Is free will a sign of love?

Post Reply New Topic

I can understand wanting to evade free will.

In many circs I have wanted to be an underling - tote that barge, and my staff does it.

Being a boss or a free agent brings responsibility, decisions, work. Stones do not - so far as I know - worry about their next meal. Who wants to grow up and pay taxes?

But of course, that is one of the probable reasons for designing free will into the system.

exactly. All those explanations for God granting free will seem very shaky anyway, they are emphatically on petty human terms.

Why would an Omnipotent, Omniscient God who hasn't yet created the Universe think to himself "Wow, I think it's a great idea to build a Universe of eternally suffering creatures, so as to have them fire off a bunch of neurons in their head in a pattern called "Love". Yes, it totally makes sense that I, the alpha and the omega, even feel "Love", which would seem like something that would only come about through natural selection, in a bid to get animals to reproduce."

MCalavera:

"So God loves any human because he sees the soul, right?"

Essentially - with qualifications enumerated in the following:

A: risking cognitive dissonance - I use the NIV - a bit harder on my cognition - instead of my preferred KJV to take off some possible linguistic pressure:

The Lord said [to Elijah], “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

B. There is my ethnicity - but I am not my ethnicity. There are my clothes - but I am not my costumes nor my customs. There is my body - but I am not my body [I am much more attractive than my body]. There is my mind, and that at least discusses issues with me, but I am not my mind. The human IS the soul - the soul IS the human.

C. I do not KNOW that God loves all souls. Some allege he does. Some allege there are souls he does not love.

D. I do know God loves the soul that is me - and not because of "Jesus loves me, this I know". I heard that around first grade, did not care for being forced nto communal singing, found no relevance to anything in the words.

E. I will assert that anybody God loves, it is the soul he loves - because that is the who in the what. And if anybody loves God, it is the soul that loves him. Ask my wife - I have said often enough, my body doesn't even believe in God.

That's just it: he didn't. Problem solved.

He didn't what?

Just making sure what you meant.

Free Will is an illusion.

ruveyn

Having free will allows us the ability to love or hate, and to accept or reject, to serve or not to serve.

Why does someone as big as God need our love (especially at the cost of having us suffer in pain and agony at times)? That sounds like divine insecurity to me.

Did you never have a puppy, one that loved you?
Youve missed out on a lot.

We can do all that perfectly without free will.

I don't believe that we can. I believe that free will is fundamental to our nature. Human beings do not exist in the absence of free will. Free will is not something God created; rather it is one of His attributes; that is to say, God shares His attribute of free will with us, along with His other attributes of love, justice, mercy, etc.

I think that existence without free will is an existence without humans. And I think that the world, with the elimination of free will, then would not have any hate in it, but neither would it have any love in it. Love originates and flows from free will. If God were to eliminate free will, then human beings would be reduced to puppets or robots.

You are assuming that free with is itself not a superior good. Or that the grace received from choice to believe in God is not a transcendent good. Your loading the scales down with your prejudice and are surprised to find the defendant guilty, maybe you missed your career path as a hanging judge.