Why did god give you free will and then hold it against you?

Question

Was Cain innocent by using his god given free will? Forget about telling me you do not believe in the Bible. This is a question of human principle. With or without a god. I use "god" because no one has come up with a better word.

Answer 1

It is understood that Free Will in humans leads to sin. Everyone sins. It is also understood that God is not holding us to the sin, as it was forgiven through Jesus Christ. Now it is also our free will to reject forgiveness.

Answer 2

Hello:

Your question requires that there be a god in that something has to first give us the free will and then secondly hold us accountable for what we do with it.

Having said that I think that if there is a God and it created us with free will and is holding us accountable that first off it is fair because God would be the one that ultimately makes the rules of right and wrong. Beyond this we cannot be sure the reality of this because the "leap of faith" to believe also includes a leap in logic and a leap in knowledge (we can think we can justify know God, but it is impossible at least logically), so we cannot really know how accountable we will be held.

Having said all of this: Maybe God being perfect and knowing everything can be sure of her/his actions at all time, however perhaps s/he wanted to experience something different and perhaps as it was said in some movie and God is a kid with an ant farm. Maybe we need something to judge us by and our choices are the least arbitrary thing.

To be honest I do not know any action that God could not forgive in the end and since life is suffering anyway the fact that we do it to each other is kinda incidental, however avoidable.

As for a better word for God how about Everything. We are Gods way or experiencing one small corner of Being one person at a time, one Tree at a time and so on...

I hope this helps.

Rev Phil

Answer 3

Well is it a god question or a human principle question?

Anyway, people tend to feel disgust and enmity towards those who do hostile or gross behaviors like theft or child molestation. Why do we? God only knows. But since we do, and since we're the only ones around here expressing an opinion, and since we feel justified in imposing our collective views on individuals, then we make laws and punish offenders. Why do any of those things occur? God only knows. But given all that, yes we have free will, but in a larger sense we don't really - we have the hopes, fears, urges and motivations that we find inside ourselves, many of which are traceable to our childhoods and environment. I, for example, have no desire to be tied up and whipped by some sexually facked up woman in spiked heels. But thank god I don't have the desire. You know? Cause if I did ...

Why we expect certain behaviors from others and are willing to contribute a piece of our own freedom to get it is one of those things like, why do we have two ears instead of twenty, or none. Who knows. But it is so. We have a lot of power that we could use to hurt others and others expect us to curb that behavior. As we expect of them too. Why that is so is a good question, and even then, what would it mean, I wonder, to come up with a reason - that our quarks are in a non-polar orbit? Whatever reason we could come up with could then also reasonably be questioned as to why THAT is and so on. I think why is over-rated.

Answer 4

Please, allow me to address your question with the answer it deserves. God does not exist, BECAUSE we have free will. You see, the term "God" refers to a being that is a complete contradiction in every sense you can imagine, and in senses that you can't imagine. One contradiction in terms is a morally and aesthetically perfect being that makes mistakes. That is impossible by definition. Yet what can it be called when such a being supposedly creates a world where there is suffering and then blames the creation? Kinda stupid also. The reason for the blame? A faculty was used in the only meaningful form of use that it has, to make a decision that is not obedient to the will of another, because that is exactly what this "God" demands, that we use our "will" only to respond to His "will". Defeats the purpose entirely of having a "will", if you actually thing about it.

Allow me to elaborate. If you have a will, just what do you ever use it for? It will be found that you use it ensure that your doubts about matters for which at least some chance of successful action are possible don't overrule your capacity to act, so that, if you best judgement obtains a sense that the rate of return for your contemplation on a matter is riskier than the rate of return for acting in the best way that you know how, you will be able to act. The remaining event is your "choice", which is whether or not to act, and in what way. Your "choice" may be to think further, or ignore the "choice point" that is before you. It may be that you are impelled to act, but "sense" that there is a reason to restrain yourself, which is the contrary of the first condition I mentioned above. This means then that you may use your will to either engage in action or to refrain from it, all the while implying that will is also a factor in the economy of mental, emotional, spiritual activity that is involved in what outwardly appears to be merely a choice between A and B, but is actually quite multidimensional and super-ramified.

Now back to your question. If this is the nature of "will" ( and if it isn't this pray tell what you think it is) then the only way to use this faculty in a world that has a God telling you what to do, if it is defined as perfectly moral and perfectly aesthetic, is to do whatever He says to do, duh. Yet, why would there be a reason to grant you an ability to do otherwise, if the only TRUE exercise of that ability is to DO otherwise... You see, the inherent function of will is not to OBEY, but to DECIDE, and there is no lower function of the will than to decide whether or not to OBEY another's will, since that means you abdicate your own responsibility to investigate the ins and outs of your own actions.

If this isn't yet clear, I will point it out another way. If there is a perfect universe, it was created to be beatiful and pleasant, IF it was created by what is usually meant by "God". We were created with a faculty which, if used in its proper sense, leads to harm and suffering, and can only not do this when abdicated, that is, when not ever used. This means it is an unecessary ability with only one possible result when used, suffering. That means that "God", who by definition can be the only proper decider of anything at all, has given you the ability, with no possibly good reason of ever using it, but apparantly plenty of "motivations" to do so, the only result of which use is suffering... Sounds like the archetype of a sadist, doesn't it?

Well, the world is rather sadistic in many respects. Therefore, either the proposed "God" of kindness and love and decency doesn't exist, or "God" is actually one of four things.... Indecent and mean (evil), Stupid (intellectually challenged), Insecure and strange, Powerless and/or incompetent. Whatever the combination of these traits, that raises all kinds of new questions, doesn't it.

I'd just rather leave out notions about a "God" at that rate. Better reevaluate the need for a "God" that puts us in a position where such a conclusion results, or else start getting used to a Stupid, Evil, Incompetent, and Strangely Insecure being at the center of this universe. Now, that is my response to a question that properly is asked of another "God" than my own. Mine is better than that.

Answer 5

You say that someone is entitled to murder because he has "God given free will." Where is God's name did you get THAT notion? If you sin, you are subject to the wrath of God. Murder is against all "human principles" whether or not there is a God.

Answer 6

It does seem, in the Bible story, that God holds all the cards. He tells people not to do something, which of course made them want to do it ...

he gives them free will, then gets mad when they use it, and pretty well stays mad all through the Old Testament.

It's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Answer 7

Free will is nothing more than the opportunity to make a choice, and experience the results of it. "God" has nothing to do with the outcome.

To use an analogy...if I throw away what I THINK is a losing lottery ticket, and someone else picks it out of the trash...and it turns out to be the winner...the outcome for sure is bad from MY perspective..but what about the guy who found it? You have two vastly different outcomes from the same decision...how can you possibly hold "God" accountable for both?

Answer 8

Why is it that people can understand the complex workings of the human body yet they can't understand the simple principles of free will?

Answer 9

would you rather have been a cow? YOU were the one who incarnated as a human being. Somehow you deserved to. Now you're complaining? You knew the risks involved and yet you took them anyway because what choice did you have?

Answer 10

Here's an article I have seen. It was quite good
http://www.midbible.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97&Itemid=83