MeDeFe wrote:I am omnipotent.
I create something. What my creation looks like, behaves like, thinks, is entirely up to me at this point.
I give my creation the possibility of thinking and acting on its own, not controlled by me.
My creation behaves in ways I disapprove of. Being omnipotent and perfect and all that jazz, I have foreseen this, though.
Now: Who's to blame for the misbehaviour?
To use the parent-child analogy you and others are so fond of, this is like a parent giving their 4 year old child a hammer and an unlimited number of buckets of paint of all conceivable colours, putting them in the middle of the Victorian sitting room, and then leaving.
You know what's going to happen, you know what the room will look like and you know what the child will look like and that it will want to know what the paint tastes like, and then try it again to see if it's gotten any better.
But who's to blame?
To me the answer is clear: the parent.
That is why god cannot remain just and at the same time in any way judge people for their thoughts and their behaviour after granting us free will. Consequences our actions have for ourself are not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about how our behaviour supposedly can influence how god treats people's souls after they've died. If I waste my life away, steal and do drugs it has consequences for me in life, that's fine. But the ultimate being who enabled me to behave like that in the first place and knew that I would behave like that cannot judge me because it has no right to judge me. God knew what would happen, that I would be a morally reprehensible person and not give a wet fart about religion, much less accept him as my saviour, and yet god let me waste my life away. I'm no more to blame than the previously mentioned child with the hammer and the paint, it would be meaningless to punish me in any way for what I have done.
The reverse is equally true, I may be helpful, friendly, organize programs to help the poor get out of their poverty, save birds that have fallen out of their nests, respect my elders, devoutly believe in god and never rickroll anyone on the internet. But I'm really just a 4 year old who happened to paint a picture of a house and a happy family on the Persian carpet. I may not have left as large a mess as the other 4 year olds, but praising me for that is just as meaningless as blaming the others. Any reward for obeying god's commands in life is as unjust as punishment for not obeying them.
You keep telling us that we cannot understand god. If that's true, god has no business punishing or rewarding us because of what we make of the free will he gave us. Even if we were to understand completely after we have died it is true, punishing or rewarding us then is like punishing or rewarding the 4 year old 70 years after the event. It is meaningless.
Sorry for taking so long, finally I'm getting around to producing a reply. Sadly, the confusion appears to persist, either on my end or on your end.
PLAYER57832 wrote:I do understand your point, but I disagree. See you haves set up a definition that basically says there is no real and true free will, because God can predict everything and therefore is really controlling the situation.
It is indeed my opinion that an omniscient god is incompatible with any meaningful definition of free will, however,
that has no bearing on this argument.The 4 year old example might seem, superficially to apply, but it really doesn't. It doesn't for several reasons. The most important is that of consequence versus growth. See, that child has way too much potential to cause harm and only a very slight chance of doing good OR of learning from that harm.
If it doesn't apply, I would request you and everyone else to please stop using it. If it doesn't apply in my case it doesn't apply in any of your cases either. Period.
In the case of Adam and Eve, we Christians believe there was a learning process. I am going to go a bit outside of church doctrine and into my own beliefs here. I believe the entire aspect of evil and so forth is, in a sense, learning. Not individual learning, though, but humanities' learning. You can say, because the harm seems so very, very, very great to us. (no dispute there!) that the good cannot possibly outweigh all that harm. However, if you believe in God and believe in God's justice, this is not the case.
I have no idea what you're talking about, nor what part of my post you're referring to here.
Further, I believe you misunderstand this whole thing of justice. See, human justice says "you murdered this person and unless it was self defense or some such, you get punished". God sees much more. He sees our true hearts. This man who committed murder, maybe he had no parents to love him, had a bunch of other bad breaks. Maybe the fact that he only killed one person, instead of many is actually a sign of good character and choice, given his whole circumstances. Humans cannot afford to make those judgements, because the risk is just too great. We need to lock up violent people to protect ourselves. However, that has very, very little of true judgement within it.
God, to contrast, sees all. He might say that that guy who attends church every week, donates money and so forth, all the superficial "good things", has forgotten to really and truly help people. Maybe he is good about putting out public checks, but behind closed doors is a jerk. Or, maybe he has tons of money and while he gives some to "good causes", is not really putting it where God asks him to. Maybe he passes out checks, but hires people for wages too low for them to survive well. Even those are but my, human ideas of examples. God's justice is not so limited, not at all.
Furthermore, God's justice is not directly tied to consequences here on earth. Bad things happen to the best of people and good things happen to people who are absolute evil. However, God's real justice takes all of that into account.
What? Introducing further hypotheticals about my examples and telling me... well, what exactly are you trying to tell me? That god's justice is different from human justice? Whatever it is you're trying to tell me, I don't see how it affects my point in the least. In my post I stated that even if god has complete information he still has no business doing any judging whatsoever, not during a person's life, and not after they die either. I even took the unlimited amount of information available to god into account. All you're saying here is "No, you're wrong!"
Maybe it'll be easier if I restate my point:
God gives us free will knowing what we'll do with it. (And screw the contradictions in that.)
With our limited information (when compared to god) we do all kinds of stuff god disapproves of.
God knew we would do all that if he gave us free will, therefore he has no business doing any sort of judging. Not while we're alive, and not after we die.