# This "We are all sinners" thing.... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 31, 2003, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-we-are-all-sinners-thing/192066 "2003-07-31T04:55:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Shaolinrabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Shaolinrabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shaolinrabbit)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-we-are-all-sinners-thing/192066/81 "2003-08-02T18:35:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Apos \* > This just goes around in circles. Why does the actor choose what they do? And why are they that way? Why does the determination come down on one side and not the other. To even TRY to explain this why is to defeat pretty much ANY account of free will. Not really, **Apos**. Can you give me an example of a person who chose one, who _could not_ have chosen the other? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-we-are-all-sinners-thing/192066/82 "2003-08-02T18:50:23Z")
What do you think of this passage, **JThunder**? ([1 Samuel 15:2,3](http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&passage=1+samuel+15%3A2-3&version=NIV)) > [@](#): > > "This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, **children and infants,** cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ " Would it be right or wrong to follow this command from God? Would _you_ kill babies if God told you to do it? ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2003, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-we-are-all-sinners-thing/192066/83 "2003-08-02T21:29:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Can you give me an example of a person who chose one, who could not have chosen the other? Again: which sense of “could” are you using? If they are not constrained from choosing one among two things, that’s trivial. But that’s not the sense of free will you’d need to defend. There are two options for a given chooser: either something explains why they chose what they did (and they could not have chosen otherwise once all factors are accounted for), or nothing explains it (it was uncaused, random, nothing accounts for it). In the first case, that something becomes pre-eminent over the choice, but in the second, no responsibility can adhere to the choice. Even a mix of the two ideas doesn’t work: neither that which is under the control of someone they are responsible for but so if their creator, and that part which is random no one is responsible for. The problem is, you are allowing yourself to treat the act of choosing as an inscrutable cipher that need not be explained. But it MUST be explained if any concept of Free Will is to be intelligible. I have already outlined two cases: determinism and indeterminism, and why neither nor a mix of the two can support the strong sense of “Free Will” necessary to explain why an omnipotent Creator can judge his own creations in anything more than the sense in which a baker can judge that he has made a loaf of bread poorly or well: the ultimate responsibility still resting in him. Moral responsibility DEMANDS some eventual recourse to a basic nature that lies BEHIND and exists prior to the choosing process. ---
**Author:** ![Shaolinrabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Shaolinrabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shaolinrabbit)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2003, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-we-are-all-sinners-thing/192066/84 "2003-08-03T00:18:19Z")
I understand what you are asking for, **Apos** , and that’s where the situation become more complex. The concept among thinking Christians is referred to as election, or predestination. This is the concept that God, knowing everything, created the universe, and it behaves as intended, with the result that those selected at the beginning would be selected again at the end. People are designed to function in the manner which they do, and arrive at the conclusion they were designed for. The purpose of this has been explained in many ways, but of course is totally unknown. I personally prefer free will to election, because I believe that it provides greater purpose for our creation and destruction. I believe that a given person has individual responsibility for their decisions which cannot be altered by either nature, or nurture. But, on the subject of why people choose what they choose, I don’t think anyone has ever answered that with satisfaction. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2003, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-we-are-all-sinners-thing/192066/85 "2003-08-03T15:43:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jsgoddess \* > Sooo, what’s the living part for, again? > > We have to live because that’s how we grow up or gain experience. > > But if we don’t have a chance to live, that’s no barrier to growing up or gaining experience? > > And the suffering that’s a part of this whole living thing, that’s unnecessary too, isn’t it? Because if a soul doesn’t even need to live for a whole day, or a whole minute, or even a whole second, then why doesn’t God just ease everyone’s suffering and blip us out after the barest instant? > > God is putting us into bodies for our own benefit, then leaving us in those bodies despite the benefit having already been achieved? There’s more to it than simply gaining a body. Life on earth and the choices we make are important too. You could compare dying in infancy to being thrown out of school in the first grade. Stuff still has to be learned, it’s possible to learn it outside of school, but it might not be as simple since the usual framework for learning has been taken away. A person who dies young will have to ‘catch up’ somehow, just at a different time or place–I don’t know how. > [@](#): > > So, Jesus was one of those incorporeal floating intelligence blobs? At one time. I don’t know if you can say ‘incorporeal.’ > [@](#): > > Again, all this says is that God is taking imperfect beings, knowing they are imperfect, setting tests for them to prove their imperfections, and then punishing them for revealing said imperfections. In the end, God gives us what we want. If we want to be with him, we can. If not, and we’ll be happier farther away, we can have that too. God is our father, and feels about us like we do our children. It’s my job to teach my daughter about the world and what she should do, but then I have to let go and let her decide what to do with her life. If I don’t like her choices, that doesn’t make it OK for me to force her to do what I want her to do. She’ll learn like we all do; by making mistakes and facing the consequences. If I ‘saved’ her from all pain, I would be a terrible mom and she would end up a wreck. > [@](#): > > Did the floating blobs of intelligence sin? Don’t know. > [@](#): > > Does he look like Morgan Freeman? Anything’s possible. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2003, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-we-are-all-sinners-thing/192066/86 "2003-08-04T07:01:49Z")
> [@](#): > > I personally prefer free will to election, because I believe that it provides greater purpose for our creation and destruction. I believe that a given person has individual responsibility for their decisions which cannot be altered by either nature, or nurture. > > But, on the subject of why people choose what they choose, I don’t think anyone has ever answered that with satisfaction. The problem is: unless that can be answered, even hypothetically (i.e., we’re not even asking that it be proven: just that there even be a coherent statement of it), then the idea of “Free will” is not a meaningful concept. Unless we can say what role “FW” plays in the process of choosing, how can it be claimed that our choosing is deficient without it? There is nothing about the concept of responsibility, or even purpose, that requires any alternative to determinism at all: the idea that they do is, IMHO, almsot always simply the exact smae confusion of the weak form of fw (external) with the strong form (internal?). Indeed, concepts like responsibility and purpose actually seems strictly INCOMPATIBLE with most attempts to explain what free will is. The reality is, whether a creator God planned out our actions or not, it still makes no sense for an omniscient being to hold people to account for doing what it is their nature to do. It makes sense in the way that a manufacturer would discard defective products, but not in the sense that the manufacturer should be angry with anyone but themselves for defects. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-we-are-all-sinners-thing/192066.md?page=4)