Mr November

Here's a bit of a brain teaser: Is God capable of giving humans free will?
(I use God to refer to the deity that is used by Catholicism, the same idea could apply to many God/god/gods)

I would argue no.
Let's say that God creates a human being. God creates this human being with the full knowledge of past, present, and future since God is said to be all powerful and all knowing.

Because God is all powerful, he also has the power to create or not create this human. And he must be totally aware of what he is creating since he is all knowing. So then if God creates a human that is destined to eat the fruit of knowledge and damn all humanity to an existence of sin and pain, than not only did he create that human with full knowledge of that humans destiny, but he then also therefore created that human with the purpose of damning all humanity in such a way. The actions of that human were the intended effects of that particular individual, created by God, in that particular environment, created by God.

As this applies to all humans, life forms, objects, etc, etc etc, God is therefore solely responsible for all sin, pain, suffering etc.

As a result I can only conclude that if this God does exist, we actually have no free will and therefore we have no responsibility for our actions - all responsibility falls on God who created us with this destiny and for the purpose of living the life we live.

Here is an example of the relationship between a human creator and a robot which is very different. If a human creates a robot, and the robot was built improperly and so malfunctions in a destructive way, it is the fault of the human creator for being an incompetent designer. If the human had full knowledge that the malfunction would occur, the effects of the malfunction would be the intention of the creator and therefore it would be the fault of the creator for being immoral. This isn't about if the creator accidentally started a device that he knew would malfunction, its about intentionally starting a device which would malfunction with full knowledge of the effects and progression of events that would follow.

Feel free to comment any counterarguments or elaborate on how this would relate to any other deities or paradoxes ect.

Sansa Stark

Spoiler:

Humans created God

Thom Yorke

Like the answer to all religious debates, maybe.

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Maybe God doesn't give two ****s, and just wants to watch us running around like ants, and blowing each other up

All powerful, and all knowing doesn't mean 'not a sick ****'.

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Al Pacino = God

Mr November

If you were all knowing wouldn't that bore the hell out of you anyway? Why bother doing something if you already know what's going to happen down to the most infinitely regressing detail? I'd shoot myself in the head.

Scarlett O'Hara

God created suffering by allowing the Devil to roam the earth. We do have free will, we can chose to be moral and 'good' or follow a path of evil. It's our choice. He can't interfere with our lives, only design them to follow a certain path. Suffering and pain is what tests our faith because once you die and get to heaven the suffering will be gone. I'm saying it rather simplified but it doesn't always need to sound that complicated.

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SATCHMO

Haha... I knw that's right.

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Yeah, but that's half the fun of it. I mean, as boring as it'd be, it's not as boring as sitting around not doing anything at all.

That's why he created man, and dinosaurs, and put them on the earth at the same time. The Snake in the Garden of Eden was a T-rex!

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Al Pacino = God

Mr November

Does God create each individual person in your view? If so, doesn't creation of a person count as interference?

If you believe that God has anything to do with your existence, than I think you would have to view that as interference since he would have gotten the ball rolling full knowing what would happen afterword. It would be like an inconceivably large Rube Golberg machine, you would know exactly what you were causing into reality.

Dirty

Well we are gonna have to go over what really constitutes as 'free will.' There are always restraints on us, we can never truly make every decision completely freely.