Robotic Perfection

The Xian god is said to be perfect and omni-max, but is this even possible? What is entailed by being perfect?

god must, by virtue of being perfect, remain perfect in all situations: choices, thoughts, deeds, etc. Because god must remain perfect and because no two choices (I'll focus on choices, but the argument works equally well for thoughts, deeds, etc.) are completely equal, there will always be one superior/perfect choice. If god is to be perfect, then god must choose this choice. This leaves god with only one option at all times when choices are made. Since god only has one option, god is merely a robot that has no free will or freedom.

But, freedom is better than slavery, right? Isn't it better to have free will/freedom than to not? (Any Xian that argues against this point negates the free will defense to the problem of evil and has bigger fish to fry at that point - not that the free will defense is all that good, but it's the only thing the apologist has.) So, if it is better to be free and have choices, then god is not perfect, since god does not have this freedom. The tenet of god's perfection is therefore self-defeating.

The Inevitability of Jesus

I've recently had a theist posit that god planned to have Jesus come and save us from the beginning of time, whether the fall had happened or not. Let's think about that for a moment, shall we?

If Jesus was always destined to come, then humans were always in need of saving, even before the fall. This wipes away any chance the theist has to claim that we deserve hell due to the fall (not that that is a good claim to make mind you). If we were in need of salvation from the beginning, the all humans regardless of our deeds or the past deeds of our ancestors were made by god to be destined for hell unless he comes to save us. What moral being would consciously make entities that it earmarked for hell from the very beginning?

Yet, in a strange way, it's probably one of the most logical stances that a theist could take. If god is omni-max, then anything and everything that happens in this world necessarily has to happen by this god's demand and according to this god's will. So, god wills that people die in horrible accidents, he wills that people are evil to each other, and he wills that people go to hell. The argument that god does not wish for anyone to perish is also obviously thrown out the window with this admission that Jesus was destined from the start. I'd score that one an own goal.

Heaven or Free Will

Xians regularly claim that this world contains evil because we have free will. Having free will means that evil will necessarily exist. Therefore, god is not evil for allowing evil since he wishes for us to be free, autonomous agents capable of making decisions based on our free will.

Of course, the idea of free will with an omni-max deity is inherently contradictory, but let's grant that free will exists for a moment. The argument is that god can not imbue us with free will that causes us to want to do good, because that's not truly free. This is supposedly impossible. Yet, Xians claim that such a place exists - heaven. In heaven, there is no evil, and people strive to do what is good at all times, one would assume. Therefore, if it is impossible to have free will and eradicate evil, heaven must be a place where there is no free will. The Xian ideal, it seems would be to become an automaton for god - a robot, with no power to choose anything. Is this what eternal bliss is?

The Xian will no doubt object to this, saying that we must have free will in heaven, which means that it is possible for us to have free will and live in a world that is free from evil. The theist can not have it both ways. The Xian might also object and say that the people in heaven have used their free will to choose to be with god in heaven, thus free will is preserved. But, this only preserves the "choice" to go to heaven in this Earthly realm, not in heaven. Is one able to exercise one's free will in heaven and reject god? If so, and if this is "evil" then heaven is not a place free from evil and it is not eternal bliss.

Just another contradiction from the contradiction mines.

Belief in Free Will?

Assume for a moment that free will isn't logically contradictory with an omni-max god. We are often told that god wants us to have free will, to freely choose to believe in him or not. So, he hides himself from us so that he won't mess up our free will. He refuses to present evidence that he exists because otherwise our choice to believe or not won't be free. Worse yet, he allows others to try and convince us that he doesn't exist or that other gods exist so that we can believe in them instead. So what? Well, if you don't believe, then you get to be tortured for eternity.

The inanity of this beggars belief. First off, belief is not something one simply chooses. It's not like I can choose to believe in the Xian god or allah or zeus tomorrow. For god to think that we freely choose to believe or not to believe is simply ludicrous. We can choose to uncritically swallow the religious pablum that is served to us, true. We can choose to not examine our beliefs or the utter lack of evidence for religious belefs, but we can't simply choose our beliefs absent those things. So, given what we can choose, god makes sure that the rational choice is one of disbelief, which is the exact opposite of what he supposedly wants, meaning that when we do exercise our free will, we will probably choose wrong. I don't think I need to point out the contradiction here.

Second, it has to be wondered why god values belief over acceptance. What I mean is that he seems to care whether we believe or not rather than whether we accept his message or not. If he were smart, he would want us all to believe and then choose to follow his message or not. He would present his side of things and then let us choose to follow a homicidal maniac or to follow a more moral path.

Third, apologist like to claim that hell is not immoral because all the denizens have chosen it. What a load of carp. No one chooses to be tortured, let alone for eternity. If one has chosen it somehow by default or by making a bad choice, it is not because one thought that hell and eternal torture would follow. Of course, god doesn't really present us with a way to rationally decide what is the right choice, and he allows others to lead us astray from that choice (I can make this claim because with all the competing viewpoints, it's impossible for them all to be right; hence someone is advocating an erroneous viewpoint and leading us astray).

Lastly, it's all too apparent that god values blind choice over informed choice, yet which one is more free? Are you more free if your choice is based on having all the facts at hand or having little if any facts at hand and misinformation? I think we can safely say that if god exists and if we have free will and if the Xians are right that god would rather not give us evidence of his existence rather than taint our free will, that god is inane, cruel, stupid, and contradictory. The more obvious conclusion, however, is that this logically inconsistent belief in god is most likely false.

Heaven Is?

One response to the problem of evil argument is to blame all of life's ills on free will. This is an especially bad answer for many reasons, like why god would give us free will if it would cause so much suffering, the fact that it hasn't anything to do with natural evil, and how this doesn't get god off the hook in any case, among some of the failings of the argument. What I want to focus on today, though, is heaven. What does this argument mean for the concept of heaven?

Well, if the Earth is a place full of evil because of free will, and heaven is devoid of evil, what does that tell you about the presence of free will in heaven? It seems that heaven would be a place where we are all automatons according to the free will argument. Is this what we should strive to be? Is this the end-all be-all of our existence, to wind up as unthinking robots? Is this really how you would want to spend eternity?