It seems to me that the concept of “free will” can account for our ability to make choices. I’m not at all sure that it accounts for the making of choices that injure others or are detrimental to the social order that we rely on.
In short: How does the ability to make a choice account for choosing evil?
Not necessarily. God hasn’t experienced any of these things (right?), and you grant that he has free will. Thus, free will does not, in fact, require those consequences.
Please take no offense when I say that you’ve simply restated the conslusive statement that free will causes these things, when in fact believers have seen that that is not the case unless you say God is not all-good…or, perhaps that is what you were saying.
He has certainly intervened in the past.
Just curious: Did he abrogate the apostles free will, for example? The free will of the those who requested, and received, His direct help with demons, illnesses, deaths and what not?
Human built AC vents aside, nature certainly is a house on a shaky foundation (e.g., earthquakes). What if we live under a falling meteorite formed and put in motion by God’s divine hand? It really is hard to take responsibility away from God for “flaws” (from our perspective) that He purposely built into His divine creation. (This, of course, takes us into natural evil, and away from personal evil and free will which is supposed to be the main focus of this thread.)
But God has free will, and he never chooses evil (under one theory), so free will alone does not explain why people choose evil actions.
Is the concept of an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing/present God extrabiblical?
I’m starting to think that the free will debate gets down to whether (1) God created logical rules, or (2) God is restricted by logical rules.
Argumentative that he does not experience these things. Christian teachings say that god would trade the entire world for one soul. And that His love for us is so great that the pain we feel is like the pain your children feel. Now that is just Christian teachings and in no way do I presume to know what God knows or feels or his devine plans. Just what Christian teachings are.
All-good is definately per opinion. Would it be all-good to run a schoolbus full of children off a cliff so that it does not plow into another group of children? Or are you saying that it would only be all good if God were to lift that school bus over the children therefore taking the free will of the bus driver away? But then again as I said that brings up the new argument about prayer. Christians are taught that only through prayer will you personally get devine intervention and the like. So in essence does the power of prayer overule anothers free will? I would say yes. But who are we to judge that God would be all-good or not if He does of does not intervene?
I do not even begin to think that we have the capacity to know all and to know right or wrong in every situation. We do not have the cognative capacity for that. If we did who would need God at that point anyways?
There are teachings that He has intervened, deffinately. But there are not teachings for us to determine when or wheather He should or should not intervene. I undestand this is getting under the heading of “He works in mysterious ways” excuse. But I do not think we can look at all-good or not as black and white. See below for example.
I was using AC vents as an analogy to the events in nature that react to it’s environment. For ex. i do not turn my AC on but have it set to when it gets so hot it kicks on automatically. My analogy to nature is the same. I was saying He set in motion nature at the beginning. Same as the path of that meteor was set in motion in the beginning. Just liek I can turn the AC off he could stop the meteor but of what consequence? Do I turn off the AC so that one person does not get a cold while another or many others get heat stroke? Or do I let the one person of his free will move away from the vent?
I disagree about nature being evil. Like I said nature is just a tool we use. Is the house evil for letting the AC turn on? Is the hammer evil when used as a weapon?
A more simple analogy.
Lets say I had decided to let my son choose his own way in life. I decide when he bocomes an adult I will not interfere accept when asked (prayer). He makes the wrong decidsion and end up in jail. Am I not all good because I do not bail him out of jail. If he calls be for bail and I do it am I taking away his free will by helping him? Am I not all-good if the money I have to use for his bail was for rent or for other things? Who judges these things?
To presume God has the obligation to interfere is saying He has control of your destiny wich negates your gift of free will. My argument is He lets things run its course except in circumstances of prayer, and then only if circumstances are ideal.
That is where faith comes in. As a father I would hope my son would understand that I could not bail him out even if I couldnt give him the reason. But if he has faith in me he knows I still love him, and would if I could.
They are the same thing. They are two sides of the same coin. What you call “God” and “Satan”, I call The Universe. You choose to personify the Universe as two juxtaposed sentient beings. People throughout history have chosen this belief or variations of it. Anyone who believes in a deitiy or deities seems to think that they are humanlike. They may give them different facades ( dog’s head, elephant’s head, eight arms, etc…) but they always have human emotions. To me this is utterly ridiculous. **The universe has no perceivable personality. We only project our traits onto it. **
Most Christians have decided to believe that God is responsible for everything right in the world, and Satan is responsible for everything bad. They seem to forget that their beleifs tell them that God is responsible for ALL of creation, and hence the bad too.
In my belief, there are natural occurrences which some in this thread have called evil, such as earth quakes and meteor strikes… I prefer to think of them as random events in a chaotic universe that we don’t have the ability to predict. These events mess up our nice orderly plans and take away our loved ones so let’s put a face to them and give the unknown a name and call it evil. When things go our way, we’ll pretend it’s because somebody up there is pleased with us. Aren’t we wonderful.
There are also people in the world who make decisions that mess up our plans and take away our loved ones because they don’t adhere to the mores of our society. What this “personal evil” as some have called it amounts to is an unavoidable repercussion of free will. Some people will choose to live their lives without concern for the rest of society, interested only in what benefits they can get for themselves. When someone’s actions are deemed highly detrimental to society we label them as evil. That allows us to destroy them in the name of good. And we don’t have to feel guilty about that because it’s what God wants. How convenient.
A belief system, or a society of shared belief systems, can be made analogous to a living entity. That system of common thinking wants to survive, it wants to eliminate conflicting belief systems. Just like the individual human mind will create mental defenses to excuse its actions, societies create “evil” that must be opposed. I’m sure most Americans don’t feel evil, but there are people in the world who are convinced of their own righteousness and our depravity. Do you have any idea how many lives have been ruined or ended because of war? Good and Evil are just the names for opposing sides of conflicting belief systems. We’re good, they’re evil… it’s never the other way around.
*Originally posted by LokiTheDog *
Our physical pain is unnecessary because of God’s omnipotence? What, you want him to tap you on the shoulder and let you know everytime you’ve cut yourself or caught your head on fire?
*Originally posted by LokiTheDog *
I don’t believe either of those propositions. I believe that pleasure and pain are both sensed by the same nerve endings. Depending on the intensity of the signal from these nerve endings, the brain either interprets it as pleasure or pain.
Experience can diminsh pain, a hypodermic injection isn’t nearly as painful on the hundredth time as it is on the first. Fear of the unknown intensifies pain. When you feel pain that you were not expecting, it is a threat to your survival and your body reacts to remove you from the source of the pain in order to prevent injury. Evolution has been kind to us ( not really… it’s not a person) by allowing low intensity signals from our pain receptors to be interpreted as pleasure. This is not because the universe loves us, it is beacuse we are better adapted for survival if we feel pleasure. For instances; if we enjoy the intimacy of others, we are more likely to procreate, and the pleasure of a full belly helps insure our survival as much as the pain of an empty belly. I see no reason to sing praises to one concocted entity for my pleasure, and scream obscenities at another for my pain. They are both very useful yet different responses to degrees of essentially the same thing.
man, a busy server can really make you look like a jackass, huh?
man, a busy server can really make you look like a jackass, huh?
man, a busy server can really make you look like a jackass, huh?
:wally
LOL, I’m really sorry about that guys.
Some things are only privy to the mind of God. Standing in the midst of creation and denying a creator… I guess it’s easy for some. Breaking my brain to be God. Yeah, I’ve done that too. Spending more time trusting Him for the details and just going ahead and loving Him and others for the short time I’m here. Nope. I haven’t did such a good job at that. Being born with a selfish pride makes me think I wake myself up each morning too. Why not question God today. I’m not even sure if He’s real…I’m guilty of having to learn the hard way. I think He is and will be just, doing things far greater than we can imagine. Having seperated the light from the darkness, I think He understands them both better than we, as mere mortals, ever will.
I’m assuming this was directed at me…
Notice how your first sentence assumes the personification of the universe? Did you miss my point entirely? I never claimed to know the secrets of the origin of the universe, I personally feel that it is beyond the scope of human knowledge to know with absolute certainty.
Standing in the midst of the universe and assuming that whatever created it all was a lot like us humans, and that we are the most pleasing thing to its eye… I guess that’s easy for some.
Which do you think is more vain… the man who creates an omnipotent entity with a human persona to explain his own existence, or one who sees that the part can not possibly fathom the true nature of the whole, and that conjecture as to its nature is merely that. If my kidney cells could think they would probably be pretty certain that their entire universe (my body) was created by an omnipotent super-kidney-cell. Do you see how ridiculous that is?
[QUOTE]
**
Being born with a selfish pride makes me think I wake myself up each morning too.**
[QUOTE]
Being born with a selfish pride makes you think that the universe was created by a supernatural version of you.
But don’t feel bad, there are billions of people throughout history that have believed similar ideas. The conformity must be comforting… but it doesn’t make the idea true.
Back to the OP, my summation is this; the perception of evil is something unique to humans. We are capable of doing violent things to achieve our goals, both as individuals and on a much larger scale as societies. But society teaches us that violence is wrong, it must in order to insure its survival because murderous citizens are like cancerous cells to it. Outside of the context of society there is no such thing as evil, just survival and aquisition. Our material desires as individuals often conflict with the rules that society has created to insure its survival. When someone acts in a way that is harmful to society, we call it evil. When two societies have a conflict, “good” and “evil” depend on which side of the battle you are on. Our side is good, their side is evil. If societies did not take this point of view they would not survive and grow.
We create the labels good and evil in order to justify our actions. They are not inherent aspects of the universe.
Before I get hammered for this, yes, I am personifying society. Being a collection comprised entirely of humans, it actually does resemble a super entity with human traits.
The universe is not comprised entirely of humans, we are an infinitesimal and insignificant part of it and therefore it does not warrant the same analogy.
here’s my little analogy to add… if , say, timothy mcveigh had equipped his truck bomb with a random number generator that would only detonate if the number ended with an 8… and it did go off anyway, would he still be guilty for his actions on that day or would he not be guilty since he did not choose for the bomb to go off (he only made it a possibility you know)hmmmmm…
what if the bomb didn’t go off?
mangomerlot, yes Timothy McVeigh would be responsible, at the very least, a reckless endangerer. But, your analogy doesn’t fit.
A counter analogy:
I’m a state Congress (a stretch, I know.) I enact legislation that would enable homosexual couples to marry, legally, in all parts of the state. Such a marriage then takes place. Unfortunately, due to a number of things, the marriage later falls apart, and the former spouses get a divorce. Am I, as the state Congress, responsible for that failed marriage? After all, I made the divorce a possibility…
In your analogy, I assume that McVeigh represents God, and that the bomb represents humanity’s actions. In your case, the bomb doesn’t have sentience, it is just a random generator. Thus, the last conscious action taken was by Mr McVeigh. He would be culpable. On the other hand, if the bomb could somehow fathom the awesome destruction not only of itself, but of the Murrah Building, and if said bomb could choose whether or not to detonate, maybe McVeigh would have a bit less responsibility.
There are too many chances for human beings not to do evil. What we do is not God’s fault.
-Soup
Well back to the OP. Without evil there would be no definition of good.
We could use the anaology of black and white. If there was no black then we would not define white. It would just be there. And since we are ignoring the rest of the color spectrum then there would be no justification oin classifying color Everything would be just seen in the same way.
So the question is, is God not all-good because He gave us the opportunity to chose evil. Should He have created a world where everything we chose would have been perfect? In the same idea do we have justification to blame Him for our imperfect choices?
I saw on the news the other day where some liberal was trying to justify the theft of cellphones because the cellphone companys made them too appealing. Do we justify the absece of God, or the absence of an all-good God because He made evil too appealing?
I understand perfectly well why LokiTheDog might say something like this (with the addition of personal perspective). I’m just surprised a Christian says it. Perhaps I am more unfamiliar with Christianity than I realize.
(And by the way, LokiTheDog, your points are all well made, and in another time, I might have been making them myself. Today, I’m trying to understand how one can logically choose Christianity, and I’m trying to really open myself to their reasoning, but at the same time make sure it is solid enough to satisfy me.)
No, not because (or not just because) he gave us the opportunity to choose evil. That’s kind of my point in the OP. In my opinion, free will BY ITSELF does not lead to evil. After all, God has it, and he is all-good (at least that’s what I’m told by the Christian sect that interests me). So, you can have free will and, being all-good by your very nature, you never choose evil. Therefore, God did something else to allow evil. Free will doesn’t explain it. He must have done something else, correct? What was that thing?
Perhaps free will is necessary to explain the existence of evil, but it certainly does not seem sufficient to explain the existence of evil.
Only if His nature would require that.
I’m just trying to find consistency in the definition the Christians give me. And, believe it or not, I’m not doing it to be belligerent. I’m trying to make respectful inquiries here.
Of course not.
If he does not exist, then who’s to blame for natural evil? No one. And for personal evil? Only ourselves. I’m at peace with that concept already.
If He does exist, then also will I be at peace and trust that he knows better than I on these points.
My problem is that I’m not to the point yet where I can say, “He exists” and “I know him.” So consequently, I can’t yet give Him the benefit of the doubt. Do you see what I mean? I’m doing the hard analysis right now to decide where and how to make my faith leap. If I don’t do that analysis properly (and surely He cannot blame me for using logic in that analysis), how do I know if I’m supposed to make that leap in favor of Christianity, Shinto, Hindu or Asatru?
Perhaps. And perhaps your also more unfamiliar with Christians than you realize.
Logic and faith are apples and oranges. To logically chose something you would have to presume you know all of the pertinant facts about an issue. Christians understand that they do not know all, nor do they try to use that as an excuse. We are tha same as you, we just choose to beleive something you do not. Every day we wake up and wonder and ask the same questions you do. Sometimes we find answers to satisfy ourselves and other times we don’t and become troubled and make personal decisions based upon that. Free Will is not just subjigated to good and evil.
The baseis of Christianity states that we are sinners. It is our nature. But it is our free will to accept that or not, to also accept that He loves us and His gift for our salvation was Christ. or not.
If you believe in the exhistance of a deity then you have an idea of the faith part. I stress beleive because i do not know of one person who ever professed they “know God”. And devine eppisodes aside none can state that they know there is a god. There is some form of agnosticism in all of us because we DO always look for the logic.
As far as wich to choose. As a Christian I say that is your free will to choose. And surely He does not blame you for trying to use logic or anylizing such a commitment. It is said the word of God is not in the verse but in the volume. And 99.9% of it is not as straightforward as the Ten Commandments. Therefore that is an analysis you must make for yourself. And there are thousands of interpretations for every chapter.
And as much as I encourage you to read the Old and New Testimates, I also encourage you to read the Vedas, Shinto and Asatru texts and any other material you can get your hands on. Do I beleive as a Christian that unless you accept Jesus as your savior you will not get into “Heaven”? Yes I do. Do I know I am right and everyone else is destined for hell? Absolutely not. But my faith urges me in that direction. Free Will to me is crucial in that decision. Good and evil are not.
I didn’t think free will was ever meant to explain the existence of evil, but rather why evil is done. Evil actions would exist whether or not people could actively choose them, would they not?
Of course, by the same opinion, free will doesn’t lead to good, either. Most moralities do not explain why good or evil exists, but why we should choose one over the other (“good” being the one to choose, however it is defined).
Hence the idea of original sin, though that seems unnecessarily pessimistic IMO (then again, I’m no Christian). Consider that in an absolute moral framework good and evil exist, period. They are metaphysical truths. Free will is simply a framework in which will and actor are unified, if not synonamous. Neither the existence of moral dichotomies nor the raw idea of free will explain actual moral choices. They never have and they cannot. A larger framework is needed to encompass motivation to act in any capacity (be that for good or evil). People can choose to be motivated by anything, thanks to free will, but the source of that motivation doesn’t seem to lie in either a dichotomous moral standard or a system where agents’ wills are active.
Consider a “T” intersection on a road. You are driving and come to a dead end. Left and right are the moral options, and the fact that you are driving the car is free will. Obviously more information is necessary to determine which way you will drive.
Here’s my take on good and evil:
God has free will. He is the creator and ruler of all, so whatever he chooses to do is Good. He decides to make fluffy bunnies or sunny skies, that’s good. He decides to make deadly retroviruses or make the sun explode and kill us all, that’s good, too.
He makes lesser beings in his own image. They have free will, too. But when they make choices that run against God’s will, they are Evil (well, maybe not always evil, but at least Sinful).
Evil/sin is merely disobedience to God’s will.
Since God is the source, whatever his will happens to be is what is Good. Hence, it is impossible for him to do evil (to disobey himself!).
Why do we sin? I would think it’s a symptom of being a separate, finite entity. First, we do not have his omniscience, and do not have total insight into his mind and will. We have bits and pieces that prophets have passed onto us, and that’s about as good as we can do. Second, we have a limited perspective, and a limited lifespan. And since we don’t know God’s mind with certainty, we can only HOPE that what he says is right and for our own good will in fact turn out to be so.
“Don’t steal that money, kid.”
“But I’m broke, God!”
“Yeah, but you’ll regret it later. Trust me. I know. Just hang in there.”
“I don’t know, God… I could really use the cash.”
“Oy veh. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, kid…”
Is it impossible not to sin? Yes, but it’s REEEEAAAAALLLY tough, since basically one guy in all of history has allegedly done it, and he got himself nailed to a tree for it.
Of course, I’m an atheist, so all this is me playing devil’s advocate. (or God’s advocate, in this case)
aw shucks, i thought it was a decent analogy. see. the point of the analogy was that he would still be responsible. even though the actual descion of the bomb detonating would be out of the makers hands.the point of that argument wasn’t even free will and sentient choices. it was about a sentient being not stopping destruction and evil when the choice to do so was available. , how can god himself not be responsible for tim’s actions on that day if he knew that tim would do what he would do and not prevent it anyway? how does god not hold responsibility for all that happens good or bad if he knows the outcome of all before the inception of the universe??
Ok, here is the answer:
Good = free will.
Really, it’s that simple. God, infinitely good, infinitely free, bestows upon us complete free will, complete good. That is as good and free as you can be, that is God.
But what do we do with this free will? We choose to limit the freedom of others. Why do we do this? A) Because we can, because God lets us. B) Because we are imperfect and finite.
Bestowing free will upon others is good. Limiting the freedom of others is evil. We people do both because we are free and imperfect.
God only bestows freedom, because He is infinite and perfect.
Because God is infinite and perfect, He is able to allow even the finite to be essentially free. If God were to eradicate evil, this would be tantamount to not allowing the finite and imperfect to be free, which would be a great sin.