free will is sort of like the Prime Directive in Star Trek
That’s a really apt comparison because they play fast and loose with the prime directive all the time, using it as an excuse for inaction while flagrantly disregarding it whenever it suits them
No, the christian god its not just capable of changing things, it is omnipotent. That means it could change things without interfering with the free will.
Strictly talking the logic of it, if you’re omnipotent, then you have the power do do anything, and that includes the power to do flagrantly self contradictory things, defy logic and still be logically consistent.
The “if you’re omnipotent” part is a pretty big “if”, but it’s not inconsistent to say that “anything” includes the ridiculous.
We’re discussing logical consequences of a thing, not if the thing is possible in the first place.
You don’t have to talk logical consistency to rule out “all knowing and all powerful” if you’re just looking at how things work in reality.
In reality, you can’t be all powerful or all knowing. Done, end of story. It’s impossible on the face of it.
In the hypothetical where something can be all powerful, then the power to do whatever, even in a universe that behaves like ours does, is consistent.
The power to do anything includes the absurd, inconsistent, and contradictory.
if he does ANYTHING to change our fate, he’s corrupting free will, which is supposed to be our greatest gift.
Not really, unless you consider that every interaction with anything interferes or “corrupts” our free will. If I plan on playing a game, but a friend of mine says “dude, don’t, you’ll regret it, it fucking sucks”, and I decide to not play, did this friend corrupt my free will?
Literally any plans, any kind of tweaks, no matter how small or how far in advance he’s playing it. If you alter events or shift things to your end goals, you have destroyed free will.
free will is sort of like the Prime Directive in Star Trek if you want to be charitable
This is a hilarious way of putting it, and as someone who hasn’t been all that steeped in christianity to be very familiar with it, that actually told me a lot 😄
God as described in the Bible suddenly makes perfect sense being a fickle piece of shit because he’s just a bastardized history of seemingly good rulers dealing with completely different problems in completely different ways.
This isn’t even all that far from the popular hypotheses about the history behind some of the stuff in the Bible, but the reason why the God of the Bible seems so damn fickle is that it’s likely an amalgamation of two different early Israelite / Canaanite gods: El and YHWH aka. Yahweh (and that name probably sounds familiar. Guess why!) If you’re interested in history, check out the book A History of God by Karen Armstrong, a nun-turned-atheist-historian. It’s an extremely interesting look into the prevailing hypotheses about the history of the 3 Abrahamic religions.
Now, it’s been a while since I read that book or about this in general so I’m not 100% sure I’m not mixing Yahweh and El up, but I think in general the ones where God goes all “FUCK YOU IN PARTICULAR” to some person or nation are El. In general in the “Elohist” passages that descend from stories of El, God is described as something really abstract or non-human, such as the burning bush. Also, interestingly the name still pops up in the (Hebrew-language) Bible in various forms.
In the “Yahwist” passages, God is described in a more personal and intimate way, and again if I remember right Yahwew is the more laid-back “facet” of the Biblical God. Interestingly the OG YHWH really hated farming and farmers, and there’s a general theme that farming and soil are somehow connected to evil, and you can see some that in the Bible; Cain was a farmer, for example. My own pet hypothesis for this is that that dates back to the agricultural revolution, when conservatively minded people would absolutely have thought that that newfangled woke farming bullshit is going to destroy society, and this sense of farming as a source of evil could have gotten incorporated into religion. Yahweh is also why depictions of God are forbidden.
Historical regional rulers did, however, affect eg. which god was favored, or what was part of the official religion, and on top of that a lot of the stories of different rulers and even some of the prophets in the Bible are essentially self-insert fanfic for some king or another.
If we’re going to take the Bible as stories that are somewhat partially true, I’d like to imagine that God as described was or is a supernatural nth dimensional being that allows for the manifestation of the human conscience in our moments of greatest suffering, but upholds a disassociative desire for a greater justice or harmony that can appear to many as an almost alien destructive nature and the tendency to punish, while another aspect or being above us, perhaps the same one, is basically a chilled out stoner who enjoys being lazy, exploring mushrooms as food, but doesn’t like the idea of farming and sedentary lifestyle.
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That’s a really apt comparison because they play fast and loose with the prime directive all the time, using it as an excuse for inaction while flagrantly disregarding it whenever it suits them
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No, the christian god its not just capable of changing things, it is omnipotent. That means it could change things without interfering with the free will.
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Yep, omnipotence is logically impossible. But try tell that a christian. That’s my point, the christian god is logically impossible.
Strictly talking the logic of it, if you’re omnipotent, then you have the power do do anything, and that includes the power to do flagrantly self contradictory things, defy logic and still be logically consistent.
The “if you’re omnipotent” part is a pretty big “if”, but it’s not inconsistent to say that “anything” includes the ridiculous.
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We’re discussing logical consequences of a thing, not if the thing is possible in the first place.
You don’t have to talk logical consistency to rule out “all knowing and all powerful” if you’re just looking at how things work in reality.
In reality, you can’t be all powerful or all knowing. Done, end of story. It’s impossible on the face of it.
In the hypothetical where something can be all powerful, then the power to do whatever, even in a universe that behaves like ours does, is consistent.
The power to do anything includes the absurd, inconsistent, and contradictory.
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Can an omnipotent god microwave a burrito so hot that even he cannot eat it?
He seemed to be happy to intervene in the Bible. Many times. So hasn’t he already corrupted free will?
To be fair, if he sets the board and knows the dice rolls he can create a universe that has both free will and only peeps that go to heaven.
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Save yourself the trouble; free will as we normally conceive of it is entirely an illusion.
Not really, unless you consider that every interaction with anything interferes or “corrupts” our free will. If I plan on playing a game, but a friend of mine says “dude, don’t, you’ll regret it, it fucking sucks”, and I decide to not play, did this friend corrupt my free will?
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Literally any plans, any kind of tweaks, no matter how small or how far in advance he’s playing it. If you alter events or shift things to your end goals, you have destroyed free will.
This is a hilarious way of putting it, and as someone who hasn’t been all that steeped in christianity to be very familiar with it, that actually told me a lot 😄
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This isn’t even all that far from the popular hypotheses about the history behind some of the stuff in the Bible, but the reason why the God of the Bible seems so damn fickle is that it’s likely an amalgamation of two different early Israelite / Canaanite gods: El and YHWH aka. Yahweh (and that name probably sounds familiar. Guess why!) If you’re interested in history, check out the book A History of God by Karen Armstrong, a nun-turned-atheist-historian. It’s an extremely interesting look into the prevailing hypotheses about the history of the 3 Abrahamic religions.
Now, it’s been a while since I read that book or about this in general so I’m not 100% sure I’m not mixing Yahweh and El up, but I think in general the ones where God goes all “FUCK YOU IN PARTICULAR” to some person or nation are El. In general in the “Elohist” passages that descend from stories of El, God is described as something really abstract or non-human, such as the burning bush. Also, interestingly the name still pops up in the (Hebrew-language) Bible in various forms.
In the “Yahwist” passages, God is described in a more personal and intimate way, and again if I remember right Yahwew is the more laid-back “facet” of the Biblical God. Interestingly the OG YHWH really hated farming and farmers, and there’s a general theme that farming and soil are somehow connected to evil, and you can see some that in the Bible; Cain was a farmer, for example. My own pet hypothesis for this is that that dates back to the agricultural revolution, when conservatively minded people would absolutely have thought that that newfangled woke farming bullshit is going to destroy society, and this sense of farming as a source of evil could have gotten incorporated into religion. Yahweh is also why depictions of God are forbidden.
Historical regional rulers did, however, affect eg. which god was favored, or what was part of the official religion, and on top of that a lot of the stories of different rulers and even some of the prophets in the Bible are essentially self-insert fanfic for some king or another.
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If we’re going to take the Bible as stories that are somewhat partially true, I’d like to imagine that God as described was or is a supernatural nth dimensional being that allows for the manifestation of the human conscience in our moments of greatest suffering, but upholds a disassociative desire for a greater justice or harmony that can appear to many as an almost alien destructive nature and the tendency to punish, while another aspect or being above us, perhaps the same one, is basically a chilled out stoner who enjoys being lazy, exploring mushrooms as food, but doesn’t like the idea of farming and sedentary lifestyle.
Please enjoy my verbal diarrhoea haha
So the playthings
with dunning-krugerwho are loyal are still playthings after?deleted by creator
Gnosticism is another old collection of beliefs that’s quite interesting to read about