philochristos

Benjamin,

You started this thread to question whether free will is a good explanation for why there's evil in the world. Whether everybody is saved in the end or not seems irrelevant, so I'm not sure what your point was in saying that if everybody bows the knee, hell will be empty.

I used free will in two way to explain Malaria. The free will of people to procreate was meant to explain why children get malaria, not why malaria exists, so you're attacking a straw man there. Second, I suggested the free will of demons to explain the existence of natural evil, malaria being an example. You say this is a contradiction because if demons cause it, then it's not natural. This is an understandable response, but it's based on a misunderstanding of what I meant by "natural evil." By "natural evil," I just mean to distinguish things like disease from situations where one person intentionally inflicts harm on another. I don't mean to imply that things like malaria happen purely by natural causes.

Your response about rape strikes me as being irrelevant to what I said. You originally claimed that being raped is a violation of free will. I argued against that, and you didn't so much as deny that what I was saying was true, and you didn't defend your claim that being raped is a violation of free will.

In response to Hell, you say that people don't have the free choice to go to hell because they were created with flaws. But having flaws doesn't eliminate free will. A person can have flaws and free will at the same time. We are not slaves to our nature. You can desire to do wrong and choose to do right anyway. People resist their own desires all the time. I quite drinking Dr. Pepper a couple of months ago. I had a mad craving for Dr. Pepper, but I chose not to drink it. So the fact that people are born with flaws does not mean they had no free will.

As as far as nobody choosing hell if they knew better, I have to disagree with you there based on what I've heard many people say. Either they're lying, or you're wrong. I've heard lots of people say they would choose hell over bowing the knee to God.

I want to say something about your claim that an infinite punishment is not justified by a finite crime. This is irrelevant to our discussion, but I want to talk about it anyway. Your argument assumes that there is some connection between the length of time it takes to commit a crime and the length of time you spend being punished so that justice is served. But there is no connection between these two things.

A murder can be committed within seconds whereas robbing a house might take several minutes. But does it follow that a person should get a longer prison sentence for robbing a house than for murder? Of course not! They have nothing to do with each other.

Your argument also assumes that the length of punishment is the only thing the punishment consists of. You ignore the severity of the punishment. Being tortured for five minutes could be far worse than being grounded for seven days. That means two people could be punishment for the same length of time, yet one is punished more severely than the other. So it could be that even though Hell lasts the same amount of time for two people, one person may be punished more severely than another in the process.

In fact, this is consistent with several passages in the New Testament. For example, Jesus said it would be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for Chorazin and Bethsaida. Hell isn't a one-size-fits-all punishment. The punishment varies according to the severity of the crime.

You also say that an infinite punishment isn't justified by any crime at all. But that depends on the severity of the punishment and how it is distributed.

Consider a math example. If we add 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + . . ., this will sum to infinity if there are infinitely many 1's we add. But if we add 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + . . ., this will not sum to infinity. It will sum to 1.  So even though there may be infinitely many numbers we've added, they still sum to a finite amount.

In the same way, punishment could be distributed unevenly over time in such a way that even though the punishment is infinite in time, it only sums to a finite severity.

But besides that, if you think about it, Hell will never be infinite even if it never ends. Each day, you've only added one more day to a finite number of days. Each time you do that, you only arrive at a finite amount of days. You will never reach infinity because for as long as you suffer, you will only be adding another finite day to a finite number of days, resulting in a finite amount of days. The punishment will always be finite in duration.

Sam

Hi Benjamin!

I don't personally subscribe to libertarian free will, but I want to respond as if I do just for the sake of having a conversation.

I have two things to say about your first point. The first is to say that God hardening Pharaoh's heart doesn't necessarily remove his free will. Libertarians believe everybody has free will, regardless of their desires. So consider two people - Jim and Bob. Jim loves old ladies and wants to protect them. Bob hates old ladies and hopes bad things happen to them. Because of their desires, Jim and Bob behave differently whenever old ladies are around. However, this is perfectly consistent with them having libertarian free will. If it happened that the reason they have their respective desires is because God made it so, they would have just as much free will as they would had their desires gotten there a different way. So God hardening Pharaoh's heart doesn't necessarily remove his free will. As long as Pharaoh has the ability to act contrary to his desires, he has free will.

Second, let suppose God does remove free will when he hardens Pharaoh's heart. That wouldn't justify the sweeping claim that God doesn't care about free will. The case of Pharaoh could be considered an exception to the rule. In fact, God's acting miraculously in the world is always the exception rather than the rule. Otherwise, we'd all be seeing miracles every day. God may override free will in special circumstances to bring about some plan, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a general desire for people to act freely most of the time.

As far as everybody bowing the knee, the Bible doesn't say God is going to force them to do that. It simply says they every knee will bow. For all we know, every knee may bow because that's what people choose once they see God face to face. The Bible is silent on the reason they choose, so it could be a free will choice.

To your second point, obviously children don't choose to get malaria, and probably nobody else chooses for them to get malaria. But there are two ways free will might come into play to explain malaria. First, malaria afflicts some parts of the world more than other parts. People who live in parts of the world where malaria is rampant have the freedom to choose whether to procreate or not. Knowing there's a lot of malaria around, they freely choose to procreate anyway. So they are, by their choices, increasing the chances of children getting malaria. Second, it could be that God is respecting the free will of demons. This would explain natural evil, like malaria. I'm not saying that's the case, just that it's possible.

To your third point about rape, free will doesn't mean having the ability to resist an attacker. I am physically unable to jump 20 feet in the air, but that doesn't mean I lack free will. The victim of rape isn't having their free will suspended, so it's not a matter of pitting one person's free will against another. God isn't siding with the rapist by respecting his free will and not the victim's. A better argument would be to say that the evil of rape outweighs the good of free will, so God SHOULD have violated the rapist's free will in order to spare the victim.

To your fourth point about people going to hell who never had a chance to be saved, this doesn't address the subject of free will at all. Besides that, people who don't get to hear the gospel still have free will. They act freely every day. They choose whether to behave with kindness or cruelty. God doesn't owe anybody a pardon, so nobody is being wronged just because they didn't hear the gospel. If there is any miscarriage of justice, it's in the fact that God saves sinners who don't deserve salvation, not in the fact that God condemns people who deserve condemnation. If somebody knows the good they ought to do, but they choose to do bad instead, they are culpable for their actions whether they were ever offered a pardon or not.

To your fifth point about demonic possession, I don't know of any Biblical story in which somebody is blamed for what they did while they were possessed by a demon. I may be wrong about that. But there are two things to say about it. First, it's hard to say whether free will is violated when somebody is possessed or not. It could be that our capacity for making choices is diminished when we are possessed, but not done away with altogether. In that case, we might still have free will even when possessed. On the other hand, if it's a complete take-over, then the person isn't acting at all when they are possessed. It's the demon that is acting. The demon is animating their body, and they are just in neutral. In that case, it isn't that their free will doesn't exist; it's just that it's not being used. But let's say demonic possession does remove free will. All that would follow is that a person isn't responsible for their actions when they are possessed by a demon since it isn't really their actions. It's the demon's action.

Sam

I think you've definitely capture what the Trinity consists of in your 6 statements, although you need to add a seventh: "There is only one God." The way trinitarians avoid tri-theism and contradiction is by making a categorical distinction between "personhood" and "being."

To illustrate this, there are some beings that are not persons at all. A rock, for example, is a being, but it's not a person. A human, on the other hand, is a being that is also a person.

If you tweak #4, 5, and 6 of your statements to say, "The Father is not the same person as the Son," etc., then you can deduce the Trinity from those 6 statements.

From 1, 2, and 3, combined the the 7th statement I mentioned above, it follows that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same God. That is to say, they are the same being.

From 4, 5, and 6, it follows that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons.

Since "being" is categorically distinct from "person," it is possible for one being to be three persons. I mean, if you can have one being (like a rock) that is zero persons, another being (like a human) that is one being and one person, there shouldn't be any problem with there being one being that is three persons. It would be a tri-personal being, i.e. one being that is three persons. It's strange, but it's not contradictory.

To have a contradiction, you'd have to say one person is three persons or that one God is three gods, but that's not what the Trinity is. To have tri-theism, you would have to say there are three beings, i.e. gods, but that is also not what the Trinity says.

If the Trinity said that God is one in the same sense that God is three, then that would be a contradiction. But the Trinity says God is one in the sense of being one being, and God is three in the sense of being three persons, then God is not one and three in the same sense. Remember, the law of non-contradictions says that two propositions that contradict each other cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. 

I think one argument against the pointlessness of revenge is the fact that revenge plays such an important role in fiction. In Conan the Barbarian, for example, Conan prays to Krum to grant him revenge, and that battle, followed shortly by the beheading of Thulsa Doom, is the climax of the movie.

Revenge satisfies a deep need we all have to see justice in the world. We fanticize about it and tell stories about it because we know that real life is ultimately unfair.

I'm doing alright!

I joined Debate.org 11 years ago. I think it was in September. For a long time before I joined debate.org, I enjoyed mixing it up with people on the internet. I was really happy when I found debate.org because it allowed me to have more formalized debates with people, many of whom were actually good at debating. I participated in 94 debates. I guess a lot of them don't count because my opponent forfeited without making any arguments, but I still got in a few solid debates. I had a good time and enjoyed the interaction. I remember we went through this phase were various members started their own talk shows. One of them was about the drama that took place on debate.org, and I remember that one was entertaining. I started one myself where I interviewed people. I would've done more of those interviews, but it was always hard to coordinate schedules.

Since joining debateart.org, I haven't participated in any debates at all. I think after all that debating on debate.org, I finally got it out of my system. For a while, I would still engage with people on reddit, but I would generally no respond more than twice to one person. I just kind of lost my enthusiasm for debating.

I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I'm probably more pleasant to be around since I'm not nearly as eager to express disagreement with people. On the other hand, I kind of miss the fun of debating. Also, I think my brain has atrophied since I stopped. But I'm not really eager to get back into it.

Anywho, howdy to anybody who is still around from the glory days.

Sam

The solar panels probably won't charge fast enough to keep up with the consumption from the refrigerator, but I don't know. Most power outages happen in the winter, and that's when you get the least sun, so that's when the solar panels are the least effective. But if it's cold enough, you can put your food outside in the snow. I did that one year for four days and was able to keep everything. You can get an extra battery to connect to the solar generator and double its life. I may do that at some point.

So far so good. I ran my refrigerator on it for 24 hours and had 11% capacity left. And I've charged it with my solar panels just to see how well it works. You can also plug your cell phone or computer directly into the solar panels and charge them that way. 

I got a solar generator after the last time I lost power during an ice storm.

I barely remember him. But that is very sad. :-(

Wow! You even remember my cat. That is true greatness. Aristotle is doing well. Thank you for asking.

I haven't observed ethang5 enough to verify what you are saying. Nevertheless, I think ethang5 is most likely an extraordinary human being. After all, he gave me a compliment one time. His greatness is obvious.

You can call your cat whatever you want.

You're welcome to use my cat's name. I don't have a copyright on it.

I believe that I have a cat named Aristotle.

You don't have any debates to your name. It would be nice to see an example of your use of these tactics.

It's impossible to answer any of this with certainty, but. . .

I believe there'd be one God in all of reality, not one god for each universe, although it's possible that God could delegate the authority to govern each universe to a different angelic/spiritual being.

I don't think God's values would be different in different universes because a persons values don't change with location, but I do think it's possible that he might issue different commands in different universes because it's possible the circumstances could be different in such a way that commands in one universe wouldn't apply to another universe. After all, God has even changed his commands in THIS universe. He once commanded that people not eat pork, but now it's okay.

I really can't speculate at all on whether we should expect to see souls from other universes in the afterlife. I'm 50/50 on that.

Thanks!  it looks like Airmax already reinstated me. :-)

I hope somebody brings back the Drama Farm. Those were the days.

I guess I really am a refugee now. I went to ddo while ago, and my account has been closed.

I'm Sam.

Would I be considered a DDO refugee if I still have an open account there?