A Plan and a Prayer

I saw this Philosoraptor picture on Facebook the other day and smiled because he's is spot on, as usual.

"If God has a plan for everybody, then why do people pray for change?"

I hear this bandied about often among my heathen friends, usually with a perplexed expression. We struggle to understand how people can muddle through life with so much cognitive dissonance.

But if you're one of the True Believers of the Abrahamic faiths, you probably believe that God has a hand in your life to some degree, and you probably still pray for assistance of some sort. Do you see the irony?

This verse is quoted often:

Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. (NIV)

But what is it saying? That God lets little sparrows die, and that he knows about it and still lets them get eaten, get sick, freeze to death, starve, get diseased, and does nothing? If he lets sparrows suffer and have hard lives, what do you think he does for his favored creation? (hint: read your bible and find out! It's not pretty!)

I told you of the little boy I babysat for, when I was in my teens. He was born with a terrible defect in his heart. Did God let that defect happen? Did God have that child be born into a life of years of pain and intense suffering? Why would he do that? (By the way, humans and modern medicine were what saved him and let him live at all.)

And religious people, stop right there. Save your apologetics for yourself. I am not interested in your twisting of reality, your logical fallacies, your cognitive dissonance. You worship a deity who lets innocent children be born and suffer their whole lives and you make excuses for that monster.

I've never ever heard an argument that can fully explain the god of the bible in terms that are completely loving and caring. If you do, then you are cherry-picking out only a tiny fraction of the content of your holy book. You are a cafeteria christian, and therefore I am not interested in arguing with you either.

So God has a plan for all of us, right? In fact, in Romans, it says we are predestined. Well, more specifically God predestines those who will follow him. This chapter also has a bit about prayer which is relevant to us today, so here is the whole section:

Do We Choose To Not Believe?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote Spot On!, which was about Alise Wright's list of assumptions for Christians not to make about Atheists. I thought they were excellent.

There was one little thing that she said though, that has spurred a follow up post on her own blog, about Free Will and Faith. She said,

Most atheists who have “deconverted” from a religious background have studied it and other religions thoroughly before choosing not to believe.

Mikespeir, in the comments, called attention to this:

If I have any reservations at all about this, it’s that “choosing not to believe” hung off the end there. I never chose not to believe. Once I realized I didn’t believe anymore I chose not to keep practicing the Christian religion. That was the choice involved.

I agree with Mike. I never chose not to believe.

Of course, I agree with Alise that we seem to have some say in our actions. We choose to read certain books/information (the bible¹ and/or Dawkins), attend different events (either church or TAM²), and we choose the people we associate with.

I have to throw in here, that this assumes that we have free will. I have learned in the past year that we most likely don't. We are determined by a myriad of previous factors. But I won't get into that here. 

Determinism and Free Will 2a of 4

Recently, I wrote about Determinism and Free Will. It was basically an introduction and consisted of a transcript of the Reasonable Doubts guys. Well, this is the first half of their second episode on the subject. I decided to break it up into two posts because, as you can see, it's incredibly long. And it was taking me forever to transcribe it.

So in this part, the guys are talking about determinism again, especially in regards to how to deal with people who break the law or do something wrong. This is a very touchy subject but the guys explain it well, especially when they talk about parenting.

Here you go:

1:56 Dave (D): So in our previous episode, Free Willy vs the Determinator part 1, we talked some about determinism and free will, but we didn't get to the moral implications associated with a hardcore determinist world view like the three of us seem to share. And not all naturalists do.

Jeremy (J): No, we need to acknowledge that there is diversity amongst naturalists. I will say I don't feel bad going further in saying, though, I think they're wrong. I think they're demonstrably wrong. I think accepting determinism, unfortunately or not, is necessitated by a consistently naturalistic world view. But there are people who disagree.

D: But it's a very hard thing to do, and it took me a very long time to just decide that, "yes, in fact I'm going to follow the evidence", because you're giving up a lot of things, apparently.

J: You're giving up things you never had.

D: Well, yeah. But things that I thought I had.

Determinism and Free Will 1 of 4

Let's talk about Free Will versus Determinism. I first learned about this philosophical and practical debate while listening to the Reasonable Doubts podcast, which I've recommended to you in the past. They have done four episodes, plus one bonus interview with a christian apologist radio show that is too painful to sit through, on this topic. It is so interesting and important that I am going to transcribe the relevant sections of all four episodes for you. (I don't transcribe the other topics of the episode, and skip half thoughts, etc. I recommend listening to them in full)

They all build on each other. The first episode (below) was the hardest for me to grasp. I had never heard of Determinism before, and had always assumed we have free will. So if you're new to it, it seems harsh and unnatural. But stick with it. The following 3 episodes clear up a lot of the questions raised in this one. Unfortunately it takes quite some time to type them out so try to be patient with me.

Reasonable Doubts, Episode 29: Free Willy vs The Determinator

Starts at 21:16

Definition of Free Will (24:30): This is the definition that christian apologist and philosopher J.P. Moreland would take: He calls it Libertarian Agency. You are a free agent. Your actions do not have prior causes. You are the unmoved mover if you have free will. You choose to do something. You could have chosen otherwise. Not only can you initiate actions, you can also stop actions, or choose not to act. Basically we're all little gods, in a way.

26:25 Determinism in a nutshell is the opposite of that. There are external and internal forces that influence your behavior. Commonly people think of determinism as you couldn't have done otherwise. You're standing there with the gun pointed at somebody and you're forced to pull the trigger. But really it means simply that there are reasons for your behavior, forces and factors at play, external and internal prior causes. When you are making choices those choices are not uncaused. There is a chain of causes. Your choice is the effect of prior causes.

Ask A Christian

So, why do I need to accept Jesus?

"Because we are sinful."

Well, why are we sinful?

"Because God gave us free will and we chose evil."

But, if free will makes this life sinful and imperfect, and heaven is perfect and without sin, does that mean there's no free will in heaven?

**crickets**

Or does that mean somehow in heaven free will and perfection co-exist? And if so, why didn't he just give us that state on earth to begin with? Since he loves us so much?

**more crickets***

Have a nice day.

(Thanks to my friend Gary for sharing this from me which came from someone else online)