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[Maxwell's Hammer]

> "You're missing the distinction between free will and discipline."

Actually, my point was that love and force aren't exclusive. Let's do analogies: Say your son stayed at grandmas all day because you had to work late. It's 11 o'clock and he's still awake when you get there and wants to stay up playing with grandma. You can physically force your child to leave grandmas because you need to get him home for bed by picking him up and carrying him. And you should. He and gran both need sleep. That is violating his will AND doing so out of love. All rational human beings do things like this for their kids.

A rational person would expect an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God to do things like reveal his presence to atheists to save us from hell, or to force heroin addicts to stop using before they overdose.

[jimwalton]

As we study God's revelation about himself to us, we find that he is remarkably and consistently non-coercive. He speaks, warns, loves, and promises, but he doesn't coerce. You won't find that in the Bible as part of his character. There is no "forcing" that is part of what he does. He'll tell you the way it is, and it's up to you to use your free will to do as you wish. That's the way he has revealed himself. No one will ever be able to stand before him and say, "Yeah, well you MADE me do it."

[Mr. Bojangles]

You said, "I have experienced in myself a ping-pong match of desires at war in me, vying for me to decide to which one I will lean. I am torn at times between competing values, competing pleasures, or even competing depravity, and any mix of them."

And the strongest desire always wins, and you can't control what the strongest desire will be.

It's really neither here nor there whether that squares with the Bible. The logic is what it is.

[jimwalton]

Yeah, I disagree with you (obviously). I do have control. Let me try to explain. I think you're endorsing a tautology here.

Darwin's theory postulates the survival of the fittest. But the only way anyone can "rationally" define the fittest is "the ones that survive." Sometimes the strong one gets hit by lightning, or the "fitter" one falls through the ice, and the one that ends up surviving is the stupid weak one that stayed in the cave. It's not a reasonable definition of "fittest."

I am saying that I get to choose which desire I'm going to follow. It seems to me you are defining "the strongest desire" as "the one I choose." But that may be tautological, because I'm the one who gets to give weight to the warring desires in me. They come from different parts of me—some are physical, some emotional, some social, and some spiritual. They come to me with different strengths from difference arenas, but I'm the one who gets to rank them, order them, and choose between them. I can absolutely control what the strongest desire will be.

Suppose I desire to be an Olympic athlete (wouldn't THAT be funny). I have placed this desire in myself. Tomorrow morning my desire to sleep and stay in bed is going to be strong (especially if it's raining), but I get to control whether or not the desire to train is going to win over the desire to sleep. I don't to choose about the desire to sleep—that comes to me naturally and quite regularly. But I do get to choose about the desire to train, and I can be the one say, each day, whether I will train or sleep. The desires are not outside of my control.

[Corinthian]

Well, no, A&E isn't where I was going with that argument, though I will touch on that in a separate comment. I was talking more about the average person who is, according to Christianity, faced with a choice: Accept Jesus's salvation, or burn in Hell.

The problem with this is that the people who "reject" salvation are mostly, if not all, people who are not convinced that Christianity is real, who are not convinced that the impending danger of Hell is real, and who are not convinced that the offer of salvation from that threat is real.

Suppose you're a skeptic. You're faced with the "choice" of accepting salvation, and the outcome of this choice will affect the destination of your eternal soul. If you're not convinced that the danger of Hell is real, and you're also not convinced that the offer of salvation is real, how can you said to be making an informed choice?

It's very much like your parachute analogy, but with a few key differences. According to Christians, we are all in free fall, plummeting toward the ground. The Christian knows what's going on, and he pulls his ripcord. But as he does so, he sees other people flying past him, and somehow intuition tells the Christian that those other people aren't aware of the impending danger. So as they fly past him, he starts shouting, "Pull the ripcord! You're going to hit the ground!"

The people who are flying by hear the Christian shouting, but they'e confused by his statements. Bear in mind that, if the ground is Hell, then within the context of this analogy, these people have never seen the ground. Their entire lives have been spent in free fall. They were born and have grown to adulthood in mid-air.

Not only do they not know what the ground is or have any reason to believe it exists, they also have no evidence that the parachute exists. They cannot see or feel the parachute that will supposedly save them from this terrible fate. So they're falling, and they hear this Christian shouting his warnings, but they're thinking, "The ground? Ripcord? What the hell is this guy talking about?"

Now, whether or not they believe in the ground, the ground is coming. They're going to slam into it and die whether they believe in it or not.

Unless.

Unless there exists an omnipotent deity who has the power to reach out and pull the skeptics' ripcords himself. That said, I'm undecided on whether or not the deity has a moral obligation to actually reach out and pull the ripcords. But I do think the deity has a moral obligation to at least ensure that every person is making an informed choice. That means providing sufficient evidence so that every person in free fall is convinced that the impending danger is real, and that the parachute is real too.

[jimwalton]

Great comment reply. Thank you for such thoughtful debate. Let's be real honest about this, for the best possible discussion. We have no evidence of hell (the ground in the analogy). All we have are the teachings of basically one man, Jesus (he's the one who talked about the most. John mentions it in Revelation; Paul mentions it once; Daniel once; other than that, it's Jesus). The offer of salvation is contingent on the teaching behind it. Where the "case" really lies is further back. The Bible contends that (1) God exists, (2) humans have become separated from him (3) he wants us back. If we accept those, the salvation and hell parts are for discussion then.

Whether God exists or not is a question of authentic import, perhaps more than any other question. If he exists, that REALLY changes everything. If he doesn't, that REALLY changes everything. While no one can prove or disprove God, we can both observe and reason to the most logical conclusion. Weighing all the evidences pro and con, I am convinced that the evidences for his existence FAR outweigh the evidences against it, and I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that God is real.

The naturalistic and humanistic world views, in my opinion, don't have the strength of evidence behind them. Their sensibility only comes from a priori rejection of certain possibilities and presuppositions that I find illogical, given the evidence.

But then comes humanity, and the prospect that we are separated from him. To me, if God is truly divine, he has to be separated from humanity, because of the flaws I see in us. Pantheism doesn't make sense, nor does the Greek and Roman ideas about God just being like us but somehow more powerful and higher. Seems like nonsense to me. If God is really God, then he has to be wholly OTHER. Since that is logical, it is also reasonable that there is a breach creating distance between God and humanity, and it's reasonable that the breach is what we call "immorality": we lie, cheat, abuse, orient to self, etc. God can't really be like this, or even approve of it, so there is necessarily a separation.

The third piece is: Does he want us back? If he is truly God, and he made us, it makes sense that he would want us back. If he is truly powerful, it makes sense that he has a plan as to how to accomplish that. If he is truly God, his plan must be fair and reasonable.

If we accept these propositions, then we can talk about salvation and hell, what God is like, what we are like, God's plan and how it works and why it's set up that way. Without accepting the propositions, the ensuing discussion about salvation and hell have no reference point.

If you want to agree to the propositions for the sake of discussion, we can continue to talk about the deity's moral obligation and informed choice.

[Corinthian]

> "Things do break on occasion. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption, and you sit down. That’s belief, and it was a conscious choice."

The decision to act on that belief -- to sit down in the chair -- was a conscious choice. The belief itself, that the chair would not collapse, was not a choice. It was an evaluation based on evidence, as you said. If all beliefs are evaluations of evidence, and you agree that they are, and if the evidence has not changed, then there is no way you could have chosen to believe otherwise.

> "Almost all of life works this way [...] because we can never know what lies ahead. Every time you turn a door knob you are expressing faith."

I wouldn't use the word faith. I define the word "faith" to mean belief without evidence, which is why I said that no Christian believes in Christianity on faith. They believe based on evidence.

I would use the word trust, or the phrase "reasonable expectation". But this is a semantics issue so it's not too important.

> "Every time we turn a car key, we do it because we believe it will start. The evidence is compelling, and it was a conscious choice. We don't know for sure that the car will start, and unfortunately sometimes it doesn't. Then we use our knowledge to try to figure out what to do about it. We dial our phone (as an act of faith, assuming it will work and help us reach another person), and try to get help."

Like with the chair, the belief that the car will start, or that the phone will work, are reasonable expectations based on past experience. We agree on this. But it is the action of turning the key, of dialing the phone, that is a conscious choice. The act of believing that the car and the phone will work was not a choice at all. If your beliefs are based on past evidence, and if your evidence has not changed, you couldn't have chosen to believe that your car would not start, or that your phone would not work.

In the same way, belief in God is not a choice. You may make conscious decisions based on that belief. You may choose to go to church every Sunday because you hold that belief. If a maniac ever puts a gun to your head and demands that you renounce your God, you can make a conscious choice to defy him, believing that God will reward you for your fealty. But the beliefs themselves weren't choices.

[jimwalton]

> The decision to act on that belief -- to sit down in the chair -- was a conscious choice. The belief itself, that the chair would not collapse, was not a choice. It was an evaluation based on evidence, as you said. If all beliefs are evaluations of evidence, and you agree that they are, and if the evidence has not changed, then there is no way you could have chosen to believe otherwise.

Great comment. The belief is still a choice, though on a different level. I can choose not to believe, but act anyway (expecting the chair to fail). I can choose to believe, but not act (assume the chair will hold me, but not sit in it). I can choose not to believe, and not act (I don't buy it, the chair won't hold, I ain't sittin'.) I can choose to believe and act (assume it will hold me and sit in it). And belief is not just black or white, either or. I can "kind-a" believe, mostly believe, partly believe. All these are choices, mental evaluations and judgments,as precursors to action.

> I define the word "faith" to mean belief without evidence

Well, I think that's an inadequate definition of faith. The Bible, in Hebrews 11.1, distinctly connects faith with evidence. Good faith requires sound, rational thinking. So also my belief in God requires sound, rational thinking based on convincing evidences. Even the expectations that I have, if they are conditioned by "reasonable," are then grounded experiences that give me cause to entertain those expectations. I have seen evidences of God in the lives of others. I see evidences of God in the world around me. I have seen evidences of God in my life. Based on those evidences, I choose to believe that he exists, and I make conscious decisions based on that belief. Other people see the same evidences and choose not to believe. I assert that the beliefs themselves are choices—very much so.