Is free will a sign of love?

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"What you're basically saying that God can only love us if we're not like that child who's completely paralyzed and is too disabled to make any choice for himself and for others."

DO NOT - I repeat, DO NOT - tell me what I am basically saying.

I with tell YOU what I am basically saying, and THAT ain't it.

I will calm down enough [I do get upset when my words are twisted, but I am NOT a great communicator and you COULD be genuinely and innocently mistaking me] to say this:

I do not - thank God - have such a child as you describe.

I do have a father with advanced Alzheimer's who has now reached the stage where he cannot consistently recognize food as food.

I do have a good friend with advanced Parkinson's who 75% of the time cannot talk intelligibly and who spends large chunks of each day, at unpredictable times, paralyzed.

You wanted some "unique philosophical views". Well, they are not, as I said, but here are a few views I will put forth. You will take what follows as MY beliefs - don't blame anybody else - stemming from a lot of examination of a lot of data. Possibly right in some respects, probably wrong in many respects, certainly inadequate as characterizing the incomprehensible and ineffable.

A. We who squirm in this universe have a component that is simply part of this universe a body of matter and energy which includes a fairly decent [for this planet] organic computer.

B. We who are in the image of the divine entity have a component which is not bound to this universe, whose full potential we cannot here know or realize, which Christian talk calls the soul.

C. We may enjoy our body and mind [though they also pain us], we may appreciate or lust after somebody else's body and, or mind.

D. But what we love in others - what the divine entity loves in us - is the soul.

E. Find me a paraplegic, deaf dumb blind, born like a woman I once knew with about two thirds of her skull empty [I am NOT joking, I have seen the scans - she was actually not much less normal than many of my university students], with epilepsy on top of Down's syndrome and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's thrown in for good measure. Hook the person up tolife support machinery.

F. No, that person cannot with the senses gather a lot of data, cannot with the brain make a lot of choices, cannot with the body do much of anything.

G. I do NOT evade the consequences of free will. We are all aware of them God is aware of them. Forget free will - hey, mon, LIFE has the inevitable consequence of death for the body and mind.

H. My father has a soul. While he lives, it is still there - and though I cannot in any way communicate with his body and mind, there is something. My friend has a soul, and it does not freeze up. And the person in para E. has a soul - and God is present to and talking with that person, knowing and loving him more than I can know and love the body and mind of Number 1 Son.

I. Hokey fine. Reasonable - I have produced straightforward, honest statements as clearly as I can. Good logic - GIGO always applies, but I think the logic will hold above IF you accept the premises. Convincing? my estimate is, not bloody likely.

J. But I will NOT stoop to the level of taking a basket of elephant dung and telling you "this is what you basically mean." You get straight talk. Try it some time.

And I respond to that by asking, Would you rather not have free will?

And I respond to that by asking, Would you rather not have free will?

Definitely!

I don't need free will in order to be happy. And, in fact, chances are we don't actually have free will. Yet, we still experience happiness.

So if God really wanted us to be happy with him, he could've just created us without free will. It's totally unnecessary when you think deeply about it.

You are the first person I have ever met who would be happier without free will.

It seems to me life would be kind of meaningless without it.

If free will exists, I doubt science cold detect it. Free will could not be the result of any physical process, because then the process would be choosing for us. And science can, for the most part, only examine the physical world.

But your feelings aside, I'd say the majority of us would prefer free will.

What free will? Our bodies and brains are made of physical stuff subject to physical laws.

ruveyn

The human IS the soul - the soul IS the human

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When you take away the mind, you're merely left with the consciousness (if it isn't seated in the mind). I don't think I'm merely my consciousness, that's a depressing world-view to have.

Science basically says we don't have "Free Will" in the way many people think we do. Ben Libet's experiments show that people's brains decide to do something half a second BEFORE they themselves to decide to. That, along with the recognition that organisms follow the same mechano-probabalistic rules as everything else on the planet makes objective free will impossible. That said, Subjective Free Will does exist, it would be very unsettling if it didn't.

You are the first person I have ever met who would be happier without free will.

It seems to me life would be kind of meaningless without it.

If free will exists, I doubt science cold detect it. Free will could not be the result of any physical process, because then the process would be choosing for us. And science can, for the most part, only examine the physical world.

But your feelings aside, I'd say the majority of us would prefer free will.

One side of the free will/Love debate that Ihavnt seen mentioned, maybe, just as a human Father likes to be loved by his children, maybe God likes to be loved by his children.
I dont see how this could occur without free will, for us to genuinly Love God?
If God forced us to love him, he would be deluding himself.

There are one or two of Jesus parables that indicate being Loved by us is important to God.

How is free will a sign of God's love for us? How is it more loving than just having us created without free will?