Why does FREE WILL inevitably lead to evil? (hell, myth, Muslims)

[nightflight]

C'mon, I mean its you Christians who tell the rest of us that God gives us free will to choose between good and evil. So why is it that your loving god would give us something that would lead us to evil? Romans 6:23 says "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". See that? Everyone sins. So God's gift of "free will" leads to damnation.

So why give "free will" if it leads inevitably to "sin" and "evil"? Does your God want people to sin and be punished??

[Huckleberry3911948]

it would appear you are correct. a whuppin seems to do them some good.
i think you are on to something concept of punishment has become alien and strange to us, with predictable results.

[alanMolstad]

Originally Posted by nightflight

C'mon, I mean its you Christians who tell the rest of us that God gives us free will to choose between good and evil. So why is it that your loving god would give us something that would lead us to evil? Romans 6:23 says "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". See that? Everyone sins. So God's gift of "free will" leads to damnation.

So why give "free will" if it leads inevitably to "sin" and "evil"? Does your God want people to sin and be punished??

it's not love if you are forced...
Jesus stands at the door and knocks, he wants us to open the door to him.

this is what free will grants us.
The chance to love God
The chance to open the door to our heart to him.

Rocks and trees have no free will,
They can not love
God seeks love, he seeks that we should love him for he loves us , for God is love.

Now Im sure there are many who would 2nd guess the Lord and his gift of free will to people.
But that is like the pot questioning the potter.
We have to have faith the out Maker knows what he is doing....even if we never catch on to His reasons...

[cleatis]

Didn't anyone tell you? It's all part of the master plan - you couldn't possibly understand it either. So you really shouldn't be asking too many questions. You know what happens to people who ask too many questions right?

[cleatis]

Originally Posted by alanMolstad

it's not love if you are forced...
Jesus stands at the door and knocks, he wants us to open the door to him.

By forced, do you mean, like as in threatened with things like damnation, the end of the world, massive floods, genocidal attacks, turning into a salt pillar... or are these things not really classified as force?

[alanMolstad]

forced...as in a rock can be picked up and flipped over and the rock can do nothing to stop itself.

God could have made us like the rocks....just "there" unable to love, unable to return love.
But God in His own wisdom has made man with the freedom to allow us to turn to Him.

God did not make us sin, but God did give us a path out of sin and death from sin.
free will allows us to take that path.

[AREQUIPA]

Ok So we got a 'problem of evil' thread.

This falls into two main headings

Why does God allow evil

and

Why does a 'loving' god send us to hell?

Huck's 'punishment' point only applied to the former as there is no point in punishing people for eternity, other than sadism, though some have assumed that, logically, it must be only a temporary torment to burn away our sin so we can all get into heaven. But then if they are going to apply logic, they oughtn't even to be thinking about God, Heaven and Hell.

The more applicable argument is Why does God allow evil
and here, there are two headings:

1) God made us that way, why is it our fault? That really is the hellfire argument. So the point here is:

2) Why doesn't God intervene?

Huck's point about punishment is reasonable. It's supposedly a learning process. And the argument that God made us with free will because he doesn't want programmed robots in heaven is a good one.

It does require a good deal of the 'Who are you to question me' attitude found in Job and Paul. A just god ought to offer people the opportunity of declining heaven without neccessarily opting for hell, but apparently God means something other by 'Just', 'Good' and 'Evil' than what we mean; 'Just' is whatever God decides, 'Good' is whatever God wants, and 'Evil' is whatever God doesn't approve of.

At such a point, one either gives into doubt and deconverts or gives up thinking and wraps the thick woolly blanket of Faith around the eyes. Or reinvents God to suit themselves. You'd be astonished how often they do that.

But there's the other Evil. The ones that can't be put down to human free will. People die in natural accidents. Job tried to deal with that problem of evil and couldn't, despite introducing a satan to blame. It really didn't get God off the hook. A later commentator tried the 'How dare you take issue with the Big Boss?' argument, but, that just leaves one feeling that one has been bullied into silence, not given any sort of reasonable explanation.

The Tsunami and Hurricane katrina were two of the most recent examples of natural evil that needed some explanation. There were attempts to explain Katrina as God punishing gays. But that is rather like punishing drug-pushers by carpet - bombing Los Angeles. Surely God could do better than that?

And the Tsunami was first explained as wiping out the infidel Muslims, or the infidel non-Muslims, according to the Muslims. Or the various religious leaders that could bear the sight of each other got together against their one common enemy - the doubters - and suggested that it was 'Just God letting us know that He's there.' Don't go into public relations, fellas.

No. The best thing is just not talk about those sorts of natural evil which seem to serve no purpose. Because the only answer that makes any sense is that they happen naturally and the reason that no god does anything about it is because there isn't one.

[cleatis]

Originally Posted by alanMolstad

forced...as in a rock can be picked up and flipped over and the rock can do nothing to stop itself.

God could have made us like the rocks....just "there" unable to love, unable to return love.
But God in His own wisdom has made man with the freedom to allow us to turn to Him.

God did not make us sin, but God did give us a path out of sin and death from sin.
free will allows us to take that path.

God can and does flip us around like rocks. Flooding the earth, having moses wipe out all life in entire cities, soddom and gomorrah (spelling). What choice did those who died in the flood have? Threatening us to eternal damnation isn't really much of a choice. And I am led to believe that we will be "flipped like rocks" plenty. What I'm saying is that free will doesn't mean much when you pretty much have no choice....

[actonbell]

Originally Posted by nightflight

C'mon, I mean its you Christians who tell the rest of us that God gives us free will to choose between good and evil. So why is it that your loving god would give us something that would lead us to evil? Romans 6:23 says "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". See that? Everyone sins. So God's gift of "free will" leads to damnation.

So why give "free will" if it leads inevitably to "sin" and "evil"? Does your God want people to sin and be punished??

The Myth of Free-Will Exposed

There was a time when I too was hoodwinked into believing that man has a "free will." I believed free will to be man’s ability to make choices, change his mind, learn from experiences, etc. And since it is a fact that man can indeed do these things, it seemed evident to me that man has free will. But then I learned that these are not the definition of free will at all.
Free will does not actually and literally mean that one can make choices, create, change his mind, or reformulate ideas and data, etc., but that those choices and thought processes must themselves be free thoughts and free choices. "Free will" is only true if our choices are also free. But free from what? Why, free from being forced upon us against our will, or free from being caused by anyone or anything except our OWN will. And so, yes, man can think, process data, make choices, change his choices, etc. But none of these activities are free from internal or external CAUSES.

The Lake of Fire - Part 15

[alanMolstad]

Originally Posted by cleatis

God can and does flip us around like rocks. Flooding the earth, having moses wipe out all life in entire cities, soddom and gomorrah (spelling). What choice did those who died in the flood have? Threatening us to eternal damnation isn't really much of a choice. And I am led to believe that we will be "flipped like rocks" plenty. What I'm saying is that free will doesn't mean much when you pretty much have no choice....

My point is that the rock is mindless...its a rock...the rock does not care.

we can look at a rock being busted up in a fall off a cliff and say, "Oh that's too bad"
But the rock does not care.

in the same way we can watch a storm or flood kill people and say, "Oh that's too bad" but although we might care a great deal, the storm does not care at all...

God could have made us like rocks
God could have made us like the mindless storm.

But God made us in His own image...so we care.
we love.
we feel pain