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[Quack]

God shouldn't have created those who he knew would reject him.

Even assuming the existence of free will, God could have only created those beings that he knew ahead of time would freely choose him.

Such beings need not be perfect for this thought experiment; the faithful still sin, but at least in this hypothetical universe there should be no eternal torment, since all the people would freely choose life.

[jimwalton]

I'm curious if your question is really about the fairness or unfairness of hell. If it is, say so and we can talk about that instead.

Glad to see you're a dew sippin', fedora tippin', burden flippin' atheist. We should be able to have a good conversation.

1. God would not and could not have created if His children (humans) had no free will. The WHOLE deal, and I mean the WHOLE deal, is about a love relationship. Without free will, love can't exist, and so there's no creation.
2. God could not have created only those that He knew ahead of time would freely choose Him. There is no freedom if it's determined, and therefore this position is self-contradictory.
3. Hell seems to be your real sticking-point. If you are thinking that hell is unfair (which is not something you said), that's an illogical conclusion.
4. If you are thinking that hell is cruel (which you also didn't say), that's also illogical.
5. If you are thinking that God is cruel, remember (a) that you can't have love without risk, (b) you can't have love without free will, and (c) God is not cruel to allow people to decide their own destinies.

So maybe you need to be a little more clear on what your point is and we can talk further.

[Ronny]

> Without free will, love can't exist

1. The hormones that create the feeling of love in our brains are just as subject to the argument of whether free will exists as any other cerebral phenomenon. If anything, love is less about free will than instinct. You don't choose to love.
2. There's also no freedom if god has a plan (armageddon?) and humans are acting out that plan as we speak.
3. An eternal torture chamber for those who choose not to follow him is illogical, if he's an all-loving being.
4. See above.
5. You can love without risk if you are all-powerful and omniscient. As for humans, we love our babies when they are placed into our arms for the first time whether there's an immediate risk or not.

[jimwalton]

> The hormones that create the feeling of love in our brains are just as subject to the argument of whether free will exists as any other cerebral phenomenon. If anything, love is less about free will than instinct. You don't choose to love.

There's no doubt that everything we think and do is the result of some kind of chemical reactions, hormones, and the interaction of cells in our bodies. The real question at hand is, "Can we guarantee that's ALL that's at play?" I would argue no. I think there's good reason to believe that consciousness is more than just chemicals. My reason would be that if intelligence is the product of physical and chemical processes that don’t aim at truth, cannot understand, and are incapable of making judgments, then reason is unreliable. We have no grounds for trusting intelligence. Physical processes don’t lead us to meaning, judgments, values, and logic (entities that do not exist in the subatomic, chemical, biological, or molecular phenomena). This reductionist-materialist objection is self-defeating.

> If anything, love is less about free will than instinct.

Again, I disagree. Love, by our own definitions, experiences, and understanding must necessarily involve choice to be love. Robots and machines can interact, but we never describe their interactive relationships as love. Chemical causation is impersonal. Biological interaction is not love. (We would never realistically describe two trees with intertwined limbs as expressing love.) If love is not chosen, it is not love.

> There's also no freedom if god has a plan (armageddon?) and humans are acting out that plan as we speak.

The only plan of God that the Bible talks about is a salvation plan. Other than that, humans are portrayed as necessarily free agents. Determinism is foreign to biblical theology.

> An eternal torture chamber for those who choose not to follow him is illogical, if he's an all-loving being.

There is nothing illogical about (1) allowing people to make their own free-will choices, (2) giving them every opportunity and advantage to choose life, and (3) allowing them to set their own destiny.

Second, love is not the only attribute of God at play. God is also an all-just being, requiring that if someone chooses hell and deserves punishment for their rebellion against God, allowing them to be separated from God in hell IS the loving choice. For God to force you to be in His presence and love Him against your will is what would be cruel.

>You can love without risk if you are all-powerful and omniscient.

Then you misunderstand both omnipotence and omniscience. First of all, omnipotence cannot be self-contradictory, and therefore there are many things that God cannot do, one of which would be to falsify some version of love that was not love at all. Secondly, knowledge is not causative, so God's omniscience is not and cannot be used as a force to commandeer free will to force us to love God. God's omniscience isn't deterministic but rather merely all-seeing (not all-causing).

[Axis of Evil]

> My reason would be that if intelligence is the product of physical and chemical processes that don’t aim at truth, cannot understand, and are incapable of making judgments, then reason is unreliable.

Natural selection would act quickly to select out those without accurate representations of reality.

> Physical processes don’t lead us to meaning, judgments, values, and logic (entities that do not exist in the subatomic, chemical, biological, or molecular phenomena).

These aren't "entities", they are descriptions and emotions. Also, this is clearly a fallacy of composition. Just because meaning isn't a result of the individual matter doesn't mean it can't result from the whole.

More importantly, theists have the same problem. There is no inherent reason to trust the thoughts in your brain if they are founded on God/the supernatural. Those have even fewer factors we can evaluate.

> God is also an all-just being

"All-just" is not possible along with "all-merciful", btw. "All just" is also tautological since it's supposedly God who determines what is just.
allowing them to be separated from God in hell IS the loving choice.

There are many, MANY different other options to ensure these people don't go to hell.

1) Reincarnation until they choose believe in God

2) Make them disappear

3) Send them to heaven anyway and only send them to hell if they hate it there and it is worse than hell to them

> God's omniscience isn't deterministic but rather merely all-seeing (not all-causing).

This doesn't get remotely close to solving the problem. It's just asserting "it doesn't cause action", when we are saying it necessarily means we act according to what he knows.

[jimwalton]

> Natural selection would act quickly to select out those without accurate representations of reality.

We have to distinguish between perceptions of reality and making abstract truth judgments. If our cognitive faculties are the result of natural selection and genetic mutation, we have no basis to presume they are giving us mostly reliable information. At best it's 50-50. And if that's the best, then I have reason to be suspicious of every thought. It could just as well be false as true, and I have no mechanism by which to determine otherwise. I cannot rationally accept by reasoning processes. Atheist scientific philosophers agree:

Thomas Nagel: "If we came to believe that our capacity for objective theory (e.g., true beliefs) were the product of natural selection, that would warrant serious skepticism about its results."

Barry Stroud: "There is an embarrassing absurdity in [naturalism] that is revealed as soon as the naturalist reflects and acknowledges that he believes his naturalistic theory of the world. … I mean he cannot it and consistently regard it as true."

Patricia Churchland: "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four Fs: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems it to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. … Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism’s chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."

Charles Darwin: "With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

Nietzsche: "Only if we assume a God who is morally our like can 'truth' and the search for truth be at all something meaningful and promising of success. This God left aside, the question is permitted whether being deceived is not one of the conditions of life."

In other words, the biological and chemical processes of the brain, by themselves, give every reason to doubt that human cognitive faculties produce for the most part true beliefs.

> More importantly, theists have the same problem. There is no inherent reason to trust the thoughts in your brain if they are founded on God/the supernatural. Those have even fewer factors we can evaluate.

Interesting. I've never heard this retort before, and probably because it isn't true. If theism is correct, then our ability to reason was created by an intelligent cause, vesting us with that ability, and since the Christian God not only has truth and necessarily speaks truth, but also IS truth, then human beings being able to comprehend and discover truth is a short step.

> "All-just" is not possible along with "all-merciful", btw. "All just" is also tautological since it's supposedly God who determines what is just.

Again, I disagree. Even in our culture, a judge who is able to weigh all of the circumstances has the right (and sometimes even the responsibility) to reduce a sentence or even commute a sentence when the conditions warrant. Mercy is one of the many tools in his/her bag to be able to judge both fairly and responsibly.

> There are many, MANY different other options to ensure these people don't go to hell.

Of course there are, and those options are all on the table. I'm assuming you're going by a very restrictive, "traditional" perspective on hell ("one fire fits all") that is simply not biblical and not accurately descriptive of God's action.

> This doesn't get remotely close to solving the problem. It's just asserting "it doesn't cause action", when we are saying it necessarily means we act according to what he knows.

Well, you can understand that I just answered briefly and not thoroughly. No matter who you are or how much you know, knowledge is never causative. If I were your best friend and knew you very well, my knowledge would never make you do anything. If I were clairvoyant and knew your mind, it still wouldn't make you do anything. Even if I were omniscient, it still wouldn't make you do anything. It is not the nature of knowledge to have causative power. God's omniscience just means he can move forward and backward in time to see. But that ability doesn't not mean that because he can see it he made you do it.

God's knowledge is complete because he can simultaneously see, not because "we act according to what he knows." Your view is more like God laying it all out like a carpet and watching it from that point unfold according to his plan, a decidedly not-biblical view. Instead, view God as a time-traveler who can see it all as "present." Suppose you and I were at an ice cream shop, and I was able to travel forward 10 minutes in time to see what you ordered. Now I know because I have seen. My knowledge has nothing to do with your free will, how you make decisions, or what decisions you free make. I have seen it, that's all. I could tell you what you're going to order because I have seen it, not because I have made it happen.

That's the way it is with God. He sees it, but He has not determined it. You are not acting according to what He knows. Instead, you are acting according to what you choose, and He knows it because He has seen it. There's a vast and meaningful difference between the two.

[Ronny]

> then reason is unreliable.

It produces consistent results. Far more consistent than mysticism ever has. You're using reason in every single one of your arguments, for better or for worse, so I'd hope you place some value in it.

> There is nothing illogical about (1) allowing people to make their own free-will choices, (2) giving them every opportunity and advantage to choose life, and (3) allowing them to set their own destiny.

Again, it is illogical if the all-loving, omnipotent being chose a punishment of eternal torture for the crime of disobedience. Not murder, or rape, but disobedience. Or failure to love, whatever that is.

Omnipotence is whatever you make of it, since it's fictional. But it's a simple fact that one can have no desire to do evil, yet still be an individual. I say "be an individual" rather than have free will, as many scientists claim that we don't actually have free will. I can imagine a planet just like the garden of eden where the intelligent beings live in peace and harmony and the idea of harming another is as anathema to them as the thought of eating vomit. If I can imagine it, an omnipotent being can make it.

And I still don't get your take on love. Are you saying that a parent chooses to love their baby when it's handed to them for the first time?

[jimwalton]

> It produces consistent results. Far more consistent than mysticism ever has. You're using reason in every single one of your arguments, for better or for worse, so I'd hope you place some value in it.

I'm not comparing reason from natural selection to reason from mysticism. I don't necessarily believe in mysticism. I'm comparing reason from natural selection to reason from theism. We have to distinguish between perceptions of reality and making abstract truth judgments. If our cognitive faculties are the result of natural selection and genetic mutation, we have no basis to presume they are giving us mostly reliable information. At best it's 50-50. And if that's the best, then I have reason to be suspicious of every thought. It could just as well be false as true, and I have no mechanism by which to determine otherwise. I cannot rationally accept by reasoning processes. Atheist scientific philosophers agree:
Thomas Nagel: "If we came to believe that our capacity for objective theory (e.g., true beliefs) were the product of natural selection, that would warrant serious skepticism about its results."
Barry Stroud: "There is an embarrassing absurdity in [naturalism] that is revealed as soon as the naturalist reflects and acknowledges that he believes his naturalistic theory of the world. … I mean he cannot it and consistently regard it as true."
Patricia Churchland: "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four Fs: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems it to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. … Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism’s chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."
Charles Darwin: "With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"
Nietzsche: "Only if we assume a God who is morally our like can 'truth' and the search for truth be at all something meaningful and promising of success. This God left aside, the question is permitted whether being deceived is not one of the conditions of life."
In other words, the biological and chemical processes of the brain, by themselves, give every reason to doubt that human cognitive faculties produce for the most part true beliefs.

> You're using reason in every single one of your arguments, for better or for worse, so I'd hope you place some value in it.

O course I do. If theism is correct, then our ability to reason was created by an intelligent cause, vesting us with that ability, and since the Christian God not only has truth and necessarily speaks truth, but also IS truth, then human beings being able to comprehend and discover truth is a short step.

> Omnipotence is whatever you make of it, since it's fictional.

I understand this is your opinion, but you know you can neither prove nor even substantiate this position.

> If I can imagine it, an omnipotent being can make it.

This is untrue, and betrays a misunderstanding of omnipotence. It doesn’t mean there are no limits to what God can do (Mk. 6.5). It means God is able to do all things that are proper objects of his power. It is no contradiction that God is able to bring about whatever is possible, no matter how many possibilities there are. The omnipotence of God is all-sufficient power. He can never be overwhelmed, exhausted, or contained. He is able to overcome apparently insurmountable problems. He has complete power over nature, though often he lets nature take its course, because that’s what He created it to do. He has power over the course of history, though he chooses to use that power only as he wills. He has the power to change human personality, but only as individuals allow, since He cannot interfere with the freedom of man. He has the power to conquer death and sin, and to save a human soul for eternity. He has power over the spiritual realm. What all of this means is that God’s will is never frustrated. What he chooses to do, he accomplishes, for he has the ability to do it.

There are, however, necessarily certain qualifications to omnipotence. He cannot arbitrarily do anything whatever we may conceive of in our imagination, as you are suggesting.

* He can’t do what is logically absurd or contradictory (like make a square circle or a married bachelor)
* He can’t act contrary to his nature. Self-contradiction is not possible. He can only be self-consistent, and not self-contradictory.
* He cannot fail to do what he has promised. That would mean God is flawed.
* The theology of omnipotence rejects the possibility of dualism
* He cannot interfere with the freedom of man. Luke 13.34. If God can override human free will, then we are not free at all.
* He cannot change the past. Time by definition is linear in one direction only.
* It is not violated by self-limitation on the part of God, nor does it imply the use of all the power of God

Leibniz & Ross philosophically state omnipotence in what’s called a “result” theory: theories that analyze omnipotence in terms of the results an omnipotent being would be able to bring about. These results are usually thought of as states of affairs or possible worlds: a way the world could be. A possible world is a maximally consistent state of affairs, a complete way the world could be. The simplest way to state it may be, “for any comprehensive way the world could be, an omnipotent being could bring it about that the world was that way.” Therefore it is not true that "if I can imagine it, an omnipotent being can make it." Ross formulated it as “Since every state of affairs must either obtain or not, and since two contradictory states of affairs cannot both obtain, an omnipotent being would have to will some maximal consistent set of contingent states of affairs, that is, some one possible world.”

> And I still don't get your take on love. Are you saying that a parent chooses to love their baby when it's handed to them for the first time?

No, because there are many facets and definitions of love in our culture. Sometimes an emotion of attachment and passion rises up inside of us (when a parent is handed their baby for the first time). What I'm saying is that many of what we would call the truest and deepest forms of love (sacrifice, commitment through the hard times, dedication despite one's feelings, etc.) are definitely and necessarily a choice. Love as a sacrifice, dedication, and commitment is a volitional decision. If you beat me until I agree to commit to a cause or an individual, it's not commitment at all. If you threaten me with a gun unless I will perform an act of sacrifice for the wellbeing of another, it's not sacrifice but compulsion. The deepest and truest love requires choice.

[Quack]

I'm glad you like my flair lol

1. Though I dispute the claim that "Without free will, love can't exist ", I will concede this point for the sake of argument.

2. God already chooses not to create countless hypothetical people who would freely reject him. I'm not sure how his not creating them affects my free will in the actual creation.

3. I'm conceding the fairness of Hell for this argument.

4. Conceded.

5. Conceded.

What I want to focus on is your second point.

[jimwalton]

OK. What would you like to discuss?