Preordinance and Punishment

Originally Posted by Marshmallow Moo

To answer someone's question, God cannot be held responsible for our actions. In the beginning, it is said that God created man as his near equal, but once Eve and Adam became greedy for the power to be EXACTLY like God, he condemned them to a fate that was less than their previous existence. God clearly doesn't want someone to overthrow him, as apparently it happened already with Lucifer. The reasoning behind his will to control everything is probably beyond human capacity to understand, but I can only assume it is in the goodwill of everything. Perhaps good and evil is much more complicated than we give it credit for.

Greed? I've always heard and read it as being curiosity, not greed.

Originally Posted by mmmmm_PIE

What about a robot chef, who feeds information (including salmonella content) into a simple program which outputs a "serve/don't serve" order the robot necessarily follows? Is the robot to be held responsible for any food poisoning? Surely the fault is with the programmer! But what if variables in the code were dictated by the result of some truly random quantum event? Is the universe at large now to blame?

If it was truly random, then no, but then that would be God as a force of nature. There'd be no point in worshipping him, any more than there's a point in worshipping a hurricane or the sun.

Wow, God sure is angry at himself.

Originally Posted by John

If it was truly random, then no, but then that would be God as a force of nature. There'd be no point in worshipping him, any more than there's a point in worshipping a hurricane or the sun.

Well, the sun isn't going to eternally torture you for failing to worship it. Actually I believe that "God as a Force of Nature" requires a non-conscious creator...

Originally Posted by mmmmm_PIE

Well, the sun isn't going to eternally torture you for failing to worship it.

Save that if God has no choice in the matter then worshipping him, or not, can have no effect.

You can't have it both ways, God cannot be free from any guilt because he has no choice, but still be worth worshipping because he has choice.

Actually I believe that "God as a Force of Nature" requires a non-conscious creator...

What's the difference between a conscious and non-conscious one if neither can ever make a decision?

I'm not so much arguing that God can't "make a decision", as that the idea of "making a decision" is meaningless (or at the very least unworthy of the connotations we give it) when an omniscient POV is involved. If we treat God as a program, for rhetorical purposes, an input of "worship" has an output of "salvation"; no notion of choice is required.

A conscious being is one who maps reality to an internal active symbology, and "experiences" an output. No particular ability is required.

But, once again, what is the practical difference between a God who is totally uncaring about humanity and one who cares but must act as if he is an uncaring one due to his knowledge of the future?

Either way everything that happens is set in stone. For all intents and purposes they are identical.

As such, it would seem that Calvanism is right, we are all saved or damned before birth, may as well do as we please until we die.

The "practical difference" is none of my concern (I personally find the idea of omniscience a logical impossibility in the first place). I was simply pointing out that its contradictory to remove responsibility from Eve due to the pre-ordained nature of her actions, and not afford God the same luxury

Originally Posted by mmmmm_PIE

What about a robot chef, who feeds information (including salmonella content) into a simple program which outputs a "serve/don't serve" order the robot necessarily follows? Is the robot to be held responsible for any food poisoning? Surely the fault is with the programmer! But what if variables in the code were dictated by the result of some truly random quantum event? Is the universe at large now to blame?

From an omniscient POV all reasoning - even God's - reduces to a computer program. If that program, or at least some of its elements, came into being (or "eternally existed") without some previous cause then they are, by definition, random values. Where do God's responsibilities diverge from the robot's?

Then that wouldn't be God, that would be Mother Nature. I'm talking about the Christian doctrine, and I don't know any Christian who honestly thinks God's works are random or deterministic, or that God's consciousness is made up entirely of neurons.

Originally Posted by Hatter

I don't know any Christian who honestly thinks God's works are random or deterministic

What's the third option?
Regardless of the composition of God's brain, regardless even of its physicality, it is necessarily random and/or deterministic because there is quite simply no other way for it to be. Maybe this isn't something Christians necessarily talk about, or indoctrinate, but it definitely follows from their premise.

Originally Posted by mmmmm_PIE

What's the third option?
Regardless of the composition of God's brain, regardless even of its physicality, it is necessarily random and/or deterministic because there is quite simply no other way for it to be. Maybe this isn't something Christians necessarily talk about, or indoctrinate, but it definitely follows from their premise.

The other option is that God really possesses free will, since he is supernatural. Maybe it's not logical, but it's what Christians generally believe. I'm aware that it's not what you believe.

Its always been my experience that theologians in academia dis-allow God contradictory or meaningless attributes/action (and thus avoid square circles, ultimately heavy rocks, and similar but certainly less trivial problems); this was certainly my policy when I believed. "Free will", in its most common usage, is a phrase with a boatload of connotations but no definition: an ideal example of a "meaningless" attribute.

idk, maybe its best to let the faithful speak for themselves? I think I'll drop this.

I thought "free will" was the ability to act in accordance with conscious, intelligent thought. And that the entire point of creating beings with this ability was so that they could exercise it.

Is there anyone who would argue that it is not good for beings to be free? And is there anyone who would argue that we could truly be free if God intervened to prevent people from doing bad [in the first place, before they act]?

Moreover, why do people demonize God for giving people this basic freedom, yet complain whenever a government impedes upon lesser freedoms?

Originally Posted by Artemicion

Moreover, why do people demonize God for giving people this basic freedom, yet complain whenever a government impedes upon lesser freedoms?

I'm arguing that he didn't give us this freedom, and that he's punishing us for a decision he made.