Please search GD for thread on free will. I think you’ll get your fill of the various sides of the argument. The OP works pretty much with any definition of free will that you choose.
And in the case of God it is more like the laws are not published, except in volumes of rumors supposedly copied from the real laws but which are mutually contradictory. And while there may be self-appointed police for these books of rumors, no one has ever seen a real judge.
Let’s face it - this whole thing is a feeble way of explaining the absence of God from the world.
Well what’s the point of it now?
I think we can sidestep it by just saying we’re talking about freedom in the usual sense, and not free will. e.g. most people would agree someone in prison does not have most of their freedoms.
Oh dear. Are we still not advanced past the “Can God make a rock so heavy He can’t lift it?” chestnut?
If it makes you feel any better, I am happy to accept a God that is not omnipotent in the rather sophomoric manner you suggest. Not infinitely powerful - just able to create a Universe by an exercise of will, restore the dead to life, command a storm to be still or multiply a sack lunch into much more than five thousand generous portions. That doesn’t call for infinite power or require us to engage in the kind of choplogic you appear eager to espouse. Helpful?
I would say that pretty much everyone who reads the Bible and attempts to follow it reads the Bible selectively. But yes, that’s a fine, Biblical example of how God could show Himself very explicitly to us without stripping us of free will to follow His commandments or not, or to love Him or not.
That’s all fine. The part I don’t get is how God can
(1) give every person different information, some contradictory information, some effectively no information.
(2) punish via eternal torment those who guess wrong.
I have decided to reject out-of-hand every sect that holds (2), since (1) is obviously true. I figure if there really is a God, and He really works that way, we are all screwed, and there’s no reason to try. I am agnostic re the existence of God, but figure that if there is a God, there isn’t one true path that he wants us to follow. Because if there were, He would have let us know. And let us all know the same thing. You don’t have to be able to make a burrito so hot you can’t eat it to be able to give instructions that are clearer, more consistent, and more widely available than IRS tax instructions.
The Moderator agrees that it needs its own thread.
Given the OP, the debate follows the premise of that post. If you wish to argue, separately, that the OP has no basis, then open a new thread with a link to this one and set forth your position.
[ /Moderating ]