Free will in heaven?

[bling]

Then the question is why we can choose evil on earth. What's the point?

Sin (evil) has purpose for the nonbeliever.
It is all driven by the objective.
Our earthly objective is not to: "never ever sin", but to obtain Godly type Love so we can Love God (and secondly others) with all our heart soul, mind, and energy.
Sin even though God hates it and would prefer we did not sin, actually helps willing mature adult individuals to fulfill their objective.

 

[Petros2015]

As far as I can tell, most Christians believe in free will. They also believe that one cannot sin in heaven. How would you reconcile those beliefs?

Here, a lot of the time, I may do something, and then feel bad about it afterward and realize, Oh I was acting apart from God's will.

If we had perfect knowledge of God's will, (we might have this in Heaven) it might be a different matter. Here, I'm kind of like a blind man stumbling or lured into brambles sometimes. Imagine though, if my eyes were open. I think that might be a bit like what Heaven is.

I like this passage from the AA Big Book

"Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. "How can I best serve Thee - Thy will (not mine) be done." These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will."

https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_85.htm

 

[Uber Genius]

As far as I can tell, most Christians believe in free will. They also believe that one cannot sin in heaven. How would you reconcile those beliefs?

Strange question for an agnostic.

If one can't gain knowledge about whether God exists, how would one gain knowledge about a much more controversial being called Heaven, and a still more controversial property of those in heaven, namely, free will.

It seems that you are asking for a description of the structural capacity of a particular roof design while denying that any knowledge about building foundations is insufficient to ever grant a building permit.

 

[holo]

Strange question for an agnostic.

If one can't gain knowledge about whether God exists, how would one gain knowledge about a much more controversial being called Heaven, and a still more controversial property of those in heaven, namely, free will.

It seems that you are asking for a description of the structural capacity of a particular roof design while denying that any knowledge about building foundations is insufficient to ever grant a building permit.

I'm not denying anything. Maybe you take the agnostic label to mean that I think nobody can know anything about God. But it just means that I, for the time being, simply don't know whether or not there is a god (agnosticism is also (and principally) an attitude, meaning that one doesn't believe in things that aren't reasonable or provable etc).

When a Christian says, for example, that the bible is true, it's only natural for the unbeliever to ask how they reconcile apparent contradictions in the scriptures.

 

[Uber Genius]

I'm not denying anything. Maybe you take the agnostic label to mean that I think nobody can know anything about God. But it just means that I, for the time being, simply don't know whether or not there is a god (agnosticism is also (and principally) an attitude, meaning that one doesn't believe in things that aren't reasonable or provable etc).

When a Christian says, for example, that the bible is true, it's only natural for the unbeliever to ask how they reconcile apparent contradictions in the scriptures.

Fair enough. Let's examine your belief in other people, an external world, and the reality of the past, none of which are provable!

We know this since Rene Descartes ushered in modernism. So one doesn't believe in God because the Bible says it is so. There are many reasons.

Cosmological, teleological, moral arguments:

Anything hat begins to exist has a cause the universe began to exist therefore it has a cause for time, space, matter and energy that transcends those properties. Timeless, immaterial, spaceless. Plato and Aristole

Out of nothing comes, we need a explanatory ultimate for the universe that is sufficient and God is necessary to gain that explanatory ultimate. Liebniz.

God is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe for life.

God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values and duties.

See no Bible reference needed. And a 2500-yr old philosophical tradition of answering the big questions about our world with arguments for God's existence.

These arguments are all over the Internet since the development of same. So any attempt to discover reasons to beleive would have stumbled over them and not the strawman argument "the Bible is the theists source of beleif," which is clearly circular.

Again it seems congruous to say you are not sure cars exist and then ask for a detailed discussions on how Bluetooth devils in cars work.

 

[holo]

Fair enough. Let's examine your belief in other people, an external world, and the reality of the past, none of which are provable!

True. I can't prove to you that I exist, for example. We both make the assumption that the other is in fact real and not merely a projection of our own imagination, and we go from there.

Out of nothing comes, we need a explanatory ultimate for the universe that is sufficient and God is necessary to gain that explanatory ultimate. Liebniz.

What does "God" mean in this sense? Must God be a person?

God is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe for life.

I'm not so sure it's fine-tuned for life. As far as we can tell, the vast majority of the universe is unable to sustain life.

God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values and duties.

I kind of agree, but I'm not so sure there are objective morals and duties. And if there are because God decided it, then it's not actually morality, it's just whatever God likes. Meaning, if God were evil, then evil would be "objectively" good", right?

See no Bible reference needed. And a 2500-yr old philosophical tradition of answering the big questions about our world with arguments for God's existence.

Sure, there may be such a thing as God (or gods, for that matter). The question is then who he/she/they are.

These arguments are all over the Internet since the development of same. So any attempt to discover reasons to beleive would have stumbled over them and not the strawman argument "the Bible is the theists source of beleif," which is clearly circular.

If somebody claims the bible is inspired by God, for example, I think they should have reasonable arguments for that, or admit that "it's true because it says it's true."

Again it seems congruous to say you are not sure cars exist and then ask for a detailed discussions on how Bluetooth devils in cars work.

I'm not following you. I'm not saying anything about cars. I'm asking whether/how the claim that humans can have free will in this life and the next, are making any sense.

 

[Uber Genius]

What does "God" mean in this sense? Must God be a person?

Firstly, let me admit that I was wrong to assume that you were not a thoughtful person due to your opening question. Your interactions have significant thought behind them and I rushed to judgement.

As to God as an explanatory ultimate His nature must explain the origin of the features we see in our universe. To create space one must not require space. To create time one must be outside of time. To create matter one must be immaterial.
God is spaceless, timeless, and immaterial

To be the primary cause or explanatory ultimate he must be eternal/uncaused otherwise we get into an infinite causal regress.

To determine personalism we must articulate a few premises.

God is eternal.
God is unchanging (doesn't gain new attributes or properties)
The cause of our universe must be sufficient to cause it.
If God, being eternal, had sufficient capability to create the universe and was impersonal, we would expect to see a universe that was eternal in the past. Instead we see a 13.7 billion year old universe.

The reason being that an impersonal God would act (not like an agent) like a force of nature. He wouldn't be able to stop creation from happening. Only a personal being can make choices of when to act. Since our universe is finite in the past we know God is personal.

This would exclude religious inferences like Buddhism and Hinduism but would not distinguish between Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.

I'm not so sure it's fine-tuned for life. As far as we can tell, the vast majority of the universe is unable to sustain life.

Since the early 1960s we have seen astrophysicists discuss the remarkable fact that the initial quantities of matter and energy as well as the laws of nature all appear to be fine-tuned for life. This claim was a scientific observation that was theologically neutral. Robert Jastrow, Brandon Carter, Martin Rees, Barrow and Tipler were the early documentors of this phenomenon. The number 1 atheist philosopher in the world for the second half of the 20th century, Antony Flew, claimed that the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God was responsible for him reversing his position and becoming a theist.

It is presented here:

And if there are because God decided it, then it's not actually morality, it's just whatever God likes. Meaning, if God were evil, then evil would be "objectively" good", right?

Called the Euthyphro Dilemma (found in Plato's Dialogues)

Is something good because the gods recognize the good, or because the gods declare it to be good.

This is poses a dilemma. Either the gods recognize something that is good outside of themselves which makes us wonder if things like mercy or justice exist outside of the gods. Or the gods command something to be good arbitrarily. So murdering one's neighbor rather than loving one's neighbor could be said to be "good."

But this is a false dilemma. The Judeo-Christian God IS the good. His nature is good and the closer our actions resemble how God would have acted in the same situation, the more moral we are said to become.

We do receive these moral proscriptions and prescriptions in the form of commands, but they are based in God's all-good nature. And are not a function of arbitrary choice.

Sure, there may be such a thing as God (or gods, for that matter). The question is then who he/she/they are.

We cannot determine much about the nature of God/gods from these natural theological arguments. We could eliminate gods because they are not eternal in the past. So we would run into the problem of an infinite regress of causes. So New Atheists often make this false claim when they ask, "Who caused God."
What they miss is that monotheism is the belief in an eternal, uncaused being.

To distinguish aspects of God's nature we need to engage the scriptures. Further we would need to find out if Judeo-Christian or Islam is a better explanation of the data we see across history.

If somebody claims the bible is inspired by God, for example, I think they should have reasonable arguments for that, or admit that "it's true because it says it's true."

This is universally true, yes.

Claims must be justified in order to move them from beliefs into knowledge.

Often the arguments for Scripture are of two types:
External and Internal.

External involves historical examination for accuracy and relies on archeology and other extant historical accounts.

In this category is prophecy. We have many fulfilled prophecies where we have future predictions that are later recorded to be fulfilled. These are very specific in nature. They are documented several hundred to almost a 1000 years before events occured. They are recognized as fulfilled by enemies who are dubious initially anyways.

The internal consistency of over 40 authors, from all walks of life, Slave to King, from many different cultural perspectives, writing over a period of 1500 years, about a host of controversial topics is unparalleled.

But no Christian scholar says, "The Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it."

The disciples of Jesus presented evidence for their claims (see Acts 13-19). They did so to hostile audiences that had good reasons to reject the Christian claims, as there was much persecution for those who converted to Christianity. The whole early church suffered no less that 10 martyrdoms killing, many estimates, over a million Christians.

Tertullian, one of the 2nd century Church Fathers wrote that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church", implying that the martyrs' sacrifice led to a testimony or evidence for others to convert.

I'm not following you. I'm not saying anything about cars. I'm asking whether/how the claim that humans can have free will in this life and the next, are making any sense.

The car/bluetooth analogy was to highlight a mereological issue. Namely denying existence of a whole, and then exploring the existence of parts of that whole. But it is not a fruitful discussion, so I propose we ignore my comment altogether.

 

[holo]

As to God as an explanatory ultimate His nature must explain the origin of the features we see in our universe. To create space one must not require space. To create time one must be outside of time. To create matter one must be immaterial.
God is spaceless, timeless, and immaterial

How do we know? Or do you just mean that since time must come from something timeless, this timeless stuff must by definition be God?

To determine personalism we must articulate a few premises.

God is eternal.
God is unchanging (doesn't gain new attributes or properties)
The cause of our universe must be sufficient to cause it.
If God, being eternal, had sufficient capability to create the universe and was impersonal, we would expect to see a universe that was eternal in the past. Instead we see a 13.7 billion year old universe.

Sure, the universe we know may be 13.7 billion years old, but we don't know about time (if any) before that. I don't see how that necessitates God.

The number 1 atheist philosopher in the world for the second half of the 20th century, Antony Flew, claimed that the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God was responsible for him reversing his position and becoming a theist.

But why can't it be that the universe just happens to be (apparently) fine-tuned for life? It's freaky, but then how else could it be?

Called the Euthyphro Dilemma (found in Plato's Dialogues)

Is something good because the gods recognize the good, or because the gods declare it to be good.

This is poses a dilemma. Either the gods recognize something that is good outside of themselves which makes us wonder if things like mercy or justice exist outside of the gods. Or the gods command something to be good arbitrarily. So murdering one's neighbor rather than loving one's neighbor could be said to be "good."

But this is a false dilemma. The Judeo-Christian God IS the good. His nature is good and the closer our actions resemble how God would have acted in the same situation, the more moral we are said to become.

In that case we're just lucky that God is good. He could just as easily have been evil. But anyway, when you look at the world, it seems much more reasonable to conclude that God is either not good or he's not omnipotent. I see nothing in the world that suggests God wants each individual person (or animal for that matter) to be happy. Of course, happiness may be reserved for the afterlife for some reason, but that's pure speculation.

To distinguish aspects of God's nature we need to engage the scriptures. Further we would need to find out if Judeo-Christian or Islam is a better explanation of the data we see across history.

Looking at the world, I don't recognize the things I can read in the scriptures, or the ideas presented by these religions. For example the claim that God wants some sort of relationship with each of us. That can't be true if it's also true that he is omnipotent, because then he'd surely be able to find a better way to connect with us than by a tiny minority getting the chance to even read the scriptures, not to mention interpret them correctly.

Often the arguments for Scripture are of two types:
External and Internal.

External involves historical examination for accuracy and relies on archeology and other extant historical accounts.

In this category is prophecy. We have many fulfilled prophecies where we have future predictions that are later recorded to be fulfilled. These are very specific in nature. They are documented several hundred to almost a 1000 years before events occured. They are recognized as fulfilled by enemies who are dubious initially anyways.

What are some prophesies that are fulfilled?

The internal consistency of over 40 authors, from all walks of life, Slave to King, from many different cultural perspectives, writing over a period of 1500 years, about a host of controversial topics is unparalleled.

One of my issues with the bible is that it's simply not consistent. Or if it is, it must be interpreted in very specific and not at all obvious ways. If that was really God's way of communicating with us, it's truly a mystery why he made it so, well, mysterious. If it were the case that people who sought God reliably found him, that would be an indication that it's true. But only a few do.

 

[Uber Genius]

How do we know? Or do you just mean that since time must come from something timeless, this timeless stuff must by definition be God?

No. We know that an effect must have a cause sufficient to explain it. This is axiomatic to all causal explanations in science and philosophy.

We could posit a series of causes that precede our space-time like the multiverse attempts to do. But we are just pushing the question backward. We need an explanatory ultimate that is eternal and uncaused. Abstract objects such as numbers and functions are thought to exist this way but are causally effete (they can't cause any effect). The only other inference we have is God.

Both are necessary beings but only God has causal powers.

Sure, the universe we know may be 13.7 billion years old, but we don't know about time (if any) before that. I don't see how that necessitates God.

see above.

But why can't it be that the universe just happens to be (apparently) fine-tuned for life? It's freaky, but then how else could it be?

This inference is covered in the video above as the "chance hypothesis. It is rejected by most atheist physicists due to improbability. There are 31 independent antrhopic conditions that all have to be fine-tuned. The chance of just one of these 31 is finetuned to 1 part in 10 to the 120th power. If you put a red dot on a sub-automic partial and hurled it out into the universe, then blindfolded randomly picked that particle you would have 1 chance in 10 to the 80th power of picking it on the first try.

That is much more probable than 10 to the 120th power and yet we haven't begun to account for the other 30 constants and initially quantities required for any life of any sort to appear anywhere in our universe. For that reason most atheist cosmologists have rejected the chance hypothesis. 50 years of engaging the hypothesis have made matters worse not better as cosmologists continue to add to the list of required fine-tuning. The gyrations occurring is not in the chance department but rather creating hypotheses to try and come up with a physical answer. Scientists have offered the multiverse hypothesis, but by nature it is a hypothesis that can't be tested as universes don't interact with ours.

Hope this helps.

 

[Uber Genius]

that case we're just lucky that God is good. He could just as easily have been evil. But anyway, when you look at the world, it seems much more reasonable to conclude that God is either not good or he's not omnipotent. I see nothing in the world that suggests God wants each individual person (or animal for that matter) to be happy. Of course, happiness may be reserved for the afterlife for some reason, but that's pure speculation.

The argument for God being necessarily good and all-good has to do with hisnworthiness of being worshiped.

A God that is evil is not worthy of worship and not the most perfect conceivable being.

Anselm developed that idea in the 11th century.

As to your perception that God is either not all good or not all powerful is one of the best reasons to be an atheist.

It is called the problem of evil and was developed by Epicurus.

It holds that evil and suffering and an all powerful and all good God can't exist at the same time.

It has two forms, logical, and probabilistic.

The logical problem is handled here:

The probalistic version here:

What are some prophesies that are fulfilled?

If you type that into the CF search you will get a large number of posts of varying validity.

One of my issues with the bible is that it's simply not consistent. Or if it is, it must be interpreted in very specific and not at all obvious ways. If that was really God's way of communicating with us, it's truly a mystery why he made it so, well, mysterious. If it were the case that people who sought God reliably found him, that would be an indication that it's true. But only a few do.

I don't beleive, and the Bible doesn't tell us, that God can only be found through excepting stories found in the Bible by others who did find them.

In fact it says that the things that were created point to him. As well as arguments from natural theology thatnI have been presenting.

There is a book called "Eternity in their Hearts," that gives account of cultures around the world that found the monotheistic God of the Bible despite cultures that were animistic, polytheistic, or pantheistic.

The cf interface keeps cutting out my video links to the problem of evil videos.

 

[cvanwey]

As with most other posts, it would appear an entirely new topic has arose. Furthermore, it seems more often than not, that when theists/atheists collide, the name 'Hitler' seems to inevitably arrive into the picture.

Was the question from the OP ever reconciled? Does an individual have the ability to choose 'sin' in heaven (yes or no)? Either answer brings contradiction, quite frankly.