WOTM: God Doesn't Care About Free Will

Funny how, when it comes to your damnation, your “free will” is soooo important, and your inescapable sinful nature that is forced upon you is an, oops, minor consideration! You are blamed for acting in accordance with your sinful nature that you were born with because your “free will” trumps your sinful propensities.  I think I know why. Moral culpability is an imperative or you don’t deserve damnation. If our natures bind and constrict our choices, how can our wills truly be free? Is free will an illusion? If “no one does good, no not one”, doesn’t that contradict that we have free will? Doesn’t free will suggest some will sin, but some won’t? Libertarian free will is the ability to have chosen otherwise, but theists assert no one chooses God. So where is free will? Wouldn’t you gladly give up “free will” in exchange for getting rid of your sinful nature and living a life similar to what is described in heaven? I would. I mean, is heaven a place that lacks free will? Will the inhabitants of heaven be angelic robotons who lack the capacity to sin? Why is your free will so important on earth, but in heaven the lack of free will to sin is not important? Conversely, suppose we always have free will but it’s our natures that determine our decisions? So pre-death people have free will but 100% sin because they have a sin nature and people in heaven have free will but 100% don’t sin because they don’t have a sin nature?  Another Forrest Gump moment: And just like that when you die your nature is flipped like a switch. God performs this nature switch flip, we don’t. It’s a rigged system. We must be punished with eternal conscious torment for the slightest infraction because we “freely choose” according to our inescapable sin nature. But, just like that, that sin nature will be removed when God says it’s time to remove it. And for 99.99999% of humanity, that time will not arrive in-time to prevent eternal conscious torment. I feel sick. Funny how at the rebirth of salvation when we are born-again in the spirit, the indwelling infinite being does not flip the nature switch at that moment. I smell a scam.

So, we have free will ... as long as what we say and do conforms with God's plan? Gosh, it almost sounds as if the excusigists made up the idea of free will.

If free will is real, then Judas made a free choice to turn Jesus in and single-handedly jump started Christianity. Without Judas' supreme sacrifice Gods great plan to save all of humanity through his only begotten son would have fallen flat on its arse and wasted 34 years of meticulous planning. And if there is no free will Judas was on rails the whole time and was literally railroaded into it by the big sky triplet consortium and suffered far more than Jesus did for the entire long weekend he took off cosplaying as a dead guy. Either way, Judas got fucked by God just as hard as Job did. Poor bastard didn't even get a reconditioned wife or a second hand donkey out of it.

Well constructed argument!! If only I could have written this by choice. Sam Harris has an interesting take on free will. Nice reference to Paul! A refreshing use of logic vs the innumerable fallacies employed by excusigists. Thanks Hitch for your excellent work!

If I was a Christian, I'd have to be a Calvinist. From what I understand, it's all been decided and I can't change it. God made me write that. 😂

Nice Ace pun.

My favorite slap down of free will is the one where Jesus TELLS Peter that he’s going to deny Jesus three times, and Peter clearly issues his free will decision to NOT deny Jesus three times. We know how that story turns out. So the god can outright TELL you what you’re going to do, and you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT do otherwise, no matter how much supposed “free will” you bring to bear. Sounds like mind control to me.

Well… I opine that, whether or not there is "free will," there is NO invisible sky-daddy who has anything to do with it. I suspect that any such "freedom" in life is determined by four things: (1) nature (what genetic proclivities, instincts, abilities, brains, bodies, talents we inherit; (2) nurture (how we are raised, taught, nourished, under what circumstances, among which people, what opportunities may or may not present themselves); (3) historic time and place (we live in an age and location that allows some semblance of "choice" in our lives, but not so for an Aztec child born with two crowns on its head, thus destined to struggle for years as a starving slave only to end up sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli, with NO choice in the matter); and (4) to add them all together… LUCK.