Free will and unanswered prayers

Saw this discussion going on on Facebook, and I knew that not only did I need to answer this but that my answer would be too long for facebook.  I obscured identifiers, except for first names, because this blog is more public than facebook.  So without further ado:

I love this argument from Lorna.  It reminds me very much of when The Onion “reported” on God answering a child’s prayer.  Back to the argument: from a strictly believing perspective, prayer is actually a form of blasphemy.  Think about it: if you pray for anything other than to stroke God’s ego (a.k.a. praising him) or to thank him for his blessings (blessings like kittens, candy, hurricanes, and birth defects), then you are putting forward the notion that you are more powerful than God.

Think about it: if you ask God for ANYTHING at all, then through the very act of praying, you are trying to persuade God to act differently than he is or change his mind; you are telling an all-knowing being that he might have missed a little detail that you just happen to know about.  “Hey God, I’ve still got cancer down here.  Just a reminder.”: at which point God slaps his forehead and says, “Shit, I knew I was forgetting something!”

Now many Christians see how this is belittling the power of God, so rather than ask for specific things, they ask for “God’s will to be done” about those things.  Now seriously, does God really need your go ahead to do whatever he planned on doing in the first place?  Picture this:  You’re at work, and a co-worker walks up to you and says, “Hey, about that project you’re working on?  I just wanted you to know that I think that you should think you’re own thoughts and use your own intiative in the matter.”  Since that was what you were going to do anyway, do you really need your co-worker telling you it’s OK?  Sounds sort of condescending doesn’t it (or batshit insane).  So anyway, you can see that other than for kissing God’s ass, prayer is basically putting oneself out there as being superior to God.

As for free will and God’s will, I’m sorry Michael, but your views are not supported either logically or Biblically.

First of all, let’s look at your concept of God’s will:  God is apparently off the hook for evil because he allows it to happen rather than making it happen.  You do realize that there is a legal term for allowing grave harm to another even though you didn’t cause the harm: the term is manslaughter.

If I let a man drown, even though I could have saved him, I am still culpable in his death because I did nothing.  It simply doesn’t matter that I didn’t push the man into the water.

Here’s another scenario: you see a dog mauling a small child.  But it’s OK if you don’t intervene, whether yourself or by calling authorities, because you are not the person who commanded the dog to attack the child, so you are blameless and can sleep easy.  If you could actually wsee such a thing and do nothing, then you are a sociopath and are in need of psychiatric help.  Further, if you honestly believe that this is how God operates, then you are worshipping a sociopath, and it may therefore be time to find a different religion.

As for free will, God doesn’t allow it, he punishes it.  Free will IS the original sin.  And if you can bear the burden to subjugate your free will your entire life, your reward is to have that burden lifted by going to heaven and losing your free will.  Before, they ate the fruit from the tree, Adam and Eve could not distinguish good from bad; remember, it was the fruit that gave them Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Without knowing good from evil, they did whatever they were told, whether it be God or a talking snake with legs.  It’s interesting at this time to point out that God lied to them about the fruit (“ye shall surely die;” they didn’t), and the snake told the truth (“Ye shall not die, but shall know good and evil;” which is what happened).  So Adam and Eve had no concept that disobedience was bad until after the fact, at which point they were ashamed.  God then drives them out of the Garden before they can also eat from the Tree of Life and become his competition.

At this point, it should be noted that the expulsion from the Garden and increasing of hardships could be considered punishment for disobedience, but consider this: why then punish all future generations for this disobedience?  Adam and Eve’s children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. never ate from the tree, why are they punished too?  It’s because the future generations kept the ability to determine good from evil, they kept free will, and this is the sin of which they are guilty.

Throughout the Bible, God demands perfect obedience in exchange for reward and under threat of punishment.  If I hold a gun to your head and tell you that I’ll shoot if you disobey me but give you $100 if you obey, then I am punishing you for using your free will in any way counter to my own will, just as God does with threats of hell.  You are to stop using your own will and to use God’s instead; any deviation will result in everlasting torment.

And on the subject of heaven and hell, many have wondered why hell is forever: how can finite crimes deserve infinite punishment?  But hell isn’t for the acts of your life; it’s for your refusal to give up free will.  Those in hell retain free will; those in heaven lose it.  Think about it: could one soul in hell choose to be either nice or hateful to another soul?  Of course they could: at least as nice as you could be around the horrible burning torment.  How about in heaven, could one soul choose to be either nice or hateful there?  The answer is no: nothing bad happens in heaven, therefore you can’t choose to perform an evil act in heaven; your ability to make your own choices has been stripped from you.

And as for Jesus, an all-powerful God has the power to forgive without human sacrifice.  An all-knowing God could devise a way for people to have free will but still make the right choices.  An all-good God wouldn’t eternally torture those who simply think their own thoughts.  But a vengeful, hateful, bloodthirsty, sadistic God would do all of the above.

This then is how I know that God is a human construct:  that I know, and most of the people I have ever met know, how to be more moral than God.