Converting the Religious: Free will

By Bob, TFS Member

In the course of discussing religion with Christians we're likely to run into the topic of free will. It might be to explain why people have to take responsibility for their actions, or to explain why God allows evil in the world. God gave us the gift of free will and there are consequences to that. It sounds kind of reasonable. Freedom is a wonderful thing. A loving God gave us this gift. But maybe we should think about it more carefully.

Suppose you were a scientific genius who figured out how to build a robot with consciousness. Further, your brilliance was so God-like that you could actually make your robots to behave in a perfectly moral way. They would always do the right thing and would be happy doing it and would be entitled to eternal reward since they were without "sin." But instead of building them that way, you decided to give them "free will." In effect, that means you give them the ability to screw up - to choose evil over good. But if they ever do - ever - they are sinners and "deserve" eternal punishment. Since over their lifetimes they have many, many opportunities to fail, it's virtually inevitable they will choose evil at least once and deserve damnation. What kind of a "gift" is this free will? It is simply an opportunity to self-destruct. Even if we gave our robots an alternate way out by coming up with a "savior" who the robot may or may not wind up accepting, the so-called "gift" would probably result in horrific misfortune for many of them. None would be better off thanks to this "gift."

The reason we think of freedom, and hence free will, as a good thing is because it allows us to pursue our own happiness without constraints, so we're likely to be more successful at getting what we want than we would be if we had fewer choices. Repressive governments, for example, restrict people's freedom so they have to do what's good for the tyrants, and as a result people can't do what is best for themselves. But freedom does us no good if the only additional choices we have are ones that hurt us. A God that allows us to disobey and thus be damned is not doing us any favor. Free will is not a gift, but a curse.

Another peculiar aspect of the Christian approach to choosing between good and evil is how we are judged. It seems sensible to call someone "good" if, on the whole, their good behavior substantially exceeds their bad behavior, and they are beneficial to society. But this isn't how it works for Christianity. To be considered good, one has to be absolutely perfect. If a person commits a single sin they are deserving of eternal punishment even if the rest of their life is saintly. In fact a sin isn't even required - we inherit original sin from Adam and Eve. Only intervention by a savior can solve the problem, which conveniently makes everyone dependent on the church. I think this is quite contrary to most people's sense of justice.

Our main point still has to be that believers can't rely on their authorities for true information, but making the above points may be helpful in getting them to recognize they have thoughtlessly accepted some ideas that really don't make a lot of sense. The next topic is the ten commandments, another area that people tend to accept without recognizing the obvious flaws.