Predestination, but free will?

[August]

I don't get this at all.

You always her religious people talk about how evil is essential because people have to have free will. It's the only argument they can come up with to justify the existence of evil in the presence of an omniscient, omnipotent benevolent deity.

But, that doesn't apply to reproductive choices, including whether to parent or not. Take this quote from a child hoarder

She was destined to be [in our family], before the foundation of the earth!

So the child's mother didn't have the free will to decide not to get pregnant, or to keep the baby and bring her home to a pedophile boyfriend, or to make a bad choice early in life and never live to get pregnant. Nope, god specifically made her get pregnant and be unable to keep the baby. And none of the prospective adoptive parents had the free will to choose her for six years. On the other hand, none of those children who were abused or murdered by their families had been predestined to be given up for adoption, they were predestined for death or misery. And this child was so hated by god that it predestined her to live in an orphanage for six years rather than with a loving family. Because it wasn't a quirk of free will that left her there, it was a plan.

Anyone who's prepared to delve into the vile morass of what passes for a fundie's brain and figure it out?

[snarkyjan]

I don't get this at all.

Anyone who's prepared to delve into the vile morass of what passes for a fundie's brain and figure it out?

I'm tempted but I can't spare the 80 IQ points.

[Grace]

I've heard some Calvinists describe it as being more like, you have free will, but God is so all-knowing that he pretty much knows what you're going to choose and how it's going to end up.

[August]

That makes more sense (sense being relative). The fundies don't phrase it that way, though. I wonder if they've just accepted evil as the will of god.

[nimerha]

I've heard some Calvinists describe it as being more like, you have free will, but God is so all-knowing that he pretty much knows what you're going to choose and how it's going to end up.

Which is somewhat hilarious, because doesn't giving it that much thought actually scramble your brain even more?

If everything is predestined, then time is just another dimension, no more special then any other. Everything that will happen is as good as already happened and contained within the world of the past.

Including, oh hey, original sin, Devil, etc.

That means that God either purposefully created the world with the seed of evil, fully aware of how it would unfold; every second of torment and misery was already potentially present in the very first step of creation; or God was powerless to stop it.

Ergo, we can either have a God who is omniscient and omnipotent and intrinsically evil, or a God who lacks at least one of the first two. Reductio ad impossibilem is taught in high school, and it takes all of ten seconds to think through this. How in the world do you manage the mental gymnastics necessary to overcome it? The way I see it, the only universe that would allow for an omniscient, omnipotent, yet fully non-evil God is a quantum universe, but good luck getting a fundie to comprehend that.

ETA: I know my Latin, I do, I do!

[ILoveJellybeans]

Its kinda terrible that thought, cause its like God wanted that child to be adopted by them, but why didnt he have them born into the family?

Whats the point of putting the child through unnecessary suffering by having their parents put them up for adoption/abuse them/die so the kid can end up in an orphanage and get adopted by this family.

If God really cared what child each family was given, wouldnt he make it so the parents who didnt want a child, or were going to put them up for adoption or abuse them couldnt have children, and only give children to parents who look after them?

[skeptifem]

I've heard some Calvinists describe it as being more like, you have free will, but God is so all-knowing that he pretty much knows what you're going to choose and how it's going to end up.

He also has unlimited power to change things though, so that isn't free will at all.