Hassan's Ornery Atheism Rears Its Ugly Head

[Hassan]

[quote name='havok579257' post='1950056' date='Aug 15 2009, 08:04 PM']so under your theory america is not a state of free will.[/quote]

A state cannot possess free will. Free will is a cognitive capacity generally found in human persons.

A state being "free" or is the extent to which it allows its citizens to exercise that particular cognitive capacity without coercing them to exercise it in a particular way.




In Saudi Arabia people have free will. That is they have a particular cognitive capacity in determining their intentional mental states. A Muslim man decides he no longer believes that there is no god but Allah or that Muhammad is a prophet. In Saudi Arabia the punishment for Apostacy is death.

Does that man have freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia?

Edited August 16, 2009 by Hassan

[peach_cube]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1950311' date='Aug 16 2009, 03:09 AM']Free will is a cognitive capacity. If it exists it does so as a particular aspect of our brains intentional states.

Freedom of will is a totally distinct matter from whether a choice is free from coercion.[/quote]

When you exercise your free will there are consequences, there are consequences if you decide not to exercise it as well. Being able to to understand those consequences does not translate to being forced to choose a particular path.

[jkaands]

[quote name='peach_cube' post='1949780' date='Aug 15 2009, 04:00 PM']If you are comforting someone who prayed to God for something like a rape to stop, but then they only believe Christ to be a "nice little story" then there is no comfort that you can provide.[/quote]

Well, I think that describing the rape as "God's will" isn't much comfort. To say that God, the all-powerful and all-loving, permitted it isn't much comfort either. To say, "Well, God permits evil and misfortune and we don't know why. We'll all understand it in the great bye and bye." is no consolation whatsoever.

When someone asks 'Why did this happen?" I say, "I don't know.' and I don't bring a deity into it, as there is no explanation or defense for the existence of evil.

[Hassan]

[quote name='peach_cube' post='1950406' date='Aug 16 2009, 09:03 AM']Being able to to understand those consequences does not translate to being forced to choose a particular path.[/quote]


Where did I say this was not true?

[peach_cube]

[quote name='jkaands' post='1950491' date='Aug 16 2009, 03:23 PM']Well, I think that describing the rape as "God's will" isn't much comfort. To say that God, the all-powerful and all-loving, permitted it isn't much comfort either. To say, "Well, God permits evil and misfortune and we don't know why. We'll all understand it in the great bye and bye." is no consolation whatsoever.

When someone asks 'Why did this happen?" I say, "I don't know.' and I don't bring a deity into it, as there is no explanation or defense for the existence of evil.[/quote]

The statement I made was to the condition that someone asks, why God did not answer their prayer to cause a rape to cease while they where being raped. If the person believes in God truly then the "story" of Jesus has significant meaning in that situation, however if the person only believes Jesus to be a story, then within the context of the situation there is nothing you can say to comfort them.

Edited August 16, 2009 by peach_cube

[dairygirl4u2c]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1950311' date='Aug 16 2009, 02:09 AM']Free will is a cognitive capacity. If it exists it does so as a particular aspect of our brains intentional states.

Freedom of will is a totally distinct matter from whether a choice is free from coercion.[/quote]

this is true. literally speaking.
but, when people talk about free will, and freedom from coercion, they're talking about how not being coerced is free-- in that sense, they have free will.

it's like, you're missing the points. being overly literal. bad judgment in interpretation etc.
and it's not like being literal is even the right thing to be -- human language doesn't lend itself to such literalness.
it's almost like you're finding ways to miss the point.
bad judgment, and/or a psychological avoidance, it seems to me.

[peach_cube]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1950506' date='Aug 16 2009, 03:32 PM']Free will is a cognitive capacity. If it exists it does so as a particular aspect of our brains intentional states.

Freedom of will is a totally distinct matter from whether a choice is free from coercion.[/quote]

That cognitive capacity can only be shown by an individual making choices. All choices have consequences. Being aware of the consequences of a choice does not make the choice less free. Choices of the will are not just random flips of a coin. I see every choice as having a consequence. Being able to weigh those consequences and decide what I will chose is an action of my will. If I see those consequences as forcing me into one decision instead of another, I am only thankful that the decision is clear. However, another in the same situation may not see the decision as being clear, they might decide to do quite the opposite. Why? Because their will is not the same as mine. There are some decisions that our will has no power over, no matter how much we wish it were not true, but this does not mean that our will is any less free.

[dairygirl4u2c]

if someone says they're going to blow your brains out unless you sign a contract, you freely entered into the contract literally, but in human imperfect lingo, we say they were in duress and might even say it wasn't freely entered into.

Edited August 16, 2009 by dairygirl4u2c

[Gregorius]

"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabacthani?"

Our Lord Himself felt the same feeling as the woman in this situation. Yet, if you read the entire narrative, you can see (or at least I can) see many places where Christ could have escaped His suffering and death. Christ chose his fate, in concordance with the will of the Father. And He was free. Nothing, not even Death, could hold Christ back from the love of the Father. In my opinion, the hurt of all suffering pales in comparison to what is gained. But if Christ did not really die, I am the most pitiful creature of all.

Christ is not just a story. We have witnesses throughout the ages, and they have passed Him on in unbroken succession. Figure out who Christ is, and all else falls into place.

edit: note: This is probably distracting from your conversation, but I just wished to add my two-sense in here.

Edited August 17, 2009 by Gregorius

[Sirklawd]

-we naturally have free will but this does not make us free from the consequences of our actions.

-as it has been show. if the choice is between A or B. You gain one and lose the other. You are stuck with what you choose. This is [i]inescapable[/i].

-In Christianity, the choice is: God or not-God. You will get what you choose. Forcing people to heaven who don't want to be there is just as wrong as forcing people to hell who don't justly deserve it.

but it doesnt end there.

-Luckily this isn't roulette, and we don't have to choose blindly. Christ gave us a full explanation of the consequences of our choice. In short: God the Father, who is goodness, beauty, and love incarnate, created us to be with him. He is the source and ultimate perfection of anything Good in this world. To do any good is to follow and love him. but if we dont want God, we will get our choice. Christ went out of his way to make sure we knew what not-God was really like. How do explain the full extent of what not being with the ultimate perfected Good is? Compare it to the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna#History"]never ending fires of Gehenna[/url] (think of this explanation as Aquinas for preschoolers)

-Christ, as the perfect example of following the Follow, showed that because this world is broken, following the Father will *definitely* be crappy, but only temporarily. (note: this is not that part that consoles the little girl, this is just fact)

-Christ, by being Christ, continues to assist us in this decision of God or not-God by giving us his grace. See, Christ wants us to choose God. The trinity loves us too much to choose something other than it because God is everything. not-God is nothing (Aquinas). (Talk about coersion! I would say there's a huge argument in favor of God, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, going out of his way to bring us to him.)

-What about those who never consciously know about Christ or revelation? The church (and many philosophers) believe in Natural Law - A basic moral law written into our hearts. (ie: "everyone knows murder is wrong") The church says that by following this you are still following God (not, not-God) because you are directing your will toward God. (fiat!)

--------------------

So what about the original example? Firstly, that girl needs love and care and tons more tact than this post has. But if the question is about the greater philosophical ideals presented with such an example, I can offer this much:

1. God loves the girl and the rapist equally because his love is not contingent on whether we choose him or not-him.

2. God ofcourse wants it to stop, and he could stop it. he can do anything. But it was God's will in the first place to give people free will. God knew from the get-go all the terrible things people would do with that free will, but he let us have it anyway. We've been told, by Christ no less, that the good is WELL worth the risk of the bad. God, who is good incarnate wouldn't create reality for a bad end. (see: Aquinas, still. Infact, I would even go as far as to say that God [i]can't[/i] create things for a bad end)

3. God's plan is not simple. It's intricate and dirty probably because it involves us. God, in a decision some cynics might say was his worst, decided to incorporate us into his plan. God wants us to spread his love. God wants us to dispense his grace. God wants us to spread his truth. God set up a church. Why go to all this trouble. Why not just make everyone love?

Because the process is important, and because we exist inside time (another gift from God). God wants to transform us and that transformation takes time. Take a look at any of the saints. People who really stand up, sacrifice of themselves, and love. Even relativists concede that it would be "best" if everyone stopped fighting and loved eachother like brothers and sisters and friends. Following God actually makes that happen. Christ himself boiled down all the old law into 1 statement. love God, and love each other. That's all there is in life, and it's the best thing to do. He then went off and showed us what true love is.

Ok im done rambling. The smarter people here can correct any bad theology i may have, but the long story short is that it's more than a simple discussion of the logics of free will.

[Oliver]

^^ Great Post

[Jordanus]

I don't know what I would say to the woman who was raped. But I don't think Aquinas would be my first choice, no matter how right he is. No abstract argument is going to help in that moment.

I can tell you that Christ is not simply a story. While I've never been raped, I have had things happen to me sufficiently bad that I went through an extended period of earnestly wanting to kill myself. Why didn't I?

Because I had met Love. I had experienced the love of Christ, and the memory of it, even years later, was enough to remind me that, no matter how hopeless the world seemed at the moment, that hopelessness was not the final word. Killing myself would have been a betrayal of that love, and I could not bring myself to do it.

And I can tell you also that, though I didn't and couldn't see it at the time, I can now see that the horrible suffering I went through had meaning. That it made me stronger and a better, more compassionate person. And I now also see by faith that by enduring as I did, I suffered with Christ and contributed to the sum of grace in the world - a great if terrifying privilege.

I don't know what I would say to that woman, because I don't know her. It would depend a great deal on what our relationship was like. But I have an inkling of what would have helped me to hear during my own terrible time:

"I don't know why this is happening to you. But I do know that I love you and will support you in any way I can. You know the love of God; cling to Him in trust and know that He is with you, no matter how you feel. I will walk with you and pray with you. When you are weak, I will try to be strong for you. Let me share your burden, my brother. Let me be Christ to you; you don't have to walk alone."

You, Hassan, may dismiss my experience as a delusion if you wish. But if so, it is a delusion that saved my life, that was capable of tipping the scales against an entirely bleak reality. It is a delusion which has consistently led me to be a better and deeper human being than anything else in my life has. Can a mental weakness produce strength? Can a feeble folly produce wisdom? Can a sickness produce health? If so, perhaps it is better to be delusional than sane.

[Sigh. I just looked at your post again and realized that you were speaking, not to the woman who was raped, but a friend of hers - I don't know how long after the fact. That of course alters things considerably. In that case, I don't necessarily see anything horribly wrong with your Aquinas answer, depending on the situation, your relationship with her, and how you said it; though I would have made it much more personal, talking about my own experience and showing that good really did come out of evil in my own case.]

Why do these terrible things happen to people? I don't know. I certainly don't think any satisfactory answer can be given to someone who does not know God. No doubt brilliant intellectual arguments can be made, that can remove obstacles from the way of the will. But I don't think those arguments can ever in themselves satisfy the heart. The only answer that can quiet the heart, as someone on the thread already said, is Jesus on the Cross. By which I mean not reading the story, though that's usually a necessary preliminary, but simply HIM.

In that sense, I am glad to see you are not satisfied with any explanation for why evil exists. Far better to be cold than lukewarm!

[Jordanus]

As for forgiveness... I don't think we can profitably even discuss the matter until deeper questions of anthropology and metaphysics are addressed.

So far as I can tell, you take the view common to our society that people are sovereign individuals, that each of us is only responsible for ourselves and has no connection to other individuals save purely social ones. From that point of view, I agree, the Christian view of forgiveness and redemption can only seem absurd. But is the point of view right? Not in my experience, and I think our common experience of our society tends to bear me out.

When we act in accord with reality, with the way things really work, things tend to work out. Cars run much better, all other things being equal, when you put gasoline in the tank rather than orange juice. If you put in kerosene, it'll probably work better than orange juice, but it still won't run right. And as our society has gotten more and more individualistic, have we seen it start working better and better? I would say we have seen the opposite. Not that things were ever peachy-keen - the good ol' days weren't all that great - but things have been going off the rails, and furthermore smart and wise people decades ago predicted many of the things we see happening now. This isn't a proof, of course, but it's evidence.

But neither is collectivism the answer. THOSE societies ended up even worse. It's probably more wrong to say that people are just bees in the hive than that they are isolated monads. There is a truth in the fact that only we are responsible, in the fullest sense, for our own sins; it's just not the whole truth.

The Christian view, right or wrong, is that neither of those two pictures is fully correct. That people are individuals, yet part of one Body - the body of Adam even if not of Christ. We are in this together, we are connected to each other. (This is clear enough if you think in terms of time - along the time axis, each of us is connected, as physically as you please, both with our parents and with our children, and more remotely with everyone else.)

If you inject poison into someone's hand, their heart may stop. That may not be "fair" to the heart, but the heart is just as stopped, because it is one body with the hand. To speak more plainly, there are no sins that "harm nobody but myself". Every sin is poison that damages the whole human race - not just those who are alive at the moment, but those who lived long ago and those who have not yet been born.

Adam's sin is not something that God just arbitrarily decided to hold us responsible for. I agree with you that would be absurd. Rather, in our view, Adam's sin is poison flowing through the veins of humanity, killing each of us slowly and implacably. Worse yet, it leads each of us, the cells in the body, to produce new poison of our own - perhaps a virus would be an even better example than poison.

But likewise, Christ's redemption is the antidote or vaccine. Christ on the Cross has drawn all the poison into Himself, so that it could be purged - or rather, transformed it into the antidote. (Again, a vaccine is a better example - it's like killing a virus and using it to protect against live ones.)

But here our analogy breaks down. Unlike cells in a body, human beings are free to choose whether to take up that antidote. We can choose what agents we pick up from the bloodstream, so to speak - more poison or more cure.

When someone hurts you, it's natural to want to lash out - to produce more poison, to do further damage to the Body. It's natural to hold a grudge and hate. Forgiveness (not forgetfulness) - letting go of hate - is part of what it takes to be open to the cure. Forgiving someone doesn't mean that you say they did nothing wrong. It doesn't necessarily even mean you think they shouldn't be punished for what they did. It does mean that you choose to love the person and desire what is best for them - perhaps punishment IS the best thing for them in a given situation, but if so, you desire it for their good, not out of hatred.

Yes, that's impossible. Cells on their own don't produce vaccine. We have no resources to do it, it has to come from outside. But come it does, if we let it.

So, to speak more plainly: Every sin hurts and damages everyone. There are no private sins. And every virtuous thing we do has the *potential* to benefit everyone. (Only the potential because it has to be united with Christ's action, whether we know Him explicitly or not. But in any case, it's far better than sinning!) All of us are responsible for each - not in the sense that we are guilty of their sins, but in the sense that they are our brothers and sisters and we desire them to be healthy - and it doesn't hurt to remember that our sins have doubtless damaged them, too! (The finger only suffered a prick, but the heart stopped, even though the one never touched the other. I have no way of knowing what damage my own sins have done to my brother - even if I've never met him before.)

So yes, it is possible for me to forgive someone who hasn't done me any harm that the world can see. I can forgive the harm they have done to the Body, and I can choose to love them and desire their healing.

How much more can God do that? How much more can He love us and desire us to come out of our sickness and hate? You ask what standing God has to forgive... I can only say that He has a better right than any, because He loves the most. Also, He can see the whole Body, while we, who crawl with petty pace along the arrow of time, can't. He knows what the problem is, and what treatment is required, far better than we can.

I think we must have very different ideas of what forgiveness basically is, and perhaps even what punishment is. (I read the question somewhere once, "Do you think someone can be punished by being made very rich? I do," and that seems to me very much to the point.) I hope my explanation has helped, even if you do not agree.

To more explicitly address the questions in your original post (and you do realize that Dostoevsky saw perhaps better than anyone else this view I'm describing, of all being responsible for each, right?):

The General's sin is primarily against the boy and against God, in two distinct but intertwined ways, and secondarily against every human being who ever lived or ever will live. Oh, and I would add also primarily against the boy's mother - he was deliberately cruel to her as well.

It's not that God is angry because the General destroyed His property, as you so gently put it. It's that He brought the boy into being, and loves him - far more concretely than the boy's mother brought him into being and loves him. His Heart is wounded by this horrible thing that has been done to the boy and his mother. And what's more, He loves the General too. His Heart is further wounded by how the General has damaged himself and distanced himself from God. And finally, His Heart is wounded for the damage to the whole Body.

When we say that God will forgive the General if he repents, we don't mean the General will get off scot-free. We mean that any punishment the General receives will be aimed at healing him and restoring him. We mean that the General will not be refused the cure to the poison. The cure may hurt - it probably will, and terribly. The more you've succumbed to poison, the worse the cure is likely to be. But the hurt is not the point - the point is health and ultimately joy, for the General and for the Body.

And you do realize that for the sacrament of Reconciliation to do the slightest bit of good, the General has to sincerely repent, right? Crocodile tears don't count - God is not mocked. And repentance means, not simply that he is 'sorry' in an emotional way, but that he takes action to set right what he has done, to the extent that is possible. He can't bring the boy back to life; he can't do anything to sponge away the mother's pain. But he can give his possessions, which were once so valuable to him, to help the mother and others in trouble; he can speak out against evil, no matter the cost to himself; and he can give himself up to the law for the just punishment of his crimes, so that society and the rule of law may be preserved.

Finally... as for the genocide of the Amalekites and so on, to be frank, I don't know what is going on there. It does not seem at all like the God I know (and no, I'm not setting up an opposition between the Old and New Testaments here - the vast majority of the Old Testament gives me no qualms). This is not an easy topic, and it's one I've wrestled with. I can think of only two solutions, and I am not satisfied with either of them.

1) Sometimes gangrene gets so bad that the only solution is to amputate. We, from our very limited perspective, are unable to judge when that point has come. But if anyone knows when it's come, God assuredly does.

But of course, that raises a whole bunch of further unsettling questions. I'm not happy with it.

2) We know that revelation has unfolded gradually over time, to be completed only with Christ. It may be that at an early stage of God's shaping of the Jews into His instrument of salvation, they got the wires crossed. God was speaking to them, but because of their sins and inexperience and whole cultural situation, they didn't get the full message.

Of course I know that won't satisfy you, because you can simply ask, "Why couldn't God just force them to get it? Or strike with lightning the people who did wrongly?" I can only say that it goes a little further toward satisfying me, because I have firsthand experience at how sin can cloud my view of God. This is doubtless part of His extreme measures at protecting our free will which others have spoken of - and ironically, it's also a punishment at the same time.

But even though I don't have an answer I'm 100% happy with, I still have faith. I know the God in whom I trust.

[Jordanus]

I'm sorry to post three times in a row, this'll be brief. (And I haven't figured out how to edit yet!)

Perhaps you've noticed that the New Testament is almost completely uninterested in the question of "Why do these things happen?" The closest I can think of to an attempt is a brief line in James about why wars happen.

That's because WHY they happen is, from a certain point of view, totally irrelevant. They do! The burning question the NT wants to address is, "So what now? How do we survive this mess?"

And the Good News is that the hard part - the impossible part - has been done for us already!

It's hard for a Christian - or at any rate for me - to get worked up about how the existence of evil disproves God. That's because I've already experienced God using all the evil, hurt, and pain to heal me, little by little, from the inside. What we're describing to you is NOT a diagram that we look at it to distract ourselves from the hurt when it comes; it's not a mantra we recite to make it go away.

It's *more real* than all the croutons, not less. The croutons is there, yeah, and it stinks to high Heaven. But there is something bigger than all the evil in the world. It's big enough to give people hope in a concentration camp. (Read Viktor Frankl sometime - or better yet, St. Maximilian Kolbe.)

I don't claim to be a remarkable person. God's still got a long way to go in healing me. But I've seen enough to get a feel for how it works. And I've seen the AMAZING people He's done a thorough job on! What I'm saying is that the stuff we're telling you actually WORKS. It's not just words.

[Ziggamafu]

I think the point of the "atheist" position is that if your dad saw you being raped and did not act so as to preserve the free will of the rapist, you would properly think of your dad as a criminal. And to say that "God knows best" is to imply that we cannot trust our sense of morality, which screws up much more than it solves (since the Church's sense of morality is God-given and God's essence is synonymous with the moral good).

My first post didn't exactly answer the OP; I provided only my own reflections on suffering as a Christian. What would I say? I don't know that I would say anything. I would listen, or just be there - do anything I could. The last thing the girl would need - like Job - would be a "friend" that gave theology lectures to her.

...which is why my own opinion remains the same; it will all be okay when we see God and meanwhile, through our faith, suffering may have meaning that is known (offered by the Christian for an intention) or mysterious (used by God in a non-Christian for an unknown good). But the person who suffers doesn't need to hear that. The person who suffers just needs someone's hand to hold.