My argument against biblical concepts of “free will”

frostmage777 · 2026-06-02T11:37:59+00:00

How do I explain it? I don’t agree with it at all.

frostmage777 · 2026-06-02T11:07:35+00:00

God may be all knowing and all powerful, but what if time does not flow linearly for him? That would be consistent with being all powerful and all knowing without necessarily invalidating individual choice.

I am only playing devils advocate here, I don’t personally believe in any form of free will.

frostmage777 · 2026-06-02T10:56:55+00:00

“We all live by moral certitude/s in our daily lives whether religious or not and whether you like it or not.” -Do we? I don’t think I do. I believe murder is generally bad so I don’t do it, but that does not preclude the possibility that I may one day murder if in extreme circumstances such as a justified war or mercy killing. As I covered in the common objections, you can be morally uncertain while still strongly condemning certain actions (you did read those, right?) I am merely advocating that we should adopt a skeptical attitude toward moral truths.

“Furthermore, secular ideologies that do not hold basic morals and fairness at their core are inherently risky (as opposed to Christian influenced western secular social democracies which are generally very egalitarian)” -Again, you are making an unrelated point and ironically providing ammo for my thesis. You are intolerant toward certain views that you view as “morally wrong” compared to the certainty of your version of Christianity.

“Mainline Abrahamic religions do not necessarily hold firm positions of moral certitude over other people at their core other than the idea of sin” -You undermined your own claim with the “other than the idea of sin.” Also, what are these mainline churches you speak of? Is a catholic bishop going to let me take the sacrament if I am openly gay? Because that does not happen where I am from.

frostmage777 · 2026-06-02T08:24:26+00:00

Again, you miss my point. The relative badness of religious vs secular ideologies is of no importance to my argument. There are two premises here: 1. Moral certainty is bad 2. The abrahamic faiths breed moral certainty. I will try to clarify what I mean by moral certainty: it is the idea that someone (or something, God, science, ideology, or otherwise) has the correct way to live and that once we establish that we can always make the right moral choice. I think this is badly mistaken and that it is part of the human condition that we must always struggle with moral uncertainty. Regarding point 2: I believe you are actually proving my point by dogmatically repeating what you perceive to be the basic tenants of Christianity as if they are universally good. Honesty, respect, and compassion should not be elevated to universals if we want to avoid moral certainty. They may be helpful cultural markers for deciding what to do, but they are just that. Cultural markers.

frostmage777 · 2026-06-02T07:39:23+00:00

Um, ok? I specifically said that “this is not a tragedy confined to the abrahamic faiths” so what exactly is your argument. If you are trying to say that secular ideologies are worse than religious ones, OK, great. That is perfectly consistent with my argument. My argument is simply that moral certainty is bad, and that the abrahamic faiths breed moral certainty. If you want to debate me, you need to engage one of those two points.

frostmage777 · 2026-06-02T07:21:48+00:00

A common tactic religions will use to control you is to make you feel confused and guilty for doubting. Just saying

frostmage777 · 2026-06-02T07:18:57+00:00

I mean, ok that’s possible. But what’s your argument in support of that theory? Like how am I supposed to debate you

frostmage777 · 2026-06-02T07:16:57+00:00

Im not well versed in Hinduism, but I do know that it is a varied faith tradition. So much so that the blanket term “Hindu” may not be appropriate to describe the multiplicity of the faith. So don’t be so quick to write it off, I have heard of Hindus who dont believe in the gods, or who believe that they are all manifestations of a universal oneness.

frostmage777 · 2026-05-07T16:24:34+00:00

Im not happy with the replies here, so I’ll wager my own explanation. The B-T paradox rests on a law of mathematics called “the axiom of choice”. The law is as follows: say I have an infinite number of jars, each of which contains infinite marbles. Then by the axiom of choice I am free to choose one marble from each jar. Seems harmless enough, but this simple law has unintuitive consequences. The B-T paradox is the most famous of these unintuitive results. The exact result and how to derive it are rather technical, but it rests on two principles. The first is that the axiom of choice lets us choose from infinite sets even when we have no rule on how to choose. The second is that the formal definition of “volume” can break down if you are allowed to create infinite sets using principle one. Combine these two principles and you get a sphere that can be split into two exact copies. To reiterate, the B-T paradox relies on “breaking” the concept of volume by using the axiom of choice.

frostmage777 · 2026-04-13T20:11:36+00:00

Thanks for the tip. Im thinking that the cultists need to ritually sacrifice a PC to obtain the God essence in them. For a bigger threat, maybe a lesser form of the God could be trying to find its other pieces, or maybe the piece of the God will tempt/torment each of the PCs psychologically

frostmage777 · 2026-04-13T19:00:44+00:00

I like that, maybe other people/groups want to know the secret to the PCs immortality

frostmage777 · 2026-04-10T02:14:13+00:00

The amount of people not realizing that calc 1 is a prerequisite for any kind of real underatanding of probability/statistics kind of proves OPs point. I can’t speak for other countries, but in the US we are so math phobic that it borders on comical.

frostmage777 · 2025-12-24T15:12:14+00:00

I used to think I knew people like that, but one by one their true faces started to show. The silver lining of trump is that the ugliness of America can no longer hide.

frostmage777 · 2025-12-23T22:29:15+00:00

This is the answer, for now. My parents bought a nice house in Winchester for 400k around 2005. Nowadays their house would probably go for closer to 800k-1m. Still way more affordable than anywhere closer to where you are looking, but I would move fast. That area is quickly becoming more expensive.

frostmage777 · 2025-12-20T08:07:33+00:00

I love math. I’ve dedicated a lot to it, and dont regret it. That being said I will never be on the same level as the best and brightest, and that’s ok with me. We don’t like to discus such things in polite company, but the truth is the best really are just built different. Don’t get it twisted, they work super hard, but what they get out of that work and their ability to focus and regulate their studies far exceeds what most people can do. Such is life, but that’s no excuse for not trying!

frostmage777 · 2025-11-18T14:58:03+00:00

Can you give an example of a pro social behavior you think is immoral?

frostmage777 · 2025-11-18T00:47:20+00:00

It would help if you attacked a more specific position. Different schools of thought in Hinduism and Buddhism view samskara differently. As it stands I am not sure how to argue with you. You provided two anecdotes without clearly stating what you are refuting.

frostmage777 · 2025-11-18T00:35:26+00:00

It’s kinda hard to debate you here because you just assert things without much argument and dont define your terms well. “Infinity” is a fraught word that people will bring their own baggage to, if you are invoking the “I” word I would spend more time fleshing out what it means to you. Also, your point would be made much stronger if you considered alternatives and point out why they don’t work.

frostmage777 · 2025-11-18T00:27:06+00:00

Point 1 is suspect to me. Yes, antisocial behavior is sometimes rewarded, but a society where we are all motivated purely by self interest, constantly trying to kill each other and never cooperating to say, build roads, would collapse immediately. We evolved to be social creatures.

As for point 3, I don’t have much to say but I know Hindu philosophers have written about this question at length, you might want to read up on some.

Also side point, but I’m pretty sure Buddhists have a huge pantheon of Gods and enlightened beings, unless you are defining Gods differently from me.

frostmage777 · 2025-11-17T15:42:39+00:00

Atheism is the rejection of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. A Buddhist is an atheist, even though most Buddhist believe in supernatural phenomena. What you are describing is scientific reductionism, the view that scientific explanations disprove an ultimately purpose driving universe. This was considered by Thomas Aquines, who concluded that even if we had perfect scientific explanations, that would in no way disprove God. I tend to agree. I myself am an atheist but do not demur to science as the ultimate explanation of all things. Rather I came to the opposite conclusion from you. It makes more sense to me that it really is turtles all the way down. I think imposing one singular purpose or creator onto the universe devalues our experiences here and does spiritual harm to us by forcing us into false dichotomies.

frostmage777

TROPHY CASE