# God heals? Question FROM a Christian **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 21, 2011, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-heals-question-from-a-christian/579298 "2011-04-21T23:41:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 88
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-heals-question-from-a-christian/579298/88 "2011-04-28T14:03:47Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > 1. Does the Devil have free will? If only humans have free will, then the Devil’s will is God’s will because the Devil can’t choose otherwise. The Devil has free will. And one point of those stories is that being created perfect isn’t enough to keep you perfect when you have the free will to choose something else. > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > 1. If free will is really so important, then why doesn’t God only create people who will freely choose good? For an omimax God, all evil is God’s own choice. There is no way out of that, including blaming a “Devil” which God created himself with full knowledge of what that devil would do, and to whom he did not give free will. If only humans have fre will, then the Devil’s will is God’s will. Well, that isn’t free will is it? > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > 1. Why is free will is so important (and I will ignore the fact that fre will is a logically incohernt and impossible concept in the first place)? You were in that [free will](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=600471&page=5) thread with me. And from what I saw, your “turtles all the way down,” belief wasn’t supported even by people who didn’t believe in free will. Here’s what I ended that thread with… (on quantum effects and possibility of free will.) > [@Does free will exist?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-free-will-exist/574464/214): > > We don’t know what causes that collapse; or why one particle decays today and another with the identical wave function decays 5 million years from now, etc. What is to say that your will isn’t capable of preventing one collapse and bringing on another? And that’s why I still say quantum mechanics allows for free will. > > Your mind can control itself. Not only that, but it can determine to control itself. Someone with a habit that largely determines their behavior, (something they find hard to do or not to do,) can decide this is a “bad” habit they don’t want to give in to anymore. And with work, hard work of retraining their brain themselves, change that habit. It happens. Your mind can control itself. It’s also true that people tend not to take the hard steps of retraining their brain when they don’t believe in free will. (as already cited.) > > So, when you don’t believe in free will, you don’t tend to control your own mind. You let it do what it feels like doing. > When you do believe in free will, you’re more likely to control your mind and change what you let it feel like doing. > > I conclude from that: If you don’t believe in free will you probably don’t have it and see no evidence for it. If you believe in it, it’s possible to have it, and you’ll see evidence for it. Seeing the same evidence of someone changing a habit, the non-believer says, “random coin flip;” the believer says, “my mind changed itself, and I determined that it would do that. I saw the possible outcomes for the coin and determined which one would happen.” (i.e. it’s not turtles all the way down as one non-believer put it.) Free will is specifically exercised when you go against your nature; when you change what it is you want to do. > > Free will is still a very useful concept and it’s better for society if people believe it. > I think it’s irresponsible to preach otherwise. It promotes bad behavior to say free will doesn’t exist. And it’s the forseeable consequence. It’s obvious that if you tell people they don’t control what they want to do, they will choose not to try to control what they want to do. It entirely forseeable that they will continue in bad behavior; that they will start new bad behaviors because they are convienent and easy. “I have this feeling to do something convenient for me. Sure it will hurt others, but I have no control over my will, so their is no point in trying to control my will; there is no point in trying to do something else. I fell like doing this; I’ll just do it. I’m just a passenger anyway.” The point is that “Free Will” isn’t if you don’t get to choose. (i.e. “then why doesn’t God only create people who will freely choose good?” is ridiculous.) And perfection isn’t enough when free choice is involved. So, you need to build people who will choose good even when it’s a difficult choice… Here’s how I come to that conclusion, but it involves some perfectly reasonable assumptions that others reject 1. Free Will. already discussed in another thread, and it’s not strictly necessary. 2. A creator God would come from his own fully formed reality, and not just a closet attached to a remote corner of ours, (as one athiest once tried to claim was “just as likely.”) 3. There would be something for us to do in that fully formed reality \*other \*than staring at God’s glory and praising him for all eternity. Not that that won’t happen, but it isn’t the \*only \*thing to do. And that’s why he wants people with free will, and not just automatons to constantly praise him, in some sort of, (as I put it in another thread,) mastabatory praise machine. from that I conclude that suffering is necessary to produce people who will always choose good, unlike the previous example of a perfect being who chose evil. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-heals-question-from-a-christian/579298)._