The Illusion of Free Choice

Christians will tell you that God provides freedom of choice to individuals, which makes them responsible for the consequences of their actions. For example, we are free to choose whether to believe in God or not; to keep his commandments or violate them; to head for heaven or slide down to hell. This choice is sometimes put in the simplest of terms – choosing good or evil. Good, of course, is defined as God-approved, while evil means anything that is in opposition to God’s will.

The problem with this idea of free choice is that it is purely illusory. It requires people to make a choice only within a prescribed framework . For example, we are told that we can either keep God’s commandments or break God’s commandments. Keeping God’s commandments is the “good” choice, the “right” choice. Breaking God’s commandments is the “bad” or “wrong” choice. But the fact is, there is only one set of commandments to choose from and they have been designed by God. Where is the opportunity to decide that, in certain situations, different behaviours are more appropriate or morally benign? What if you want to decide your own morality, based on your own sense of right and wrong, so you discard God’s commandments and create an individual moral code that suits you and harms no-one?

Limiting choices to within a framework which assures the framer the result he desires, cannot be called “free”. It’s like a mother telling a child she can only choose to wear the red dress or the blue dress, because those are the dresses the mother likes best. There’s no option to choose the green dress or the yellow dress. Nor, for that matter, is there the chance to wear a tee shirt and jeans, or a blouse and skirt. In the same way, God limits our options to ensure that our choices correspond to his own predetermined outcomes for us.

Freedom of choice is also illusory when the person making the choice is given no clear idea of the consequences of his decision. Christians will tell you that if you do this you’ll go to heaven and if you do that you’ll go to hell. They witter on about peace and happiness, fire and torment, but you won’t get a clear description of what an eternity of heaven or hell will actually consist of. The trouble is, apparently no human has actually been to either place and returned to give us a full-blown account of their adventure. It’s a bit like the promise that Hank will give you a million dollars when you leave town but, although plenty of people have left town, no-one has ever returned with stories of the huge spending spree they’ve been on with Hank’s million dollars. To have real freedom of choice you must comprehend as clearly as possible what the results of your choice will be.

And while we’re on the subject, portraying the consequences of our choices in terms of reward or punishment is surely a matter of enticement, rather than the offer of free choice. Just as we are influenced, albeit unconsciously in many instances, by advertising, fashion, or popular opinion, so God influences our choices by manipulating our feelings about where we we would want to spend eternity (always supposing we accept the idea of life after death). If he were to include a third option, for those people who don’t necessarily want to live with him, but whom it would be unjust to punish with endless hellfire, at least the alternatives would be somewhat fairer than a simple happiness versus misery scenario. After all, no-one would choose to live in endless misery, so making that one of only two options is to weight the odds very strongly on the side of choosing the path that leads to heaven. However you look at it, that smacks of blackmail.

Probably one of the most important aspects in making a genuine choice is having the ability to act on reliable, verifiable information. You don’t just need to know what the options are, you need to be certain that they’re real. Imagine a man comes to your door and tells you he has a car for sale. It’s just what you’re looking for, it’s in perfect condition and at a very reasonable price. Probably one of the first things you would want to know is when you can see it. How would you feel if the man told you that he couldn’t actually show it to you, but he had a picture of it? Would that be sufficient for you to hand over your money? How about if he produced a written statement by someone who had seen the car, confirming everything that the man was telling you about it? I’m guessing that unless you could actually have a good look at the vehicle, perhaps even getting a qualified mechanic to check it over, and taking it for a test drive yourself, you would tell the man at the door to take his proposition elsewhere.

Christians will tell you that you need to accept Jesus as your personal saviour and that, if you don’t, you will go to hell. But where is the proof that Jesus even existed, or that he was who he said he was? Prior to the time Jesus allegedly lived, there were many stories of mythical saviour figures bearing strong similarities to the story of Jesus contained in the gospels. Being told that you have to accept some historical myth on faith alone is hardly a strong foundation for making an accurate choice. Just as you wouldn’t accept a stranger’s word for the fact that he had a fantastic car for sale without verification of its existence and reliability, so it would be foolish to accept the need to conform your life to the urgings of a religious believer without corroborating evidence of the product he is peddling.

Some might say that, to be convinced of the reality of Jesus as the son of God and saviour of the world, you must set aside your scepticism and open your heart to belief. That only the holy spirit can confirm the truth of spiritual things. But why should you be expected to make life or death decisions based on emotions and desires rather than on concrete facts? That is no foundation for wise choices in matters that have far-reaching consequences.

No, the claim by Christians that God allows people the freedom to choose to follow him or not is bogus. Without being able to choose options that are unlimited by a framework that manipulates the outcome to achieve the framer’s desired result; in the absence of the fullest details about the consequences of the choices to be made; and without verifiable information about the reality of the options apparently available to you, freedom of choice is just an illusion.

IslaSkye

A pig’s ear of an argument

Edit: Some of this post is no longer relevant as the person in question has since changed his blog entry.

Yesterday, Twelve of the Broken Microwave blog wrote about a recent “argument” that he was engaged in with an atheist. (Actually, it was two atheists, but I just want to concentrate on what he said to the alleged less experienced atheist.) Suspiciously, Twelve neglected to link to wherever it was that the said argument had taken place, thus not allowing anybody to see the argument in context.

The atheist is quoted as having said:

Did you know Jesus in the bible killed a herd of pigs? Really. He really did. So much for Gentle Jesus! Matthew 8:32 And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, the devils went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

That makes Jesus nastier than the average person. He could have found a much kinder way of doing this. Jesus shows by this one act that he was immoral.

According to Twelve, the atheist was wrong and guilty of doing “no research” when he claimed that Jesus had killed a herd of pigs and when he concluded that this one act caused Jesus to appear quite nasty, not at all kind and without scruples.

A sensible reading of the scriptural verses in question shows that Jesus was indeed culpable in the deaths of the Gadarene swine. There’s just no getting around that, unless you’re a Christian who thinks that God can do no wrong. After all, who was it who permitted the devils to enter the herd of pigs that were feeding nearby? Jesus. The devils sought his permission and he gave it.

Although this is a case of animal cruelty, my main problem with this story is Jesus’s apparent indifference towards the owner of the pigs whose livelihood had perished in the sea and the swineherds who had suddenly found themselves redundant. The latter – upon seeing Jesus’s dubious moral character – fled into the city and told the people about what had happened, to which the “whole city” came out to meet with Jesus and “besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.” Can you blame them? Whose livelihood would be next on the chopping block?

There’s no indication that Jesus offered any recompense to the owner or his employees for the disaster that had befallen them. I concur with what the atheist concluded from this story. Jesus does seem to have an unlikeable side to him. You’d think that as an omnipotent being he could have thought of a better way of dealing with the devils, without impacting adversely on the lives of innocent people.

Twelve responded to the atheist by suddenly talking about a totally different time and situation – the tenth plague that was inflicted upon Egypt by an ever-loving God. I was confused by the jump. After quoting the atheist on his blog, Twelve said, simply:

This just screams, “No research!” so I replied with this:

I concluded that Twelve had left out certain pertinent parts of his argument with the atheist, for reasons that I can only guess at. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was being deliberately vague for some reason and, if so, that might very well explain why he hadn’t linked to where the argument had taken place.

Anyway, the first sentence of Twelve’s reply clearly showed that more had gone on between what the atheist had said and his response to it:

observingworld [the atheist], I know the firstborns didn’t do anything, but Pharaoh was the one who decided the fate of those animals and children, not God. God gave Pharaoh a choice, and he chose to have all of the firstborns killed. That’s not God’s fault. If the cattle died, that’s Pharaoh’s decision. No matter how unfair it was for the firstborns to die for Pharaoh’s mistake, the blame doesn’t fall on God, but Pharaoh.

This appears to be to a response to something else that was said and not to what had been initially said. Twelve seems to be rather disingenuous.

Anyway, I’m continually flabbergasted by Christians like Twelve who try to make a silk purse out of any story from the Bible, no matter how much of a sow’s ear it really is when you discard the believer’s bias.

Notwithstanding that God had hardened the heart of Pharaoh against giving in to his demands, there’s still no way that Pharaoh was to blame for the death of “all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast”, which resulted in there being not a house where there would not be somebody dead. The holy plague touched every Egyptian family. And, who knows, maybe if God hadn’t messed around with Pharaoh’s heart, this tragedy might never have happened. It’s almost as if God wanted the opportunity to slaughter thousands of people to demonstrate his power.

Imagine that an Islamic hijacker had taken control of an American aeroplane and was demanding that the government release all of the prisoners from Guantanamo Bay or he would blow up the plane on the orders of Allah with all the innocent passengers on board. The US president refused to capitulate and so the hijacker carried out his threat. Is this scenario any different than the dilemma that faced Pharaoh? The central issue in both situations is the use of blackmail as a motivating force in achieving a certain aim, where the lives of innocent people are used as bargaining tools. How moral is that?

And as a leopard cannot change his spots, so God is continuing to blackmail people into heaven in this day and age. He’s still the monster he’s always been, as is abundantly evident in the Bible, threatening everlasting punishment on those who don’t submit to his demands of obedience.

Curmudgeonly Yours