DO WE HAVE TOO MUCH FREE WILL?

Religion says that God gave us free will so we could use it to love. But we didn't so evil is our doing. Free will to make mistakes would do but they say no. They say we need the power to be evil.

The problem?

Many feel that considering how much torment man has inflicted on the innocent that there is too much free will.

If love the sinner and hate the sin is nonsense for the sin is part of the person then all evil is too much for it calls for abuse and degradation of the sinner.

It could be that having too much free will is a bigger problem for belief in God than any other.

Always freely choose good?

What is wrong with the notion, “God should not design us so that we always freely choose good?”

One thing that is wrong is that God saying it is not the same as people saying it on his behalf. If people believe in God not because there is a God but because they want to believe then whoever says, "God exists and is right to let us be so drawn to evil" is evil themselves and a hypocrite. It means people condone evil because they want to and they want to because they want to believe in God.

God needs to prove he said it so hearsay or sending a message second hand will not do.

God can say "God exists and is right to let you be so drawn to evil" but people cannot be speaking for him. No decent God would ask people to say this for him on his behalf. It is not something that can be delegated. You cannot use a proxy king or a substitute when you need to crown the king.

So there is no right to say we should have enough free will to be so destructive.

Religion answers, “It is simply wrong. Limited free will is not free will.”

But the smart atheist will remind them that God has to design us with inclinations anyway so it makes no sense to praise him for putting bad ones in us instead of good ones.

Religion contradicts the Christian teaching that sin is bondage though it does not always feel like bondage. A person with more inclinations to be good is freer than a person who has less.

Why can’t God not give us full free will when he knows we are not about to abuse it and pull a few strings when we are so that we end up doing good? What is wrong with part-time free will? We will not notice the difference.

It is only going to be a problem if you believe that we are rarely ever really good. But if we are basically good, a tweak here and there is nothing.

No real free will if there is a God

It is said that God lets us use our freedom for his purpose. This follows from the fact that if God is creator then you exercise free will to do evil not in spite of him but because of him. So somehow our sins serve his purpose though he does not approve of them.

So whether we help people or not his plan still works. You have no free will to hurt God's plan - you only think you do. A God who lets man torment man in the name of a free will that isn't free at all or very free is an evil God. He is a God who lets us imagine we can destroy his work. He creates that stupidity in us.

When you are permitted by your earthly ruler to be free you are in fact not free. It is permission that is working not freedom. Imagine how much worse it is with a God who makes all around you!

The feeling of being free will be with us even if we are permitted by others and by God to act. That is a warning that this feeling is a lie. Yet it is the main reason for free will being believed in by most people. They think they experience it. Feeling free does not make you free or mean you are free.

If I have free will only to choose God or otherwise and if that is what free will is all about then think about the following. God by definition is all that matters so having a relationship with him is all that matters. Free will is about him according to believers. If I can go for a walk, or listen to the radio or watch the television and God forces me not to choose the first then I still have free will with the other two. When I forget about the walk I still have free will so I can still have it if God makes me forget. The only choice I should have is between resting in the divine presence or not doing it. I ought not to be free to harm other people seriously if I ought to be free to harm at all.

Hitler & those who had too much free will

Hitler disproves God. He and the Nazis should not have their free will put before that of the millions they brutally killed. Hitler and Co had too much free will.

Religion says that to be free we have to be free all the way. We have to be free to do tremendous harm like Hitler was. That translates as:

"Who is to say if God allows too much evil to be done or to happen? How can we know? So let us respect God and assume that there is not too much. We cannot tell God where the line should be drawn. He knows best."

Theologians say, "God should not reduce our suffering because if he did we would still be complaining that he is too hard on us. God just draws the line on the amount of suffering he sends where he does for no reason for he has to put a limit somewhere".

That is dismissing our concerns. Maybe we would be complaining no matter how little evil there is. But that does not justify God choosing to allow as much evil as he does. In other words, the believers wish that we should suffer so severely for we deserve it because we would be moaning no matter what he did for us. God could have drawn his line somewhere else and lower down for suffering can be tremendous and less would do.

Believers are saying instead of being utterly disgusted at how much evil there is, they want to say God is responsible for it and has used this responsibility wisely. It is made out to be about God not people. It is an insult to the suffering. It is not the kind of thing they have the right to guess about. Would you guess that if a doctor decapitates a child that he must have had a justification for it? If you guess, what does that say about you? The argument itself is evil. To defend evil with evil is just evil. It is wrong to risk saying that some force which helps people do evil is good when it could be that it should be condemned.

Do people not realise that it is a cruel fallacy to tell x, “Okay you lost your leg in that accident but at least it was not your eye or your arm”? You have no right to weigh suffering and trouble like that. It is the not as bad as" fallacy. More accurately it is the fallacy of relative privation. It is bad enough to say that if you are the one losing the leg but for anybody else to say it is infinitely worse and more stupid and totally cold.

Parents draw the line at how much harm they let their children do so why can't God?

Not worth it!

If any really have to be free to inflict extreme misery on other people then freedom is not worth it. Also, it takes a few seconds of "free will" to take away a lifetime of "free will" from others.

The free will defence implies that it is perfect love for God to let us do what we want for it is respecting our autonomy which suggests he loves people like Hitler more than us. It is bad enough to say that it is love but to say that it is perfect love is worse.

The will of many good people is overridden by the will of some evil people and that is unfair. God just had to kill Hitler with a heart attack to put the will of the majority first and it was not done for God is bad news or does not exist. Believers will say he did come to a bad end and so God did deal with him and stop him. So they admit God should have stopped him but they don't care that he waited until the worst damage was done first and that is very offensive to us. If all people cannot be equally free then it follows that God has to allow what will ensure that most people have as much freedom as possible. So it is madness for a few to be allowed to take away the freedom of many by shutting them up in concentration camps. To disagree is to be callous. It is claiming that it is more important and valuable for the few to be able to do what they want. This is the philosophy not that the meek will inherit the earth but the aggressive.

To tell yourself that God did deal with Hitler is about comforting yourself or it is about defending God. What is wrong with these?

Comforting yourself about the horrors that happen to others is just selfish. It is not about you but about the reality.

Is it about defending God then? Given how much the Christian religion warns that we are selfish and sinful you can be sceptical about those who claim to be all about God.

Unless you show how good God is for people and how good it is for them to believe defending God is just callous. But the problem is that if God exists then it is wrong to defend him for the sake of man. You have to defend him for his own sake.

Defending God is not going to help most of the victims. You are defending God to yourself not to them. Defending God to their faces would make them feel even worse.

Also, you cannot know there is a God in the way you know those people have suffered. A God who exists in your opinion is just your opinion. God is not an opinion. There is a lack of proportion there. You have no right to say evil is worth it and to sake it for the sake of a religious opinion or belief. If you have religious knowledge of the existence of God it is different but you do not have this knowledge.

It makes no sense to say that the goodness of respecting an evil Hitler's freedom is worth all the suffering and anger and despair that he inflicts and is downright callous. You shouldn't even want to say it. Even if it is true, saying it should be agonising for you fear being too unfeeling or uncaring.

You cannot know the evil was worth it. It is the kind of thing you would need to know before you can have the right to say it. What does claiming that evil is worth it without you having evidence that it is say about you? To say evil is worth it when it is not shows your true colours up.

Good outweighing evil

Many think that God would still be good if he let us be free all the way as long as all the evil that ever happened will outweigh the good on the last day. God giving people something as dangerous as free will could only be justified if there is going to be more good than evil.

Some do think that it is worthwhile having everybody doing evil and suffering even if there is only a few who are the loving exception. To say the love is worth the excess of evil is to insult sufferers. The assertion that we should be free to do evil all the way is then an extremely evil statement considering that nobody will know until God reveals the overall analysis on the last day to show if holiness really did manage to be stronger than sin. This proves that Christians should not be using free will to prove that belief in God is rational for when we cannot prove that holiness will win how can we prove that the defence is true? We cannot.

You do not say we have free will from God and therefore having it means good has been stronger than evil and always will overcome. That is a circular argument. To justify all the evil and suffering that has ever happened with a circular argument is shamelessly trying to make evil look good and to excuse it. You require as much proof as you need to secure a murder conviction as you do to have the right to tell sufferers they should be suffering for God's purpose. Even if you help them a lot you are still saying the suffering you cannot do anything about is part of God's plan and ultimately a good thing. If you feel empathy for sufferers you will be so upset that it will be difficult for you to find an answer. Christians are too flippant. Many arrogantly think that God admires their virtue so much that he sends torment to others so that they can help them and show off their holiness. Their deeds look good but their hearts are as black as the pits of hell.

Finally

To say it is right that some get too much free will so that they can murder millions is an insane thing to say. It backfires on the love for it says victims should be glad that their oppressors had free will and that much of it. If free will is so special then they have to approve. When God allegedly prevents many of us from doing great damage he can prevent all. Am I free to starve the whole of Germany to death? If we have free will then we have too much of it. Too much free will would disprove the existence of God. To argue, "But only God can know if we have too much" is just a cop-out and nobody who truly understands the suffering of others would say such a thing. It is obvious that people have a right to be seriously offended by your argument. Believers are really thinking of themselves when they go on about the need for free will. It is that they want to be able to intend to be good. They would say that free will is still worth it if everybody else has none and if it leads only to misery. Saying it is a gift from God is an arrogant insult. If God goes with the doctrine and the doctrine with God then God is implicitly bad as an idea.

Paradoxically, free will in Christianity is too little when needed and too much when not needed.  You are told you do not have free will to fly to save the person falling off a cliff and yet that you have free will to be able to become evil in Hell forever!  That kind of free will is not a gift from God.