I agree that our decisions have consequences. You can’t exercise your free will to choose chocolate ice cream, and expect it to taste like pistachio. We are in total agreement on that.
You have free will to jump from the roof of a tall building. But most people won’t do that. They will refrain from jumping. If they want to experience the exhilaration of a free-fall jump, they will choose to invest the time and money to go skydiving. But I ask you: When they look out the window, and choose to stay inside, do they really WANT to stay inside? I think not. I think they really want to jump. (In fact, I personally would love to experience that fall.) But they fear of dying makes most people choose to stay inside. This is the point I’m trying to stress: They choose to stay safe, even though they don’t want to stay safe.
If God’s existence were as obvious as chocolate and gravity, then we would do what He says, but we wouldn’t really want to. We would be “forced” to obey Him, the same as we are “forced” not to jump off the roof. Technically, no one is being forced; it is a free-willed decision. But still, we’re not doing what we want to do.
So, I believe that God specifically chooses to hide the evidence of His existence. He designed stuff so that it wouldn’t be possible to prove He’s there. In this manner, no one is forced to believe. We believe only if we choose to do so.
Is that a better explanation of how I’m using the term “free will”?
You are arguing that a religion MUST be nothing but an eternal and unchanging set of moral value judgements. Nothing more and certainly nothing less.
I will certainly agree that US-based fundamentalist Christians do hold to that definition of what “religion” means. AIUI, you’ve said elsewhere that that was the milieu in which you were raised. So it’s hardly surprising you’ve inherited that definition, perhaps unexamined.
As you learn more about what the rest of the world thinks and believes, you’ll find that there is vastly more variety in what constitutes “religion” than just that.
Because they have solid evidence of the existence of tall buildings, of gravity, and of what is likely to happen if one jumps from the top of a tall building. Full knowledge is helpful in deciding whether or not to jump from the tall building-Ignorance is not.
So, God is like a bridge with a bunch of hidden holes in it, where we are ready to plunge to our death if we take the wrong step, never knowing which step is the right one?
That’s less giving free will, and more just ensuring failure.
Agreed. The difference is that God (at least, how I understand Him) does not simply want obedience. That would make Him a tyrant. He wants us to want to follow His ways, and that is not going to happen if our awareness of Him is as obvious as our awareness of tall buildings and gravity.
Then he needs to make it clear which set of ways is his in particular, and the only way to do this is to make some sort of appearance and saying " These are the particular set of rules I set forth", otherwise we are back to throwing thousand-sided dice to pick our religion.
Not that our legal system is the best at holding to its ideals, but it’s preferable to a legal system that you will not even know whether or not you broke a law, much less what the punishment for that is going to be, until you are face to face with the judge.
That too, of course. I was referring to the generic “god loves us” message people get.
I’ve heard defenders of faith say that don’t you have faith in your spouse? Not really, in the sense that I have 44 years of evidence that she loves me and has been true.
When someone asks you to have faith, check your wallet.
As suspicious as the same God who apparently was ok with slavery for 99% of the duration of human civilization suddenly starts to turn out to be an abolitionist God (for some) in the mid 1800s.
If one agrees our interpretation of God changes as the Holy Spirit works within us, then we have to be open to admitting that our deep seated beliefs of who God is and what God’s will is can and should change. If one believes that we are flawed and sinful, then we are constantly getting things wrong in our stumble for God. It’s part of the process until the Age to Come.
If I were trying to make a religion, then I’d at least indicate that as long as you are trying to follow a righteous path, then a benevolent god would not let you fall.
They would either clearly mark the holes, or they would move the holes to where you were not going to step.
Which would be, of course, why religion would change to stay up to date with society. It’s less about following arbitrary rules and more acting in a way that supports a stable and prosperous society.