Dean Stretton <> wrote:

> Lawrence John Meckan wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > > I am very disappointed in God. I would have thought that he could have
> > > used his incredible power to come up with something that would
> > > instantly have us all choosing to be with him. The ressurection seems
> > > like something that an ordinary with the limited knowledge that people
> > > had 2,000 years ago would come up with. It's not worthy of a God.
> >
> > We're not "dependent...as if we were borg-implanted into a combat
> > computer". We have free will, right ? We have the power to choose, right
> > ? Wouldn't it be more loving for Him to give us the choice of following
> > Him, instead of an instantaneous "magic" button which He turns on ?
> 
> This is not a satisfactory response.  Notice how Barry referred to God
> devising a situation that has us "all _choosing_ to be with him [my
> emphasis]". Not being _forced_ (as you suggest), but _choosing_ to be with
> him.  Suppose God proves His existence beyond doubt.  In that case, it
> does not follow that our free will has been violated.  Even given
> overwhelming evidence in favour of proposition X, people are still free to
> believe X, and free to believe not-X. They would be irrational if they
> believed not-X, of course; but they could still believe it.  People
> believe irrational things all the time.
> 
> In short, it would be a very good thing for all of us to choose to be with
> God. Thus, this is something that God would want to be actualised (brought
> about). So unless you can give good reasons for thinking otherwise, it is
> highly likely that _if_ God exists, then the state of affairs in which
> (nearly) everybody chooses to
> 
> be with Him would be actualised.  The fact that this state of affairs is
> _not_ actualised therefore counts significantly in favour of the
> proposition that there is no God.
> 

This argument gets run up the flagpole quite frequently, so seeing I don't think its worthy of a salute, I'd better try to put the reason into words. Let me say straight away I think this is still pretty inadequate and needs more refinement, but let me have a go at least.

The argument is basically

A. God wants us all to freely choose to be with him/obey him/belong to him/however you want to express it.

B. He could have done much better than he apparently has, in achieving this goal.

C. Therefore the Christian idea of God must be wrong.

As I see it, there are problems with BOTH A and B. Before any assessment of B can be made, there must be an adequate statement of A.

Now assuming we're looking at the Christian idea of God, then he doesn't want slaves/robots/servants. He doesn't even primarily want obedience. He wants sons and daughters. So we're not really talking about obedience, we're talking about a particular kind of relationship, of which the (functional) family is a model.

Now we can look at B. If, say, God chose to unambiguously demonstrate his existence. Would this help achieve A? I think more discussion is needed here, but I suspect it wouldn't help. A point to note is that the Bible does say that at a future point in time God *will* unambiguously demonstrate his existence, and from that point on, it will be impossible for anybody else to enter the kind of relationship he wants. I think this is a very important point.

So, to re-quote from Dean above:
> Suppose God proves His existence beyond doubt. In that case, it does not follow that
> our free will has been violated. Even given overwhelming evidence in favour of
> proposition X, people are still free to believe X, and free to believe not-X.
> They would be irrational if they believed not-X, of course; but they could still
> believe it. People believe irrational things all the time.

This is true, but what I'm saying is that while people might then believe in God, the sort of relationship he want to achieve with us might be impossible.

I can even give an example to illustrate that what I'm saying might be plausible. I've been in a place where the local people (wrongly) believe that everybody with a white skin is fabulously wealthy. The kids always wanted to visit us in our house, but when they got in, all they were thinking about was how they could get some of the goodies that they believed we had. It was pretty well impossible to build a genuine relationship with these kids -- the other agenda just got in the way all the time.

The analogy's bad, but maybe worth thinking about.

Cheers, Mike.