First off, you two should cut out this one-liner crap. Make an effort.

Secondly, "not having something" does not imply "incapable of". If God is all powerful but has no free will, it doesn't mean he is incapable of having free will. Just because I don't have a big screen TV right now doesn't mean I'm incapable of getting one.

I don't think God is omnibenevolent, that is, doing good to all people. "Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated." He is perfectly good though.

MA, what verses are these about babies going to heaven? I'm genuinely interested, it's not something I've studied much.

@Oh_Man (or @anyone for that matter), which would you rather have:

• A life where everything you believe in is 100% true and logical, but you hate life and you have to go through hell to get through the day
  
• or a life where not all of your beliefs make sense, some are completely incorrect, but you enjoy every second of every day of your entire life
  

I wouldn't call that a "choice".
If you are meant to do a certain thing, then you only have the illusion of choice, since you didn't really choose it: it was already chosen and thus pre-determined for you.

Here's a few...

As long as the debaters agree on which translation of the Bible, yes, the Bible may be discussed with certainty. The point I'm trying to make is "if the Bible says something, that statement is not automatically true." If you are discussing "what does the Bible say?" then, as you have said, we can discuss that with relative certainty.

Without concrete proof of the afterlife, we cannot know. If you're asking from a quote from the Mayahana or some other holy document that says "babies have a special Hell", we probably won't find one. Ancient, allegedly-holy documents don't make your argument any more true (unless your statement is something along the lines of "When was John Smith born?"). Otherwise I could claim that any document is inspired by God.

By only discussing the Bible, you are ignoring the Bhagavad Gita, the Mayahana, the Torah, the Quaran, and more. If you wish to only discuss the Christian God, then yes, the Bible says that babies go to heaven. It's clear that you know a lot about the Bible and I know very little. That is why I ask questions, even though the answer might be obvious to people like you.

Of course, if this topic is only to debate "free will and the Christian God," I'll gladly remove myself from the debate.

I don't think you understand what is being said, but I could be wrong. Here I will use the modern description of the electron for an analogy. Classically, we think of the electron as a particle, an object with a definite position and momentum somewhere in space. Quantum mechanics tells us that this idea is wrong, the more we know about its momentum the less we know about about the electron's position, and vice versa. Despite this, we can agree that there is an electron, somewhere at least, and that it will be somewhere and have some momentum. For some reason people have no problem accepting this: that an electron can be both a particle and a wave, but when it comes to God being omniscient and people having free will they suddenly decide to apply different reasoning. Let's assume there are only 3 spots in the whole universe and we have 1 electron, just like we had 3 options and 1 choice to make. Naturally it must be in one of those spots, but we cannot say which spot it will be in, we can only give some approximations: theres a 10% chance it's in spot 1, a 50% chance in spot 2, and a 40% chance in spot 3, for example. We never delimit the electron to one spot, despite the fact we know it is in one spot. Likewise, if we extend this analogy to God, we can say he never delimits our choice, despite the fact he already knows our choice. Of course, if we were to actually observe this electron, its waveform would 'collapse' into one of the 3 spots, and likewise if God were to say "you shall pick option 3" he would delimit our choices and take away our free will by predetermining the choice. So long as he never delimits the options however, there is still a choice to be made and we still have free will, despite his omniscience.

I had something else to say but I forgot, sorry.

Edit: remembered what I forgot
Oh, the other thing I'd mention is has to do with God and time. When we say God knows our choice "before" we make it, we assume we know enough about time to know that that matters. For example, making a choice may affect the entire timeline of our existence, past present and future, despite the fact we have no way of knowing if it affects the past, or how the structure of time really exists. God may simply exist outside of time, or at all times, or at no times, in such a way that our free will isn't hindered because he does not know our choice "before" we make it, but merely "knows" that we make it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 6 2012, 5:09 am by Vrael.

Lol. I'm replying to one-liners with one-liners. And why should I make an effort, I've never met a theist who would even entertain the notion that God has no free will. Yet here I find two non-believers who are trying to put a case forward for it, even though all three of us know that we're just discussing fiction.

So God doesn't have free will but is capable of having it. Uh huh. Then this means he has free will. It's painfully simple. Omnipotence is absolute power, no constraints, no impossibilities. It's like saying God voluntarily locks himself in a cage... but he still has the key to his release. You either have free will, or you do not. No amount of semantics on your behalf can change this very basic logic.

What is this? 1984? I can't just doublethink myself into believing stuff I know to be incorrect. I just can't. It's intellectual suicide. It's insanity. This is practically what it means to be insane, to have beliefs that are far out of line with what we actually know about reality.

And then there's this odd dichotomy you have presented us with... As I already said, what sort of person needs to lie to themselves to get through the day? Why is reality so discomforting that you have to make up a fairy tale in order to live with it? And how would it even work, lying to yourself? Obviously you know deep down that you are incorrect, no matter how much you repress it.

And I can't answer your question, because it's really a false dichotomy. I am quite happy living life with the full knowledge that when I die I cease to exist, that life has no objective meaning, and that there is no benevolent caretaker watching over us.

I'll take the truth over a lie any day.

That is why.
Don't put words in my mouth, or sacrieur's, or anyone elses for that matter.

There are no semantics involved, you have simply skipped a step in your logical process in order to arrive at the conclusion you wished for. God being omnipotent without free will neither constrains his power nor provides an impossibility he cannot overcome. If God voluntarily locks himself in a cage and has the key to his release, this does not change that fact that God is locked in a cage. Neither does the theoretical capability to have free will change the fact that God has no free will. (If he happens to have no free will, that is).

That is a good point for the debate, but is there any recorded history at 0 BC other than art? Did any of the art reflect the king? Im not sure...

Hmmm, what step was that?

Lol this is a joke. You're practically tripping over yourself with rhetoric now... "Free will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints." God has no constraints, none. Even self-imposed constraints can be abolished at any point in time, at a whim. You either have free will, or you do not. There is no middle ground. Please, just climb out of your trench already...

Not familiar with the Greek and Roman historians, I see.

The single most damning evidence that the bible is not inerrant. http://bible.cc/joshua/10-13.htm

This is something that actually would have been recorded by every culture. There is no record of it happening with any culture.

Actually, www.biblestudymanuals.net/joshua10.htm
Egypt, Babylon, Peru, China, and more all have histories and myths involving days standing still or running backwards; some, such as the Chinese account of Emperor Yao, coincide with the time of Joshua and are astronomically accurate to what would have happened in China of the sun was changed over in Israel.

You went immediately from the idea that omnipotence requires no constraints to the idea that a God with no free will is constrained in some way and therefore not omnipotent, without showing in the interim how not having free will constrains God's powers in some way.

You appear to simply support my case here, but I'll allow you another chance to explain yourself better if you desire, before I make any response to it.

Secondly, you're the one throwing rhetoric around. "Please, just climb out of your trench already..." is rhetoric, irrelevant, and has nothing to do with the issue of whether or not a God with no free will can be omnipotent. If you wish to hear some rhetoric from me, I would be glad to indulge you, but it would have to be through some other medium as it isn't appropriate for our discussion in this forum.

I already said how, because by not having free will God is incapable of making an action freely. This is a constraint.

You then tried to counter by saying God can release himself of this constraint at any time, using my own cage example as an analogy. I then said this was rhetoric/semantics because if he is capable of releasing the constraint then he already has free will.

It is very simple.

A computer is capable of performing many functions on its own, and I think we can both agree it has no free will. So why then does God being capable of releasing himself from a cage or any other function God can perform imply that he has free will? How is it that you link the "capability to perform a task" to "the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints." Are you saying performing a task requires that a choice first be made to perform that task? If so, why? Lightning strikes the ground, yet I don't think clouds have free will, or ever decide to begin the task of making lightning strike the ground.


Stop the nonsense as well. I am well aware of your desire to 'win the crowd', as you yourself have made known, which is all statements like "It is very simple" are intended or useful for. I don't play those games here. Accuse me of being unable to understand something "very simple" on battle.net or in some other medium if you wish, but not here.

Because your contrasting non-sentient behaviours to sentient ones. The computer or lightning strike doesn't have any consciousness, or any ability to make any choice whatsoever. God, being a sentient being (albeit a fictional one, yes sigh I can't believe we're discussing this) has that driving its actions.

So in essence you're assuming God has free will to begin with, as an assumption.

The entire point of my discussion is that "omnipotence implies free will" is wrong. You need to start from assuming omnipotence to be true and then show it implies he must have free will in order to validate your claim that started this whole discussion. As I said,
By assuming God has free will you're circumventing the entire process of proof and skipping directly to the conclusion. This is typically known as begging the question.

If you're no longer interested in validating your claim and wish to discuss the implications of some other claim, or that you never really meant to claim omnipotence implies free will, that's fine as well. Just lets be clear about what we're saying here, I feel somewhat trolled.