Plainly, they worship God because God made them that way. Isn't determinism great? I'd love to offer a rational, scientific worldview as an antidote to this sort of thing (or should I try to pretend that science and religion somehow don't interfere with one another?) but alas basically all the (reasonable) current ideas about how the world works leave no room for free will; in fact they have no room for any kind of actor (souls, spirits, what have tou) to have free will.
It always makes me think of antfarms. Perhaps god is just a stereotypical twisted pre-teen boywho got himself the cosmic version of an antfarm. Mostly he's bored (or off at soccer practice) and so he leaves us alone to kill each other but every once in a while he comes back to introduce conflict or worse. (Look out! Here comes the magnifying glass!!)
It's almost as disturbing as the notion of god as the bearded despot doling out punishment and gold stars to people based on how well they follow instructions (Today, Pat Robetson, you can be line-leader. You're always such a good boy).
all the (reasonable) current ideas about how the world works leave no room for free will
Can you elaborate on this, peridot? I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Well, how do we think the world works? a hundred and fifty years ago, we had this clockwork notion, that everything followed Newton's laws and so on. And it bothered people, because if everything follows these clockwork laws, including the little grey cells, then everything in the universe is as predictable as the planets in their orbits, and there's no room for some kind of soul to step in and have choices - the decisions you make, in this view, are utterly predictable from the structure and state of your brain.
Of course, this particular clockwork view is wrong; relativity and quantum mechanics have replaced it as our idea about how the world works. But they are no better; they give a model of the world that is just as rigid as Newton's. The probabilities that turn up in quantum mechanics are a red herring; the actual probabilities are just as rigid as Newton's laws, and claiming that the random choices between probabilities allow free will is like (actually, is) claiming that a coin has free will because we can only write a probability that it will come up heads.
I admit, there are a few physicists (Tipler, for example) who try to introduce some magical never-observed and totally-unsupported-by-fact hypothesis that the human brain is somehow special, that some exotic physics happens inside that kilogram of grey mush, which allows the soul to act and make choices. This is fundamentally "I wanna believe" thinking.
Really, we have no reason to think that the clockwork universe has any room for free will. After all, what does free will really mean if human minds operate according to predictable laws?
You see this question on a more human scale when people start talking about human psychology, particularly insanity and mental disturbance as a cause of crime. If people, say, go on shooting rampages because their mind is disordered, and they buy junk food because their brain is wired to like it, and they respond to advertisements with pictures of beautiful women because our brains are wired with a visual response, and so on, what room is there for free will?
Ah, I see. I agree with that, I guess my only response can be, um ... so what? I mean you and I experience many of our choices as freely made, and ultimately the universe doesn't care what choices we make, so what of it, you know?
Jakey, you amuse me.
Speaking of fucked up religious folks, do take a look at the most recent issue of the Walrus ("Religion in the House") -- eek, creepy stuff.
As for predistination: I don't buy it. I understand the logic, and I'm not sure I can argue against it, but I don't think the universe (or God, for that matter) sets us up in a situation where we have no choice. We *do* make choices, though biology/circumstances/past/etc affect what our options and perceived options might be.
When I first heard the topic of predestination preached, I was pretty mortified. This is a humbling teaching, and we humans don’t like humility. My own study of this topic has led me to believe we humans are not quite as in control as we'd like to think, perhaps we can rewrite salvation to fit our own preferences, but this is a gamble I prefer not to make myself. But I understand your position and empathize with it, I have felt the same frustration. But as far as you and I can perceive we DO have free will – and with that in mind I’d rather not make God my enemy before leaving this life.
Now Jake you stated predestination is a teaching of calvinism, which it is, but please understand Calvin didn't make the thing from whole cloth - this doctrine comes from the Bible, which Christians accept as a direct word from God himself.
Michael, there's an assumption that you and I don't share. Actually there are several, but this is one that's in my mind right now, because it's come up before in conversation with Doug. That assumption is that people need to be saved.
I know you may not be able to answer these questions, but please try if you can:
Do you take the need for salvation as axiomatic? If so, can you explain why? If not, what evidence is there for it? (evidence that, preferably, doesn't lend itself equally well to 100 other explanations)
It looks to me as if God is playing the Sims, but he's one of those people who locks his Sims in the house with no doors and no bathroom and waits for them to soil themselves. Then laughs. Or was that just me?
I agree that predestination is perverse (or evil), but I'm not sure that it's perverse in a way that is peculiar to Calvinism; I think that many other denominations of Christianity that share key assumptions with Calvinism are perverse in more or less the same way. I have three questions, though, on whose answers this view depends:
1. Is eternal damnation inherently perverse? The notion that any amount of sin that can be accomplished within a finite life span might be punished by torment of infinite duration suggests to me that God, to put it as charitably as possible, lacks a sense of proportion. Compared to eternity, both the opportunity to sin and the opportunity to repent (and do whatever else must be done to be 'redeemed') are literally infinitesimal. So if we take seriously the notion of eternity (which I have trouble wrapping my mind around), there's virtually no moral difference between a god who damns people arbitrarily and one who damns them for their finite sins.
2. Is the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient creator compatible with free will? This is an old problem, but I think a relevant one. If God controls all the conditions under which we make our decisions, and creates the minds that make those decisions, then does God thereby fully determine all the choices we make? I don't propose to answer this; my personal opinion is that the notions of omnipotence and omniscience are impossible to define soundly, and thus nonsensical. But, setting that aside, it seems to me that if free will is impossible, then every religion that has an omniscient, omnipotent creator, who sends people to hell for making the wrong choices, effectively has a god who predestines people to suffer eternally. On the other hand, if free will is possible, that takes us to question 3:
3. Does it matter when God decides to damn someone? Even if our choices are freely made, an omniscient god knows their outcome before we make them no less than after. So, from God's point of view, there's no real difference between deciding who is to be saved and who is two be damned a priori or a posteriori: to an omniscient being, everything is a posteriori. So we could be saved or damned on the merits of our freely chosen actions long before we are even born.
It seems to me, then, that predetermination of salvation and damnation are de facto just as much a part of most other versions of Christianity as they are of Calvinism, and that whether their God is evil really comes down to question 1.
...er, to be damned, of course. Not two. Fie on typos.
Q. Pheevr
The notion that any amount of sin that can be accomplished within a finite life span might be punished by torment of infinite duration suggests to me that God, to put it as charitably as possible, lacks a sense of proportion.
No kidding.
I don't know how relevant your question 2 is, though, in light of what peridot said above. The whole question of free will is moot, IMO. As long as we experience our choices as free, there is no functional difference between an "actually" (whatever that means) freely made choice and and choice proscribed by God/biochemistry/quantum fluctuation. So what do we care? The only difference between God and natural phenomena is that natural phenomena don't, as far as we know, have motivations. We can't call the universe evil for allowing people to suffer, because the universe can't be any way other than how it is (as evidenced by the fact that it is the way it is, right?). An omnipotent, omniscient, etc. god, otoh, can be evil.
I think that the understanding of damnation as described by Bible literalists (rivers of fire etc) is limiting and problematic in the ways you two have hit upon. However, when I think of "damnation" in a theological I send to imagine it more as a sort of disconnection from God/the "good" in the universe/etc. - an inability to see and participate in and appreciate the wonderfulness of heaven (somewhat like CS Lewis describes it, e.g. in his book The Great Divide).
Re: calvanism: amusing link: http://www.xanga.com/indablinkof...69492/
item.html
Funny characterization. But it lacks the arrogance that Calvinists display in announcing that they ARE God's chosen (with the implied
"and you're not, so neener neener"). The Calvinists that I've encountered don't agonize over whether God has picked them or not. They're sure he did.
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