Is free will a sign of love?

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Whenever I question a loving God allowing people to do mistakes that lead them to stuff up the whole world badly and send themselves to an eternal hell of eternal pain and suffering, I get the old Christian response that God respects our freedom to choose what we want to do and, thus, He chooses not to stop us from harming ourselves and others.

And when I challenge such a response and ask why a loving God would allow us to have free will if such a free will can lead to a lot of dangers for us all ... instead of Him just creating us for His pleasure and for us to feel joy and happiness without us having the need to make free choices ... the Christian responds by saying that free will is a sign of God's love to us.

My question is:

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?

A. I would if you asked give you a very different take on free will.

B. Nobody KNOWS why free will - frankly, any takes on motivation for anything the Abrahamic divine entity does are pretty much speculation.

C. Which do you love more - your Beany Baby collection with no free will or your willful, often naughty, frequently hurt and unloved-feeling children?

God is supposed to be the ultimate loving father.

I am a father and I hope a loving one. I allowed my children to take risks and make mistakes within reason.

But would I stand by and watch one child kill their sibling? No.

Would I say to the killer "I will lock you in the shed and torture you every day for the rest of eternity? No.

So I must be a nicer, wiser and more loving person than God.

MCalavera:

"Philologos wrote:
A. I would if you asked give you a very different take on free will.


Go ahead. Please enlighten us with your unique philosophical view"

A. Certain of my views are already scattered around here

B. Some I have interchanged privately at Awesomely Glorious, who regardless of whether we agree on any particular issue is a serious inquirer and discutant.

C. If I convince myself you are a serious inquirer and discutant Ι will send you some select thoughts privately in due course.

D. The line "Please enlighten us with your unique philosophical view" is not calculated to make me take you seriously:
1. I am not here to enlighten anybody
2. The sentence could easily be read as sarcastic - forgive me if I take you incorrectly.
3. There is nothing unique about my views - they are simply different from what I was reacting to,
4. I am in no sense a philosopher nor have I claimed so to be..

E. If your aim is serious discussion - it is easy to decide that issue with, say, 91 and pgd at opposite ends of the spectrum, but I have found it difficult to type you - do feel free so to affirm and I will take it into consideration.

MCalavera:

You say "Still, we need good reasons to accept such a god as a loving and compassionate one.

We can't just pretend he is loving if we feel that he is not."

Well, of course. I would be the last to advocate such a thing. The "fake it till you make it" adage should not be a pillar of any theistic religion. If you are a child, and you feel your parent is not loving and compassionate, pretending he / she is so is not seriously to be advocated. I understand that there are those who so pretend - I know of at least one person who pretended a spouse was not an abusive jerk, if not to herself at least to her family.

But you know, if you DO have loving and compassionate parents, generally you KNOW it even if you think it is rotten you did not get that pony and resent being forced to take a bite of sickening hard boiled egg and find it unjust that you were spanked for pouring kerosene on the burning trash to see what would happen.

Pretense is not involved there.

MCalavera:

Quote:
C. Which do you love more - your Beany Baby collection with no free will or your willful, often naughty, frequently hurt and unloved-feeling children?


What are you trying to say here?

That God couldn't love you as much as he supposedly does now if you had no free will?

Anyway, I didn't get from you an answer to my main question. Care to answer it?

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?

I do hope either you are tired or it is simply my admittedly inconsistently successful communicative skills.

No. It is simply this:

If I make something - say I write a book. I may be pleased with it. May be satisfied with it. May enjoy turning the pages.

I don't love it. Note to other linguists: yes, English idiom let's us extend the sense so as to say "I love grilled cheese sandwiches" - just as I can call that wooden thing in the shed a saw horse, though it is no true horse. Yes, fellow linguists, many languages do not have lexicon specialized to differentiate want / like / love - I know a few of them, not perhaps the ones you do. But English differentiates.

And, MCalavera, back to you - unless you do linguistics too, in which case I did not turn away from you with that digression - IN English, LOVE requires at least the potential for a relationship. And not even my stuffed toy collecting sister is so abnormal as to have a relationship with a Beany Baby.

MCalavera - you got back before I got through the last set; whatever:

You say:

You are always welcome to send me private messages (if that's what you mean by "privately"), but I prefer a public discussion for this topic so that all who are interested may read.

I will be frank with you. I am not interested in evangelizing messages. I just want convincing answers. If you can convince me that free will is a sign of love, then you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

Be reasonable, use good logical points, and intellectual honesty, and you will easily convince me.

A. As I say, I have - and others have - spouted a lot on free will. There are those around here who are in no way serious discutants and to who the pearls before swine metaphor applies, which does not put down the people but DOES negatively characterize their practice in discussion. Anyone that interested can talk to me, I see not reason to try to outshout the rowdies in the back of the classroom with their jars of slightly foaming amber liquid [actuall examples from our case files].

B. I will be frank with YOU, I am not interested in evangelizing messages. I don't think I have said or done here anything that would suggest that. I am ALSO not intersested in providing concincing answers. The way I operate is - you and I talk. I say what I think, including some of the data behind the thought. You say what you think, including some data. I respond with additional or modified views and supplementary data. You likewise. I go off and mull it over and see what I come out thinking. You do likewise.

C. I do not see what I would gain by convincing you that we have free will and that God loves us and that those two statements are consistent one with the other. You might gain - certainly I would gain if you produced evidence that modified my understanding.

D. 1. Be reasonable: by any standard I can live with I have been. But "reasonable" is not objectively determined. To my brother, I believe in a divine entity, ipso facto I am UNREASONABLE. To me, my brother refuses to discuss even his own discipline dispassionately, ipso facto HE is unreasonable.
2. Use good logical points: by any standard I can live with I have been. Again, "good" is not objectively determined. GIGO - BAD premises invalidate the tightest logical structure. My brother declares my premises bad. Do you?

3. I will easily convince you - forget THAT.Not that I assume you to be unreasonable, prejudiced, stupid. I do not. Not even that I have no intention of trying to convince you, given that the whole point for me is that you should look at all available evidence and let the data convince you. But MAINLY - I do not have the persuasive skills necessary to convince an Eskimo to put his parka on before going out in the blizzard. When my fifth grade class did a fundraising thing, I could not sell packets of flower seeds to my own avid gardener mother.

"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.