To be a little fair, knowing that you will spend an eternity being tortured in hell is one hell of a consequence, one that I would not risk lightly.
But it is still a consequence of exercising that very free will.
And assuming that the lines are not so tight as to form a railroad, then you would have some freedom even while avoiding such dire consequence.
Also… (isn’t theology fun?), you either have the possibility of repentance and redemption from breaking the rules, or you are damned irrevocably once you have, either way also gives you the ability to exercise free will.
Even damned if you do, damned if you don’t, gives a choice.
The other version of religion shifting is when people ditch tenets of their religion in order to keep popular with society. When they do so, it’s an implicit acknowledgment that their religion was based off of BS to begin with.
Czarcasm, no, I’m sorry to say that I don’t grasp what you’re trying to say.
But I think that I do understand LSLGuy’s post, so I’ll address that one, and hope that maybe it’s relevant to yours too.
I will concede that a person does, technically, still have free will, even when he knows that there are severe consequences for choosing Option #2. But won’t you agree that he is being coerced to choose Option #1? The point I was trying to make is that when there is a balance between ignorance and ironclad proof, then the person can do what they want, not influenced in either direction. That is total free will.
In my experience, anti-religious people tend to view God as a tyrant who wants to force his will upon us. Religious people tend to view Him as a leader who wants to teach us the right things to do, and to do them willingly.
Or (as I once heard a religionist say), when God thinks we are ready for the next step, He works behind the scenes to get the laws changed to support his new path for Mankind.
Goddidit.
By “anti-religious people” are you perhaps referring to atheists? Y’know-the people that don’t believe your god even exists?
If you aren’t referring to atheists, then who are you referring to?
That’s not what Progressive Christians believe. Progressive Christians believe that God is unchanging, but our interpretation of God’s will is every evolving and coming closer to what God actually desires for the world. Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek are flawed human languages and flawed humans were responsible for analyzing and trying to understand what God was trying to say. Heck, the Gospels constantly point out that the revered Apostles kept getting Jesus’s (the Word of God) teachings completely wrong and He had to constantly correct them.
As a Lutheran, we believe the Church is constantly reforming (Ecclesia semper reformanda est). And therefore we are constantly going back to Holy Scripture, going back to the teachings of Christ, and challenging previously held interpretations that don’t match what God wants.
(FWIW, the ELCA affirmed LGBTQ clergy in lifelong monogamous relationship prior to Obergefell, when public support for same sex marriage was under 50% - so it was actually moving prior to society’s acceptance)
You are free to agree or disagree with the continual reformation or the manner of the reinterpretation, but saying “God needs to change” is a strawman argument.
Umm…, yeah, I suppose so. I didn’t mean to offend anyone, nor to be inaccurate.
I guess I should have written, “there are some people who …”
I apologize, and thank you for asking.
But throughout the Bible mankind is praised for these supposed misinterpretations, not corrected. Even back when the god of the Bible communicated more directly, I can’t recall she/he/it saying something along the lines of “Uh…no. Y’all seem to have misinterpreted what I said, so lets see if I can clarify things for you.”
“Umm…, yeah, I suppose so. I didn’t mean to offend anyone, nor to be inaccurate.
I guess I should have written, “there are some people who …”
I apologize, and thank you for asking.”
The New Testament itself is a total reinterpretation of Scripture - where God basically says “Y’all seem to have misinterpreted what I said, so lets see if I can clarify things for you”
And Deuteronomy (which literally translates a ‘second law’) is a slight reinterpretation of previous books of the Torah, adding the Deuteronomic Code and saying that it is part of original the Law of Moses (which likely a convenient fiction of the author)
Ignoring the possibility that the New Testament is the result of shoehorning one religion into another, how many wars and how many deaths took place in the thousands of years before your god finally got off her/his ass to give us the revised version of the rules?
As you say, the lines don’t form a railroad. There is a tremendous variety of behaviors one can engage in that stay wholly within the lines as best I understand mainstream Judaic and Christian thought. And the selection of which of those conforming behaviors to engage in is an exercise of free will.
As a separate matter, yes, crossing the lines and coloring outside would be an exercise of free-er free will if you will, albeit with the risk of the horrendous threats being carried out later. But you don’t need to cross the line to be engaging in free will.
Certainly there is coercion towards option 1. Massive coercion. Monstrously inhumane and barbaric coercion.
I think you and I are using “free will” in profoundly different senses of the phrase.
As I understand it, the buzzphrase “free will” represents the idea of having the ability to make a choice; IOW your future behavior in detail is not fore-ordained. Which choice is up to you. That does not imply each choice has the same consequences. Whether you choose chocolate or vanilla, you’re going to be tasting different flavors. Decisions have consequences. Every exercise of free will transits another branching point in the collection of conceptual worlds-that-might-have-been, selecting the one that contains the choice you chose.
If I understand you, you seem to be saying the buzzphrase “free will” means there are no consequences to one’s decisions. Every decision produces the same outcome or at least equivalently desirable outcomes. I don’t see that.
After all, God’s wrath is no different from Gravity’s: have the temerity to step off a tall cliff and Gravity’s retribution will be swift, inexorable, and unpleasant. Decisions, wise or unwise, deliberate or inadvertant, major or minor have consequences. All of them, not just the big ones about thumbing one’s nose at god-given strictures.
I know you’re far more insightful than that, so somehow we’re not connecting.
As in non-existent? Just kidding, sort of. I guess it matters what your idea or definition of evidence is. As a retired detective, I think a certain way when the term evidence is used. One good thing about the U.S. is that you are pretty free to believe what you want about god(s) and religion. Knock yourself out. We can agree to disagree. But when legislators pass laws based on what THE BIBLE says, I have a problem. In a country that was founded upon (among other things) freedom of and from religion, the use of a religious book that can be used to justify almost anything as a basis for law-making seems more than a bit hypocritical.
Issidiqui, I don’t doubt that you and your church believe that way. But I’ve definitely known other people who held the view that God needs to change Himself to adapt to us. That wasn’t a straw man, that’s what they argued.
And doesn’t it strike you as a bit suspicious that the same God who was homophobic for 99% of the duration of human civilization up until recently suddenly turns out to be a gay-friendly God right around the time that human society started becoming pro-LGBT?..A little bit too convenient?
How can it be intellectually honest that God always conveniently matches what a local society wants at any particular time in history? That wouldn’t be a true religion.
“People” is a pretty fuzzy word. Were these people actually theologians with insight into the history and development of the church? Were these people in positions of influence over the policies to be espoused? Or were they just… people?