It is extremely hard for people who are working on facts based stuff to get their heads wrapped around people who are religious, let alone those who are religious and who are working on facts based stuff at the same time (there are plenty of those). Suffice to say that it is very well possible to have different 'modes' of operations, where one moment you are fact based and the next you are belief based. So when you are busy with your fact based work you may see 'the hand of god' in the beauty before you, only to see yourself as part of gods plan in your discoveries and your work.
To a person in that position there is no apparent contradiction, to an atheist there may be but they are not in that position themselves so lack a frame of reference that would allow them to appreciate this and to see that it actually isn't a problem.
--
So in the end it boils down to something like this:
"God has a plan, that plan is for you to have free will. You may question your ability to choose, you may believe that you have or do not have free will and yet even if you act against Gods plan that too is part of the plan".
This may sound like nonsense but to a religious person it assuredly isn't. Source of this very much abbreviated conversation, my grandmother, long since deceased with whom I had some interesting conversations on the subject (me: atheist, she: devout catholic).
> It is extremely hard for people who are working on facts based stuff to get their heads wrapped around people who are religious, let alone those who are religious and who are working on facts based stuff at the same time (there are plenty of those).
It is also hard for religious people to wrap their heads around facts and certainty. Before I was atheist I would debate Christians on the merits of theistic evolution vs. intelligent design. Intelligent design proponents will literally accuse Christians who believe differently of blasphemy.
My mom even lost a science teaching job over something more minor. She was unwilling to say with 100% certainty if the story of creation happened in 7 contiguous days, or may have happened over 7 non-contiguous days. While she believed it was most likely 7 contiguous days she didn’t have enough evidence to be sure.
> It is also hard for religious people to wrap their heads around facts and certainty.
I know some very good hard science scientists who have absolutely no problem with this and I suspect that goes for the bulk of them. Religious people come from all walks of life and have all kinds of professions, some of them dealing with facts, others less so.
I also know plenty of atheists that have a problem with accepting facts and dealing with probability (which is another way of saying certainty).
So I don't think that by itself says much. It's when the two are in conflict that things get interesting: what if your facts say 'a' and your belief says 'b'. In some cases this leads to people renouncing their belief, in others it causes psychological issues, and in the majority it is just absorbed without any apparent conflict or discomfort.
Atheism is just another 'ersatz-belief'. You can't prove nor disprove the existence of some entity or entities on other levels and timescales. That would be like a virus infecting a cell trying to understand its host body and the world it lives in. Or an ant in front of chip-factory, crawling over the tracks while a train comes rushing by, or something like that.
Religions are narrative patchworks which are used to justify things. Not to explain them.
What you've found with your question is one of the many places the narratives don't join up, and the fraying sticky tape shows through.
There's no point trying to make sense of this, because there is no sense to be made. Ultimately it's about people using story telling to make themselves feel better and more reassured that their tribe is safe and stable.
Not coincidentally, this also allows some opportunists to make themselves richer, more powerful, and more important. Surprisingly frequently this also provides opportunities for extra sexual activity.
The stories don't need to make sense beyond that. They just need to look like an acceptable narrative salad made of tasty story bits. In fact it's better that they don't make sense, because then they can reduce believers to a pre-rational state where "You just have to believe!" makes them more credulous.
You can see the effects clearly with climate change and Covid. Some people try to understand the facts to make reliable predictions and offer realistic solutions.
Others can't fit these challenges into a religious world view. So they fall back into outright denial and/or use them as yet another excuse to welcome the apocalypse and their own imaginary personal salvation.
None of this is a function of raw IQ. You can be smart and still be infected by these distorting ideological viruses.
My (albeit atheist looking in, but with a Christian upbringing) understanding of that is it's sort of like how classical physics comes out of the randomness of quantum physics. You have free will, that absolutely can affect the world, but god's plan is emergent in a way that takes into account the randomness of free will, combined with occasionally putting this thumb on the scale with saints, miracles, etc. In that scheme, sinning is in a lot of ways forcing god to put his thumb on the scale.
You'd think that forcing god to take some action would not be a concept, but it goes at least as far back as the ten commandments. The "take the lord's name in vain" thing was this idea that words had magical power in a snow crash kind of way and that you could literally go so far as to command god with the right incantation. Obviously that's a big no no which is why "saying curse words" was considered higher priority than "don't rape". You see pieces of that still in Orthodox Jewish numerology of Hebrew like was a plot point in Pi.
Keeping with the metaphor, I'm not sure that quantum entropy requires an additional source of randomness, only the classic concept of entropy. The thermodynamic laws like that are a emergent projection of the quantum realm and don't always have a distinct analog. Additionally, one could argue a breakdown of the metaphor, that randomness isn't a complete analog for free will, and is only useful for talking about free will in aggregate where the different choices tend to cancel and coalesce.
And, again, none of this is a position I actually hold, just where I've ended up trying to understand the cognitive framework of people vastly different from my own who simply have different axioms they start with.
It’s a really hard thing to reconcile. I struggled with it for a long time. My perspective as a Christian is that God is all knowing and all powerful. He does have a plan (and that plan is often not what I want). I can allow God to act through me via the Holy Spirit. I still have free will, but I choose to use that free will to be God’s instrument.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of my actions are “blessed” by God, or that I don’t sin, but it means that I can be a conduit for his plan if he needs me.
It’s not a perfect explanation. Religion is built on faith. If something can be proven then you don’t need faith. That’s kinda a squirmy imperfect answer, but that’s all I got :)
>Can we make choices that effect the outcome of things or is it all part of Gods plan? It can't be both right?
Given the appropriate doctrine, sure it can.
First, in some religions (and some denominations of Christianity) God exists outside of the framework of logical necessity. God being tied to logical necessity himself is a later western theological concern (say, starting with Augustine and co). Not really a tenet of earlier Christian doctrine, or accepted by e.g. the orthodox church.
That is, what looks "impossible" or a "a logical contradiction" to us, isn't necessarily so to God (which is also part of the case with miracles - they're not just cool feats like a Marvel character with superpower would do, they are the bending of physical rules and reality itself).
In that context:
> Did God create everything including free will or does it exist outside of his control?
Both. He created everything AND he gave it free will to chose for itself.
"I don't blame my program when it does something wrong, I mean I wrote the code that tells it how to behave".
That's because you're not God to your program, but merely a human that developed it. So you can't both make it and give it free will (among lots of other limitations, like not being able to make water wine at will).
>First, in some religions (and some denominations of Christianity) God exists outside of the framework of logical necessity.
This is simply an escape hatch, if it can't be explained, it's because it's magic. Gods follow no logic do what you're told even if it makes no logical sense because there is no logic to be found. There is no room for debate here, you can't use reason, there is nothing further to discuss.
>That's because you're not God to your program, but merely a human that developed it. So you can't both make it and give it free will (among lots of other limitations, like not being able to make water wine at will).
Even more so the blame goes to God not his creations since he created everything including free will and the choices. Blaming your creations playing in the sandbox you created with the sand you created is a nonsensical blame game with yourself.
>This is simply an escape hatch, if it can't be explained, it's because it's magic.
So? It is what it is, and you can take it or leave it. There are plenty other things we can't explain at the moment, millions of things we couldn't explain in the past, tons of things we would not have explained before the demise of humanity, and some we can never get at as they're not testable (even in physics theories).
That doesn't mean they can't and don't nevertheless hold (or, many of them, not hold).
Just because we're confined to the visible spectrum as a specieis doesn't mean information outside of it doesn't exist (and would exist even if we never had developed the ability to make infrared and other such sensors). Or, just because we're confined to 4 dimensions, doesn't mean the universe doesn't have instead, say, 10.
Similarly, just because we have an a-priori (in the Kantian sense) restriction to understand the world based on logic, doesn't mean the universe (in the general sense, including any metaphysical entity might be) is also likewise constrained.
>Gods follow no logic do what you're told even if it makes no logical sense because there is no logic to be found. There is no room for debate here, you can't use reason, there is nothing further to discuss.
Well, apparently, given thousands upon thousands of volumes of theology (not to mention sacred texts) there is still plenty to discuss.
Also, within the doctrine that God gave people free will, this "do what you're told" doesn't hold. The reverse is implied, that he gave that precisely so we might also opt not to do as we're told.
It is an escape hatch, but is it simply an escape hatch? Is a whale simply a mammal?
> if it can't be explained, it's because it's magic.
More or less, as I understand it.
> do what you're told even if it makes no logical sense because there is no logic to be found. There is no room for debate here, you can't use reason, there is nothing further to discuss.
These are your words, not his.
> Even more so the blame goes to God not his creations since he created everything including free will and the choices.
Could be.
> Blaming your creations playing in the sandbox you created with the sand you created is a nonsensical blame game with yourself.
Is God himself doing this, or are you imagining God is doing this? You don't seem to even believe in Him.
> I have never been able to get my head around the religious paradox of God has a plan and free will.
I think this can actually be explained in a fairly straightforward way via science: the laws of physics dictate precisely how reality ought to behave, and yet we have thoughts and we make decisions and we believe to be largely free to do whatever we want even though our conscience and our entire being are essentially just a big clump of chemical reactions governed by the laws of physics.
According to some pantheist flavors, the laws of physics are the omnipotent property of God - aka "His plan" in christian lingo - as well as the omnipresent property.
The interesting thing about this interpretation is that it's immune to the determinism paradox: it doesn't matter if the laws of physics dictate a "plan" or whether "we" can randomly affect it (the definition of "we" is itself a big philosophical rabbit hole btw), because by their very definition, the laws of physics are what they are, and they always hold true no matter what.
Your question seems to be framed from a christian/abrahamic perspective, and is about God's omni-benevolence property. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a sufficiently simple/satisfactory explanation for that question.
In some flavors, the view is that there is no omni-benevolence (think in the tradition of Roman gods, for example), other views include the position that God is not an entity per se and that the notion of conflicts and the pursuit of what is "good" are inherent to our human condition (think Buddhism). If you're inclined to hear abrahamic leaning interpretations, the most closely aligned I've seen is the idea of "God draws straight lines w/ crooked sticks" (i.e. things we perceive as injustices are actually not, but we cannot comprehend the greater good because we are imperfect, biased things). See also karma and beliefs of reincarnation.
As for the origin of entropy, there's a lot of different takes, some rooted in philosophical thought (e.g. Spinoza-like takes that everything is deterministic and RNG is an illusion), some more spiritualistic (e.g. the panentheist idea that the universe is contained in God and that there may or may not be a non-deterministic force underlying it all)
Personally, I don't try to obtain explanations for every claim of every denomination (trying to nitpick apart the exact definition of God as per christianity, for example), since at some level one needs to acknowledge the metaphorical/allegorical aspects of various religious texts. I find it more interesting to take note of what concepts/interpretations appear in multiple denominations, there's a surprising amount of overlap when looking at individual concepts separately from lore.
Aside from all the stuff about deities, there's also quite a bit of literature on the morals side. I find those topics to be have a lot more overlap among religions, with self improvement usually being a central theme.
Anyways, if these kinds of debates interest you, I would recommend looking into pantheism and derivations. A lot of common questions have already been contemplated by various schools of thought. The wikipedia article might be a good place to start.
I have studied much of it and enjoy Joseph Campbell quite a bit, this discussion was focused on abrahamic religions though.
I find it interesting from a study of human behavior but overall all religions seem to lack rigor, they leave me unsatisfied due to their lack of even internal consistency, unlike mathematics and science.
Questions of determinism or free will are at the root of the mechanics of the universe and how a god might construct it or not. If you believe some god to have created all things then how can there be free will, that would denote something from the outside, some source of entropy not under the control of the creator. If it is under control of the creator the it is not true entropy and everything is determined ultimately by the creator.
> If you believe some god to have created all things then how can there be free will, that would denote something from the outside, some source of entropy not under the control of the creator. If it is under control of the creator the it is not true entropy and everything is determined ultimately by the creator.
Yeah, that's one way to look at it. There's also philosophies of what exactly is "self" and where its boundaries lie. One take is that if "God lives within us" then even if the universe is entirely deterministic, our decisions are governed by our own internal mechanisms (hence it's "free will" in the sense that we exclusively "own" those mechanisms, as opposed to them being influenced by outside factors). Another related view is the notion of relativity (i.e. "my reality is not your reality and definitions are inherently tied to each person's relative consciousness because without consciousness there are no definitions". This second notion cuts pretty close to the heart of why arguments between christians and atheists often break down: if they are talking about two completely distinct, mutually-exclusive realities (as it is perceived by each individual), there's really no way to reach a compromise.
There's a variety of interpretations of free will in that context, some simple and fatalist (e.g. immutable, inescapable fate), some quite a bit more creative ("God gave us free will because He loves us and He weeps when we use it to do bad things, yet everything is part of His grand plan"). I don't always see these interpretations as necessarily internally inconsistent. Some definitely are literally nonsensical or highly metaphorical, but some just take a bit more effort to appreciate. At times, it's an exercise in realizing whether I'm being overly pedantic over some philosophical minutia and extrapolating aversion to the entire belief system.
Rather than rejecting entire ideologies at face value, I enjoy looking for common ground between different ideologies or ways to reconcile ideas because religions come packaged w/ moral frameworks and I think the moral aspect is an ignored but key thing if one hopes to talk to religious people about controversial topics in a productive manner.
It might be a bit more complicated once you hear about the story of Adam and Eve, among other sometimes contradictory stories. Was free will given at creation, or maybe after they ate that one apple? Even old Stoics grappled with a variation of the problem[1], but most religious people I think follow an understanding that free will was conferred to humans and that can allow you to disobey god's plan, but that it ultimately will not end well and/or is futile against the predetermined and eventual good outcome.
Well. Maybe we do live in some sort of simulation. That would imply there is some code running on some substrate of whatever nature. Code has errors, and bitrot on storage media is universal. So deviations from that plan resulting from bugs and bitrot could be the free will :-)
Well I'm religious (although I guess I 'believe' in man-made climate change), so here goes. Of course, every religion will have different answers.
The general Christian jist, often twisted by evangelicals and fundamentalists (in my opinion), but still preserved and well-recorded in the annals of Catholic thought is that God is both personal but also perfect.
Let's go back in time. Aristotle, from whom a lot of (Western) Christian ideas come, believed that the universe obeyed certain laws and that behind these laws there was an 'unmoved mover', i.e., an entity whose power permeated the universe and who followed the laws of the universe. To paraphrase, God is that which has no cause. Now to be clear, a lot of human language is predicated on things having causes; we are not used to dealing with that which has no cause, which is why these linguistic paradoxes often pop up and cause confusion.
Broadly speaking, God is Aristotle's unmoved mover. While he could override free will, he won't, because he promised us he wouldn't and as a perfect God, he follows his own law. It actually doesn't make sense to identify 'God's law' as separate from God himself, because God is subject only to himself. God cannot 'cause' himself to do something because God has no cause.
In the same way that God created the universe, but the universe follows certain laws that cannot be broken (save, of course, in Christian thought for exceptional circumstances, although even then it's unclear -- happy to discuss this in more detail). People ask silly questions like 'can God create a square circle', but fail to understand the nonsensicalness of the question. The universe we inhabit was created by God and does not permit square circles. 'Could' God create a universe in which some laws could be broken... sure, but (1) to presume that we have the linguistic ability to speak of such universes is human hubris, and (2) moreover, to 'could' do something requires that one have a cause to do such a thing, but God has no cause and nothing can 'cause' him to do something, since God is his own cause, and the quality of having no cause is one that is necessary for God to be God. If some thing had the quality of needing a cause (like the potential we're talking about to create a new universe with this new set of laws), it could not possible be the same thing as God. If God had willed such a universe to exist, it would already, and maybe it does, but we wouldn't know.
> Can we make choices that effect the outcome of things or is it all part of Gods plan?
Yes, we can make choices that affect the outcome of things. In fact, large portions of the universe is the result of human choices. But we cannot deviate from God's plan, simply because God will manage to fix it, no matter what we do. This is like how humanity can do whatever we want, but the universe will end in heat death basically no matter what choices we make today. The trajectory of the universe towards the apocalypse and the final judgement is inevitable (just like the absolute increase in entropy), even if the choices we make today are not.
> Did God create everything including free will or does it exist outside of his control?
God cannot change his mind (what cause would he have to do so). His will is perfect. Thus, since he's given us free will and guaranteed it, he cannot 'take it back'. In our human conception of 'free will', we grant ourselves -- as imperfect being -- the action of being able to change our mind. God doesn't change his decisions, because his will is perfect. God is not the only creature with this particular nature. The angels also have perfect will, which is why lucifer will not change his mind and reconcile with God.
This conception of God differs drastically from yours which envisions God as simply a very powerful super-hero-like entity. It even differs from the Old Testament view of God, which often has him changing his mind. The Christian conception of God (at least that present in the Western church) is very different from Judaism and extremely different from evangelical, Protestant Christianity.
I'm engaging in good faith (and I am giving my best understanding; many much smarter than myself have thought about this and I am trying to summarize), please no trolling or flaming here.
Yeah sorry there is no internal consistency here for me, I do thank you for trying in a honest way.
God created everything including free will and what it means to have it.
God blames and punishes his own creations for excising free will in a way he's deems incorrectly. He's wants us to learn from him and accept him, yet he created us and designed us down to the quark.
Basically for me the buck stops with God, yet he seems to blame us if we stray, why? Is there something outside of God where evil comes from? Who created that?
Again I as programmer cannot blame the program and punish it for its emergent behavior based on the code I wrote that responds to input and makes decisions. The fault is mine especially if I also created the computer and the universe in which it runs, I either change the program or accept its behavior, punishment and blame would just be playing a silly game with myself.
Most responses here seem to revolve around God not following logic, fine there is nothing more to say then, and is truly nonsense, 2 + 2 does not have to equal 4.
> Most responses here seem to revolve around God not following logic, fine there is nothing more to say then, and is truly nonsense, 2 + 2 does not have to equal 4.
That is the exact opposite of what I am saying. God does follow his logic, including his logic that people remain free of his own coercion.
> God blames and punishes his own creations for excising free will in a way he's deems incorrectly. He's wants us to learn from him and accept him, yet he created us and designed us down to the quark.
No one is 'blaming' you. You have internalized your own notion of the Christian God and are arguing against it.
God does not blame you. Never has anyone entitled God a 'blamer'. God does not even punish. Satan is the accuser (In fact that's another name for him), not God.
Rather one is punished by his own sin. Here's an example. I am raising my children in an upper-middle class lifestyle. They will be educated well and raised to understand how to live well. If my child decides to abandon this teaching and instead decides to become a drug addict, they cannot blame me for punishing them. They have punished themselves by turning away from my teachings.
The same is true of God. When we reject God, by rejecting his instructions on how to live life, we punish ourselves. Should you refuse God and rebuke him, he is not going to force you into his plan for eternal life. Isn't that what this whole thing was about? Free will? Well here's the ultimate example. If you don't follow God and corrupt your own soul, you will torment yourself when you see the perfection of God. Have you read the Christmas Carol? Scrooge is not tormented by the spirits. Rather seeing his own behavior in comparison to the good behavior of those around them is enough to indict him in his own mind. So too is it on earth. There is no coercion. No spirit is going to come down and force you to behave.
You can choose joy, or you can choose death. As a Christian, I evangelize because I see what it has done in my own life. When I see others who have gone through similar sufferings as myself (not going to get into this) deal with what life has dealt them and they seem upset, I want to share with them the good news of the gospel and the joy that is to be found in conforming with God's will. No one is going to force you and no one is going to smite you down with lightning. Christianity utterly rejects the notion of karma or that an individual sin leads to individual destitution (book of Job puts this one to rest). The only person who will punish you is yourself when you don't follow the will of God, just as those who refuse to follow the rule of physics and decide they can fly off tall buildings have no one 'punishing' them but themselves. To a Christian, the rule of life prescribed by Christianity is similar to living our life in accord with the rules of physics. There is no difference, since both have the same source, and the laws regarding sin are manifest and obvious to those undertaking the study of the natural world.
>God does follow his logic, including his logic that people remain free of his own coercion.
Again this makes no sense, he created everything, the rules of the universe, how our minds operate, there is nothing free from his coercion unless you are saying there is something he didn't create?
>God does not blame you. Never has anyone entitled God a 'blamer'. God does not even punish. Satan is the accuser (In fact that's another name for him), not God.
Genesis 3:13
>To the woman he said,
>“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
>Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
>To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
>“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
That sure sounds like blame and punishment to me and thats just the very beginning.
>If my child decides to abandon this teaching and instead decides to become a drug addict, they cannot blame me for punishing them. They have punished themselves by turning away from my teachings.
You did not design your children or the universe in which they live, God however supposedly did, there is no other place for blame to go. He's is the alpha and the omega, you as a parent are not, there are many outside influences that can be blamed including your children's choices since you did not design their brain, you are only an influence on them among many.
You just don’t have a deeply held belief in God, so when you see a paradox like that, you respond with dismissal.
Now, I don’t know what you hold dear, but I guarantee you, somewhere you hold a fundamental belief that is inconsistent with something else you believe at a fundamental level. That’s what makes belief systems tick - you run into something you can’t reason your way out of and must commit to taking something on faith.
Paradoxes are not flaws in belief systems, they are essential.
God and Satan are sitting together in Heaven. God says "Look at my servant Job, he loves me so much, he does his sacrifices, he worships me constantly." Satan says "Of course he does, you spoiled him rotten with children and riches and stuff. I bet if you kick him in the teeth a few times he'll turn on you, because that's how humans are."
They have a bet. No stakes, mind you, just a gentleman's wager. Satan destroys Job's life. Plagues, famine, all of his children dead. He's a caricature of misery, wallowing in sorrow, rags soaked in pus and bitter tears. He can't figure it out. He's lived his entire life as a righteous man, blessed by God, then one day God just kicked him in the teeth.
Eventually God shows up. Verse 38 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038&versio...) God spends the entire chapter answering, in essence, "I'm God. Who are you to question me?" An interesting part of this chapter is that, if one takes it seriously, it strongly implies that God is in direct control over everything - no free will, no randomness.
Romans 9:19-24 is also interesting, spelling out in no uncertain terms that, yes, God does predetermine everything, including moral choice. And he punishes the sinful, despite making them sinful.
"One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”[a] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?"
"22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?"
Again, the answer isn't that God is perfectly just, or perfectly loving, but simply that God has the right to do what he will with his possessions. God will kick a righteous man in the teeth on a dare if he wants to. Pray harder n00b.
The problem is the Abrahamic canon is so old that parts of it predate Judaic monotheism (see parts of Genesis referring to God or the council of Gods in the plural, or the commandment "thou shalt not have any gods before me.") The image of God and his nature evolves with religion and society, and eventually God's nature contradicts itself. Modern Christians have to reconcile their morality with the parts of the Bible that openly condone slavery and genocide, and Paul's sexist BS. Why would an all loving, all benevolent Father talk about dashing infants against rocks and sending rape gangs against his enemies?
Because 4000 or so years ago, back when people collected the foreskins of their enemies in jars as wedding gifts, that's exactly what one would expect of a just God.
Don't bother trying to square the circle. The Bible isn't a singular coherent narrative planned out from beginning to end, it's thousands of years of poetry, prose, legal documents, mythology and insane fever dream, and it contradicts itself in many, many places. If you approach it not as a divinely inspired book spelling out the absolute, immutable truth about who GOD is, but as an account of generations of people trying to reconcile their belief in the divine with reality, and coming to radically different conclusions, then the paradox resolves itself.
Can we make choices that effect the outcome of things or is it all part of Gods plan? It can't be both right?
Did God create everything including free will or does it exist outside of his control?
I don't blame my program when it does something wrong, I mean I wrote the code that tells it how to behave.