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There can't be free-will if there wasn't any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.
So it's kinda like saying "if God is all powerful could He create a mountain on Earth but also make it so the Earth is a perfect sphere?" It's just pointing out that a planet that's a perfect sphere wouldn't have mountains and a planet with mountains are not perfect spheres. Which isn't exactly deep philosophical thought that needs a flow chart.
Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong. Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger's Cat? Physics is false!
But outside atheist dogma, most people accept there are things about the universe that are paradoxical. The Halting Problem doesn't mean we should discard mathematics, Schrodinger's Cat doesn't mean we discard Physics. Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn't accomplish anything.
I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following:
None of these are evil, yet they are choices.
This is a false equivocation. Proving that a fundamental part of a religion (such as a tri-omni god) to be paradoxical means everything built off of that idea is wrong. The same applies for math and science, but when large swaths of things in math and science get proven wrong because of a underling assumption that later turned out to be false, we get closer to the truth. That's how we went from a geocentric model, to a heliocentric model, to the understanding that there isn't any discernible center to the universe.
Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.
Nah. This paradox quite clearly debunks the idea of a tri-omni god presiding over the universe. This is a fundamental assumption within some major religions, and it's wrong. By extension the ideas built off of it are wrong.
Do the same for math and science and you'll lead to new discoveries.
If I throw a jar of strawberry jam at your head, is that not an evil choice? You chose to make a sandwich with that jam, but someone else can choose to do something evil in the same situation.
If you're saying that it's only because you don't really understand them. Mathematics was widely assumed to be complete, consistent, and decidable and then Alan Turing's Halting Problem came along and blew that out of the water. So it's been mathematically proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. Seems paradoxical to me! I guess that means the field of mathematics is just a weird superstition we should mock, right?
You've missed the point of the example situation. Throwing the jar at a person's head isn't one of the available choices. The only choices available are ones that do not harm to anybody, and are in no way sinful. Yet despite that, there is still a choice, there is still decision making.
One my favorite books is Forever Peace, and in the book humanity has found a way to have digital connections directly into the human brain through a port at the base of the neck. The military uses it for remote control warfare drone warfare. The civilian population mainly uses it to connect directly into another partner during sex, which has the effect of feeling what both people are feeling mid-act. Eventually the protagonists find out that if people are connected in this manner for extended periods of time, they become "humanized", meaning they see all other humans as extensions of themselves, incapable of willingly harming other humans. They become pacifists to the extreme. The protagonists go on a fight against the government to humanize the entire world, and eventually they do so, ending all war and crime across the planet.
If free will was really so important to create us with, god could have done so in a manner similar to the humanized people from the book. They still have the ability to make decisions and chose things for themselves, but the option to harm others is never available. If god exists, they could have done something like that, maintaining this need for free will.
That's not a paradox. Just because some things can't be proven doesn't mean everything can't.
No, because nothing in mathematics requires everything to be provable.
Look through this list of mathematical proofs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_proofs
Not a single one requires "all mathematical problems have a solution" to be a premise.
On the other hand, the false belief in a tri-omni god is in fact a prerequisite for a number of religions, and therefore are indeed weird superstitions deserving of mockery.
You're missing the point of free will. Putting a limit on people's choices is the antithesis of free will. I can make the choice to use the jam to make a sandwich, I can sell the jam, I can throw the jam in the garbage, and yeah, I can throw a jar of jam at someone if I choose. Some of these options are better than others, but free will means I make the choice, the choice isn't made for me.
Free will is important since it's the essence of creation. If we didn't have free will we'd all just be an extension of God, not distinct beings. If there are no distinct consciousness, then it would be just God and nothing else. If there's no distinct consciousness then there's nothing really created. It would be all just thoughts of a single being.
For there to be distinct consciousness there needs to be the capability to make choices, which means there's there's the capability to make bad choices. For me to be incapable of throwing a jar of jam at you there would need to be an omnipotent being governing my decisions. But doing that would take away my agencies and destroy free will. Destroying things is the opposite of creation, which would be against everything God is supposed to be.
Just as we are capable of making choices, God is also capable of making choices. Choice is something that an omnipotent being should be capable of, right? God's choice to not interfere with our consciousness is inseparable with the creation of free will.
And that is your choice. God isn't going to stop you from making this choice. But is mocking other people's beliefs making the world a better place?
There will always be limits on people's choices. I don't have wings, I cannot choose to fly. I don't own a nuke, I cannot choose to nuke something.
So because limits on free will are inevitable, they should be reasonable, which means no evil.
As is demonstrated by the sandwich example, even when no evil choice is available, choice is still possible.
As is demonstrated by Forever Peace, this is not the case. The mechanism for Forever Peace being that humans see others as an extension of themselves, thus being incapable of harming others, but there is no limit to other mechanisms that would do this.
That would appear to be blatantly false. The universe constantly is destroying things. Celestial bodies get destroyed every day. Stars die, black holes consume, planets get bombarded with rocks from space. This planet alone has had 5 mass extinction events.
Not a year passes where there isn't some child starved to death or slowly killed by disease. Natural disasters wipe people's homes off the face of the earth and kill thousands.
The universe is an incredibly hostile place.
When it is ultimately a force for suffering, yeah absolutely.
You can choose to fly because airplanes exist. Note how people can choose to use for transportation or use them to drop bombs or crash them into buildings with thousands of people inside.
Also nuclear weapons exist and people can choose to drop them on cities and many thousands of people will die.
It feels like you're desperately trying to miss the point to avoid having thoughts that conflict with your current belief (or non-belief if that's how you choose to term it)
Matter can't be created or destroyed and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Matter can be converted into energy (and vice-versa) but nothing is ever really destroyed. Do you consider this to be a religious belief simply because conflicts with your argument?
How much suffering was caused by the religious oppression done by atheists like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? It's not just religious people that causes suffering. I'm pretty sure it's intolerance of the beliefs of others that the root of all of that suffering, which history has demonstrated that atheists are more than capable of. So I'm asking again, is your intolerance of the beliefs of others making the world a better place?
That's not what I meant, and you know it.
Other people have that choice. I do not.
Given that you seemingly intentionally missed the point about the things that I cannot choose to do, I'd say this is projection.
This conversation has nothing to do with the existence of god(s), it instead has to do with the existence of tri-omni god(s).
This is a false equivalence. If I burn down a building, it's been destroyed even if the matter of the building still exists.
Are you here to have a serious conversation, or just waste time?
This has no relevance. You completely missed the point of everything I've said, I hope not intentionally. Because this line of thinking isn't coherent.
Nope I honestly don't know what your point is. You gravitate towards absolutes more than most religious extremists do. Like if you're not an omnipotent being with every power you can imagine then you have no choices? But then you also think that the fact that world is some primitive video game where there's only very simple A) B) C) style options it would be a paradise and you're angry at God because the world doesn't work like that. Personally I find it frustrating when a video game limits my options to that degree and the option I want simply isn't there. Doesn't feel like I really have a choice if I'm only allowed to do the things they were considered to be valid options by someone else.
Yeah having choices makes for problems, but those are our problems to deal with.
And the atoms from that burnt building will go elsewhere and allow for the creation of new life. Nobody ever teach you about the circle of life, Simba?
I think we're basically done here. You're just rejecting facts that conflict with your inflexible world view now. Atheists have killed a great many people in history, that's a fact. You reject that fact because you want to believe that religion is the source of everything bad in the world. Can't face the reality that a lot of evil has been done without religion being a factor, and a lot of evil has been done by people that think of religion similarly to how you think of it. It's almost as if intolerance is the problem and it's the same problem if it's coming from a religious person as it is when it comes from an atheist. Being intolerant towards all other beliefs than your own doesn't make you better than others, even when if you do everything you can to deny that you have beliefs.
That is not even close to what I was saying.
This is an oversimplification of a very easy to understand thought experiment.
I'm not angry at god, I don't believe gods exist. Are you angry at Thanos?
Thanks for this waste of time.
A fact that has nothing to do with any of this.