"pretty mind blowing" --- So you reject God based on a poor understanding of classical theology, but then you embrace an atheistic reality where human consciousness is an illusion and claim to be defending another illusion called truth? That is mind blowing, an entire reality based on illusion. "Nothin from Nothin leaves Nothin" (Billy Preston 1974)
@@andrewferg8737 What you call a poor understanding is a very obvious reading of the argument. Just because someone doesn't accept your poor arguments doesn't mean they're misunderstanding them.
@@MindShift-Brandon This is my argument against the free will position. Let us take an example of three men. Man 1 is born with the desire to molest children and acts on that desire. Christians would call him a sinner and the rest of us would seek to lock him up for what he did. Man 2 also is born with the same desire but he knows that this is wrong so he 'chooses' to not molest children. He would be considered righteous for not sinning. If it ended there then the free will argument would be valid, but; Man 3 is born with ZERO 'desire' to molest children (the majority of men) and therefore has no conflict on this matter. Are the majority of men who are in the third category being denied free will because they are 'not' born with the 'desire' to molest children? If god knows who will and who will not be born with the desire to molest children and is happy to make the majority men 'not' have that desire then WHY allow the ones that 'do' have the desire to molest be born in the first place? You can apply this to ALL the things that Christians call sin. Basically god only needs to remove the desire to sin from a small percent of the population to have a sin free world. The rest of us don't sin because we don't have any desire to sin.
With this all laid out, the amount of guilt and coercion given to believers and especially children, and the amount of blame placed on women is UNFORGIVABLE.
@@MindShift-Brandon good on you. You should. So far this channel seems to be most in line with my own views. Free Will is one of the most consequential issues in philosophy. And not just relating to religious issues. But talk about an issue that's hard to tell ppl about!!!
And then there's the mentality that if you're guilty of the thought crime of lust you deserve infinite punishment cuz you've "sinned against an infinite being". Uhhh. Sometimes I wonder if there really isn't a god that's simply testing ppl with the bible. And if you endorse the moral nonsense in the bible just to save your eternal bacon you've failed the test and are damned to an eternity hanging out with ray comfort and Kirk cameron.
@@paulnejtek6588 Those two are the worst, I couldn't conceive of two people that would make Hell worse. I believe that Lucifer would do anything to either get them out or get out himself. There are also the two Hovinds and Frank Turek.
@@55Quirll I kinda like Kirk Cameron sometimes. Not always the brightest star in the shed but he has likeable qualities sometimes. He strikes me as someone who could be reached with reason....maybe. it may take some Xtra effort but it's achievable. Possibly. Ray? Holy shit!!!!! That dude is out there somewhere waaaay beyond the voyages of the starship Enterprise. In a place where up is down and down is left, and left is...... Red? I dunno. Some reality where nothing makes any sense except that some things ray says make sense after a full bottle of vodka.
It's always odd to me no one mentions a God who is all powerful could absolutely give us free will without giving us the capacity for evil. We as humans physically cannot fly or breathe underwater and yet those limitations are not considered an infringement on our free will so why would the physical inability to commit evil be? An all powerful God absolutely could put something like that in place without removing our free will
That becomes worse when you think about How Christians believe God himself CAN'T do Evil, because his Nature compels him. So then that raises the question: does God have free will? If yes, then clearly it's possible to have free will and be unable to sin. If no, then free will Isnt important to have. Either way, it's problematic. And let's not even get started on the angels and Heaven How is It that there can be a World without sin like that. Either in Heaven you loose free will, or it's possible to have free will and no Evil. In both cases it's problematic. And even If we explore God only creating those who when they go to Heaven they wouldn't ever sin. That's also problematic because God could only create those who wouldn't sin to Begin with, without having to Go to Heaven.
If the Bible is to be taken seriously and we we're made in the image of God then there are certain qualities of God that are impressed on us. God has on multiple occasions done things that are evil. A being that creates and is capable of evil will make evil things. If God were to remove our tendency towards evil he'd have to start by removing his own.
Why create the Tree of Knowledge in the first place? Why stick it in the Garden? Why cast Lucifer to Earth to corrupt the new creation of Mankind? The more I look into Christianity, the more questions I have, the less answers I get, and it makes me believe it's all nonsense.
"could put something like that in place without" --- Puppies, tadpoles, and infants are not perfected creatures, but they are good. Are you expressing your preference for a reality devoid of puppies, tadpoles, and infants?
@@marshallyoungmandy8434 "So then that raises the question" ---- Your questions have been raised and addressed multiple times over the preceding millennia. Sometimes the best answer is simply that we have asked the wrong question.
Exactly, even if they can't comprehend it they feel pain and fear death like humans do. That's why I'm a buddhist because Buddha cared about animals and didn't want them to be sacrificed, killed etc and I morally align with his teachings
This was my earliest separation from the church as a child. As a hunter and angler it’s pretty obvious to me that animals feel pain and have some element of affection (like a hunting dog). And I remember my friend saying he was trapping raccoons and I thought that was cruel, and his reply was “It’s just a critter.” Asking more he revealed that according to the Bible that animals are here for us. So I look it up on my own, sure enough. I now argue to theists that they are called to be good Shepard’s of their Gods creation, and a good Shepard doesn’t maim for fun or disregard animals.
This is my favorite argument to discuss with Christian’s. You can see the cognitive dissonance roaring onto their face as they scramble to explain away my points. Then the fear, as they get angry, call me a sinner and drop the discussion. That anger comes from fear. The fear that if they listen to any more they may doubt and that doubt will send them to their “loving” gods hell. Once one fully embraces these points it’s so easy to recognize Christianity is NOT true.
Exactly. I think this is very true for many christians. I also think many simple have never and will never think past what the bible presents. Depending on your circles, you may never have been introduced to certain concepts
@princegobi5992 There are some brilliant people on the internet. I don't see any of them around here though. Like I said these arguments might work on old church ladies but anyone who has a moderate interest in theology will be able to respond easily and then turn the argument back onto the atheist.
The writers of the Abrahamic religion didnt even know North America, South America, Southern Africa, EuraAsia, Australia. They thought middle east and the Mediterranean was the world. All those people dying without knowing Christian religion. Why would Jesus only be in the middle east. If i can come up with better logic than God. That means God is not really that smart not that all knowing after all we are made in his image. He is as dumb as us humans. Free will is needed to justify the illogical concept of the Abrahamic God.
@@anonymouswon7000 Because you've never been persuaded/convinced of something other than what you thought. Aigh. As if those words and concepts, and the books written about them, exist for nothing, for no good reason. Forced to think. As if.
@@anonymouswon7000 You dear soul. I have news for you. If that were true, no one would bother arguing/debating, educating, or writing books. Besides, your life and talents are not your own for your "genetics" and "types of life experiences" to force you to spend as they will, let alone as you please. Like it or not, believe it or not, the One who's feeding you and constantly sustaining you owns you by creation and redemption. Yes, your life and talents are His property. And He is giving even you a probation in which to do quality due diligence on His existence and only-possible solution to sin and its resulting evil, and help Him end both by forming a character forever fit for His holy presence and home.
I don't usually leave comments much but I just wanted to tell you how amazing that I think that your videos are. This is absolutely one of my favorite channels and I find myself looking everyday to see if you have any new videos. I have recently, within the past year, left the belief of the god of the bible and I am trying so hard to recover from the trama of believing in this god for all of my life since childhood. I am 55 years old now and all of my life I have lived in fear from the doctrines that were forced upon me from from such a young age, especially the hell doctrine. All I could think about was people that I love, especially my children, and even all of the people that I don't even know, ending up there and then being there for eternity. These horriable doctrines get so engrained in us when they are taught to us from such a young age that it affects every area of our lives, the decisions we make, the things that we think and even our mental health. It was in studing the bible trying to grow closer to this god that I ended up walking away from him. I reqret so much all of the years that I spent believing these things and even teaching them to my children. Your videos help so much and offer new insights and perspectives that I haven't seen or thought of before. I haven't came out to many people about my deconversion because, at this time in my life, I just really can't handle all of the backlash that I would receive. Having channels like yours to go to really helps me not feel so alone in all of this. Thank you for all of the time and effort that you put in to making these videos and information available to us.
No, thank you for this comment. It is beyond kind and extremely encouraging. I also appreciate you sharing your story so much. There is strength in numbers here and a normalization of what so many of us have gone through. i am so happy you commented and so happy we are both living in the truth, despite the odds. And to make your life easier. My plan is to have a Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday video every week at 9am central. I will also have the occasional Saturday video at the same time. Appreciate you being here!
You should feel proud of yourself for finding the courage to live in truth and freedom and thus to be truly alive. Don't be guilt tripped or any of that crapp.
The other issue for me is that there is a big difference between creating something with the capability of doing wrong and creating it in such a way that would be a preferable choice. Evolution managed to create animals that absolutely have the capability of engaging in homicide or theft and yet also make it so that those animals are psychologically and neurologically inclined to have empathy for others and thus seek alternative solutions to problems baring some serious developmental error or psychological or neurological trauma. Surely something with the intelligence to design a complex brain could design similar systems that would result in creations that would generally associate those actions with negative feelings and thus refrain from doing them or at least makes those that are willing to proceed anyway likely to be a very rare outlier at best. We have brains that do the contrary and actually produce reward signals for actions this creator supposedly considers bad which makes no sense don't give your creations reward signals for activities unless you want them to do those activities on a frequent basis. If I award a neural network points when it does a thing I don't get to them complain when it learns to do that thing as often as possible, if you don't want it to do an action you award no points or award negative points, in the case of a human this would be depriving the brain of dopamine or whatever but same general idea take away the reward signal when the action is undesired. If you didn't want your creation to be gluttonous for example you could surely design the limbic system such that the rewards were self limiting. It could be designed such that repeated activations of the same reward pathway over a short time period resulted in suppression of the dopamine release or the release of an antagonist to block that signal pathway. This still works for the biological function of rewarding necessary biologically beneficial activities in moderation but would discourage excessive repetition.
I love your quote: “ I can’t choose to believe. Real belief comes from the information I have.” Try choosing to believe in Santa again. It doesn’t work that way. Excellent video!
Exactly. What is the Christian reply to things like addiction, trauma, brain damage, and mental illness etc that literally rewire / control brain function and cause us to do horrible things against even our own will?
I have sympathy for you, but "why are we thus?" is not an original question. That gets canvassed in Romans 9:14-23, "why did you make me like this?" which is quoting Isa.29:16 and 45:9. The implication in Rom.11:32 is that we were created thus to be saved from such. Paul then in Romans 11:25-36 suggests that all Israel will be saved eventually, and the implication is the same for Gentiles in other places, a hint of which is seen in Rom.10:11-13 and more explicit in other places. For apparent contradiction compare Rom.9:27 with Rom11:25-26. Apparent but not real in my mind, because Paul is making a point. The point being that we are not the ones doing the job of salvation. We are the object of the action, not the doer of the action. We are Adam or Israel Rom.9:31 doing Rom.10:3, well worth reading in the Good News translation or even the Amplified. The idea being that God has already put himself into us and we live out of what we already have. That is we who live by spirit fulfil the righteous demands of the law. The faith we live by is that God is in us, not ignorant that Gods righteousness is already in us, not thinking that we have to establish our own righteousness as Adam and Israel did. We live out of the righteousness of God already in us and trust God to bring us to the fulness of his own statue, that is Gods' job. Colossians 1:27 "and the secret is that Christ is in you, which means that you will share in the glory of God." We don't put Christ in us, we simply acknowledge that he did that at creation, that it is a living active union that works for our benefit. The taking of communion is simply the acknowledgement that Christ is in us and that we can trust him to do his job of bringing us to be like him. I grew up on a farm with animals and their pecking order and the constant struggle for position. I don't need convincing that I am a 'nephesh', an animal, I am totally convinced, but I also hope that maybe I am an animal to be in the image and likeness of god, by their doing. A long winded suggestion that we are observing and participating in an ongoing act of creation. My apologies.
@@MindShift-Brandon Why does everyone assume that God is a being that is 100% good when the bible never states that he is? God is NOT a being that is 100% good this should be clear by what God is capable of doing in the bible. God committed genocide with a worldwide flood, he commanded the Jews to do the same when he passed judgment on people in the Old Testament a being that is 100% good would NOT be able to do those things because it goes against the very nature of good, however it does NOT go against the nature of a being that is 100% righteous. A being that is 100% righteous would be able to use evil the right way to punish those who do wrong because good lacks the characteristics to do any act of punishment because it's in good's nature to forgive NOT to punish. If God was a being that was 100% good, there would be no justice for any act of wrongdoing and people would get away with doing any act of wrongdoing that they would want to do and the being that is 100% good would just continue to forgive every wrongdoing and the wrongdoing would never end and that would be hell.
I watched a video with Forrest Valkai discussing the story of Noah in which he made the comment, “of what sin were the gophers guilty of?” I’ve often wondered why an Eternal, N-dimensional, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being couldn’t just blink creatures out of existence if they weren’t what this Being desired, and start over?
Because when smiting massive percentages of the population with the elements and plagues is in your backstory it's fantastic for keeping your followers in fear. A "free" choice made out of fear is not a choice made freely.
@@Jeanettesboxingchannel If eternal damnation isn't a gun against your head then what do you call it? But that says nothing for those that apparently follow God being at the heads of groups that advocate for the horrible mistreatment of people not like them. Nobody has a gun on them to get them to do what they do any yet here we are with them trying to roll us back to a time when blacks and women had no rights. Hurray for christian morals and love.
God: "Hello guys today i made a robot which i created his emotions and personality and what he will do, and get surprised when he did what i designed him to do"
This is, by far, the best video I’ve seen on the problems of the Free Will argument that I’ve heard since Theological Bullshit’s. Clearly articulated at every point. I’m saving this one for future reference and sending it to a couple people I know!
Hi Charles, you asked for my thoughts on this video, so I thought I would make them public here. I've had this in draft for a while, and I should probably just post it now.. I don't think I can give this anything close to a point-by-point rebuttal. I didn't find this a fun video to watch (perhaps understandably), and I thought it took too many tangents. I can't remember everything that was said, and I don't really feel like giving it a second watch. But I'll give some thoughts I've had while digesting it. Firstly, on earthly suffering in general. I would say that whatever your view of the afterlife (if any) is, I'm not sold on the idea that, the suffering we experience in this life is in any way detrimental to our experience of the next life. One simplistic approach is to say that the more we suffer in this life, the better Heaven will seem by comparison, or the less shocking Hell will seem. Or if we just cease to exist, then of course there will be no sense of shock or relief or anything after we're gone, so I would mainly look at the issues of free will, and the afterlife. I would probably be fairly willing to suppose that in an absolute sense, free will probably doesn't ultimately exist. I think its existence would entail everyone having complete control of their own destiny, and it seems unlikely that anyone in that position would choose anything other than a destiny where they are willing and able to enjoy God for eternity. So unless universalism is true, some people either didn't choose their destiny or willingly chose it based on limited knowledge. (They didn't know it would lead to separation from God, or they didn't believe that separation from God would be bad.) But I'm not sold on the idea of free will being necessary for there to be any kind of justice. I think it's only necessary that in some sense I "own" my past choices, good or bad. And that therefore it's not wrong if I am called to account for them. (Particularly if God wants most for us to trust in him, to have our sins forgiven and taken away.) Is it wrong for God to create beings without absolute free will, and then to reward or punish them based on their choices? I don't think it's clear. But I'll look at some possible afterlife scenarios and give my thoughts. 1. "Maximal conscious torture" - "God" (or the ruler of the afterlife) is maximally malicious, and takes great pleasure in seeing how much pain and suffering he can inflict on people. Any conceivable action that might lessen people's suffering is out of the question. Noone suffers more or less than anyone else, regardless of how they acted in life - but if they can be made to feel ashamed of their past actions, then presumably all the better. (This isn't compatible with Christianity, but it's perhaps a helpful end of the spectrum to start on.) It's not a just or a loving position, and there is no fathomable reason why a just or loving God would choose for this afterlife to exist. 2. "Anti-universalism" - noone is forgiven for their sins; everyone is punished for them eternally in Hell. (I don't think anyone believes this, but again it's helpful to include.) Is this just? Is it unjust? I don't think we can actually rule out either. I can think of ways to justify eternal punishment - either as the penalty for sinning against an infinitely great being, or possibly in the sense of sinning for eternity while being punished. Or perhaps because our action or inaction may cause someone else to reject God and suffer that loss. (I think the first option could possibly be argued against, on the grounds that our punishment shouldn't be any greater than our finite understanding of God's greatness. But I don't have enough knowledge about morality and the nature of God, his holiness and wrath, and the nature of the afterlife, to rule out any of these objectively.) The biggest problem I would have with this model, intellectually (apart from the lack of Biblical support), is that I don't see why God would want to create a world entirely full of people. who will go there. 3. Traditionalism - some people spend eternity enjoying God, others are punished for eternity in conscious torment. As before, I don't think we can definitely rule out whether it's just or not. Again, the most difficult thing to come to terms with on this view is how God would be willing to create people under this model, knowing (or at least being nearly certain) that at least some people would end up in Hell for eternity. Humanly speaking it doesn't seem possible, but I would want to be cautious of assuming God is too much like us. Another issue is, essentially, the "how can I be happy knowing my former spouse is suffering eternally" question. I think in this model, it entails that we become like God and fully take on his sense of sin and justice, so that we feel the same sense of rightness that he does. I'll give some more thoughts about this question in the next case. 4. Annihilationism - people either enjoy God forever, or are punished finitely and then cease to exist. This is easier to defend than eternal torment. It could be argued that once a person ceases to exist, they do not feel "hard done by" in any sense, and there is no imbalance of any kind that needs to be restored to them. Should I be sad if my former spouse is gone forever? I could say it was a tragedy, but there are some counter points to consider. - Perhaps I would see their sin the way God does, and see the rightness of their punishment - Perhaps if I experience grief, it enables me to come to God and know his comfort more deeply. - Sometimes we talk about a spouse or partner as "completing" us - such that if we lose them, we feel like a part of us is missing. In Heaven, we know a deeper kind of completion with Christ and our Christian brothers and sisters. I would gain much deeper and closer relationships with them, than with my spouse on earth. 5. Universalism - everyone eventually comes to enjoy God forever. I'm not sold on Universalism - although some Christians do make a case for it - but I think it gives fairly easy resolutions to all of the above problems. Noone ever loses anything that they do not ultimately regain, and in a greater way. People may suffer terribly on earth, or perhaps for a time in the next life before they accept God, but once all of their suffering is over, it doesn't haunt them, and it just becomes events in their story towards knowing God, and living in complete wholeness with him and everyone else. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Just to try and show that there are different ways of thinking about the afterlife, and how they might or might not be realistic given a loving and just God. I hope they are helpful, or at least sufficiently relevant.
The best video? The problems? Sure, until you realize how easily dismantled and disarmed those "problems" are by the three needless oversights I just posted above.
Lots and lots of assumption for example a loving and just god. What is punishment what is love what is justice our current understanding of these ideas would have to change for me to accept any of your ramblings
@@nahorsurazal3803 "Lots and lots of assumption for example a loving and just god." Who's assuming? My comments below are based on the Bible's claims, not on assumptions, believe it or not. But how would our current understanding of those ideas have to change for you to accept them? Please explain.
The concept of free will is literally just the church saying: "It's your fault!" So god created us and he can kill us as property at any time, but he had to give us free will so we would have the ability to choose to love him and not just be drones. But then he also created hell and told us that if we did not love him and do exaclty as he said, we would burn in hell for all eternity. So... what is free will then? The freedom to choose between telling god hoe great he is or burning in hell? What kind of choice is that?
You are missing God's legitimate reasons. It is not a matter of God saying, “Choose my way, or you must go to hell.” Instead, it is “No matter how evil or depraved you are; I provide a way to save you from your sins that are turning you into another Satan. And that way is to accept Christ.” Who wouldn’t want a personal relationship with the most perfect, loving, unselfish being? Even though God uses evil for His righteous purposes, God did not create evil. So, where did evil come from? Free will creates the possibility of choosing selfishness. And once chosen, selfishness is the spark that grows into irreversible, progressively increasing evil behavior. Moral evil results from selfish behavior as it progresses to higher levels. The pain and suffering caused by evil is a being used by God to train and prepare believers for eternity. When a god (i.e., Adam and every other human in the human race) uses his free will to choose selfishness, it is an instant spiritual addiction to self. And no god (little g) can be allowed to continue because absolute power corrupts absolutely. God (bid G - the God of the Bible) can hold absolute power because he's absolutely and sacrificially unselfish - even to the point of sending His son to die by Roman crucifixion so that, if a human chooses Christ, they can have their spiritual life restored and go to heaven. God is always "others" focused. Sin is selfishness, righteousness is unselfishness and holiness is sacrificial unselfishness. So do you want to be with selfish people for all eternity or unselfish people? But sin is like malware running in the background of our being. It constantly makes humans choose selfish decisions and actions. So the collective selfishness of the world has caused the horrible mess we see today. Accepting Jesus means accepting His righteous unselfish ways. Jesus then gives that person the Holy Spirit to overcome selfishness (aka sin). True love is a choice, and choices can only be made by beings of free will. That is why God goes to great lengths not to intimidate or manipulate mankind with His awesome presence. That is why we do not see Him. That is why He does not appear at the command of a man like a genie in a bottle to grant our wishes or to prove that He exists. That is why amputees aren’t healed, that’s why prayers for healing aren’t always answered immediately, that is why the miraculous aren’t everyday occurrences, that’s why Jesus refused to jump from the pinnacle of the temple to prove He’s the Christ, that’s why Jesus didn’t call legions of angels to save Him from the cross. That’s why God doesn’t show Himself to the world before the door to heaven closes and judgment begins. What if the atheist got his wish and God made a personal appearance on the earth? Suppose He was the epitome of awesome power and appearance, complete with lightning bolts. What would happen? It would be on CNN instantly. It would be instantly around the world on all media outlets and smartphones. Would the atheists believe? While the unbeliever may have to scurry under the intimidating power of such a higher-order being, convincing the person that this is the God of the universe would probably be next to impossible. (I recommend the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier as an example of this scenario.) And even if they knew it was God, deep down inside, they would not want to submit to Him. But God wants people to love Him as He really is because they want to, not out of fear because they have to. Isn’t that what we want in a spouse too? We want someone who will love us because they want to, not because they have to. Those who want to will stay forever, but if you are manipulated, frightened, or forced to love, eventually you will probably rebel and leave because your heart is not in the relationship.
intellectually lazy Christians try to use libertarian free will to soften/water down what the Bible teaches the Bible doesn't teach free will, I as a Christian deny libertarian free will/PAP this video is simply a critique of Christians who do not study enough to know what the Bible truly says this isn't the silver bullet against Christianity you think it is, it's simply a critique of people who inject humanistic ideas into the Bible to make it more palatable for unbelievers
I always wondered why WE never see anything like the Dove flying down from Heaven to rest on a blessed person's shoulder. And even more so, why no one can cure disease by laying hands on a sick child.
What a brilliant summary of perhaps the biggest issue of the Christian story. I feel you and I have had very similar journeys here. Once I took the time to look beyond my local Christian self, and 'zoom out' across all of humanity and time, I could see plainly the folly and futility of The Plan. Whatever way I tried to justify that realisation was met with more and more questions. Ultimately I had no choice, but to not believe any longer.
Thank you so much for this video. You explained the different types of free will so well. I also want to add that we don’t get to choose to be born to begin with, so we don’t get to choose the terms of life. We couldn’t opt in to gods rules on earth, we were just put here, without our permission. That idea alone makes the idea of free will unlikely. 😊
Another AMAZING video! You've brought up things about free will after death I've never heard of or considered before and it all makes perfect logical sense! The free will of Christianity is a fancy way of saying *ultimatum.* It IS an ultimatum and they gaslight you into believing it's FREE WILL. It's not FREE if there is a cost tied to it. If God is so loving, gracious, kind, and considerate, why was his first reaction to CURSE everything for all eternity? If he really was a God of forgiveness and mercy, forgiving Adam and Eve right there would have been the perfect opportunity to model that behavior he claimed to have but never showed and would have nullified a need to flood the world and to sacrifice himself later. Once you get a crack in your belief system and start to see it for what it is - man made and illogical, the whole thing collapses right in front of you. Your eyes are opened and you awaken to the notion just how deceived you were and it's downright horrific the damage this religion has done to countless people. Loving your videos!
If someone convinced me that I could either do X or I would be tortured, what courtroom would fall to rule that this was coercion, and not hold me liable for doing X?
There is, at the very beginning of the doctrine, a few very big problems. A : there is NO free will facing an omniscient being in charge of everything. B : the savior is needed to save from... The wrath of god for following his plan. C : Original sin is part of the plan. D : the reason to kick from Eden was so mankind would not eat from the second tree, that would provide immortality on top of the result of eating the previous fruit that was REQUIERED to have the knowledge of good and bad. A god that does that is a perverted tyrant that enjoys punishing people for his own wrongdoings and does not let a chance out of his trap.
Everyone is familiar with the Sims...I was a tryant to my characters when they didn't get that job promotion...I made a "concoction" to "delete" them and I enjoyed every minute of it because they didn't do what I commanded them to do 😊
FFS, it shouldn't be THIS much WORK just to figure out how to have a normal conversation with Christian family members. I'm not trying to deconstruct anyone else's faith, but "free will" is one of the issues I bring up if I find myself cornered by someone determined to witness to me. Don't get me wrong, anyone who's ever stood in a short order line behind me knows I can't decide and maybe have just a little too much free will. 😅 I genuinely just want a relationship with my loved ones without talking about death and the end times. I'm sick of them trying to save me, and I'm sick of my closest relatives telling me I'm going to hell. All I wanted was family game night, or family movie night, or just small talk would be nice.
I left the Christian religion 30 years ago after going in very deep. I became mentally iill in the end, now fine ,now I find it all fascinating how I was drawn in so deep, I was preaching when ever I could, I’m ashamed of that now. your channel is so helpful, you have a gift from god to deconvert , well done, I’m sure you are helping many people find reality again.
You will be back. Once someone fully embraced Christ there is no going back because He will hold you but you will go trough Hell of suffering in Great Tribulation if you do not make right choice again so be wise
@@Bojan12 Shame I wasn't helped when I was suicidal, crying out to God ,nothing comes when you are this low I can assure you. Christianity made me this way, I'm free now and life is good, I'm my own boss, no more trying to justify drowning of babies, stonning of children and women, if this is the discipline giver I'm better than that, I'm sure you are too. Human sacrifice of woman, there is so much death ordered in the bible ,read it front to back several times you may free your self. Take care.life is short don't waste it.
@@freebirdofreason1994 He came to me in my darkest moment and became my brightest Light. You did not need to explain those things but hold on to the Light until Light reveals the answers you were looking for. Hardest things in the world is not only to see the Truth but to face it and embrace it completely and drop foolish imaginations because they are not reality and never will be
"We don't have will over where, when, or how we are born, but we have free will after we are born." This is kind of correct. Your genetic dispositions, the kind of parents you are born into, family environment, political environment, and socioeconomic environment are a HUGE (an I mean very large part, arguably even all of it) of what you are and become that you have absolutely no choice over. There are things you think you are choosing out of free will, but you are not. You are acting out of programming based on these influences earlier in your life. Some would argue, and I tend to agree, that we don't actually have free will, only the illusion of it. That all of our choices have already been shaped by all the random events leading up to that choice.
This was so very good, Brandon. Thank you for all this amazing content. I cannot believe how much you are putting out and the quality. when will this channel blow up?!
Another problem with whether or not free will exists in heaven, is that if it exists, what is stopping someone from pulling an Adam, sinning again, and starting all this process of the fall of man all over again, and if there isn't free will in heaven, yeah it is exactly as you said, why this whole crap on earth to begin with? Either free will is so important to God that he is willing to send people to eternal damnation to preserve it, which in that case it should also be preserved in heaven, or it isn't, therefore we could have skipped he earth stuff altogether. This was one of the first major questions I had that I just couldn't reconcile, and kicked off my de-conversion process.
You mentioned the problem of suffering/evil and divine hiddenness as your primary drivers away from belief. Mine were original sin, and the idea that everyone who’s not Christian is going to be tortured forever, even if they were born into another religion. Also when I was 17, I went thru a phase where I was taking it all seriously. I got a study Bible, used it, took it to school, prayed, and I tell you it made me absolutely miserable and isolated. I was spending all this time seeking relationship with this hidden being, I should have been spending that time connecting with other people. I suppose that’s ok for the believer, since we’re supposed to hate everyone who isn’t god anyways. But it wasn’t ok with me.
Agree wholeheartedly. The free will solution proposed by Christian apologists is so flawed that even I, who is not a deep thinker, could see so many inconsistencies. Even more proof that Christianity is just a man made myth.
Well now that is a thought. There is no such thing as free will so ey can't Christians see the logic. Perhaps their belief, like your own is not a choice you made. The lack of free will is a bitch!
the Bible doesn't teach free will.... you're rejecting Christianity based on people who inject humanistic ideas into the Bible? the Bible doesn't teach free will anywhere
The argument used to be presented to me that I would have to give up my free will in order to live in a world without suffering. Which made me wonder what's the opposite of free will? Living in god's perfect will where everything is love and bliss? Yeah, I will take option B, no free will. It also used to make me wonder about some verse that god was willing that none should perish, then he should have shut this failed experiment down long ago!!
Understand that God does not want to take ungrateful people with Him. Free will is for us to chose either Light or Darkness that is why sin needed to happen because Light shines brightest in the Darkness and Jesus is that Light and the one who truly seeks and humbles himself will know without shadow of doubt who their Creator is and none absolutely none would be able to take it away because God has come to live in them because that is what was their answer to His call
@@attackhelicopter-up3dh I understand your logic and thinking however with God is different. While He is the Creator He let us reproduce those children so it is random. Each of them He gave life to live and choice to make. Now you may not like this but one of the reasons He let those kids also be so His love can be manifested even more. Like He said to His Disciples what rewards do you have if you love only those who love you? In other words to show that He is God who loves all absolutely all and that His people must be the same if they want to be in His Kingdom. You see everything God does is for much greater purpose. Even Hell. By creating Hell He told us forward I am not messing around however this who I am the Creator and Destroyer and your true purpose can only be found in Me
Well done. I had not considered it from these angles before. The last point about if we do not have free will in heaven, then why not just start there is so good!
Adam decided to disobey God in his pre-fallen morally-perfect state despite direct contact with God and did so in an apparently short amount of time after his creation. What does this say about being unimpressed with the Infinite Being after direct contact? What does this say about God's so-called perfectly-created Adam? Seriously, couldn’t God have created an innocent sinless morally perfect free-willed being in direct contact with God able to go more than a few days without disobedience? What this also says is that God is so unimpressive in person that a morally perfect free-willed being in direct contact with God will, in a very short amount of time, choose to ignore him. Funny enough, the only other example of morally perfect beings directly interacting with God, the angels, did the same thing.
There is no such thing as "freewill", for anybody. We are all subject to the realities of nature, laws, and codes of conduct, morals, conscience, instinct. Nobody violates those without consequence. "Free will" only exists in our imagination.
Morals also don’t exist. If there is no supernatural and all powerful, all good God then there is no morals. The universe didn’t leave us a rule book on what’s good and bad, everything just is. We’ve evolved morals, much like crows and apes, since we are a social species and thus what we see is moral is actually what is bettering our survival. Morals are an illusion of a simplistic and outdated perception of the world, yet they are beneficial for promoting our survival (which isn’t necessarily good or bad since objective morality doesn’t exist). Either way we don’t have free will to choose our actions and thus act ethically or unethically. Our biology, much like a computer processes stimuli into actions which we don’t choose, we are simply adaptive programming based on genetics and environment.
exactly lol every Christian needs to watch this and abandon this absurd and ridiculous idea of "free will" the Bible does not teach libertarian free will/ability to do otherwise (PAP)
That was great! RUclips recommended your channel and I'm hooked. I would love to see you as a panelist on The Atheist Experience or Talk Heathen or any of the call-in shows.😊❤❤❤
Wow. This is amazing. You articulated what I have been thinking all along with a logic and knowledge I am lacking. I feel I have learn something incredibly powerful . Than you🎉
I'm late to the comments, but honestly this is an amazing video. You didnt say anything new (maybe I'm watching to much atheistic/agnostic content :D ), but the way you structured it and how you explained was absolutely top notch. I will borrow from this video for sure to use it in my discussions.
I’ve always wondered about free will. I asked so much while at church. Yet no one could give an answer. I’d always add onto their answers with more questions like this. I’ve even been told that I “never ask the simple questions”. Which I think me questioning like this maybe contributed to my church unintentionally alienating me from them. Then when I graduated high school they basically abandoned me. That sent me into a downward spiral and eventually led me to struggle with deep depression and such. I eventually made the decision that I could no longer believe in this god. I’ve never been happier since this decision. But it’s been difficult trying to put on the act that I still believe with my family who doesn’t know about this.
I don't even know why churches preach free will, unless they think they're covering for god. The bible teaches pre-destination. No version of the term "free will" appears at all.
lol your comments are all over the place. I have no idea what you believe, which is fine. But I did enjoy this comment and appreciate you being here so much!
Great! I find it so frustrating when talking with theists when they say things like, "of course you have free will, you chose to have this conversation, duh", but it's hard to convey that isn't what most people mean by free will. It never goes well because they don't even want to entertain the possibility of the differences between libertarian free will, compatibalism etc... free will is straight up the "god says I have free will so I have free will, end of" type to them, with no variation. Wilful ignorance to stay strong in belief, I guess🤷🏼♂️
I agree with you. I think they just equate free will with decision making and they do not understand or entertain the notion that you need independence and knowledge to make a “ free-will” decision.
Great video. My take is that we do not choose to be apart of God's creation, nor the burden of original sin. Sure, I can choose to accept Jesus' sacrifice to get out of that burden, but considering the circumstances, is that "free choice" a fair one?
Just like how some parents punish their kids for merely existing or ask them to pay back the cost of raising them even though the kids did not ask to be born and need parents to provide them with everything they need to survive.
Why? There wouldn't be any further thoughts, obviously. He may say or act otherwise under the compulsion of torture. Is that what you mean?? Pretty odd how you think that has anything to do with truth. Also, some odd moral priorities. But most important do you have proof for what you're saying or just saying a bunch of empty BS you can't back up?? In which case this is time number 2,337, 668 I've seen a theist say something that's supposed to be pithy and wise but just showcases that you've got no substance. "Pithy" is a pretty common substitute for substance.
My religious faith started to unravel when I realized I wanted to believe but didn't. When I questioned it, I heard that faith was a grace, which only made it worse! So faith is supposed to be a free gift from God, so why wouldn't God give it to me, knowing I so wanted it? No amount of praying for faith made it stick. I'm just grateful for independent spirituality and metaphysics and mystics.
Faith is isn’t the gift. The grace of salvation is a gift. Just came here to read comments. I assume this is just a bunch of anti free will propoganda and conversing. I hope you can believe Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins.
@@bobgoldcat7636 Watch the video, the channel itself maybe, and engage in the content. Then you'll understand WHY and HOW people disbelieve, and maybe come up with better ways to convince them to believe. If you cannot emphasize with and understand the unbeliever and their viewpoints, how can you possibly hope to get them to come to yours?
@@bobgoldcat7636 maybe an all knowing god could of waited another 2000 years until revealing themselves so their message could of traveled the world in seconds instead of just 1 guy on a mountain in the middle of nowhere in a time when no method of communication or travel around the world was possible, I'm not trying to say I'm better then an all knowing all powerful deity but maybe if I wanted people know about me I would just tell one person and instead turn on global shout chat and let everyone know my message
So, uhm, he made a game with impossible rules and then punished us for failing. Then his own son was so ashamed of this bullying behavior that he stepped in and broke the game. Why would anyone worship a being like that? We're just toys to that god.
An odd thought about Free Will as it pertains to the euthyphro Dilemma: if it is true that God does not wish us to sin, but he also wants us to have free will, and it is further true that God declares what is and isn't moral rather than what is and isn't moral determining what God supports, then what is it that prevents God from having declared that all the things that his creation would choose freely to do would be good and therefore create a world with free will and no sin where all actions and decisions made by his creation glorify him?
Also how does an omniscient being have emotions? since emotions are triggered by new knowledge. When we discover someone lied to us we get angry, when we expect something to happen and it doesn't we're disappointed, when something bad happens we become sad or fearful. It all hinges on not having foreknowledge. The god of the Bible is full of illogical emotions, anger, jealousy, regret, etc. Such silly stuff lol
I just started watching your videos and I must’ve grown up in a very similar background to you because everything you say directly relates to my childhood and the brainwashing I went through with religion! Keep it up man you are amazing!
After my daughter’s cat died, she asked me if cats go to heaven. I asked her what she thought heaven would be like. “Just like here with our family, but with my cat too.”
I never could figure out why the animals got the shaft after Adam and Eve ate the fruit. I mean they didn't sin, so why is every creature now punished for one creature's transgression? But I guess we needed them for sacrifices then, so I suppose their pain is through Man's necessity. Not to mention those animals must have undergone some incredible instantaneous physiological alterations. And the free will in Heaven point is a good one. As a kid I always wondered, if Lucifer could grow discontented in Heaven, why couldn't a person's soul that has gone there eventually do the same? 🤔 Stimulating thoughts here; good video!
It all really is fun and interesting to think about. That poor first crocodile that wouldn't have needed those teeth or the ability to digest bone etc. Just imagine what he went through the second a pomegranate was bitten. LOL the absurdity!
I, even as a believer, don't understand why animals have to suffer for what those two did, either. The animals really played no part at all. But as far as the free will in heaven thing goes, the bible actually says that there is a difference in the old heaven and the new one. The old one wasn't perfect. The new heaven and the new earth are supposed to be, hence why nothing unclean will be allowed in.
I had these questions from the time I was a little girl. My mother told me if people were really good deep down they'd find their way to God no matter what, and if they were "ugly" deep down they'd never find God. Ergo if I had hateful thoughts -- being angry at God for hardening Pharaohs heart and for making Hell, for example -- I was already just evil and that wasn't God's fault, or at least that was the conclusion I came to.
A few thoughts after watching. I have been working through these sorts of issues myself, and I have been attacking these same sorts of issues from a number of different angles. One issue I have been struggling with is just that it free will with or without God just seems impossible to me. I don't even know how to square it intellectually--what would it be? Some kind of mental faculty that exists outside of cause and effect, but which can act on this world? It seems as if "free will" (if it exists at all) would have to be very small indeed, since most actions would be induced by a combination of things like your genes, your social network, your environment, your health, the chemicals in your brain at any given time, etc. With God, that just seems to add another layer to the issue--if a timeless all powerful God created every part of you, planned everything in advance, including all those previous factors mentioned above, along with bazillions of other knobs and bits, and had an outcome in mind all along, then started things going in such a way that nothing could every step outside of His plans, then how could anyone be responsible for any event except God? God would be responsible for all things good AND bad because He planned them all out and created every bit of matter, every soul, every thought, and even the very moments in time when the actions took place. Still, if I step outside of that thought experiment above, I have to admit to myself that regardless of how obvious all the above seems to me no matter how I turn things around in my mind, I could be wrong. Free will and predestination and cause and effect and the fate of the universe are all beyond my understanding. Maybe there is a way for God to maintain free will even in the face of all these limiting factors, and I just don't get it. But if there is such a means, it strikes me that "free will" is always delimited by any number of factors. If we are in a sinful world, and we have sinful natures, we are limited by those natures insofar as we cannot choose to get rid of the nature we are born with, and we have to live in accordance with the limitations of those natures. For example, I have to sin. While it may be argued that I can choose the sins (debatable), I cannot choose in the end to avoid all sin--and in fact it seems obvious that humans tend to fail at avoiding sin a great proportion of their time on earth. This is because of the nature within us, which we didn't choose. I also cannot choose to do things beyond my ability, such as soar through the air by flapping my arms, or running at 50 miles an hour, or teleporting to Tokyo. I can't learn faster than my limitations, I can't move faster, I can't live longer than my weak body allows. Everywhere I turn, I find another limitation. So it strikes me that, were I teleported to heaven, and my ability to choose to sin were stripped from me, I would only lose one more ability among many. Further, it's an ability I don't want anyway. If I had my druthers, I would much prefer to be a perfect person, with no vices, no sin, a perfect relationship with God if He really exists. Those aspects are all particular limitations or enhancements that may cut away certain other abilities--an ability to lie, to murder, to curse, to fornicate. But each of those abilities or choices are just add-ons to the long list of things I cannot do--and were I to gain the ability to live a perfectly virtuous life, I would be receiving a suite of new abilities to operate within. Perhaps the lost abilities would be like freeing myself from weights and chains, as if the Christian is right the righteous life might be much fuller and freer and fulfilling. But if that is true... then the sinless life is certainly no more robotic than the sinner's life. It is just a life lived within a different set of constraints. I could just as easily act within those new limitations with that new set of freedoms given me. It might be argued that the ability to choose whether to love God is taken away, so maybe I could be a robot in that sense as to that particular issue. Many Christians object that the choice to love is the important one here, since love without choice isn't love. But I am not sure that even with the introduction of sin that we have a greater ability to choose. Did those who love God choose now to love Him in a truer way by being surrounded by those who chose differently? It seems like an illusion that they could have chosen differently. Skeptics also point this out often--that if God knew in advance what everyone was going to choose, why not just create those who He knew would choose God freely and forego creating those who would choose poorly and end up suffering forever? No freedom would be lost, but we would lose a lot of suffering! I am not the first to point this out either, but even should God decide to allow for sin, there seems no compunction on His part to further allow things like forced sex, torture, slavery, or others of the ugliest sorts of sins. God could step in whenever an individual has those desires and stop them from carrying them out, given that God is loving and wouldn't want to see His creatures suffer. We can still operate in freedom without being free to terrorize one another! And by working in that way, God could show us His love and care by manifesting His love through concrete actions on a daily basis that would draw us to Him through the expressions of His care. But the world seems built on suffering and destruction, where animals must live by tooth and claw, where disease ravages, where mental illness creeps up, and nature itself drives us to hideous cruelty (and also at times great kindness). I don't see why it HAS to be this way. If God is the ultimate expression of justice and love and peace, then those things should be indelibly written into His creation, right? The fact that they don't seem to be, and that rather the opposites manifest themselves more readily, is very troubling indeed.
Brilliant. Yes, you have exposed all the contraductions in this big mess of myths. FWIW there is a branch of christianity, Calvinism, which AIUI does actually believe everything is preordained (this can be with our without free will i think) and that means who goes to heaven or hell is also pre ordained and theres nothing any of us can do about it. Apparently they re OK with this. As are, apparently, most christians who AFAICS are quite happy to have a blissfull life in eternity whilst people they knew but didnt choose their brand of religion, burn for all eternity . What the heck kind of morality is that? None of it works. Contradictory bs.
If you really want to have understanding of those things then seek and find The Volumes of Truth. It is Revelation given specifically for today world and have many things that God said to us. It it is not easy at all to face it however those who seek the truth must face it so the Truth can set them free
I now attend deconstruction videos like I used to attend church. Its comforting to know that Im not the only one whose struggled to believe whats been taught in the bible. Some of us have experienced great psychological trauma as the result of persistently trying to live up to Gods expectations. Everything you present in this video should be thoroughly analyzed by so-called believers. Glad Im not the only one who's come to these conclusions.
How does an omniscient being even have free will? The being can't change his mind because he can't have false foreknowledge, it would mean praying for a certain outcome would be a waste of time as the being already knows the outcome that he can't change. He's locked into "his plan".
I remember as a kid, I blamed Adam and Eve for the fact that we sin because they disobeyed God. My dad chastised me and said "No. Your sin is YOUR fault!"
Preach it brother! I stopped believing in God very much because of the suffering of animals. I am appalled at how so many believers of any god look down on animals and don't care about them. They want mercy but don't show mercy to the animal s. What Hippocrates
You could be that person looking down at the suffering if animals and not caring. If their life circumstances and yours were reversed they would have your beliefs and you theirs. Blame is one thing that goes out the window when free will does not exist. It is a way of thinking we are all locked into from birth.
How can you do wrong without the knowledge of right and wrong? Does a baby do wrong when it tips over its glass? Does a baby do wrong if it swipes at a knife left nearby and it falls down, slicing Mom's foot?
I've been an atheist for more than a decade now and I live in a highly Christian religious community and I work in a very religious organization which is Jamaica and I'm a police officeri I've been ridiculed and hated for my lack of beliefs, like you i grew up in the church became the protégé of my pastor but when i read the bible and was being totally honest i could not still be believe it .. I firmly believe that your channel is a masterclass and I honestly believe you're my biggest inspiration to take on this roll of bringing logic and reason to the Caribbean I follow a myriad of atheists here but I've never really heard one echo my thoughts the way you do sir I'm truly lucky to have found your channel and I'm just here sitting learning how to better get my arguments across to all these apologists around me and the naive. So much I want to say to you Mr mindshift and ask you, continue doing your good work sir.
My special needs older brother, literally cannot understand the concept of god, would have been murdered by a Christian god according to the OT. Not a hateful bone in his body. Screw that story. Original sin is ridiculous. I was an atheist by twelve. This story among many helped in that change from catholicism. 40 years later, I'm convinced I'm still correct.
My best friend had a much older brother who was special needs, and growing up i thought about this issue so many times because of him but still couldn’t shake the indoctrination. Its such an excellent example. Thanks for sharing.
Where in the old testament does it support the murder of special needs people. That is a modern concept,abortionists do well at killing people with learning disabilities. Science happily supports their killing too.
To say science supports abortions is so ignorant. Science isn't a belief system. It does not take a stand on issues. Science of say ultrasounds and early detection might be used by those who believe its ok to abort such a kind of human, but it does not advocate for it. This is beyond naive. By this same logic. The science that builds cars, happily supports drunk drivers. lol what?!
@@MindShift-Brandon That very science that was meant to help,has now been used to dispose of the unwanted. It is niave to think science is always designed for good. The atom bomb,operations designed to save life now use to kill unborn children. You must be more intellectually honest with yourself as l try to do. I do not have all the answers but humans have a lot to answer for. Greed,murder,indifference,child abuse,racism,animal cruelty and so the list goes on.
i never said it was always designed for good. I am saying it is not a belief system. it is not on a side. people use science for good and bad. You had just stated science happily supports abortion. This is 100% false. Science doesnt do anything lol!
People are still deceived by The wizard of Oz trick 😢 Why does Free Will have limited choices? 😮 What does can't mean? 😏 These are just some of the issues I've always had with Free Will. I've realized that true Free Will is only the Creator(s). Ours is limited at best, and that may be an illusion as well. Great video, thank you for your time and effort!❤
Excellent Brandon for putting the detail around these massive holes in Christianity. I hadn't thought of the no free will after death issue before and what you say is obviously correct imo :)
I am always wondering why christians say that mureder and rape are because of free will, but they can't wrap their head around the fact that the free will of the predators interfere with the free will of their victimes who just want to live and not to be assulted and/ or murdered.
The best intellectually crafted haymakers??? This abusive religion??? Aigh. As hard as it may be to believe, you'd know otherwise about both if you were to do quality due diligence for once, as careful Christians have done for centuries, while both sides have needlessly failed to all along. You'd know that only Jesus' grace, not logic, truly sets you free, from the influence/deceptions of the master deceivers who have convinced you they don't exist, and from slavery to sin (unloving, cherished thoughts, motives, words, and deeds). How little you realize his every claim and objection is based on one or more needless oversights and resulting unfounded and unjustified assumptions and misconceptions. And how little you realize Christianity is the only possible and guaranteed solution to evil, as in it's guaranteed that it will end it. Your problem is overlooking the three implications in His reason for banishing the pair fom Eden: 1) He gave them a tree of perpetual life for a reason (so there's no immortal soul/spirit) 2) sinning made them morally weak, unable to reliably love unconditionally and self-sacrificially and resist Satan's temptations 3) only the obedient have the right to eat often from that tree and live forever (so God is not perpetuating sin, nor interested in or honored by doing so, by forever preserving the lives of the wicked in hell) Your problem is not knowing that Jesus defined/explained what He meant by "believing in Him" in John 6, especially verse 63, the need and method for forming a character fit for Heaven, as in forever safe for, and forever able to enjoy God's pure and holy home, as well as able to survive His holy presence. Your problem is not knowing, because of your disastrous quality of due diligence, that you can know unmistakably that time is all too quickly running out in which to help God end, even hasten the end of, evil not just once, but forever.
My favorite satan figure is in Job. It amazes me that god was so willing to let this adversarial character test him to near death. Really gives a person perspective of who god is.
I am omniscient and know all things, past, present and future [Psalm 147: 5, Jeremiah 1: 5 et al.] One day, just for the fuck of it, I struck up a conversation with Satan and made a bet with him [Job 1: 7] - that my best guy, Job, would never take My name in vain [Job 1: 8]. I of course already knew this, so this was going to be an easy win. Also seeing how I am omni-benevolent, I set the rules of the bet: that Satan would not harm Job directly. Arrange for all his livestock to be stolen? That's fine. Not stealing is a commandment for _people_ to obey, not us at the deity level [Job 1: 12]. Kill his 10 children? Not a problem; they don't count for anything anyways. They're such minor npc's, we didn't even bother giving them names [Job 1: 19]. Again, morality is for people, not deities. So I allowed Satan to do all this stuff, one misfortune after another, mass-murder his children, and nope, Job doesn't curse me [Job 1: 22]. I won the bet. Job asked me why I did all this to make him suffer [Job 7: 20, 10: 2, 13: 19 et al.]. I told him that I don't need to explain myself to him [Job 40: 8] But I WILL explain myself and my motives to everyone else _except_ Job, as I told the authors of the Bible itself why I did all this. Oh, and as a consolation prize, I conjured up 10 replacement children for Job and his wife [Job 42: 13] so that they hardly even noticed a difference. R/AmItheAsshole
I feel like Alice in wonderland. Arguing about God being some cosmic jerk because of a story in the bible is insanity. It's like arguing over who would win in a fight between batman and the hulk.
Honestly the argument you made at the end is genuinly mind-blowing, and you have no idea how grateful I am for it. By considering heaven is a place of all-good and direct contact with god's love, all those elements that exist in heaven must be what the ultimate good and love is, and by not having free will in that eviroment proves that, logicaly, that complete free-will itself (that god gave* us because of his aparent love for us) can't be all good and the "proof of god's love" at least on this eartlhy existence, deconstructing this giant shield that christians use to counter-argue so many things. Entering on the classic paradox that our earthly free will is actually an incapabilitly of god, disrespecting the all-powerfull definition (or maybe its very own existence of our free will is already a paradox itself, making all possibilities impossible by logic, ultimately leading to a fallacy about god) Even though the whole bible narrative is unbearable by a skeptical point of view, having knowledge about this argument helps in the whole "beat them at their own game" kind of thing This is the first video I watch from you, and you brought me a point that I couldn't think of even in a million lives, it was something that was disturbing me for a considerable amount of time, definelty won a subscriber, sorry for my english as its not my first language, and thanks again!
For years I've wanted a 3rd option: Not heaven. Not hell. Just something else.. Of course, Idk if such a thing exists, but I can still hope... I also stopped believing in free will 14 years ago, ironically while I was studying at a Christian college. 😅
"For years I've wanted a 3rd option: Not heaven. Not hell. Just something else.." How about this: That there is no heaven or hell. Your "soul" is simply your brain being complex enough to give you your sense of individuality. Nature has given you a precious few decades to do what you want, experience things, and hopefully (because humans are social creatures) that you have enough empathy to have a desire to try and make a positive effect within your social sphere. And that death is an end which awaits us all, good or bad, that our brain ceases to function, and we lose consciousness. What we leave behind is (hopefully) positive memories in others whom we encountered in our life's travels. It's not heaven, and it's not hell. Is this so bad?
@@christasimon9716I want to face Reality not my own imaginations and dreaming how I wish things are. There is no time for that. Here and Now is only that matters and find the Truth later it could be already too late
The existence of bed bugs prove God if he does exsist is a monster. What reason could he have for creating little sacks of blood sucking insects that are damn near impossible to eradicate other than to torture and torment Human Beings and animals alike.
The bit about “choosing” to believe is really poignant. I want to believe but there is nothing compelling enough. I don’t want to just “give up thinking.” That’s not belief.
Watching this for the second time, can’t wait to see a video on God’s perfect will, and whether a Christian is living according to their purpose and his perfect will. This idea gave me so much anxiety when I became a believer. Also, how bible app guilts you not to break a streak. I know its a “positive thing” but mannn after you loose you 500 days it feels almost punitive
One problem with pascal's wager. The first commandment is not believing in other gods. Therefore choosing the wrong god is worse than choosing no god. So Pascal's wagers conclusion on religion actually is that no one should believe in any god. Not choosing any god = ignorance, choosing the wrong god = malice.
The free will argument is pretty mind blowing. "I don't want robots, but if you don't act like robots, I am going to destroy you"
Ha, yes exactly! So crazy
@@MindShift-Brandon "Ha, yes exactly! So crazy" ---- Then why would you think Christians believe that?
"pretty mind blowing" ---
So you reject God based on a poor understanding of classical theology, but then you embrace an atheistic reality where human consciousness is an illusion and claim to be defending another illusion called truth? That is mind blowing, an entire reality based on illusion.
"Nothin from Nothin leaves Nothin" (Billy Preston 1974)
@@andrewferg8737 What you call a poor understanding is a very obvious reading of the argument. Just because someone doesn't accept your poor arguments doesn't mean they're misunderstanding them.
@@MindShift-Brandon This is my argument against the free will position.
Let us take an example of three men.
Man 1 is born with the desire to molest children and acts on that desire. Christians would call him a sinner and the rest of us would seek to lock him up for what he did.
Man 2 also is born with the same desire but he knows that this is wrong so he 'chooses' to not molest children. He would be considered righteous for not sinning.
If it ended there then the free will argument would be valid, but;
Man 3 is born with ZERO 'desire' to molest children (the majority of men) and therefore has no conflict on this matter.
Are the majority of men who are in the third category being denied free will because they are 'not' born with the 'desire' to molest children?
If god knows who will and who will not be born with the desire to molest children and is happy to make the majority men 'not' have that desire then WHY allow the ones that 'do' have the desire to molest be born in the first place?
You can apply this to ALL the things that Christians call sin.
Basically god only needs to remove the desire to sin from a small percent of the population to have a sin free world.
The rest of us don't sin because we don't have any desire to sin.
With this all laid out, the amount of guilt and coercion given to believers and especially children, and the amount of blame placed on women is UNFORGIVABLE.
Unforgivable indeed! I get more and more sickened by the whole deal.
@@MindShift-Brandon good on you. You should. So far this channel seems to be most in line with my own views. Free Will is one of the most consequential issues in philosophy. And not just relating to religious issues. But talk about an issue that's hard to tell ppl about!!!
And then there's the mentality that if you're guilty of the thought crime of lust you deserve infinite punishment cuz you've "sinned against an infinite being". Uhhh. Sometimes I wonder if there really isn't a god that's simply testing ppl with the bible. And if you endorse the moral nonsense in the bible just to save your eternal bacon you've failed the test and are damned to an eternity hanging out with ray comfort and Kirk cameron.
@@paulnejtek6588 Those two are the worst, I couldn't conceive of two people that would make Hell worse. I believe that Lucifer would do anything to either get them out or get out himself. There are also the two Hovinds and Frank Turek.
@@55Quirll I kinda like Kirk Cameron sometimes. Not always the brightest star in the shed but he has likeable qualities sometimes. He strikes me as someone who could be reached with reason....maybe. it may take some Xtra effort but it's achievable. Possibly. Ray? Holy shit!!!!! That dude is out there somewhere waaaay beyond the voyages of the starship Enterprise. In a place where up is down and down is left, and left is...... Red? I dunno. Some reality where nothing makes any sense except that some things ray says make sense after a full bottle of vodka.
It's always odd to me no one mentions a God who is all powerful could absolutely give us free will without giving us the capacity for evil. We as humans physically cannot fly or breathe underwater and yet those limitations are not considered an infringement on our free will so why would the physical inability to commit evil be? An all powerful God absolutely could put something like that in place without removing our free will
That becomes worse when you think about How Christians believe God himself CAN'T do Evil, because his Nature compels him. So then that raises the question: does God have free will? If yes, then clearly it's possible to have free will and be unable to sin. If no, then free will Isnt important to have. Either way, it's problematic. And let's not even get started on the angels and Heaven How is It that there can be a World without sin like that. Either in Heaven you loose free will, or it's possible to have free will and no Evil. In both cases it's problematic. And even If we explore God only creating those who when they go to Heaven they wouldn't ever sin. That's also problematic because God could only create those who wouldn't sin to Begin with, without having to Go to Heaven.
If the Bible is to be taken seriously and we we're made in the image of God then there are certain qualities of God that are impressed on us. God has on multiple occasions done things that are evil. A being that creates and is capable of evil will make evil things. If God were to remove our tendency towards evil he'd have to start by removing his own.
Why create the Tree of Knowledge in the first place?
Why stick it in the Garden?
Why cast Lucifer to Earth to corrupt the new creation of Mankind?
The more I look into Christianity, the more questions I have, the less answers I get, and it makes me believe it's all nonsense.
"could put something like that in place without" ---
Puppies, tadpoles, and infants are not perfected creatures, but they are good.
Are you expressing your preference for a reality devoid of puppies, tadpoles, and infants?
@@marshallyoungmandy8434 "So then that raises the question" ----
Your questions have been raised and addressed multiple times over the preceding millennia.
Sometimes the best answer is simply that we have asked the wrong question.
I find it disgusting when people use the reason that animals have no souls as an excuse to torture them and treat them terribly.
Exactly, even if they can't comprehend it they feel pain and fear death like humans do. That's why I'm a buddhist because Buddha cared about animals and didn't want them to be sacrificed, killed etc and I morally align with his teachings
@@UwUImShio i disagree with Buddhism too, that’s why I’m more of a Daoist
Agreed. Shouldn't that make their lives all the more precious?
This was my earliest separation from the church as a child. As a hunter and angler it’s pretty obvious to me that animals feel pain and have some element of affection (like a hunting dog). And I remember my friend saying he was trapping raccoons and I thought that was cruel, and his reply was “It’s just a critter.” Asking more he revealed that according to the Bible that animals are here for us. So I look it up on my own, sure enough. I now argue to theists that they are called to be good Shepard’s of their Gods creation, and a good Shepard doesn’t maim for fun or disregard animals.
@@lukepoplawski3230so you came to the same conclusion that aligns with a christian perspective and that was a separation from church?
This is my favorite argument to discuss with Christian’s. You can see the cognitive dissonance roaring onto their face as they scramble to explain away my points. Then the fear, as they get angry, call me a sinner and drop the discussion. That anger comes from fear. The fear that if they listen to any more they may doubt and that doubt will send them to their “loving” gods hell. Once one fully embraces these points it’s so easy to recognize Christianity is NOT true.
Exactly. I think this is very true for many christians. I also think many simple have never and will never think past what the bible presents. Depending on your circles, you may never have been introduced to certain concepts
What is argued that brings about the results as you claimed?
You could try discussing it with someone other than little old church ladies?
@@ChristianConspiratorit’s almost like you don’t think that the internet provides debates from what are considered he very best apologists.
@princegobi5992 There are some brilliant people on the internet. I don't see any of them around here though. Like I said these arguments might work on old church ladies but anyone who has a moderate interest in theology will be able to respond easily and then turn the argument back onto the atheist.
Welcome all. This is one of my favorite issues to talk about. Enjoy.
Freewill is the power that God can not overcome. God's plan cannot come to pass without us humans submitting to his will. The most powerful God.
The writers of the Abrahamic religion didnt even know North America, South America, Southern Africa, EuraAsia, Australia. They thought middle east and the Mediterranean was the world. All those people dying without knowing Christian religion. Why would Jesus only be in the middle east. If i can come up with better logic than God. That means God is not really that smart not that all knowing after all we are made in his image. He is as dumb as us humans. Free will is needed to justify the illogical concept of the Abrahamic God.
Your fundamentalism is showing. Freedom and will are distinct issues.
@@anonymouswon7000 Because you've never been persuaded/convinced of something other than what you thought. Aigh. As if those words and concepts, and the books written about them, exist for nothing, for no good reason. Forced to think. As if.
@@anonymouswon7000 You dear soul. I have news for you. If that were true, no one would bother arguing/debating, educating, or writing books. Besides, your life and talents are not your own for your "genetics" and "types of life experiences" to force you to spend as they will, let alone as you please.
Like it or not, believe it or not, the One who's feeding you and constantly sustaining you owns you by creation and redemption. Yes, your life and talents are His property.
And He is giving even you a probation in which to do quality due diligence on His existence and only-possible solution to sin and its resulting evil, and help Him end both by forming a character forever fit for His holy presence and home.
I don't usually leave comments much but I just wanted to tell you how amazing that I think that your videos are. This is absolutely one of my favorite channels and I find myself looking everyday to see if you have any new videos. I have recently, within the past year, left the belief of the god of the bible and I am trying so hard to recover from the trama of believing in this god for all of my life since childhood. I am 55 years old now and all of my life I have lived in fear from the doctrines that were forced upon me from from such a young age, especially the hell doctrine. All I could think about was people that I love, especially my children, and even all of the people that I don't even know, ending up there and then being there for eternity. These horriable doctrines get so engrained in us when they are taught to us from such a young age that it affects every area of our lives, the decisions we make, the things that we think and even our mental health. It was in studing the bible trying to grow closer to this god that I ended up walking away from him. I reqret so much all of the years that I spent believing these things and even teaching them to my children. Your videos help so much and offer new insights and perspectives that I haven't seen or thought of before. I haven't came out to many people about my deconversion because, at this time in my life, I just really can't handle all of the backlash that I would receive. Having channels like yours to go to really helps me not feel so alone in all of this. Thank you for all of the time and effort that you put in to making these videos and information available to us.
No, thank you for this comment. It is beyond kind and extremely encouraging. I also appreciate you sharing your story so much. There is strength in numbers here and a normalization of what so many of us have gone through. i am so happy you commented and so happy we are both living in the truth, despite the odds. And to make your life easier. My plan is to have a Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday video every week at 9am central. I will also have the occasional Saturday video at the same time. Appreciate you being here!
You are not alone Sherri. (((Hugs)))
You have just described my life exactly, Sherri.❤
You should feel proud of yourself for finding the courage to live in truth and freedom and thus to be truly alive. Don't be guilt tripped or any of that crapp.
@@MindShift-Brandon Welcome to reality and out of the darkness.
The other issue for me is that there is a big difference between creating something with the capability of doing wrong and creating it in such a way that would be a preferable choice. Evolution managed to create animals that absolutely have the capability of engaging in homicide or theft and yet also make it so that those animals are psychologically and neurologically inclined to have empathy for others and thus seek alternative solutions to problems baring some serious developmental error or psychological or neurological trauma. Surely something with the intelligence to design a complex brain could design similar systems that would result in creations that would generally associate those actions with negative feelings and thus refrain from doing them or at least makes those that are willing to proceed anyway likely to be a very rare outlier at best. We have brains that do the contrary and actually produce reward signals for actions this creator supposedly considers bad which makes no sense don't give your creations reward signals for activities unless you want them to do those activities on a frequent basis. If I award a neural network points when it does a thing I don't get to them complain when it learns to do that thing as often as possible, if you don't want it to do an action you award no points or award negative points, in the case of a human this would be depriving the brain of dopamine or whatever but same general idea take away the reward signal when the action is undesired.
If you didn't want your creation to be gluttonous for example you could surely design the limbic system such that the rewards were self limiting. It could be designed such that repeated activations of the same reward pathway over a short time period resulted in suppression of the dopamine release or the release of an antagonist to block that signal pathway. This still works for the biological function of rewarding necessary biologically beneficial activities in moderation but would discourage excessive repetition.
I love this. Wonderfully said and fantastic examples. Thank you!
I love your quote:
“ I can’t choose to believe. Real belief comes from the information I have.”
Try choosing to believe in Santa again. It doesn’t work that way.
Excellent video!
Exactly. What is the Christian reply to things like addiction, trauma, brain damage, and mental illness etc that literally rewire / control brain function and cause us to do horrible things against even our own will?
I have sympathy for you, but "why are we thus?" is not an original question. That gets canvassed in Romans 9:14-23, "why did you make me like this?" which is quoting Isa.29:16 and 45:9. The implication in Rom.11:32 is that we were created thus to be saved from such. Paul then in Romans 11:25-36 suggests that all Israel will be saved eventually, and the implication is the same for Gentiles in other places, a hint of which is seen in Rom.10:11-13 and more explicit in other places.
For apparent contradiction compare Rom.9:27 with Rom11:25-26. Apparent but not real in my mind, because Paul is making a point. The point being that we are not the ones doing the job of salvation. We are the object of the action, not the doer of the action. We are Adam or Israel Rom.9:31 doing Rom.10:3, well worth reading in the Good News translation or even the Amplified.
The idea being that God has already put himself into us and we live out of what we already have. That is we who live by spirit fulfil the righteous demands of the law. The faith we live by is that God is in us, not ignorant that Gods righteousness is already in us, not thinking that we have to establish our own righteousness as Adam and Israel did. We live out of the righteousness of God already in us and trust God to bring us to the fulness of his own statue, that is Gods' job. Colossians 1:27 "and the secret is that Christ is in you, which means that you will share in the glory of God."
We don't put Christ in us, we simply acknowledge that he did that at creation, that it is a living active union that works for our benefit. The taking of communion is simply the acknowledgement that Christ is in us and that we can trust him to do his job of bringing us to be like him.
I grew up on a farm with animals and their pecking order and the constant struggle for position. I don't need convincing that I am a 'nephesh', an animal, I am totally convinced, but I also hope that maybe I am an animal to be in the image and likeness of god, by their doing.
A long winded suggestion that we are observing and participating in an ongoing act of creation. My apologies.
This is the major issue for me, especially as it intersects with eternal damnation. Excellent video Brandon.
Thank you, always so great to have you here!
@@MindShift-Brandon Why does everyone assume that God is a being that is 100% good when the bible never states that he is?
God is NOT a being that is 100% good this should be clear by what God is capable of doing in the bible.
God committed genocide with a worldwide flood, he commanded the Jews to do the same when he passed judgment on people in the Old Testament a being that is 100% good would NOT be able to do those things because it goes against the very nature of good, however it does NOT go against the nature of a being that is 100% righteous.
A being that is 100% righteous would be able to use evil the right way to punish those who do wrong because good lacks the characteristics to do any act of punishment because it's in good's nature to forgive NOT to punish.
If God was a being that was 100% good, there would be no justice for any act of wrongdoing and people would get away with doing any act of wrongdoing that they would want to do and the being that is 100% good would just continue to forgive every wrongdoing and the wrongdoing would never end and that would be hell.
"the major issue for me, especially as it intersects with eternal damnation" ---- Did you look for a valid answer before deciding to be atheistic?
@@andrewferg8737 theirs a reason why no one takes you seriously in these comment sections…you reek of ignorance and foolishness
@@danielblair4413 Justice for wrongdoers *is* good. The problem is that what the god portrayed in the Bible does isn't justice.
I watched a video with Forrest Valkai discussing the story of Noah in which he made the comment, “of what sin were the gophers guilty of?”
I’ve often wondered why an Eternal, N-dimensional, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being couldn’t just blink creatures out of existence if they weren’t what this Being desired, and start over?
Because there are those who He has seen that will love Him
Because when smiting massive percentages of the population with the elements and plagues is in your backstory it's fantastic for keeping your followers in fear. A "free" choice made out of fear is not a choice made freely.
@@stanleyhyde8529 well, nobody pointed a gun at them. Many still chose to be bad, and follow evil. Others chose to follow God.
@@Jeanettesboxingchannel If eternal damnation isn't a gun against your head then what do you call it? But that says nothing for those that apparently follow God being at the heads of groups that advocate for the horrible mistreatment of people not like them. Nobody has a gun on them to get them to do what they do any yet here we are with them trying to roll us back to a time when blacks and women had no rights. Hurray for christian morals and love.
God: **creates humans with the foreknowledge that they will sin**
Humans: **sin**
God: **surprised Pikachu face**
God: "I'm sending you all to hell!"
God: "Hello guys today i made a robot which i created his emotions and personality and what he will do, and get surprised when he did what i designed him to do"
Thats why you apologize and He will forgive you.
@@Jeanettesboxingchannel Apologize for being exactly the way this psycho supposedly created me? That's hilarious and sad at the same time.
This is, by far, the best video I’ve seen on the problems of the Free Will argument that I’ve heard since Theological Bullshit’s. Clearly articulated at every point. I’m saving this one for future reference and sending it to a couple people I know!
wow man, thank you so much for that!
Hi Charles, you asked for my thoughts on this video, so I thought I would make them public here. I've had this in draft for a while, and I should probably just post it now..
I don't think I can give this anything close to a point-by-point rebuttal. I didn't find this a fun video to watch (perhaps understandably), and I thought it took too many tangents. I can't remember everything that was said, and I don't really feel like giving it a second watch. But I'll give some thoughts I've had while digesting it.
Firstly, on earthly suffering in general. I would say that whatever your view of the afterlife (if any) is, I'm not sold on the idea that, the suffering we experience in this life is in any way detrimental to our experience of the next life.
One simplistic approach is to say that the more we suffer in this life, the better Heaven will seem by comparison, or the less shocking Hell will seem.
Or if we just cease to exist, then of course there will be no sense of shock or relief or anything after we're gone, so I would mainly look at the issues of free will, and the afterlife.
I would probably be fairly willing to suppose that in an absolute sense, free will probably doesn't ultimately exist. I think its existence would entail everyone having complete control of their own destiny, and it seems unlikely that anyone in that position would choose anything other than a destiny where they are willing and able to enjoy God for eternity.
So unless universalism is true, some people either didn't choose their destiny or willingly chose it based on limited knowledge. (They didn't know it would lead to separation from God, or they didn't believe that separation from God would be bad.)
But I'm not sold on the idea of free will being necessary for there to be any kind of justice. I think it's only necessary that in some sense I "own" my past choices, good or bad. And that therefore it's not wrong if I am called to account for them. (Particularly if God wants most for us to trust in him, to have our sins forgiven and taken away.)
Is it wrong for God to create beings without absolute free will, and then to reward or punish them based on their choices? I don't think it's clear. But I'll look at some possible afterlife scenarios and give my thoughts.
1. "Maximal conscious torture" - "God" (or the ruler of the afterlife) is maximally malicious, and takes great pleasure in seeing how much pain and suffering he can inflict on people. Any conceivable action that might lessen people's suffering is out of the question.
Noone suffers more or less than anyone else, regardless of how they acted in life - but if they can be made to feel ashamed of their past actions, then presumably all the better.
(This isn't compatible with Christianity, but it's perhaps a helpful end of the spectrum to start on.)
It's not a just or a loving position, and there is no fathomable reason why a just or loving God would choose for this afterlife to exist.
2. "Anti-universalism" - noone is forgiven for their sins; everyone is punished for them eternally in Hell.
(I don't think anyone believes this, but again it's helpful to include.)
Is this just? Is it unjust? I don't think we can actually rule out either. I can think of ways to justify eternal punishment - either as the penalty for sinning against an infinitely great being, or possibly in the sense of sinning for eternity while being punished. Or perhaps because our action or inaction may cause someone else to reject God and suffer that loss.
(I think the first option could possibly be argued against, on the grounds that our punishment shouldn't be any greater than our finite understanding of God's greatness. But I don't have enough knowledge about morality and the nature of God, his holiness and wrath, and the nature of the afterlife, to rule out any of these objectively.)
The biggest problem I would have with this model, intellectually (apart from the lack of Biblical support), is that I don't see why God would want to create a world entirely full of people. who will go there.
3. Traditionalism - some people spend eternity enjoying God, others are punished for eternity in conscious torment.
As before, I don't think we can definitely rule out whether it's just or not.
Again, the most difficult thing to come to terms with on this view is how God would be willing to create people under this model, knowing (or at least being nearly certain) that at least some people would end up in Hell for eternity. Humanly speaking it doesn't seem possible, but I would want to be cautious of assuming God is too much like us.
Another issue is, essentially, the "how can I be happy knowing my former spouse is suffering eternally" question. I think in this model, it entails that we become like God and fully take on his sense of sin and justice, so that we feel the same sense of rightness that he does. I'll give some more thoughts about this question in the next case.
4. Annihilationism - people either enjoy God forever, or are punished finitely and then cease to exist.
This is easier to defend than eternal torment. It could be argued that once a person ceases to exist, they do not feel "hard done by" in any sense, and there is no imbalance of any kind that needs to be restored to them.
Should I be sad if my former spouse is gone forever? I could say it was a tragedy, but there are some counter points to consider.
- Perhaps I would see their sin the way God does, and see the rightness of their punishment
- Perhaps if I experience grief, it enables me to come to God and know his comfort more deeply.
- Sometimes we talk about a spouse or partner as "completing" us - such that if we lose them, we feel like a part of us is missing. In Heaven, we know a deeper kind of completion with Christ and our Christian brothers and sisters. I would gain much deeper and closer relationships with them, than with my spouse on earth.
5. Universalism - everyone eventually comes to enjoy God forever.
I'm not sold on Universalism - although some Christians do make a case for it - but I think it gives fairly easy resolutions to all of the above problems. Noone ever loses anything that they do not ultimately regain, and in a greater way.
People may suffer terribly on earth, or perhaps for a time in the next life before they accept God, but once all of their suffering is over, it doesn't haunt them, and it just becomes events in their story towards knowing God, and living in complete wholeness with him and everyone else.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Just to try and show that there are different ways of thinking about the afterlife, and how they might or might not be realistic given a loving and just God.
I hope they are helpful, or at least sufficiently relevant.
The best video? The problems? Sure, until you realize how easily dismantled and disarmed those "problems" are by the three needless oversights I just posted above.
Lots and lots of assumption for example a loving and just god. What is punishment what is love what is justice our current understanding of these ideas would have to change for me to accept any of your ramblings
@@nahorsurazal3803 "Lots and lots of assumption for example a loving and just god." Who's assuming? My comments below are based on the Bible's claims, not on assumptions, believe it or not. But how would our current understanding of those ideas have to change for you to accept them? Please explain.
The concept of free will is literally just the church saying: "It's your fault!"
So god created us and he can kill us as property at any time, but he had to give us free will so we would have the ability to choose to love him and not just be drones. But then he also created hell and told us that if we did not love him and do exaclty as he said, we would burn in hell for all eternity.
So... what is free will then? The freedom to choose between telling god hoe great he is or burning in hell? What kind of choice is that?
Perfectly said. Thanks for the comment
Shame leads to self-loathing leads to obedience.
You are missing God's legitimate reasons.
It is not a matter of God saying, “Choose my way, or you must go to hell.” Instead, it is “No matter how evil or depraved you are; I provide a way to save you from your sins that are turning you into another Satan. And that way is to accept Christ.” Who wouldn’t want a personal relationship with the most perfect, loving, unselfish being?
Even though God uses evil for His righteous purposes, God did not create evil. So, where did evil come from? Free will creates the possibility of choosing selfishness. And once chosen, selfishness is the spark that grows into irreversible, progressively increasing evil behavior. Moral evil results from selfish behavior as it progresses to higher levels. The pain and suffering caused by evil is a being used by God to train and prepare believers for eternity.
When a god (i.e., Adam and every other human in the human race) uses his free will to choose selfishness, it is an instant spiritual addiction to self. And no god (little g) can be allowed to continue because absolute power corrupts absolutely. God (bid G - the God of the Bible) can hold absolute power because he's absolutely and sacrificially unselfish - even to the point of sending His son to die by Roman crucifixion so that, if a human chooses Christ, they can have their spiritual life restored and go to heaven. God is always "others" focused. Sin is selfishness, righteousness is unselfishness and holiness is sacrificial unselfishness. So do you want to be with selfish people for all eternity or unselfish people? But sin is like malware running in the background of our being. It constantly makes humans choose selfish decisions and actions. So the collective selfishness of the world has caused the horrible mess we see today. Accepting Jesus means accepting His righteous unselfish ways. Jesus then gives that person the Holy Spirit to overcome selfishness (aka sin).
True love is a choice, and choices can only be made by beings of free will. That is why God goes to great lengths not to intimidate or manipulate mankind with His awesome presence. That is why we do not see Him. That is why He does not appear at the command of a man like a genie in a bottle to grant our wishes or to prove that He exists. That is why amputees aren’t healed, that’s why prayers for healing aren’t always answered immediately, that is why the miraculous aren’t everyday occurrences, that’s why Jesus refused to jump from the pinnacle of the temple to prove He’s the Christ, that’s why Jesus didn’t call legions of angels to save Him from the cross. That’s why God doesn’t show Himself to the world before the door to heaven closes and judgment begins.
What if the atheist got his wish and God made a personal appearance on the earth? Suppose He was the epitome of awesome power and appearance, complete with lightning bolts. What would happen? It would be on CNN instantly. It would be instantly around the world on all media outlets and smartphones. Would the atheists believe? While the unbeliever may have to scurry under the intimidating power of such a higher-order being, convincing the person that this is the God of the universe would probably be next to impossible. (I recommend the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier as an example of this scenario.) And even if they knew it was God, deep down inside, they would not want to submit to Him. But God wants people to love Him as He really is because they want to, not out of fear because they have to. Isn’t that what we want in a spouse too? We want someone who will love us because they want to, not because they have to. Those who want to will stay forever, but if you are manipulated, frightened, or forced to love, eventually you will probably rebel and leave because your heart is not in the relationship.
free will doesn't exist, theists and atheists are in agreement on this
@@roberthill4581 What a bunch of indoctrinated crap.
I don't want robots on earth but I must have them in heaven
The whole issue of free-will-but-predestination was the stake in the heart of my faith.
This was a damn good video. I like how you broke down free will into different categories to show it's not consistent throughout the Bible.
Appreciate that. Glad you found it useful!
YES...YES...YES!!!
Well articulated. The free will point is inexcusable.
Thank you! Agreed
intellectually lazy Christians try to use libertarian free will to soften/water down what the Bible teaches
the Bible doesn't teach free will, I as a Christian deny libertarian free will/PAP
this video is simply a critique of Christians who do not study enough to know what the Bible truly says
this isn't the silver bullet against Christianity you think it is, it's simply a critique of people who inject humanistic ideas into the Bible to make it more palatable for unbelievers
I always wondered why WE never see anything like the Dove flying down from Heaven to rest on a blessed person's shoulder. And even more so, why no one can cure disease by laying hands on a sick child.
a multitude of issues.
God can. He has done that with me multiple times.
love how you communicate . thank you
Appreciate that, John. Thanks for being here!
My personal revelation was the realization that everything I know about God I’ve been told by other people. And why would they know about God?
Thats such a simple and fantastic concept
What a brilliant summary of perhaps the biggest issue of the Christian story. I feel you and I have had very similar journeys here. Once I took the time to look beyond my local Christian self, and 'zoom out' across all of humanity and time, I could see plainly the folly and futility of The Plan. Whatever way I tried to justify that realisation was met with more and more questions. Ultimately I had no choice, but to not believe any longer.
Thank you so much for this video. You explained the different types of free will so well. I also want to add that we don’t get to choose to be born to begin with, so we don’t get to choose the terms of life. We couldn’t opt in to gods rules on earth, we were just put here, without our permission. That idea alone makes the idea of free will unlikely. 😊
Exactly!!
It is not free will if we are FORCED to choose a SINGLE option to escape from eternal damnation.
The best example of "under duress" EVER!
You still have it
@@Bojan12 Good to know that even after all these years, I still "have it!" Thanks for the affirmation! :)
Another AMAZING video! You've brought up things about free will after death I've never heard of or considered before and it all makes perfect logical sense!
The free will of Christianity is a fancy way of saying *ultimatum.* It IS an ultimatum and they gaslight you into believing it's FREE WILL. It's not FREE if there is a cost tied to it.
If God is so loving, gracious, kind, and considerate, why was his first reaction to CURSE everything for all eternity? If he really was a God of forgiveness and mercy, forgiving Adam and Eve right there would have been the perfect opportunity to model that behavior he claimed to have but never showed and would have nullified a need to flood the world and to sacrifice himself later.
Once you get a crack in your belief system and start to see it for what it is - man made and illogical, the whole thing collapses right in front of you. Your eyes are opened and you awaken to the notion just how deceived you were and it's downright horrific the damage this religion has done to countless people. Loving your videos!
Thanks so much for this!
If someone convinced me that I could either do X or I would be tortured, what courtroom would fall to rule that this was coercion, and not hold me liable for doing X?
Exactly!
There is, at the very beginning of the doctrine, a few very big problems.
A : there is NO free will facing an omniscient being in charge of everything.
B : the savior is needed to save from... The wrath of god for following his plan.
C : Original sin is part of the plan.
D : the reason to kick from Eden was so mankind would not eat from the second tree, that would provide immortality on top of the result of eating the previous fruit that was REQUIERED to have the knowledge of good and bad.
A god that does that is a perverted tyrant that enjoys punishing people for his own wrongdoings and does not let a chance out of his trap.
Preach! Couldn’t agree more.
Everyone is familiar with the Sims...I was a tryant to my characters when they didn't get that job promotion...I made a "concoction" to "delete" them and I enjoyed every minute of it because they didn't do what I commanded them to do 😊
I think you are a shining example of why we weren't supposed to touch that fruit...
Because intelligence and reason, revels...the truth.
FFS, it shouldn't be THIS much WORK just to figure out how to have a normal conversation with Christian family members. I'm not trying to deconstruct anyone else's faith, but "free will" is one of the issues I bring up if I find myself cornered by someone determined to witness to me. Don't get me wrong, anyone who's ever stood in a short order line behind me knows I can't decide and maybe have just a little too much free will. 😅 I genuinely just want a relationship with my loved ones without talking about death and the end times. I'm sick of them trying to save me, and I'm sick of my closest relatives telling me I'm going to hell. All I wanted was family game night, or family movie night, or just small talk would be nice.
Can feel this frustration through the screen. Its hard when you know they are just missing out on whats real and right before them.
@@MindShift-Brandon Yeah, I got inspired by you and uploaded a video about this just a few minutes ago. Thanks for lighting me up with your vids!!
I cant wait to watch it in the morning!
@@MindShift-Brandon Aww, thank you! That would mean a lot.
The free will concept has become one of my favorite topics. It's really fascinating when you dig into it
I left the Christian religion 30 years ago after going in very deep.
I became mentally iill in the end, now fine ,now I find it all fascinating how I was drawn in so deep, I was preaching when ever I could, I’m ashamed of that now.
your channel is so helpful, you have a gift from god to deconvert , well done, I’m sure you are helping many people find reality again.
You will be back. Once someone fully embraced Christ there is no going back because He will hold you but you will go trough Hell of suffering in Great Tribulation if you do not make right choice again so be wise
@@Bojan12 That is so far from reality, once you realise its so different. Take care.
@@freebirdofreason1994 No it is not I know that God very well. And who belongs to Him will forever be His and He will discipline them good
@@Bojan12 Shame I wasn't helped when I was suicidal, crying out to God ,nothing comes when you are this low I can assure you.
Christianity made me this way, I'm free now and life is good, I'm my own boss, no more trying to justify drowning of babies, stonning of children and women, if this is the discipline giver I'm better than that, I'm sure you are too.
Human sacrifice of woman, there is so much death ordered in the bible ,read it front to back several times you may free your self.
Take care.life is short don't waste it.
@@freebirdofreason1994 He came to me in my darkest moment and became my brightest Light. You did not need to explain those things but hold on to the Light until Light reveals the answers you were looking for. Hardest things in the world is not only to see the Truth but to face it and embrace it completely and drop foolish imaginations because they are not reality and never will be
I love how you described exodus, it’s probably the best summary of the story I’ve heard.
Appreciate that. Thanks for being here!
"We don't have will over where, when, or how we are born, but we have free will after we are born."
This is kind of correct. Your genetic dispositions, the kind of parents you are born into, family environment, political environment, and socioeconomic environment are a HUGE (an I mean very large part, arguably even all of it) of what you are and become that you have absolutely no choice over. There are things you think you are choosing out of free will, but you are not. You are acting out of programming based on these influences earlier in your life. Some would argue, and I tend to agree, that we don't actually have free will, only the illusion of it. That all of our choices have already been shaped by all the random events leading up to that choice.
Well stated though you had no choice in saying it and I had no choice in saying it is well stated.
Exactly, I've been saying the same thing. You are a product of your environment and other factors.
Free will is a scam! If “God” wanted us to love him freely then why scare us with the threat of hell!? Clearly we don’t have “free will”
This was so very good, Brandon. Thank you for all this amazing content. I cannot believe how much you are putting out and the quality. when will this channel blow up?!
Thanks, John! Very kind. And i think these things just take time but I appreciate your support.
It resonates a bit with the narcissist saying: 'look what you made me do'... christianity is like condensed narcissism,
Another problem with whether or not free will exists in heaven, is that if it exists, what is stopping someone from pulling an Adam, sinning again, and starting all this process of the fall of man all over again, and if there isn't free will in heaven, yeah it is exactly as you said, why this whole crap on earth to begin with? Either free will is so important to God that he is willing to send people to eternal damnation to preserve it, which in that case it should also be preserved in heaven, or it isn't, therefore we could have skipped he earth stuff altogether.
This was one of the first major questions I had that I just couldn't reconcile, and kicked off my de-conversion process.
You mentioned the problem of suffering/evil and divine hiddenness as your primary drivers away from belief.
Mine were original sin, and the idea that everyone who’s not Christian is going to be tortured forever, even if they were born into another religion.
Also when I was 17, I went thru a phase where I was taking it all seriously. I got a study Bible, used it, took it to school, prayed, and I tell you it made me absolutely miserable and isolated. I was spending all this time seeking relationship with this hidden being, I should have been spending that time connecting with other people.
I suppose that’s ok for the believer, since we’re supposed to hate everyone who isn’t god anyways. But it wasn’t ok with me.
It is not hate however we cannot hang out with those who chose to hate God. It just does not work
Agree wholeheartedly. The free will solution proposed by Christian apologists is so flawed that even I, who is not a deep thinker, could see so many inconsistencies. Even more proof that Christianity is just a man made myth.
Ha! Thanks Duane. Yes its blatant, isn’t it?
Well now that is a thought. There is no such thing as free will so ey can't Christians see the logic. Perhaps their belief, like your own is not a choice you made. The lack of free will is a bitch!
the Bible doesn't teach free will.... you're rejecting Christianity based on people who inject humanistic ideas into the Bible?
the Bible doesn't teach free will anywhere
Perspective is Everything!!
AMEN!!!!
The argument used to be presented to me that I would have to give up my free will in order to live in a world without suffering. Which made me wonder what's the opposite of free will? Living in god's perfect will where everything is love and bliss? Yeah, I will take option B, no free will. It also used to make me wonder about some verse that god was willing that none should perish, then he should have shut this failed experiment down long ago!!
Love this thinking
Understand that God does not want to take ungrateful people with Him. Free will is for us to chose either Light or Darkness that is why sin needed to happen because Light shines brightest in the Darkness and Jesus is that Light and the one who truly seeks and humbles himself will know without shadow of doubt who their Creator is and none absolutely none would be able to take it away because God has come to live in them because that is what was their answer to His call
@@attackhelicopter-up3dh I understand your logic and thinking however with God is different. While He is the Creator He let us reproduce those children so it is random. Each of them He gave life to live and choice to make. Now you may not like this but one of the reasons He let those kids also be so His love can be manifested even more. Like He said to His Disciples what rewards do you have if you love only those who love you? In other words to show that He is God who loves all absolutely all and that His people must be the same if they want to be in His Kingdom. You see everything God does is for much greater purpose. Even Hell. By creating Hell He told us forward I am not messing around however this who I am the Creator and Destroyer and your true purpose can only be found in Me
Well done. I had not considered it from these angles before. The last point about if we do not have free will in heaven, then why not just start there is so good!
Thank you! Yes this whole plan/concept just does not make any sense.
Wow, this truly blew my mind.
Thanks for watching. Glad it was useful
Adam decided to disobey God in his pre-fallen morally-perfect state despite direct contact with God and did so in an apparently short amount of time after his creation. What does this say about being unimpressed with the Infinite Being after direct contact? What does this say about God's so-called perfectly-created Adam?
Seriously, couldn’t God have created an innocent sinless morally perfect free-willed being in direct contact with God able to go more than a few days without disobedience?
What this also says is that God is so unimpressive in person that a morally perfect free-willed being in direct contact with God will, in a very short amount of time, choose to ignore him. Funny enough, the only other example of morally perfect beings directly interacting with God, the angels, did the same thing.
Exactly, my friend! Seems no one wants anything to do with him if they get to see him face to face lol. Thats an exaggeration, but still. Cmon!
Love the sinner, but hate the sin
It's a battle that you just can't win
For your god will never bless
One who ever dares to transgress
It's not called love if you think he should die
It's not called love when you don't even ask why
You just listen to the voice inside your head
Next thing you know, bang bang and he's dead
You base your life on a book of fables
It gives you permission to assign labels
To anybody or anything you don't understand
And maybe kill it if you hear God's command
Why doesn't your god practice what you preach?
During the Flood he was just out of reach
Millions dying for a breath of air
Except for Noah, He didn't really seem to care
If sin is something God demands that we hate
Was not evil His choice to create?
In the end maybe He is to blame
Yet it is we, not Him who should feel shame?
Hate religion and hate its lies
Its immoral doctrines we should all despise
In this one life let's find a better way
Once you start thinking there's no need to pray
© 2016
There is no such thing as "freewill", for anybody. We are all subject to the realities of nature, laws, and codes of conduct, morals, conscience, instinct. Nobody violates those without consequence. "Free will" only exists in our imagination.
Morals also don’t exist. If there is no supernatural and all powerful, all good God then there is no morals. The universe didn’t leave us a rule book on what’s good and bad, everything just is. We’ve evolved morals, much like crows and apes, since we are a social species and thus what we see is moral is actually what is bettering our survival. Morals are an illusion of a simplistic and outdated perception of the world, yet they are beneficial for promoting our survival (which isn’t necessarily good or bad since objective morality doesn’t exist). Either way we don’t have free will to choose our actions and thus act ethically or unethically. Our biology, much like a computer processes stimuli into actions which we don’t choose, we are simply adaptive programming based on genetics and environment.
the Bible doesn't teach free will, that was an invention by pelagians, a heresy condemned by the church in the 400s
Christians after watching this video: "After all, it seems that free will does not exist in my religion"
Calvinist Christians: "Welcome to my world"
exactly lol
every Christian needs to watch this and abandon this absurd and ridiculous idea of "free will"
the Bible does not teach libertarian free will/ability to do otherwise (PAP)
That was great! RUclips recommended your channel and I'm hooked. I would love to see you as a panelist on The Atheist Experience or Talk Heathen or any of the call-in shows.😊❤❤❤
Thank you so much! Glad to have you here. And ill be on the hang up with matt this Wednesday night!
Partly a lack of honesty, partly fear; I think some of these aspects of our humanity keeps people locked into terrible ideas like religion.
Yes. It’s just sad
Wow. This is amazing. You articulated what I have been thinking all along with a logic and knowledge I am lacking. I feel I have learn something incredibly powerful . Than you🎉
Thats very kind. Thanks so much for being here!
There are very few people who can intertwine the biblical events this well. Your knowledge and insight are astounding.
I'm late to the comments, but honestly this is an amazing video. You didnt say anything new (maybe I'm watching to much atheistic/agnostic content :D ), but the way you structured it and how you explained was absolutely top notch. I will borrow from this video for sure to use it in my discussions.
Appreciate that so much!
I’ve always wondered about free will.
I asked so much while at church.
Yet no one could give an answer.
I’d always add onto their answers with more questions like this.
I’ve even been told that I “never ask the simple questions”.
Which I think me questioning like this maybe contributed to my church unintentionally alienating me from them.
Then when I graduated high school they basically abandoned me.
That sent me into a downward spiral and eventually led me to struggle with deep depression and such.
I eventually made the decision that I could no longer believe in this god.
I’ve never been happier since this decision.
But it’s been difficult trying to put on the act that I still believe with my family who doesn’t know about this.
I don't even know why churches preach free will, unless they think they're covering for god. The bible teaches pre-destination. No version of the term "free will" appears at all.
Questions lead to more questions and there is no end
go to a Reformed/Calvinist church and they'll teach you about free will (it doesn't exist in the Bible)
Yahweh/Jesus: The winner of longest Hide-and-Seek game ever. 2000 YEARS and counting.
.
LOL
lol your comments are all over the place. I have no idea what you believe, which is fine. But I did enjoy this comment and appreciate you being here so much!
Great!
I find it so frustrating when talking with theists when they say things like, "of course you have free will, you chose to have this conversation, duh", but it's hard to convey that isn't what most people mean by free will. It never goes well because they don't even want to entertain the possibility of the differences between libertarian free will, compatibalism etc... free will is straight up the "god says I have free will so I have free will, end of" type to them, with no variation. Wilful ignorance to stay strong in belief, I guess🤷🏼♂️
I agree with you. I think they just equate free will with decision making and they do not understand or entertain the notion that you need independence and knowledge to make a “ free-will” decision.
Great video. My take is that we do not choose to be apart of God's creation, nor the burden of original sin. Sure, I can choose to accept Jesus' sacrifice to get out of that burden, but considering the circumstances, is that "free choice" a fair one?
Right. Seems pretty damn unfair to me.
Just like how some parents punish their kids for merely existing or ask them to pay back the cost of raising them even though the kids did not ask to be born and need parents to provide them with everything they need to survive.
These are all excellent points and excellent thoughts. I would love to hear any further thoughts you have after meeting God in person.
Lol
Why? There wouldn't be any further thoughts, obviously. He may say or act otherwise under the compulsion of torture. Is that what you mean?? Pretty odd how you think that has anything to do with truth. Also, some odd moral priorities. But most important do you have proof for what you're saying or just saying a bunch of empty BS you can't back up?? In which case this is time number 2,337, 668 I've seen a theist say something that's supposed to be pithy and wise but just showcases that you've got no substance. "Pithy" is a pretty common substitute for substance.
My religious faith started to unravel when I realized I wanted to believe but didn't. When I questioned it, I heard that faith was a grace, which only made it worse! So faith is supposed to be a free gift from God, so why wouldn't God give it to me, knowing I so wanted it? No amount of praying for faith made it stick. I'm just grateful for independent spirituality and metaphysics and mystics.
Faith is isn’t the gift. The grace of salvation is a gift. Just came here to read comments. I assume this is just a bunch of anti free will propoganda and conversing. I hope you can believe Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins.
@@bobgoldcat7636 Watch the video, the channel itself maybe, and engage in the content. Then you'll understand WHY and HOW people disbelieve, and maybe come up with better ways to convince them to believe.
If you cannot emphasize with and understand the unbeliever and their viewpoints, how can you possibly hope to get them to come to yours?
@@bobgoldcat7636 maybe an all knowing god could of waited another 2000 years until revealing themselves so their message could of traveled the world in seconds instead of just 1 guy on a mountain in the middle of nowhere in a time when no method of communication or travel around the world was possible, I'm not trying to say I'm better then an all knowing all powerful deity but maybe if I wanted people know about me I would just tell one person and instead turn on global shout chat and let everyone know my message
Merci.
A very good demonstration, with some amazing arguments I had never heard before.
A French Atheist
Glad to hear it. Thanks for being here! Au Revoir
So, uhm, he made a game with impossible rules and then punished us for failing. Then his own son was so ashamed of this bullying behavior that he stepped in and broke the game. Why would anyone worship a being like that? We're just toys to that god.
Very well articulated.
Thank you much!
An odd thought about Free Will as it pertains to the euthyphro Dilemma: if it is true that God does not wish us to sin, but he also wants us to have free will, and it is further true that God declares what is and isn't moral rather than what is and isn't moral determining what God supports, then what is it that prevents God from having declared that all the things that his creation would choose freely to do would be good and therefore create a world with free will and no sin where all actions and decisions made by his creation glorify him?
No Sin must exist so the choice between Light and Darkness can be made
I appreciate these videos! 💯 I remember saying to myself...I can't just believe this, no matter how I try I just can't
Thank you!
You’re a fkn genius dude. This is a next level strategy!
Too kind! That was an early vid too. I’d like to think it gets better. Thanks for watching
I have never met a human you thinks EXACTLY like me until I met you. This is wild
Also how does an omniscient being have emotions? since emotions are triggered by new knowledge. When we discover someone lied to us we get angry, when we expect something to happen and it doesn't we're disappointed, when something bad happens we become sad or fearful. It all hinges on not having foreknowledge. The god of the Bible is full of illogical emotions, anger, jealousy, regret, etc. Such silly stuff lol
Excellent argument against free will, well presented. Thank you for your efforts in putting it together.
My pleasure. Thanks for watching
I just started watching your videos and I must’ve grown up in a very similar background to you because everything you say directly relates to my childhood and the brainwashing I went through with religion! Keep it up man you are amazing!
Appreciate that!
After my daughter’s cat died, she asked me if cats go to heaven. I asked her what she thought heaven would be like. “Just like here with our family, but with my cat too.”
I love how a child’s image of heaven or the afterlife is somehow more godly than any place a fictional god written in a book can ever be.
I never could figure out why the animals got the shaft after Adam and Eve ate the fruit. I mean they didn't sin, so why is every creature now punished for one creature's transgression? But I guess we needed them for sacrifices then, so I suppose their pain is through Man's necessity. Not to mention those animals must have undergone some incredible instantaneous physiological alterations. And the free will in Heaven point is a good one. As a kid I always wondered, if Lucifer could grow discontented in Heaven, why couldn't a person's soul that has gone there eventually do the same? 🤔 Stimulating thoughts here; good video!
It all really is fun and interesting to think about. That poor first crocodile that wouldn't have needed those teeth or the ability to digest bone etc. Just imagine what he went through the second a pomegranate was bitten. LOL the absurdity!
@@MindShift-Brandon lf you believe in evolution then you would very well know crocs were not always crocs.
i am obviously making an example out of the literal biblical narrative. I am playing that framework. Goodness.
I, even as a believer, don't understand why animals have to suffer for what those two did, either. The animals really played no part at all. But as far as the free will in heaven thing goes, the bible actually says that there is a difference in the old heaven and the new one. The old one wasn't perfect. The new heaven and the new earth are supposed to be, hence why nothing unclean will be allowed in.
It wasn't a snake that tempted Eve, it was a serpent, or , a type of dinosaur. Some say the fruit was sex.
Wow. Mind blowing stuff! 🤯 Thank you for the content. Really thought provoking.
Very kind. Thanks so much!
I had these questions from the time I was a little girl. My mother told me if people were really good deep down they'd find their way to God no matter what, and if they were "ugly" deep down they'd never find God. Ergo if I had hateful thoughts -- being angry at God for hardening Pharaohs heart and for making Hell, for example -- I was already just evil and that wasn't God's fault, or at least that was the conclusion I came to.
A few thoughts after watching. I have been working through these sorts of issues myself, and I have been attacking these same sorts of issues from a number of different angles. One issue I have been struggling with is just that it free will with or without God just seems impossible to me. I don't even know how to square it intellectually--what would it be? Some kind of mental faculty that exists outside of cause and effect, but which can act on this world? It seems as if "free will" (if it exists at all) would have to be very small indeed, since most actions would be induced by a combination of things like your genes, your social network, your environment, your health, the chemicals in your brain at any given time, etc. With God, that just seems to add another layer to the issue--if a timeless all powerful God created every part of you, planned everything in advance, including all those previous factors mentioned above, along with bazillions of other knobs and bits, and had an outcome in mind all along, then started things going in such a way that nothing could every step outside of His plans, then how could anyone be responsible for any event except God? God would be responsible for all things good AND bad because He planned them all out and created every bit of matter, every soul, every thought, and even the very moments in time when the actions took place.
Still, if I step outside of that thought experiment above, I have to admit to myself that regardless of how obvious all the above seems to me no matter how I turn things around in my mind, I could be wrong. Free will and predestination and cause and effect and the fate of the universe are all beyond my understanding. Maybe there is a way for God to maintain free will even in the face of all these limiting factors, and I just don't get it.
But if there is such a means, it strikes me that "free will" is always delimited by any number of factors. If we are in a sinful world, and we have sinful natures, we are limited by those natures insofar as we cannot choose to get rid of the nature we are born with, and we have to live in accordance with the limitations of those natures. For example, I have to sin. While it may be argued that I can choose the sins (debatable), I cannot choose in the end to avoid all sin--and in fact it seems obvious that humans tend to fail at avoiding sin a great proportion of their time on earth. This is because of the nature within us, which we didn't choose. I also cannot choose to do things beyond my ability, such as soar through the air by flapping my arms, or running at 50 miles an hour, or teleporting to Tokyo. I can't learn faster than my limitations, I can't move faster, I can't live longer than my weak body allows. Everywhere I turn, I find another limitation.
So it strikes me that, were I teleported to heaven, and my ability to choose to sin were stripped from me, I would only lose one more ability among many. Further, it's an ability I don't want anyway. If I had my druthers, I would much prefer to be a perfect person, with no vices, no sin, a perfect relationship with God if He really exists. Those aspects are all particular limitations or enhancements that may cut away certain other abilities--an ability to lie, to murder, to curse, to fornicate. But each of those abilities or choices are just add-ons to the long list of things I cannot do--and were I to gain the ability to live a perfectly virtuous life, I would be receiving a suite of new abilities to operate within. Perhaps the lost abilities would be like freeing myself from weights and chains, as if the Christian is right the righteous life might be much fuller and freer and fulfilling.
But if that is true... then the sinless life is certainly no more robotic than the sinner's life. It is just a life lived within a different set of constraints. I could just as easily act within those new limitations with that new set of freedoms given me. It might be argued that the ability to choose whether to love God is taken away, so maybe I could be a robot in that sense as to that particular issue. Many Christians object that the choice to love is the important one here, since love without choice isn't love. But I am not sure that even with the introduction of sin that we have a greater ability to choose. Did those who love God choose now to love Him in a truer way by being surrounded by those who chose differently? It seems like an illusion that they could have chosen differently. Skeptics also point this out often--that if God knew in advance what everyone was going to choose, why not just create those who He knew would choose God freely and forego creating those who would choose poorly and end up suffering forever? No freedom would be lost, but we would lose a lot of suffering!
I am not the first to point this out either, but even should God decide to allow for sin, there seems no compunction on His part to further allow things like forced sex, torture, slavery, or others of the ugliest sorts of sins. God could step in whenever an individual has those desires and stop them from carrying them out, given that God is loving and wouldn't want to see His creatures suffer. We can still operate in freedom without being free to terrorize one another! And by working in that way, God could show us His love and care by manifesting His love through concrete actions on a daily basis that would draw us to Him through the expressions of His care. But the world seems built on suffering and destruction, where animals must live by tooth and claw, where disease ravages, where mental illness creeps up, and nature itself drives us to hideous cruelty (and also at times great kindness). I don't see why it HAS to be this way. If God is the ultimate expression of justice and love and peace, then those things should be indelibly written into His creation, right? The fact that they don't seem to be, and that rather the opposites manifest themselves more readily, is very troubling indeed.
Thanks for taking the time to share so much. I really appreciated reading it!
Brilliant. Yes, you have exposed all the contraductions in this big mess of myths.
FWIW there is a branch of christianity, Calvinism, which AIUI does actually believe everything is preordained (this can be with our without free will i think) and that means who goes to heaven or hell is also pre ordained and theres nothing any of us can do about it. Apparently they re OK with this.
As are, apparently, most christians who AFAICS are quite happy to have a blissfull life in eternity whilst people they knew but didnt choose their brand of religion, burn for all eternity . What the heck kind of morality is that? None of it works. Contradictory bs.
If you really want to have understanding of those things then seek and find The Volumes of Truth. It is Revelation given specifically for today world and have many things that God said to us. It it is not easy at all to face it however those who seek the truth must face it so the Truth can set them free
Excellent job Brandon!
Thank you much! Appreciate the watch
I now attend deconstruction videos like I used to attend church. Its comforting to know that Im not the only one whose struggled to believe whats been taught in the bible. Some of us have experienced great psychological trauma as the result of persistently trying to live up to Gods expectations. Everything you present in this video should be thoroughly analyzed by so-called believers. Glad Im not the only one who's come to these conclusions.
Thank you so much for this beautiful depiction man
So glad you made it out!
Really good explanations, thanks for posting.
Thanks for watching!
How does an omniscient being even have free will? The being can't change his mind because he can't have false foreknowledge, it would mean praying for a certain outcome would be a waste of time as the being already knows the outcome that he can't change. He's locked into "his plan".
100%!
He can change His mind bur what He has said must be done that none can change
That was awesome. You are really good at this
Oh thanks so much!
I remember as a kid, I blamed Adam and Eve for the fact that we sin because they disobeyed God. My dad chastised me and said "No. Your sin is YOUR fault!"
Preach it brother! I stopped believing in God very much because of the suffering of animals. I am appalled at how so many believers of any god look down on animals and don't care about them. They want mercy but don't show mercy to the animal s. What Hippocrates
Do not let those things make you bitter
Hey Hippocrates didn’t do anything. Leave the poor philosopher alone!
You could be that person looking down at the suffering if animals and not caring. If their life circumstances and yours were reversed they would have your beliefs and you theirs. Blame is one thing that goes out the window when free will does not exist. It is a way of thinking we are all locked into from birth.
How can you do wrong without the knowledge of right and wrong? Does a baby do wrong when it tips over its glass? Does a baby do wrong if it swipes at a knife left nearby and it falls down, slicing Mom's foot?
I've been an atheist for more than a decade now and I live in a highly Christian religious community and I work in a very religious organization which is Jamaica and I'm a police officeri I've been ridiculed and hated for my lack of beliefs, like you i grew up in the church became the protégé of my pastor but when i read the bible and was being totally honest i could not still be believe it .. I firmly believe that your channel is a masterclass and I honestly believe you're my biggest inspiration to take on this roll of bringing logic and reason to the Caribbean I follow a myriad of atheists here but I've never really heard one echo my thoughts the way you do sir I'm truly lucky to have found your channel and I'm just here sitting learning how to better get my arguments across to all these apologists around me and the naive. So much I want to say to you Mr mindshift and ask you, continue doing your good work sir.
You have the same 2 grips as me. totally agree with you
My special needs older brother, literally cannot understand the concept of god, would have been murdered by a Christian god according to the OT. Not a hateful bone in his body. Screw that story. Original sin is ridiculous. I was an atheist by twelve. This story among many helped in that change from catholicism. 40 years later, I'm convinced I'm still correct.
My best friend had a much older brother who was special needs, and growing up i thought about this issue so many times because of him but still couldn’t shake the indoctrination. Its such an excellent example. Thanks for sharing.
Where in the old testament does it support the murder of special needs people. That is a modern concept,abortionists do well at killing people with learning disabilities. Science happily supports their killing too.
To say science supports abortions is so ignorant. Science isn't a belief system. It does not take a stand on issues. Science of say ultrasounds and early detection might be used by those who believe its ok to abort such a kind of human, but it does not advocate for it. This is beyond naive. By this same logic. The science that builds cars, happily supports drunk drivers. lol what?!
@@MindShift-Brandon That very science that was meant to help,has now been used to dispose of the unwanted. It is niave to think science is always designed for good. The atom bomb,operations designed to save life now use to kill unborn children. You must be more intellectually honest with yourself as l try to do. I do not have all the answers but humans have a lot to answer for. Greed,murder,indifference,child abuse,racism,animal cruelty and so the list goes on.
i never said it was always designed for good. I am saying it is not a belief system. it is not on a side. people use science for good and bad. You had just stated science happily supports abortion. This is 100% false. Science doesnt do anything lol!
Well, thanks for this morning's biblical Daily Word. Atheistic sermon is the best way to start the day. 🍞 ✝️🤲🙃
Lol! Love that. Ive got two kore this Saturday and Sunday that i am really excited about. Appreciate you being here.
People are still deceived by The wizard of Oz trick 😢 Why does Free Will have limited choices? 😮 What does can't mean? 😏 These are just some of the issues I've always had with Free Will. I've realized that true Free Will is only the Creator(s). Ours is limited at best, and that may be an illusion as well.
Great video, thank you for your time and effort!❤
Excellent Brandon for putting the detail around these massive holes in Christianity. I hadn't thought of the no free will after death issue before and what you say is obviously correct imo :)
I am always wondering why christians say that mureder and rape are because of free will, but they can't wrap their head around the fact that the free will of the predators interfere with the free will of their victimes who just want to live and not to be assulted and/ or murdered.
Yes. So many issues
I've been asking Christians about this and their only excuse is well a person can't choose when free will is used or some lame excuse.
I’m loving you bro, absolutely love this content, some of the best intellectually crafted haymakers to this abusive religion!! Well done🫡
Hey thanks so much! What a refreshing comment after some of these others today, lol. Appreciate your kind words and you being here.
The best intellectually crafted haymakers??? This abusive religion??? Aigh. As hard as it may be to believe, you'd know otherwise about both if you were to do quality due diligence for once, as careful Christians have done for centuries, while both sides have needlessly failed to all along.
You'd know that only Jesus' grace, not logic, truly sets you free, from the influence/deceptions of the master deceivers who have convinced you they don't exist, and from slavery to sin (unloving, cherished thoughts, motives, words, and deeds).
How little you realize his every claim and objection is based on one or more needless oversights and resulting unfounded and unjustified assumptions and misconceptions.
And how little you realize Christianity is the only possible and guaranteed solution to evil, as in it's guaranteed that it will end it.
Your problem is overlooking the three implications in His reason for banishing the pair fom Eden:
1) He gave them a tree of perpetual life for a reason (so there's no immortal soul/spirit)
2) sinning made them morally weak, unable to reliably love unconditionally and self-sacrificially and resist Satan's temptations
3) only the obedient have the right to eat often from that tree and live forever (so God is not perpetuating sin, nor interested in or honored by doing so, by forever preserving the lives of the wicked in hell)
Your problem is not knowing that Jesus defined/explained what He meant by "believing in Him" in John 6, especially verse 63, the need and method for forming a character fit for Heaven, as in forever safe for, and forever able to enjoy God's pure and holy home, as well as able to survive His holy presence.
Your problem is not knowing, because of your disastrous quality of due diligence, that you can know unmistakably that time is all too quickly running out in which to help God end, even hasten the end of, evil not just once, but forever.
My favorite satan figure is in Job. It amazes me that god was so willing to let this adversarial character test him to near death. Really gives a person perspective of who god is.
Yup! Covering Job this coming Thursday!
I am omniscient and know all things, past, present and future [Psalm 147: 5, Jeremiah 1: 5 et al.] One day, just for the fuck of it, I struck up a conversation with Satan and made a bet with him [Job 1: 7] - that my best guy, Job, would never take My name in vain [Job 1: 8]. I of course already knew this, so this was going to be an easy win.
Also seeing how I am omni-benevolent, I set the rules of the bet: that Satan would not harm Job directly. Arrange for all his livestock to be stolen? That's fine. Not stealing is a commandment for _people_ to obey, not us at the deity level [Job 1: 12]. Kill his 10 children? Not a problem; they don't count for anything anyways. They're such minor npc's, we didn't even bother giving them names [Job 1: 19]. Again, morality is for people, not deities.
So I allowed Satan to do all this stuff, one misfortune after another, mass-murder his children, and nope, Job doesn't curse me [Job 1: 22]. I won the bet.
Job asked me why I did all this to make him suffer [Job 7: 20, 10: 2, 13: 19 et al.]. I told him that I don't need to explain myself to him [Job 40: 8] But I WILL explain myself and my motives to everyone else _except_ Job, as I told the authors of the Bible itself why I did all this.
Oh, and as a consolation prize, I conjured up 10 replacement children for Job and his wife [Job 42: 13] so that they hardly even noticed a difference.
R/AmItheAsshole
I feel like Alice in wonderland. Arguing about God being some cosmic jerk because of a story in the bible is insanity. It's like arguing over who would win in a fight between batman and the hulk.
Honestly the argument you made at the end is genuinly mind-blowing, and you have no idea how grateful I am for it. By considering heaven is a place of all-good and direct contact with god's love, all those elements that exist in heaven must be what the ultimate good and love is, and by not having free will in that eviroment proves that, logicaly, that complete free-will itself (that god gave* us because of his aparent love for us) can't be all good and the "proof of god's love" at least on this eartlhy existence, deconstructing this giant shield that christians use to counter-argue so many things. Entering on the classic paradox that our earthly free will is actually an incapabilitly of god, disrespecting the all-powerfull definition (or maybe its very own existence of our free will is already a paradox itself, making all possibilities impossible by logic, ultimately leading to a fallacy about god)
Even though the whole bible narrative is unbearable by a skeptical point of view, having knowledge about this argument helps in the whole "beat them at their own game" kind of thing
This is the first video I watch from you, and you brought me a point that I couldn't think of even in a million lives, it was something that was disturbing me for a considerable amount of time, definelty won a subscriber, sorry for my english as its not my first language, and thanks again!
Belief is the opposite of knowing 👍
For years I've wanted a 3rd option:
Not heaven.
Not hell.
Just something else..
Of course, Idk if such a thing exists, but I can still hope...
I also stopped believing in free will 14 years ago, ironically while I was studying at a Christian college. 😅
Same!
Foreal i wanted a multiverse with 27k planets like earth where humans can live without him
"For years I've wanted a 3rd option: Not heaven. Not hell. Just something else.."
How about this: That there is no heaven or hell. Your "soul" is simply your brain being complex enough to give you your sense of individuality. Nature has given you a precious few decades to do what you want, experience things, and hopefully (because humans are social creatures) that you have enough empathy to have a desire to try and make a positive effect within your social sphere. And that death is an end which awaits us all, good or bad, that our brain ceases to function, and we lose consciousness. What we leave behind is (hopefully) positive memories in others whom we encountered in our life's travels.
It's not heaven, and it's not hell. Is this so bad?
@@christasimon9716I want to face Reality not my own imaginations and dreaming how I wish things are. There is no time for that. Here and Now is only that matters and find the Truth later it could be already too late
@@Bojan12 "I want to face Reality not my own imaginations"
Did I type something that you disagree with? Other than something of your own imagination?
The existence of bed bugs prove God if he does exsist is a monster. What reason could he have for creating little sacks of blood sucking insects that are damn near impossible to eradicate other than to torture and torment Human Beings and animals alike.
Everything has a purpose
With power comes responsibility. An all powerful god is responsible for everything by definition.
I love the first phase of Brandon.
The bit about “choosing” to believe is really poignant. I want to believe but there is nothing compelling enough. I don’t want to just “give up thinking.” That’s not belief.
I wish I could get my wife to listen to this excellent video
Thats kind and i can relate!
Watching this for the second time, can’t wait to see a video on God’s perfect will, and whether a Christian is living according to their purpose and his perfect will. This idea gave me so much anxiety when I became a believer.
Also, how bible app guilts you not to break a streak. I know its a “positive thing” but mannn after you loose you 500 days it feels almost punitive
Thanks for being here and for the rec. yes great point on the bible app. Talk about demotivating
One problem with pascal's wager. The first commandment is not believing in other gods. Therefore choosing the wrong god is worse than choosing no god. So Pascal's wagers conclusion on religion actually is that no one should believe in any god.
Not choosing any god = ignorance, choosing the wrong god = malice.