Promoters of the Free Will Defence Have Dark Motives

 

The Free Will Defence

Religion says that love is voluntary. Only a being with free will to do extreme evil can give love. So they say God gave us all this freedom we have but we abused it of our own volition and so he is not to blame for evil. This reasoning is called the free will defence or the freedom defence. It is meant to clear God of the blame for evil.

 

What is at stake if it is wrong!
 

All reasonable people believe that faith in God or religion should help otherwise they should be dropped. If they don't help or hinder they can be dropped if we feel like it. If they hinder they should be dropped. The religious person and the atheist should agree that if we are going to have faith, the content of the faith must be ideas and material that do no harm if they prove to be wrong. There should be no harm done.

 

If you follow those who claim to channel the word of God to you from God or who simply claim to be the publishers of God's message, then are you following God? If there is no God you are still following something. It is those people. It is the God that man has invented. But surely it is you deciding to follow them that is the problem - you are in a sense following not them but what you think of them. Ultimately you are following you. Whatever - you are still following an idol not God. An idol is a false God and if God does not exist then God is a false God!

 

If there really is a God you can still approach him as an idol.

 

If God does not exist, it follows that man insults us with faith in God. It follows that we praise nature for dealing with evil when it is not. To worship a God who does not exist means you worship nature and a figment of your own imagination. You worship what does not deserve to be worshipped and what does harm.

 

If God does not exist then the free will defence is nonsense. It is man then to blame for the free will defence. And man is blaming free will and man for evil directly (for example, war) and indirectly - including the cruel deaths of little babies by disease - all for the sake of a fictitious God. We are not talking about the fact that man does terrible things. We are talking about the fact that man is enabled by nature or whatever to do them. That is the problem. If man causes evil it does not follow that man is to blame for being able to do it. Evil parents are to blame if they give their children the tools with which to ruin others.

If God exists and we agree that people should be angry at him for the things he does and allows, the anger then should be directed at those who invent God if there is no God and those who invent a God in their heads even if there is a God. Belief in God makes you direct the blame at those who sin and thus cause a fallen world where babies are left even by God to suffer and die horribly. That accusation is horrendous.

 

Any answers for the problem of evil fail if there is no God. They are themselves evil for they excuse the inexcusable and see less evil where more should be seen. If there is no God then because of evil, you are unwittingly (and sometimes wittingly!) adoring evil when you adore God. A baby suffering is just evil and purposeless and thus you would be evil yourself for trying to say God has a plan unless there really is a God.

 

Man speaking for God and defending him is disgraceful when man refuses to take responsibility for condoning evil in the universe. If evil cannot be condoned or reconciled with a good God then man is bad for even trying to.

 

It is one thing in theory to say that there could be a God and his infinite love is compatible with the existence of evil.  But it is still man’s word you are taking for it that this theory is plausible and true. Anger against man’s theology is not the same thing as anger against God. Even if there is a God, the God worshipped by people is their perception of God not God as he is. That is why we can rage against Christians condoning evil as God's will and still say it is not about anger against God. It is they we have the problem with for their God is in their heads and we are not talking about any real God even if there is one.

 

The defence slanders

When people cannot defend God rationally and have to lie when they see the role he plays in evil, they have no right to try and blame human free will for sin and much evil. They are hypocrites who point the finger.

 

If we cannot be fully to blame for what we do, it follows that God is not right to let us suffer. The whole point of God giving us free will is

 

that we can reject love totally and hurt ourselves and deserve everlasting hell torment

 

or love him 100% instead

 

The real reason people believe in strong free will is that they want to slander us by guessing we are capable of such evil and they guess it for religious reasons. They wickedly start with religious theory instead of starting with people and making the kindest assumption possible.
 
Free will believers who argue that God gives us the power to do evil or good with intent and that it is given for the sake of that choice always go too far with it. If you break a window and it ends up on facebook you are considered to be to blame for all the consequences though it was not your fault some nasty people want to bully you and preserve your offence forever online. Believers in karma are just as bad.
 
Why do they try to blame us not God?

 

Christians say that God is right to let all the evil things happen for he must respect our free will. But it is they who are saying this. The motive could be that they want to say this and it is not to defend God. I want to go further - wanting to say it IS the reason. How do we prove this? 

 

We know this because,

 

-They admit they are selfish sinners.

 

-They are ultimately only guessing.

 

-The worship of God is disguised idolatry.

 

-It is easy to say God is right to let horrendous things happen to you when you are you and not the billions of people and animals who suffer.

 

Thus their saying it is evil - even if it is true. They are not saying it because it is true but because they want to say it.

 

If they say God respects our free will for our sake what then?

 

He is not God. God being perfect love has to keep all respect for himself.

 

Why didn't he give us the power not to choose all the time between right and wrong but between a or b? God could program you to do only good but still give you the free will to chose coffee or tea. Free will for moral issues is not the same as free will for non-moral choices.

 

If they say God respects our free will for his own sake what then?

 

It means they are saying it is not about our dignity at all. If it is hard to think that free will dignifies us while we can use it to do terrible things it will now be impossible to get any sense of dignity from it. The victim of the human monster cannot think, "He abused his dignity as a free agent." She cannot take any comfort from those who come to help her. She will not see them as dignified free agents either. Her suffering is worsened for she sees nobody as dignified. How is she supposed to pick up the pieces? She will be so frightened because she will think the monster attacked her simply because he had no sense of her dignity or his own.

 

We see that those who say dignity is based on faith in God are talking nonsense or telling lies.

 

Does the doctrine give us dignity?
 
Religion needs to teach that God or whatever has given us free will. Religions that deny free will end up dwindling and being seen as social artefacts from the dark ages. Why does, say Catholicism, teach us to believe in free will? 
 
1 Is it because it gives us dignity?
 
2 Is it because the Church cannot get us to accuse ourselves of sin without the concept of free will?
 
3 Is it because we need to believe in free will to excuse God for allowing all the evil and suffering in the universe? If God comes first and we are to do all we do just for God it follows that we are to believe in free will and preach it just for him. It follows that if that is right, then whoever does not accept it is evil and greatly evil at that.
 
2 and 3 are closely related. It follows that if we adopt free will just so that we can please God it follows that we can be accused of and accuse ourselves of sin.
 
1 is the only one that is not smeared in misanthropism. It gives the only real reason for accepting it. That depends on whether free will really gives dignity. But 2 and 3 show no concern for dignity except God's and are abhorrent. They imply, "You are worthless if there is no God. If my belief in God is wrong you are shit." What kind of love is that? Oddly Christians say you must believe in God to really believe in morality and take it seriously. When Christendom's own doctrine of free will destroys genuine love and offers a charming but skin-deep substitute, we can be 100% certain that God and morality do not go together and belief in God is only a hindrance.
 
Sense of being in control
 
What if I feel that God is in control? I can give him permission to be in control. That enables me to feel that I am in control. It is my way of trying to be in control or feel in control.  Obviously feeling in control is more important to me than being in control. I am not in control when I am drunk but I love the feeling of control don't I? It is about me and not him. Those who do not hand it over to God get very angry with him and everything else. So you are compelled to hand control over to forces you cannot control. Atheists and believers alike do this. It is an ultimately atheist thing to do because no God of love would force you to force yourself to regain a sense of control.
 

Want to believe?
 
People only imagine they want to believe in the religious version of free will. Free will for them is not just about the power to pick a or b but to pick good or evil. The power to pick a or b would mean free will is about giving us power for its own sake. But religion says we are given free will because God lovingly wants us to freely choose to love or not to love. If free will is just about a or b then the religious should care little if we have it or not. We should be content with it instead of wanting the power to be good or evil.
 
Those who want to believe in God start with the wanting. They tell us to believe in free will because faith in God makes no sense without it. In fact, free will, if it should be believed, should be believed for its own sake and not just believed in as a prop to get believing in God.
 
Not a matter that can be merely assumed
 
The implications should the free will defence be wrong are revolting. It is not right to assume that the defence is true. You need sound evidence.

Religion tends to urge people to assume they have free will. It never bothers much with the argument, "I feel free so I am free." It is not even emphasised. If free will is at the heart of our dignity and accounts for why God does not stop all evil, verifying free will should take supremacy. If God is so important, we need to do better than just assume we have free will so that we can blame ourselves for evil and not him! God would want us to know him and his ways - us making assumptions about him and his ways is not knowing him.

 

It is not up to us to clear God. It is up to him to tell us clearly why he allows evil. A lawyer does not simply come up with possibilities as to why a person may be innocent of a crime. The lawyer bases anything he says on what the person himself or herself has said. Anything else would be unfair.

Telling us why evil happens means starting with giving hard evidence that free will is real or free enough to explain why we do so much harm.

Finally
 
Free will is a doctrine with which you flatter yourself while you excuse a God/idol who you think lets terrible things happen to the innocent and who sends disasters to befall them. Get over yourself! Do not theorise how a loving God can allow evil to happen. Go among the suffering of the world and be willing to give up your health and your existence for them. The free will defence is more about trying to tell yourself that there is a God despite appearances to the contrary because you don't want to suffer and cease to exist. You want a God to overcome evil so that you may have a life after death.  Calling free will a gift is cold and irresponsible considering the grave damage we could do with it.  And what about the damage already done?  You would be a Hitler too if you could swap bodies and lives with him.  Maybe we need to associate evil more or as much with irresponsibility than with malice.  Either way harm is treated as if it were nothing as if the victims have no value.