ForumsWEPRThe Religion Debate Thread

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nichodemus
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nichodemus
14,991 posts
Grand Duke

So yeah, our threads on religion have long since died out, so I figured it would be time to start afresh here!

Do you believe God exists (I know almost all of you don't)? Do you feel religion is important today? Is it a force for good? Discuss everything related to that here!

I'm going to start the ball rolling:

We all know about the rise of ISIS and the terrible acts it perpetuates. Does that show that Islam and religion in general is an awful concept? Is it the people who twist it? Or is it fundamentally an evil force?

Roping in the WERP frequenters
@MageGrayWolf @Kasic @Hahiha @FishPreferred @Doombreed @09philj

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HahiHa
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HahiHa
8,256 posts
Regent

Yeah. That's what I mean.

Okay. Though that means I am not responsible for my salvation, and cannot be punished for not believing in God as I am not 'regenerated'.

JW has something similar. 144000 of the most righteous will join God in heaven, while the rest live in paradise on earth.

That is awfully specific XD
Does remind me a bit of what I read about Sethian gnostics in the context of the Judas gospel. Apparently, they believed only some people even have an eternal soul, namely those descending from Seth.

Even though He knows what choices we are gonna make, it's still possible for us to have a free will.

That is logically unsound. If we had true free will, it would be impossible to know how we will act.

It's not like He is just gonna suddenly change our desires because that will limit our free will.

Having desires at all is already a limitation of our free will. If He wanted us to make a choice, then He shouldn't have given us desires. Punishing us because we act on those desires is like punishing a kid for eating the cookie we placed in front of it; it can be technically justified, but it is deliberate and cruel.
lozerfac3
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lozerfac3
978 posts
Farmer

Okay. Though that means I am not responsible for my salvation, and cannot be punished for not believing in God as I am not 'regenerated'.
You are punished for sinning though.

That is logically unsound. If we had true free will, it would be impossible to know how we will act.
Who said? And why?

Having desires at all is already a limitation of our free will. If He wanted us to make a choice, then He shouldn't have given us desires. Punishing us because we act on those desires is like punishing a kid for eating the cookie we placed in front of it; it can be technically justified, but it is deliberate and cruel.
If we don't have any desires then where do our choices come from? Surely our choices are not random. There has to be a reason for our choices.
HahiHa
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HahiHa
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Regent

You are punished for sinning though.

It's God's fault, though. As he hasn't regenerated me, I am yet incapable of accepting Christ and repenting.

Who said? And why?

Can you define free will in your own words, please? Because the way I understand the concept, it should logically defy predetermination. A choice could be predicted, but never known.

If we don't have any desires then where do our choices come from? Surely our choices are not random. There has to be a reason for our choices.

Of course there's a reason for our choices. You're talking to an adherent of determinism who doesn't believe in free will All I'm saying is, we could make a decision based on reason without necessarily feeling a desire for a particular choice. Our free will would be intact as long as we have the possibility to make a choice, we don't need to be pushed towards one in particular.
lozerfac3
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lozerfac3
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Farmer

It's God's fault, though. As he hasn't regenerated me, I am yet incapable of accepting Christ and repenting.
You don't deserve to be regenerated though.

Can you define free will in your own words, please? Because the way I understand the concept, it should logically defy predetermination. A choice could be predicted, but never known.
I never said anything about predetermination, that's for sure. Let me redirect you back to R. C. Sproul. Here.
HahiHa
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HahiHa
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Regent

You don't deserve to be regenerated though.

Well that's harsh ^^ Why not? And how do you even know?

I never said anything about predetermination, that's for sure. Let me redirect you back to R. C. Sproul. Here.

I don't care much about that Sproul guy. I want to hear your definition, if you please.

To help you understand what I mean, here's what you said:
"Even though He knows what choices we are gonna make, it's still possible for us to have a free will. "

If God already knows for certain what choice you are going to make, then logically, your choice is predetermined. My understanding of the concept of free will is that it cannot possibly be known beforehand, as it would be entirely independent of any outside factors. Which it cannot be considering how our brain works, which is why I don't think there's any truth to that (and also I don't think we have souls, and a soul would have been the only thing that could explain a true free will). But that last part is not really important right now.
lozerfac3
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lozerfac3
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Farmer

Well that's harsh ^^ Why not? And how do you even know?
The same reason you deserve to go to hell.

I don't care much about that Sproul guy. I want to hear your definition, if you please.
My definition is his definition. Free will is self-determination; you must choose based on your strongest inclinations.

If God already knows for certain what choice you are going to make, then logically, your choice is predetermined. My understanding of the concept of free will is that it cannot possibly be known beforehand, as it would be entirely independent of of any outside factors.
There is something wrong with that logic that I can't quite explain. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding something.
HahiHa
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HahiHa
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Regent

The same reason you deserve to go to hell.

Sooo, I'm going to hell because God refuses to regenerate me because He thinks I'll succumb to my desire to sin despite a stronger inclination to accept Christ after being regenerated; desire to sin that stems from that time when some very distant ancestors were tricked into doing something God forbade them to do but did nothing to prevent, and despite the fact that His own son died for my sins?

Yay?

Free will is self-determination;[...]

Which is what I understand as 'entirely independent of any outside factors', as I wrote above.
lozerfac3
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lozerfac3
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Farmer

Sooo, I'm going to hell because God refuses to regenerate me because He thinks I'll succumb to my desire to sin despite a stronger inclination to accept Christ after being regenerated; desire to sin that stems from that time when some very distant ancestors were tricked into doing something God forbade them to do but did nothing to prevent, and despite the fact that His own son died for my sins?
God refuses to regenerate people not because anything that they did/do/will do or anything that He thinks they did/do/will do. He knows you're going to sin after you accept Him, so He didn't choose you because He knows you are going to follow Him perfectly.

Which is what I understand as 'entirely independent of any outside factors', as I wrote above.
Lol I don't know what that means.
HahiHa
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HahiHa
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Regent

He knows you're going to sin after you accept Him, so He didn't choose you because He knows you are going to follow Him perfectly.

That sentence doesn't make sense. Did you forget a 'not' somewhere?

Lol I don't know what that means.

You know what, I'm curious too. @Moegreche, do you think the concept of free will is compatible with a deity that knows what you are going to do, or not? I can't guarantee that my conception of the idea of free will is 100% on spot, so I'd rather have your input, if I may ask
Moegreche
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Moegreche
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Duke

There is a serious tension between (1) an all-knowing God, and (2) human free will. The basic idea here is that God already knows what we're going to do in the future. And if God knows that, then our actions are such that we couldn't have done otherwise. If this is what we're talking about with free will, then God's omniscience is, in fact, incompatible with free will.

But the story is much more complicated than this.

As a quick aside, I watched the video you linked to, lozerfac3. R. C. Sproul (the lecturer) is a Calvinist, and he's having to jump through some major hoops because of that. Calvinists believe in predestination, so he's trying to work that bit into a coherent notion of free will. His understanding of the notion of free will, however, is very weak. This is partly because he is a theologian and not a philosopher. So he ends up conflating metaphysical worries with ethical ones. His view is also deeply inconsistent. It's close to a Humean view (i.e. David Hume) notion of free will, but he ends up making a move to talk about self-determination. This is both a misunderstanding of what determinism is, and something that is metaphysically inconsistent.

But let me give some fairly standard moves that are given to resolve the tension between omniscience and free will.

One move is to think about what it would mean to know what someone was going to do. Let's say you have a kid, and your kid's favourite ice cream is mint chocolate chip. If you put a bowl of this ice cream out, you know your kid will eat it. And this seems compatible with free will. You know enough about your child's desires and inclinations to know how they will act in certain situations. God's omniscience allows Him to know how we would act in any circumstance, because He fully understands our nature, desires, and inclinations.

This is where a metaphysical definition of free will comes in. The Humean notion I referred to earlier says that an agent acts freely if her action comes from her desires. This is what's called a compatibilist notion of free will. It doesn't deny determinism--the claim that all events are caused. My desires are caused by lots of different things: biology, brain chemistry, personal history and memories, etc. These causes can ultimately be traced to events outside of me and my control. But so long as my actions are the result of my desires or inclinations, then I have acted freely.
(This is close to what Sproul said, but not quite. He ended up using Hume's theory of action along these lines (which is why it sounds close) but then made a dubious move when talking about free agency. I'm just noting this, rather than engaging with it, because it's complicated stuff.)

So here's the upshot. If your definition of free will is that you could have done otherwise, then it looks like we lack free will. In fact, this is precisely what the incompatibilist notion of free will is (those who deny either the free will thesis or determinism). But if acting freely is something more nuanced than this, then we can get away from the worries about God's omniscience.

Think about it this way. Determinism seems to be true--every event has a cause. That much is clear. Adding God to the mix doesn't actually offer a unique challenge to free will given this. After all, God just needs to know the deterministic events that led up to a particular choice. Those events would be in place with or without God.

With these considerations in place, the challenge now is to morally responsibility in the divine sense. There are moves we can make to rescue the notion of moral responsibility--at least as far as human-to-human interaction is concerned. But there are worries about these moves when it comes to divine responsibility. If I'm ultimately not responsible for my character or my desires, then how can I be eternally punished (or rewarded) for acts that result from those desires? On this front, I'm not aware of any strong apologetic moves that can rescue moral responsibility in the relevant sense.

lozerfac3
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lozerfac3
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Farmer

With these considerations in place, the challenge now is to morally responsibility in the divine sense.
Okay that's what I was thinking. Thank you so much for this.

If I'm ultimately not responsible for my character or my desires, then how can I be eternally punished (or rewarded) for acts that result from those desires? On this front, I'm not aware of any strong apologetic moves that can rescue moral responsibility in the relevant sense.
If those desires are determined, would it be safe to say that the consequences of those desires are also determined. Because all of our desires are evil according to God, we are all destined for hell.
lozerfac3
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lozerfac3
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Farmer

That sentence doesn't make sense. Did you forget a 'not' somewhere?
I meant God didn't choose you based on your morality. He didn't choose you because He thinks you are going to follow Him perfectly. You are in fact not going to follow Him perfectly. God is a lopsided God. When you realize where everyone is going to end up, it makes you so grateful that He chose you to enter heaven instead. It is very offensive because I didn't have to work for it. So does that limit God's perfect justice? Kinda, but it's an imbalance that is ultimately good. I would still say He's perfectly just because He knows we deserve hell.
EmperorPalpatine
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EmperorPalpatine
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Jester

It's not like He is just gonna suddenly change our desires because that will limit our free will.

...
Exodus 9:12.
But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses.

Free will is self-determination; you must choose based on your strongest inclinations.

And God interfered with the Pharaoh's inclinations, specifically to satisfy his own prophecy. Thus it was not free.

The basic idea here is that God already knows what we're going to do in the future. And if God knows that, then our actions are such that we couldn't have done otherwise. If this is what we're talking about with free will, then God's omniscience is, in fact, incompatible with free will.

JWs skirt around it by interpreting God's "ability" to know as separate from what He "actually" knows. Like having a library of everything knowable, but choosing which books to skip.

I would still say He's perfectly just because He knows we deserve hell.

If we deserve hell, perfect justice is choosing hell. If he chooses something else, that's mercy. Mercy is a subversion of justice.
lozerfac3
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lozerfac3
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Farmer

And God interfered with the Pharaoh's inclinations, specifically to satisfy his own prophecy. Thus it was not free.
Passive interference. Pharaoh was gonna do that anyway.

If we deserve hell, perfect justice is choosing hell. If he chooses something else, that's mercy. Mercy is a subversion of justice.
Then God is not perfectly just in this way I guess.
lozerfac3
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lozerfac3
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Farmer

Actually, it is important to note how God hardened Pharaoh's heart as much as it is why. "It is a biblical axiom that revelation devoid of illuminating grace hardens sinful hearts" (The Gospel Coalition). So God hardened Pharaoh's heart by revealing Hinself through the plagues.

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