Question to both Atheists and Theists???

Question

Why did God give free-will to Humans--if that eventually causes most of them to be condemned to hell? Wasn't that a very BAD decision??
Atheists what do you think about this doctrine of FREE-WILL?
Theists--what's your explanation?

Answer 1

I suspect free will is an illusion. We are driven by our instincts and our desires; we are conditioned by our education and our environment; the end result is that when making any decision, we actually have less "freedom" than we suppose.

Answer 2

From my viewpoint as an atheist free will is... tricky to say the least. Let's see if I can explain this. Ok, let's say our universe was created by the big bang. Not sure that I believe that, but it's the easiest to explain, so we'll go with it. All the stuff in the universe is at a single point, and explodes outward. At that moment, everything has been and will be was just determined. It's all lead up to this moment and will continue to lead on. I must make the decisions that I AM going to make, but I am STILL making them by choice. I'm doing things because I want to do them, but if one could track every particle in the universe, you WOULD be able to determine all my future actions and thoughts. This is even confusing me a little, it's pretty abstract. Basically whatever decision I make IS the decision I was going to make all along, but I still did what I wanted to do, I still made the descision.

Answer 3

I am theist, considering I am Christian, but I will speak for theist and atheists as well.

The question makes a presumption that we as finite beings have understanding of an infinite being. The reality is that we don't. There are many paradoxes that involved infinity. One such is Galileo's paradox, which goes something like this:

Every integer is the square root of another integer, yet not every integer is a perfect square. This must mean there are more square roots than there are perfect squares. But this is not true, because there has to be one perfect square for every root: Thus the paradox.

This is one example of a paradox that infinity creates. They have interesting properties. Cross applied to God: If God gave man free will with knowledge that they would go to hell, then God must be sinister and not omni-benevolent. If God did give man free-will with no foreknowledge of what he would do, then he isn't omniscient. Here we have two infinite sets again omni-benevolence vs. omniscience, which creates a paradox.

Like Galileo’s Paradox, both exist, but how they exist is perplexing and beyond us. But God is knowable. It is not that we can know God, but that God has made himself known to us. That is why we can know God.

Answer 4

God's decision to give man free will is not a bad decision. When Adam ate the apple, he chose to disobey God because he had free will. Not all mankind is condemned to hell. Jesus Christ ,His Only Son came down to redeem and saved us.

Atheists lack belief in God.;mainly because they can not see God. And in the case of the free will, it's the negative direction of their will. They simply don't want God to exist.Theists is someone who denies God doesn't exist. He is an atheist denier. The theist believes that God practices general sovereignty that allows free will in mankind and allows man to contribute to bringing about the future. Even though God has the foreknowledge of the outcome, prayers can make a difference to God with regards to his plans.

Answer 5

I am an atheist, so I do not believe in "hell." I believe that every human has free-will, so no decision they made was because of fate. Although this leads to many poor decisions, that's life.

Answer 6

Well it's because of flaws like that in religion that I'm an atheist. There are too many flaws about God and the whole christian thing, he did do to many bad decisions.

Answer 7

Hell and the other negative things associated with God are all projections of people's ego thought systems. The god we see in most religions is one that is an exact duplicate of what people want him to be (rewarding, judging, punishing, etc.). Jesus came, preached Unconditional Love, people didn't like the message and changed it. Some of it survived in the parables. The dynamic of making god into what we want him to be is clearly shown in the parable of the prodigal son via the 'good' son (at the end of the parable).

Answer 8

I think your premise that most humans are condemned to hell is flawed. You don't know that and neither do I.
You have a chance and a choice to make (by the way, the fact that God knows the choices you will make doesn't mean, in my opinion, that he is controlling those choices - as alluded to by one respondant.
Finally, to think our little peanut sized brain (relatively speaking) can totally understand God is arrogant in the extreme.

Answer 9

'Omniscience' is logically incompatible with 'free will'. 'Omniscience', all by itself, is sufficient to put the lid on 'free will'; omnipresence and omnipotence are irrelevant. It is not necessary for god to intervene in order to negate 'free will' as a possibility. Omniscience negates free will all by itself.

If we really DO have 'free will', then an omniscient god is logically excluded. The logical fallacy lies in the premise that if god is omniscient, all outcomes are already known to god... everything that you think, decide and do... and everything that you WILL think, decide, and do.

For an omniscient being, all of existence over all of time is laid out as a tapestry before him... past, present and future, down to the smallest detail of material, of thought and of deed, and all is constantly in his awareness. There is no past, present and future from that perspective... there is only an eternal 'now'.

If that is the case, since god already knows everything that will happen, then everything is already decided... and as we go along through life, we are merely doing what has already been seen by god. Since god knows and sees everything that will happen, NOTHING that we think or do can be contrary to what god already sees and knows. We might THINK we have free will... but since we are merely acting out what god already sees and knows, this can be no more than an ILLUSION of free will.

Put another way, if you come to a point of decision, you have no choice but to take the path that god already knows you will take... there is no other option. That works all the way down the path of cause-and-effect... and, along the way, it even casts doubt on the validity of the concept of cause and effect. I don't want to get into that, though... it makes my hair hurt.

So, imagine that since before time began, since before the universe was created, god has 'known' that you would come to a point of decision at some spatial and temporal coordinate, and that faced with the possible paths A and B, you would take path A.

Now, during the course of your life, you arrive at that spatial and temporal coordinate where this choice exists. You evaluate the potential outcomes, and you have it in your head that you have 'free will', and thus, you are free to choose between path A and path B. However, since god is 'omniscient', and god 'knows' that you will take path 'A', then path B IS NOT an option... it IS NOT a matter of choice... it is a 'NECESSITY'. OF NECESSITY, you WILL take path A. Not 'must'... not 'can'... WILL take path A. You DO NOT have a choice. Path B is NOT an option... it is not even a POSSIBILITY. The best that you can achieve is the ILLUSION that you are free to choose.

So, either god is omniscient OR we have free will. It is QUITE IMPOSSIBLE for BOTH of these conditions to coexist.

The only way out of this logical dilemma is to limit god's power; i.e., start taking away things that god can see and know, until we get to a point where free will BECOMES a possibility. But when we start doing that, then he ceases to be omniscient... and thus ceases to be a 'supreme being'.

So... free will is an impossibility concomitant with an omniscient diety. The following sums up the possibilities:

1. There is no omniscient diety... therefore, the whole argument is stupid and irrelevant.

2. IF we possess 'free will' AND god exists, THEN, of necessity, it is IMPOSSIBLE that god is omniscient. (This does not preclude the notion of 'god'... it just means that he can't be as 'supreme' as one might think he is... or wish him to be.) You are (logically) obliged to acknowledge that god CAN NOT BE all knowing... and since omniscience is one of the things that makes god 'all powerful', then this means that god CAN NOT BE omnipotent, either.

3. IF god exists AND god is omniscient THEN, OF NECESSITY, it is IMPOSSIBLE that that we have free will, and you are (metaphorically speaking) nothing more than a piece on god's eternal game board; and, thus, "... man is not responsible for his actions."

Personally, I vote for number 1. You can pick any one you want... but YOU MUST PICK ONE, because there are NO OTHER possible outcomes... NO OTHER logically valid choices.

It is unfortunate (for the Abrahamic death cults of desert monotheism) that the concepts of god were solidified as dogma a few thousand years before the philosophical discipline of 'logic' was dreamed up by the Greeks. Those that concocted the religion did not have access to the intellectual tools that would have enabled them to realize that they had 'screwed the pooch' with respect to assigning god's impossible attributes. It wasn't until the 4th century that this logical impossibility garnered serious attention, and churchmen got their theological 'dancin' shoes' on, trying to weasel their way out of the logical dilemma.

They did not succeed, and this issue continues to be debated even 'til this day. This logical dilemma (and the resulting 'cognitive dissonance') was a key element in some of the various 'heresies' that were spawned in the early days of Christianity.

However, the simple observation that these impossible beliefs still exist shows that this does not seem to have been a very big hindrance, under the simple expediency that "There is no problem so big that we cannot ignore it, until it will go away." Too bad for them, though... it DOESN'T go away.

Corporate religion is helped along by the fact that most 'believers' do not employ logic or critical thinking skills; heck... that's why they're believers in the first place. If they employed logic and critical thinking, they WOULD NOT BE believers. So, even though these concepts create a logical impossibility, it does not seem to present a significant problem for them.

Answer 10

Ever played that game The Sims? I think God created us for amusement. I mean, sitting up in Heaven for eternity might get a little boring, don't you think? I think He likes to see what we do with our free will.