# No free will in heaven, or God is a meanie
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [February 1, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037 "2003-02-01T03:35:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/1 "2003-02-01T03:35:12Z")
(I’ve made an argument here in GD before for a lack of free will in Heaven, but I just thought of a little twist:)
Assumptions:[ul][li]The “God” I’m speaking of is specifically the God of conventional Christianity.[/li][li]God is omnipotent; He can do or create anything that is logically possible.[/li][li]God is also omniscient; He knows everything, and knows exactly how the future will play out right down to the placement of each individual quark at each instant.[/li][li]God can create humans in any logically possible forms, with any logically possible personalities. He could, if He chose, create humans as full-grown adults with fully intact memories of childhoods that never happened, for example.[/li][li]Free will is a blessed gift to humans from God. The fact that humans were created with free will is seen as evidence that God is not a meanie toward humans.[/li][li]Free will is the cause of sin. Without free will, God’s creations would not sin.[/li][li]No human soul ever sins once it gets into Heaven. _Ever_. Not for all eternity. Not even after trillions of years when all the stars in all the galaxies have burned themselves out. _Never_.[/ul][/li]Given this list of assumptions, I see two possibilities:
(1.) Free will means it is inevitable that you will eventially sin. Therefore, in Heaven, no human soul has free will.
(2.) It is possible to have free will and thus be **able** to sin, but to be in a situation and to have a personality such that you will never ever **choose** to sin. Therefore, in Heaven, human souls might still have free will, provided that their personalities and the situations they encounter never result in their choosing to sin. (Maybe the Light of the Lord is upon them and it’s just so darned wonderful that they never want for anything else, or something.)
If possibility (1.) is the case, then, since free will is such a precious gift, we don’t have much to look forward to in Heaven because that gift will be taken away.
If possibility (2.) is the case, then the big booming question becomes: **Why didn’t God create us all in a Heaven-like environment to begin with?!** If it’s possible to have free will and yet never sin (as is allegedly the case in Heaven under possibility (2.)), then why did God create humans who would sin?! Remember, God knows everything that’s going to happen before it happens, so He would have known what would happen to Adam and Eve before He ever created them. God knowingly and deliberately created humans that would sin, despite the logical possibility of creating humans that would have free will yet never choose to sin. And since God’s own justice in the face of Adam and Eve’s original sin requires Him to send the souls of unrepentant sinners to Hell when they die – or at the very least, send the souls of those who rejected Jesus (out of the very same free will that God had given them) to Hell when they die – that means that the omniscient God created some people knowing full well ahead of time that they would not be saved.
Possibility (2.), then, is proof positive that the claim that “God wants all human souls to go to Heaven” is blatantly false. God is a meanie and only wants some humans to go to Heaven, since He could have created free-willed humans who would never sin but He didn’t.
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### Author:  [@Mothchunks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mothchunks)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/2 "2003-02-01T06:24:47Z")
I believe the little wanker referring to here is Jehovah. I’ve read a lot of different mythologies, but this Israeli tribal storm/war god takes the cake for being the most petulant, peevish, adolescent, insecure, callous, bloodthirsty, elitist, genocidal maniac of all time. You fail right at the beginning if you even attempt to make sense of him. “Ineffable,” they intone. “His ways are a mystery.” No shit. Demanding blood sacrifices, animal and human (Isaac). Any deity that demands one to sacrifice children, even if it turns out to be a tasteless joke, is more than a little unhinged. Then he figures the only way to redeem his sinful creations is to sacrifice his own son to himself in the most horrible way available. But then, he really IS Jesus, so he’s sacrificing himself to himself…Will somebody just send me the cliffnotes for this crap.
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### Author:  [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/3 "2003-02-01T06:41:08Z")
what you have stated here is basically “the problem of evil”, and a response to the most popular “refutation” of it. more formally, the problem of evil goes:
1. god created all things.
2. god is all-loving and all-powerful.
3. an all-loving being would prevent evil when he could.
4. an all-powerful being could stop evil when he wanted to.
5. evil exists in god’s creation.
conclusion: either god is not all-loving, or god is not all-powerful.
many people are quite satisfied by saying "god gave people free will, which leads to a better world than could exist without free will, so god is still all-powerful and all-loving, and it is people that create evil.
my personal response is to deny that free will even exists in the world in which we live, but for those that disagree with that, it is simple enough to say that free will could exist without humans’ capacity (desire!) to do evil.
personally, i don’t see how an all-powerful something-or-other would fail in creating something so simple as a world in which free choice existed and evil did not. but if that claim is to be denied, surely your response is sufficient. either the holiest either lack the desire to do evil or lack free will.
so the argument of free will in response to the problem of evil is invalidated, regardless.
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### Author:  [@SnugTheJoiner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnugTheJoiner)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/4 "2003-02-01T07:41:02Z")
I’m just paraphrasing Dante here (not necessarily my own belief):
A soul in Heaven is there because it has CONSCIOUSLY chosen to surrender itself to the one, true, Divine Will. It cannot and will not rebel because it its in a constant and unending state of truth–returned, at last, to the Divine Will from which it originated (and perhaps, as E. M. Forster postulated, making it a little better).
Although I don’t know whether this is the be-all and end-all, it does have a certain sense of Platonic logic that I find appealing.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/5 "2003-02-01T07:42:55Z")
But do you still have any free will once you have surrendered yourself to the “Divine Will”?
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### Author:  [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/6 "2003-02-01T08:14:11Z")
not to mention: if god wants what’s best for us, why are we not born into a state of eternal and divine truth? i don’t suppose we could be happier than being in such a state.
is denial of goodness evil? well, i don’t hold out from the people i love but for selfish reasons.
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### Author:  [@Scarf-Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarf-Ace)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/7 "2003-02-01T14:15:54Z")
What exactly is free will anyway? Although may have many choices in a situation, one is always the best choice.
Presumably the divine will always takes the best choice.
We being weak humans seldom do.
> [@](#):
>
> Why didn’t God create us all in a Heaven-like environment to begin with?!
He did - the garden of eden (symbolic or whatever). But as a consequence of free will, and then sin we gave it up.
I think maybe the question should be why the choice of evil exists rather than the ability to choose it. And in divine terms - why would Satan himself (formerly an angel) choose to fuck with God and his creation? The only logical conclusion is that God made the option of evil perceptible to both Satan and Adam and Eve alike knowing that they might choose it (but hoping they wouldn’t).
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/8 "2003-02-01T14:47:24Z")
If Satan had free will to rebel in Heaven, will we have the same free will when/if _we_ get there. or did God change the rules after that major muck-up?
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2003, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/9 "2003-02-01T18:48:47Z")
I wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> Why didn’t God create us all in a Heaven-like environment to begin with?!
To which **Meta-Gumble** replied:
> [@](#):
>
> He did - the garden of eden (symbolic or whatever). But as a consequence of free will, and then sin we gave it up.
The point I was making in the OP was that, if free will exists in Heaven and Heaven is eternally sin-free, then it **must be possible** to have free will and never sin (or even want to sin).
So instead of creating Adam and Eve with the variety of free will that meant they **would** eventually sin, why didn’t God create Adam and Eve with the variety of free will that you have in Heaven, namely, a free will that will still never choose to sin because it would never want to?
**Meta-Grumble** continued:
> [@](#):
>
> I think maybe the question should be why the choice of evil exists rather than the ability to choose it. And in divine terms - why would Satan himself (formerly an angel) choose to fuck with God and his creation? The only logical conclusion is that God made the option of evil perceptible to both Satan and Adam and Eve alike knowing that they might choose it (but hoping they wouldn’t).
It’s the “might choose it (but hoping they wouldn’t)” part of that paragraph I must disagree with. God is supposed to be **omniscient.** And not merely omniscient as to what’s going on right now, omniscient about everything that will happen **in the future** , based on whatever choices God makes (if God is indeed capable of making choices at all).
God didn’t merely know that Adam and Eve **might** choose evil. He knew that they **would** choose evil. He knew right down to the very millisecond exactly when Eve would take that first bite of the forbidden fruit. **Not** knowing those details would mean that He was not omniscient. He **knew** they **would** sin, leading eventually to billions of souls frying in Hell for all eternity, yet He created them anyway. He could have chosen to create them with a little variation of free will, or with the constant Light of the Lord’s presence, or with **whatever** it is people have when they’re in Heaven. But He didn’t.
Therefore – and I think this was kinda the point I was trying to make – God is either not omniscient, not omnipotent, or not omnibenevolent.
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### Author:  [@mrblue92](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrblue92)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2003, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/10 "2003-02-02T02:43:16Z")
"Now then, you have the facts. You know what the human race enjoys and what it doesn’t enjoy. It has invented a heaven out of its own head, all by itself: guess what it is like! In fifteen hundred eternities you couldn’t do it. The ablest mind known to you or me in fifty million aeons couldn’t do it. . . .
“By this time you will have noticed that the human being’s heaven has been thought out and constructed upon an absolute definite plan; and that this plan is, that it shall contain, in labored detail, each and every imaginable thing that is repulsive to a man, and not a single thing he likes!”
- Mark Twain, [Letters From Earth](http://www.positiveatheism.com/hist/twainlfe.htm)
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### Author:  [@boyohboy17](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boyohboy17)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2003, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/11 "2003-02-02T04:44:25Z")
Here’s a slightly different “proof”:
[list=1]
[li]A person (or soul) knows for certain that god exists.[/li][li]The same person knows that god will punish him for sin.[/li][li]And, that person is constantly in the presence of god.[/li][/list=1]
This would be similar to have someone constantly following you and monitering your actions. If that person had a knife (or worse), would you dare do anything that he would not like with him breathing down your neck?
Therefore, simply by giving you a constant awareness of his power and his presence, god strips you of free will upon entering heaven.
> [@](#):
>
> **tracer**
> Why didn’t God create us all in a Heaven-like environment to begin with?!
Because then we would not have free will, and god already has angels for that.
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### Author:  [@Cooper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cooper)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2003, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/12 "2003-02-02T05:21:25Z")
No one has ever satisfactorily explained to me what “free-will” could even possibly mean.
If we have person, with genetic makeup G1, and with life experiences L1, then we have an entity E(G1,L1).
In situation S1, E(G1,L1) makes a choice. That choice is a product of S1 and E(G1,L1). Where does Free Will fit? If we could make an exact copy of E(G1,L1), how could he make a different choice in S1?
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### Author:  [@Insaneous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Insaneous)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2003, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/13 "2003-02-02T11:38:55Z")
Cooper:
i think that if u had the same situation with an exact copy of E(G1,L1) that they would still make the same choice regardless of free will or not. If they knew of the choice of the previous situation then they would think, ‘hey i could change choice’, but if they knew that then the situation would be different from the original. So free will still applies except that in both cases both entitys have chosen the same choice because they r thinking the same things because both situations are the same.
On free will and evil in general:
I believe that free will is the abilty to do good or evil. Most people don’t have a total free will because they fear the concesquences (sp) of say killing someone. Things like guilt etc affect ur will to do things, so its not totally free. Total free will would be things like animals where they don’t really care the result of their actions.
Any way if any of you have read further tolkien mythology like ‘The Silmarillion’ will see that Iluvatar (God) lets evil happen because in the end it makes everything all the more beautiful. A bit different from the christian God, but the same could apply where since he knows wats gonna happen in the end, that evil makes it in the end better. Kinda like theater for his own enjoyment.
Another point is that part of evil is wanting to control others, so god gave free will to humans but wont stop evil because it is evil in itself to control the judgement of humans. Thus he uses jesus, etc to influence peoples decision but not control it.
OR final point: Evil is a human invention made to deter us from doing the wrong thing.
BTW wat i said probably makes no sense but its my first post! 😛
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### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2003, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/14 "2003-02-02T13:23:43Z")
Tracer wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> God didn’t merely know that Adam and Eve might choose evil. He knew that they would choose evil. He knew right down to the very millisecond exactly when Eve would take that first bite of the forbidden fruit. Not knowing those details would mean that He was not omniscient. He knew they would sin, leading eventually to billions of souls frying in Hell for all eternity, yet He created them anyway. He could have chosen to create them with a little variation of free will, or with the constant Light of the Lord’s presence, or with whatever it is people have when they’re in Heaven. But He didn’t.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you appear to be assuming that there is something intrinsic about being in God’s presence that short circuits volition. And yet, Jesus teaches that that there are those who, when face to face with God, reject Him outright. It is not the case that God is absent here and now. Although he is not a material entity, neither is man solely a material entity. Jesus teaches that man has a spiritual nature, and that what is of significance to God is moral decisions. God is present in a context of morality.
What I’m saying is that Heaven doesn’t cause people to choose goodness; rather, people who choose goodness are what comprise Heaven. You seem stuck on this business that they choose over and over or forever and ever, but that is applying a temporal reference frame to eternity.Their choice is their choice.
Just because Adam and Eve, if they existed, might have sinned does not mean that they “went to Hell”. In fact, the only person whom we know for sure to be in paradise with Jesus Himself is a convicted criminal who lived a whole life of “sin”. You cannot be held accountable for rejecting Love until you have encountered Love. Sin is nothing more, in the end, than rejection of Love. And anyone is free to reject the Facilitator of Goodness.
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### Author:  [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2003, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/15 "2003-02-03T02:08:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Insaneous \*
> i think that if u had the same situation with an exact copy of E(G1,L1) that they would still make the same choice regardless of free will or not. If they knew of the choice of the previous situation then they would think, ‘hey i could change choice’, but if they knew that then the situation would be different from the original. So free will still applies except that in both cases both entitys have chosen the same choice because they r thinking the same things because both situations are the same.
so you say that given a set of circumstances (G1, L1), our agent can only act one way (E(G1, L1) ). tell me again, how is that free?
> [@](#):
>
> BTW wat i said probably makes no sense but its my first post! 😛
welcome to the SDMB. may your stay here be fulfilling \>8]
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2003, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/16 "2003-02-03T03:09:18Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Libertarian \*
> **Correct me if I’m wrong, but you appear to be assuming that there is something intrinsic about being in God’s presence that short circuits volition.**
No.
What I’m saying is that, according to conventional Christianity, a man who willfully commited any number of sins during his lifetime will, if he is a Christian (by choice) at the time of his death, be admitted into Heaven where he will **never commit any sins again** for all eternity.
This means that there has to be **something** about Heaven that causes this man not to choose to sin anymore. I brought up the notion of “the Light of the Lord’s presence” as a possible example of what **might** be the thing that makes Heaven different enough from living in the flest that there is no sin there; I didn’t say, or mean to imply, that it **was** the thing that made Heaven sin-free. It could be that being without a physical body removes the desires which cause a soul to sin. It could be that Heaven is painted just the right shade of pink, for all I know. But **whatever** it is, there is **something** about the nature of Heaven, and the nature of the previously-sin-committing souls who inhabit Heaven, that makes Heaven into a Sin Free Zone.
The point I was making was that, since sin only occurs (but does not necessarily occur) in souls that have free will, this leads to **two possibilities** :
1. In Heaven, no soul has free will. Or:
2. In Heaven, souls still have free will, but either something about Heaven itself, or something about the way the soul’s personality has changed since its body died, or both, causes each and every soul in Heaven never to choose to sin.
It’s possibility 2 that I’m interested in here. If it is possible for an environment (Heaven) and the human souls God created to exist together in such a way that although they **could** sin they never **would** sin, then **why** couldn’t God just create people’s souls and people’s natural environs like that from the get-go? They would still have the precious gift of Free Will, right? And unlike the situation we have now, **no one** would go to Hell when they died. (If they died at all.)
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### Author:  [@xenothrope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenothrope)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2003, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/17 "2003-02-03T03:47:57Z")
I hope this isnt TOO off topic, but I had always wondered. What if lucifer won the holy war? (going on the premise that God, heaven and hell all exist) Called himself GOD, and cast the former god into hell.
Would explain a bit, I always thought.
Just a thought.
-x out
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### Author:  [@Mothchunks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mothchunks)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2003, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/18 "2003-02-03T06:12:54Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by xenothrope \*
> \*\*I hope this isnt TOO off topic, but I had always wondered. What if lucifer won the holy war? (going on the premise that God, heaven and hell all exist) Called himself GOD, and cast the former god into hell.
>
> Would explain a bit, I always thought.
>
> Just a thought.
>
> -x out \*\*
I think it would explain a lot too. Or how about this scenario: the Elohim are all equal beings, until one day one decides to declare himself king. Some angels follow him and the others follow one who resists the tyrant. He loses and is cast out into hell. The tyrant sets himself up as dictator forever and calls himself God.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2003, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/19 "2003-02-03T08:13:04Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by xenothrope \*
> **I hope this isnt TOO off topic, but I had always wondered. What if lucifer won the holy war? (going on the premise that God, heaven and hell all exist) Called himself GOD, and cast the former god into hell.**
(I’ll assume that by “Lucifer” here you actually mean the Satan, as “Lucifer” was an epithet applied to only Nebuchadnezer [sp?] in one Old Testament passage. It was John Milton, not the Bible, who cast Lucifer in the role of “Satan Before the Fall”.)
Okay, assuming there was a holy war of some sort in Heaven, and that the victor was Satan, this would mean that the “God” of the Bible actually lied to the people to whom He dictated the Bible, wouldn’t it? (Since the Bible talks of Satan as lesser than God and of Satan eventually being cast into the burning lake forever at the end of the world.)
If that were the case, then Satan is a pretty lousy liar. The Bible, and the New Testament in particular, is rife with mentions of Satan. If Satan **really** wanted to cover his tracks, he wouldn’t’ve made so much as a mention of any “Satan” anywhere in the Bible. He would have been “God” and that was the end of it.
So if there **was** a Holy War in Heaven, and a liar won said war and called himself “God” and later dictated the Bible under that pseudonym, then it stands to reason that this liar would **not** be Satan. He would be somebody totally different, whose original name wouldn’t even be **mentioned** in the Bible.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2003, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-free-will-in-heaven-or-god-is-a-meanie/152037/20 "2003-02-03T12:02:15Z")
> [@](#):
>
> my personal response is to deny that free will even exists in the world in which we live, but for those that disagree with that, it is simple enough to say that free will could exist without humans’ capacity (desire!) to do evil.
Physicists would probably disagree with you. At the least, they would acknowlede the existence of chance. There is certainly enough rom in the univserse for choice.
> [@](#):
>
> What I’m saying is that, according to conventional Christianity, a man who willfully commited any number of sins during his lifetime will, if he is a Christian (by choice) at the time of his death, be admitted into Heaven where he will never commit any sins again for all eternity.
Perhaps. Or perhaps there is more awaiting us than eternity. Who knows? God’s plan may be mroe grand than a lovely retirement home.
Or, perhaps wwe, unlike the angels, having tasted Good and Evil, are capable of making a choice they could not.
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