.

God didn't create Satan with sin, but he gave him free will which Satan used foolishly.

Or is it possible that Satan was created to betray God to set things in motion?  After all, wouldn't Satan have known it was impossible to overthrow God?  What would the point have been?

I find it interesting that some people say that Judas effectively did the same thing and betrayed Jesus because he had to in order to move things along.  It's not a completely crazy viewpoint.

Satan is not all knowing, so he did not know for certain that he couldn't overthrow God. He tied to get many angels on his side (there is a verse I think that says he got about 1/3 of all the angels) but God is all knowing, and all powerful so Satan didn't have a chance. Satan probably should have known that he couldn't ovethrow God, but his pride probably made him do foolish things.

Alternatively, he knew he couldn't overthrow God but, being of free will and wanting things to go in accordance with God's plan, which required an adversary to test His creations, rebelled, presenting such a high degree of subservience instead as pride to make the charade all the more convincing, perhaps eventually forgetting the original reason, and thereby fulfilling his role as both he and God intended.

To sacrifice one's soul for the sake of God is a far greater burden than merely the body. Judas Christ, in Hell forever for our sins.

Here's a notion: What if God is testing us for some utterly up fathomable purpose even higher than He is (even if it's just as simple as 'get on my level, punks'), but doesn't want us to succeed because then we would have to leave Him or change irrevocably to something which is not us, and His love is so great that this would be as unbearable as not helping us to succeed. So he rigs the test to be asymptotic.

Side note: Or Ra is a particularly powerful angel/demon which has been referred to as a god, but is not the God.

Oh! Other thing. Explanation of evil for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent entity if you believe in multiverse theory. He instantiates all possible universes with a sum total of good. This includes universes that do include some evil. We happen to be in one of them. (And yes, it's a shitton of universes given the tiny changes one can make. We did say omnipotent)

[Frumple]

Side note: Or Ra is a particularly powerful angel/demon which has been referred to as a god, but is not the God.

In that case, you'd have something subordinate to god in power violating something's free will, which... would instead replace the first bit of that catch 22 with "is not omnipotent"

[Rolepgeek]

Not really?

Humans violate each other's free will all the time. Literally forcing someone to do something, or changing their mind through wheedling tactics, or mind-affecting drugs...it still happens. If God doesn't prevent it, that just means he's not stopping them from using their free will to commit sin. 'Hardened his heart' could as easily mean a little whispering voice in the back of his head telling them how all those Jews are such terrible people and don't you remember the last time you listened to some whack job with a two-bit spirit backing him up?

[Orange Wizard]

The war in heaven wasn't observed by mortals, though.  And demons don't show up much in the Bible...  I think they possessed some pigs, and drove a man into a raving fit?  Which Jesus took care of in front of witnesses.  But surely there was more to this elaborate production than *that*...  Maybe not though.

I dunno, between the prophets and apostles, there's something like a few thousand instances of demons being driven out. Not all are recorded in detail, obviously, but much like Jesus' miracles, many are just mentioned in passing; "and then he went to X place and drove out many many demons and healed like two dozen blind men".

[Rolan7]

The war in heaven wasn't observed by mortals, though.  And demons don't show up much in the Bible...  I think they possessed some pigs, and drove a man into a raving fit?  Which Jesus took care of in front of witnesses.  But surely there was more to this elaborate production than *that*...  Maybe not though.

I dunno, between the prophets and apostles, there's something like a few thousand instances of demons being driven out. Not all are recorded in detail, obviously, but much like Jesus' miracles, many are just mentioned in passing; "and then he went to X place and drove out many many demons and healed like two dozen blind men".

Oh, yeah I forgot about those.  So perhaps the existence of demons throughout history was to allow Jesus and the saints to drive them out, showing their power?  I don't know if the apostles did, but I think saints are supposed to have that power.


(Unrelated rant deleted.  Suffice to say I'm still afraid of Christianity.  I think it's only as nice as it is, which isn't honestly much, because it's temporarily weakened.)
(I'd say it's better than Shariah law at least, but...  Comparing the two religions at their heights...)

[Rolepgeek]

The same is true of any philosophy, Rolan. That's how the brain works. If your tribe is in power, that means it's your turn to get back at all those jerks who oppressed your ancestors. Or keep them from getting power so they can get back at your for something that totally wasn't your fault, you never even got to meet grand-dad. Can go for non-religious philosophies too, up to and including rationality. It's just not in power (though Science is, in large part, and most denial of that goes to show how deeply embedded it is that we consider it not in power because it isn't stronger...and science unfortunately uses something similar to this quite a bit. Less formalized, more focused internally, thankfully, but there's a lot of issues that self-perpetuate and result in a lot of unhappy people)

[Tiruin]

The same is true of any philosophy, Rolan. That's how the brain works. If your tribe is in power, that means it's your turn to get back at all those jerks who oppressed your ancestors. Or keep them from getting power so they can get back at your for something that totally wasn't your fault, you never even got to meet grand-dad. Can go for non-religious philosophies too, up to and including rationality. It's just not in power (though Science is, in large part, and most denial of that goes to show how deeply embedded it is that we consider it not in power because it isn't stronger...and science unfortunately uses something similar to this quite a bit. Less formalized, more focused internally, thankfully, but there's a lot of issues that self-perpetuate and result in a lot of unhappy people)

>_>
"That's how the brain works." is very misleading to say, in the least.

[origamiscienceguy]

The war in heaven wasn't observed by mortals, though.  And demons don't show up much in the Bible...  I think they possessed some pigs, and drove a man into a raving fit?  Which Jesus took care of in front of witnesses.  But surely there was more to this elaborate production than *that*...  Maybe not though.

I dunno, between the prophets and apostles, there's something like a few thousand instances of demons being driven out. Not all are recorded in detail, obviously, but much like Jesus' miracles, many are just mentioned in passing; "and then he went to X place and drove out many many demons and healed like two dozen blind men".

Oh, yeah I forgot about those.  So perhaps the existence of demons throughout history was to allow Jesus and the saints to drive them out, showing their power?  I don't know if the apostles did, but I think saints are supposed to have that power.

All of the apostles drove out the demons in Jesus' name. In fact, as far as I remember, all of their miracles were done in Jesus' name. So the apostles made it clear that they themselves didn't have the power, but only God did.