Perhaps it is because we are evil by nature and deserve everything that happens to us?
the-pi-guy said:
Basically you'd be happy to be locked up if it meant there was no suffering, hunger, etc? You'd be happy to be a computer? No dreams, no hopes, no suffering, no ills. |
Yes! Remember: "world hunger, slavery, human suffering, and the ills of the world" would be gone. My free will would be gone and I'd be happy. Everyone would be happy.
KLAMarine said:
Yes! Remember: "world hunger, slavery, human suffering, and the ills of the world" would be gone. My free will would be gone and I'd be happy. Everyone would be happy. |
I'm about to play the devil's advocate here hehehehehe:
Without free will you'd have no way of knowing if those criteria were actually met. You'd be happy out of ignorant bliss, much like a man who lives as a hermit in a hut on the moon his entire life has no knowledge of any of the world's evils - but at the same time, has no knowledge of the world's good. This is the paradox of being self aware and holding the knowledge of the world's evils and goods - a dichotomy which Genesis speaks of. Adam and Eve lived in blissful ignorance until they ate from the tree of knowledge. They had no knowledge of the suffering of the world and thus these evils did not exist - until they made a conscious effort to be knowledgeable of them. God would rather have them live in ignorance and so he forbade the act of eating the fruit, and subsequently threw them out of Eden.
Was it not the way of the Medieval Roman Catholic Church which so heavily restrained any scientific advancement and pushed their own viewpoints on the matter? I'd say they were the epitome of free will violation.
Once again, I'm just playing the devil's advocate and providing an interpretation of the arguments made. The viewpoints shared may or may not be what I personally believe. Don't hate me
ReimTime said:
I'm about to play the devil's advocate here hehehehehe: Without free will you'd have no way of knowing if those criteria were actually met. You'd be happy out of ignorant bliss, much like a man who lives as a hermit in a hut on the moon his entire life has no knowledge of any of the world's evils |
But there are no more evils in the world. Recall I gave up my free will for there to be no evils.
ReimTime said: but at the same time, has no knowledge of the world's good. |
Also, I gave up my free will, I didn't get IQ points knocked off. I can now only do good and no evil since, again, there is no more evil.
the-pi-guy said: While there has been so much horror that has come out of the evil of the world, so much beauty has come out of it too. Art, music, math, television, computer games, stories, poetry, sports, etc. All of it would be lost. |
How? I gave up my free will for evil things to disappear. The stuff you listed isn't evil, that wouldn't disappear.
the-pi-guy said:
That's not how it works. You can't just get rid of the thing that created other things and expect those other things to still exist, because you want them to. For example, you can't say bears are mean. Let's imagine a world with no bears. You can't just say "well, we'll still have the fur coats made from the bears, because those aren't mean." If you get rid of free will, you have to get rid of everything we have because of it. Not just the nasty stuff. |
But things are still very much possible, it just wouldn't be due to free will. If I gave up my free will, I'd become a robot but a robot can still very much do things and because evil has been banished, I'd only be able to do good things. What those good things are wouldn't be up to me but they'd still be there.
the-pi-guy said:
Most of those happened directly because of free will, they don't have any reason to exist. Take the Mona Lisa, why would a robot paint it? If we're robots how could we appreciate it? |
Robots was the wrong word, I'd be a robot with human emotions.
if there is a god and everything we know spawned from it... then of course evil is also its creation
the strange thing is that to me this is self-evident to the concept of a god and yet religious people avoid this point like the plague
but the thing is... what is evil?
evil is merely that which is considered negative from the perspective of a particular group of humans and as issues like abortion show its in constant flux
if i kill 200 people tomorrow, sure to other people i'd be a pretty evil person
but, outside of human society will it matter? will it matter to fish, to dogs, to birds etc? no because its merely an abstract human concept
suppose the people were "terrorists"? suppose they were nazis? then it would be justified but from the pov of the "terrorist" its evil
the type of god i believe in is not a personal god that amusingly has all the trappings of human morality yet is omnipotent... which imo is the silliest thing ever
i'd think that a god would be beyond concepts like these because even in my own experiences i'm beginning to understand that words like "evil" and "good" really have little meaning because theycan be rationalised one way or another constantly