To start, I’m a lapsed Catholic. I consider myself a theist. But I have some real issued with this God stuff, and I’d be very interested in any replies.
My questions are going to be based pretty much on the Christian faith. That’s the only religion I know enough about to discuss with any certainty. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in ideas and examples from other faiths.
So, most Christian sects believe in free will, and say that I am free to sin (though I’ll face eventual punishment) because I have free will. So, that seems to say that God isn’t interested in having me for a puppet, and has to allow me to make my own choices.
But what about the people whose lives I affect with my choices? How does my free will serve them?
We would all, I think, consider it negligence if I were to let a five-year-old pick up a gun and start shooting her classmates. We would say that her freedom to act is constrained by the freedoms of her classmates not to be shot at.
But God has apparently put no such constraints on our actions. I am “free” to destroy others, as I will. But what about the will of the people I destroy?
If this is really a test of my worthiness, how is it reasonable that if I fail my test I take others with me? How would those classmates of my hypothetical five-year-old be tested if they are dead?
To make it work so that I have free will but God is still benevolent, don’t we have to create a universe in which I only think my actions are harming others, and they only think their actions are harming me, while in reality we are all prevented from having any negative effect on each other?
The alternative is that God has set up a system in which people get royally screwed through no fault of their own while God sits back and says that it’s their “free will” that’s to blame.
—To make it work so that I have free will but God is still benevolent, don’t we have to create a universe in which I only think my actions are harming others, and they only think their actions are harming me, while in reality we are all prevented from having any negative effect on each other?—
This is exactly what many people suggest.
To put it charitably, I view this as a sort of effective moral nihilism. It tries to assert that intentions in acting can be wrong… even when their effects have no moral weight. I don’t see it. If someone realizes that no harm is being done, how can they even be accused of intending to do harm? How can a man building a sloppy building that collapses on people and kills them wrong, but God designing a world in which mudslides kill people be morally neutral?
The argument seems to need to show that humans have an obligation to stop evil wherever they see it and can do something about it (with which I agree), but God does not. We don’t consider it a valid objection that police are interfering with free will when they arrest a criminal. Or a good samaritan who stops a rape. Even the most ardent anti-war proponent doesn’t argue that, by invading Iraq, we are violating Saddam’s free choice to torture and murder his people.
The people that you take with you had their free will tested all of their lives. Free will to act in ways pleasing or displeasing to God. The Bible makes no mention of people being a entitled to certain lifespan. Life’s uncertainty and unpredictabliity is one of the things used to urge people to be “good” all of the time, repent today, etc. You never know what’s around the bend.
Why do you think this is not already the case? Why do you think that physically or emotionally hurting someone harms them spiritually? Most types of Christianity say that things don’t really get good until after death anyway. The hypothetical classmates would feel physical pain but then go on to their “final destination” according to how they had exercised their free will. In cases where the harm you inflict upon a person results in suffering rather than death, I would say that the suffering is an opportunity for the victim to be tested and prove himself . Your free will serves to either make their earthly lives more pleasant or to provide challenges through which they can prove their worthiness.
If this is the case, then why should anyone die at all? Someone who lived as an evil bastard and died of natural causes at 92 may very well have turned a new leaf by 157. Doesn’t this aging and death thing impose on their free will?
What msgotracks said. The rain falls on the just and unjust alike. They’ve been excercising free will their entire lives, which should produce a good enough ‘average’ of moral decisions from which to judge them, so to speak.
—Why do you think this is not already the case? Why do you think that physically or emotionally hurting someone harms them spiritually?—
Whatever that distinction actually is, I believe hurting people emotionally is also wrong (and anyway, if by spiritually you mean “makes them a worse person” there is every reason to think that abuse, especially when young, makes people lots more messed up and angry, and less capable of love than they would have been).
—Your free will serves to either make their earthly lives more pleasant or to provide challenges through which they can prove their worthiness.—
So why is it wrong for me to torture someone as long as I let God know I’m just doing it to help give the person a chance to challenge themselves and prove their worthiness? I mean, they might not have a lot of time to do it otherwise since they could die at any time. This theory, which seems designed ad hoc to obviate God of any moral responsibility for ANY particular state of the world as designed by him, also seems to deal a mortal blow to ANY moral responsibility.
I think you did. At least in Christian doctrine, there’s no mention of reincarnation. And those who believe that it’s all hunky dory would probably believe there’s no such thing as dying “prematurely.”
But, for me, I can’t see that a five-year-old has revealed anything about his or her character yet. And God allows me to go out a torture a five-year-old to death. So, what is the purpose of my freedom to do that? It may reveal my character, but does it reveal the child’s?
And, of course, I then run into the eternal question: If God already knows all, he knows what I would do, so why the test?