But god, being god, does what it is necessary to do; so if god demands a sacrifice, he could not have done otherwise. — Banno

But see, for example, Exodus 32:7-14.

God says he will destroy those who built the golden calf. Moses tells God that will make him look bad to the Egyptians if he does that and it will contradict God's covenant to provide the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the promised land.

"Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened."

Moses changed God's mind. Quite the lawyer. This seems to indicate God is a tempermental sort, fortunately willing to be talked down. As in, don't forget your promises and don't go looking like a crazy man. Such reasoning prevailed upon God.

Your reference to God lacking free will is based upon a logical analysis of what omnibenevolence requires, and inserts more modern concerns about perfection and freedom. it's not based upon a reading of the text about this particular God (Yahweh).

While I do know the Jewish view is that angels lack free will, my understanding is that human free will comes from the fact that humans were created in God's image (part of the Creation story). That is, freedom is part of a divine nature.

I don't know your analysis of God having free will holds, but it's certainly not an issue directly addressed in the text.

What I'm pointing out here also harkens back to what I said earlier. This is a text about the ancient Hebrews and their covenant with God and their eventual receiving of the promised land. Any event that interferes with that ends the book or at least greatly changes it's theme.

If Abraham kills Isaac, there will be no Jacob (aka "Israel"). The next passage would then be: " And so now God fucked up, having talked Abraham into killing what was supposed to be the forefather of the Jewish people. Ho hum, let's now talk about Ishmael, Abraham’s other bastard child Sarah cast off into the wilderness."

Since it's just a book of fiction, it's perfectly fine to conclude some parts are inconsistent, undeveloped, confusing, non-sense, or whatever. It's not like the world's most well written story.

For example, know why Moses never entered the promised land? The Jews questioned whether it was safe because their scouts saw Nephilim there and it pissed God off that they would question the soundness of his directive to enter.

The Nephilim are giants, half angel, half mortal. They were the reason for Noah's flood (the unholy offspring of gods fucking women) to kill them all off. As in wtf?

The statement "stealing is illegal" is true, verifiable by looking the law up to see see what it says.

But the writing of law is our societal idiosyncracy. Some cultures just have their elders speak their laws, and some may just know them from watching the behavior of others. Verification is achieved by just watching what people do.

In fact, societal laws are known by the vast number without ever having read a legal book. Even those who believe morality arises from its appearance in the Bible must admit they know morality despite never having read the Bible.

Substitute "law" for "morality" in all cases. It's no different in terms of how it's verifiable.

As @frank noted some time ago. The morality/legality distinction is not something universal. That's just our peculiar state/religion distinction we've created. The Torah, for example, provides the direction for everything. It all comes from God in that tradition.

How this links to the OP is the question. We can have morality, law, social norms, etiquette, manners and all such things without any belief in a higher power. Wolves and chickens have their complex social roles too.

The foundation of these norms is the metapysical question. Do we have them just to facilitate survival and therefore ingrained in our DNA? Or do they come from a higher source of wisdom directing us toward higher purpose? If you choose the latter, you have no way of asserting that than faith. The consequence of denying the higher power is to be a complex wolf or chicken though. That worldview is lesser i'd submit.

But having so expressed, I yet maintain that (non-Orwellian) "democracy" is, and can only be, at direct odds with tyranny and tyrannical governance. — javra

If you define democracy as non-ttyranical, then it must you're saying something about a term, not a political system.

Suppose you have a non-tyranical monarchy, would it be a democracy?

Not interpreting these stories ethically but instead interpreting them in manners that, for one example, reinforces authoritarian interests by claiming these authoritarian interpretations to in fact be the so called literal word of God then, in turn, reinforces, in this one example, tyrannical societal structures. Which stand in direct conflict with democratic ideals - that can also come about via certain interpretations of biblical stories. God being Love as one such motif that comes to mind - cliched though it may sound to many. — javra

Tyranny can exist under any political system, including democracy. Tocqueville discusses the tyranny of the majority. Plato's philosopher king supposedly had the wisdom to rule and was to be selected by qualification, not democratic vote, which more emulates how religious leaders are chosen. I'm not in favor of theocracy, and I'm fully supportive of the state's power being supreme, but our recent elections hardly yielded a Solomon.

prima facie, trussing up your son, placing him on a pile of wood and holding a knife to his throat is abuse. It takes a good lawyer to explain this away. Even our Hanover is not up to the task. But the various churches have been quite adept at hiring good lawyers in cases of child abuse. — Banno

Read this: https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/vayera/the-binding-of-isaac/

After reading it, summarily reject all it says and tell me how horrified you are at the binding of Isaac. That's the process we've followed going on a couple of years here.

The Torah was accepted as the holy source of righteousness well after there were already accepted rules of righteousness. That means no interpretation would change those already accepted norms. How that was done was through rabbinic interpretations and reliance upon Talmudic law, a law of equal priority to the Torah, supposedly handed down at the same time as the written word, high atop Mt. Sinai.

This is just to say if you want to know the law in Georgia regarding X, you can't just read the statutes, but you need to read the case law and Constitution as well, all together.

To those who think child murder is advocated by the Bible, point me in the direction of that church so I can see it. Fortunately all churches I know of have misinterpreted their own sacred texts in a way that saves children. Thank goodness for their ineptitude.,

Again, I get it, it’s a very heretical interpretation of events. Given by someone who does NOT know the bible like the back of his hand. The heretic that I am, though, I will fall back on the bible / torah having been written by imperfect men via their own less than perfectly objective and, hence, biased interpretations of events, such that that part about El intervening in Abraham’s killing of Issac could well be an untrue written account of the events which actually transpired. — javra

The Bible was written by men over an extended period of time and it was not originally written as a book of values and norms. How the Bible became holy is a whole different analysis. This is also why literalist interpretations without reference to other commentaries result in interpretations never accepted by any tradition.

Norms and values are learned and known from living in a society. It's common that very religious people have never read much of the Bible. It's also the case that most very law abiding people have never read legal texts. The written word is often reserved for experts who are called upon when questions about the rules arise (priests, rabbis, lawyers, etc.).

In other words, values and norms precede text and the text eventually relied upon for thhe norms might be ad hoc, meaning the text has been made holy, so now we interpret it to say what we knew to be right and wrong already. This is not disingenuous interpretation. It's just a manner to give authority to moral claims. The meaning of the bible will always be its use, so even if it says "murder your mama," but it's used to protect all mothers from harm, it means how it's used, a dictate about protection of mothers.

Problematic to this analysis is the 19th century Christian fundamentalist position that held that the meaning of the Bible is avaliable to anyone who can read. It's the belief in "perspicuity " that God made the text plain and understandable by all, in contrast to Catholic and certain other Protestant traditions.

We battle with this strawman here constantly, where biblical objectors assume this peculiar brand of Christianity is the prevailing (and really only) view and then they offer their two cents on the meaning of every biblical passage. It can't be stated often enough that if perspicuity is rejected (which I do), then a 4 corners literalist interpretation is irrelevant

Have faith and see what you're told to see. — praxis

The old trope that faith leads to murder. I'm pretty sure secular nations have gone to war as well. Ukraine looms larger than Myanmar.

Noah also trusts in God. — BitconnectCarlos

Noah builds the ark on trust alone, but you'd have thought others would have thought something was up when the polar bears and penguins and koala bears all converged in the middle east. They'd have thought maybe Noah was on to something. Literalism demands such questions, right?

the Book of Hebrews the writer says Abraham thought God would resurrect Isaac. The command was still to murder — Gregory

NT. Different tradition. The story has many interpretations among Christians even, but certainly compared to Jews.

And to add, just to respond to the critical interpretations of the Isaac story, reference to Jewish law, not because it's the final word, but because it's from the folks who rely most heavily upon the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible):

"Pikuach nefesh (Hebrew: פיקוח נפש), which means "saving a soul" or "saving a life," is the principle in Halakha (Jewish law) that the preservation of human life overrides virtually any other religious rule of Judaism."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikuach_nefesh

There are those amongst us who see faith, understood as submission, as a virtue. I am questioning that. I suspect you might agree, broadly speaking. — Banno

Yes, I do agree, and I see others are posting about the varying uses of the term "faith." And that's likely the source of much of the debate. I suppose this thread might have taken a more focused course if objections were phrased as "the sort of faith i disagree with is..." or "biblical passages interpreted as promoting obedience as a virtue are concerning because...," but that would have been less fun probably.

So the stories are indeed preposterous, as you say. The lesson one is supposed to take away is, as ↪praxis says, thoughtless obedience. This is not admirable. — Banno

It's been interpreted to mean that human sacrifice is forbidden. But you're the one looking at the art. See what you will. Speaking of art, I was at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art recently. What do you make of this?

Stop with the literalism, becasue the literal story is of an horrendous act. One needs sophistry to move beyond that. — Banno

The literal story is of a 37 year old man previously birthed from a 90 year old mother and of a father who bargained directly with God over the survival of Sodom and Gomorrah. And in the end, this grown man survived, having two children of his own, the youngest having birthed the entirety of the Jewish people.

But let's order this story for you: God promises Abraham and Sara a child and explicitly promises him this child's descendants will inherit land (Canaan) and will be a great nation. All this happens, including a child being born miraculously.

Would it not be foretold by these facts that Isaac could not have died, considering God made an explicit covenant with Abraham that Isaac was the future progenitor of Israel?

The story is literally preposterous, yet you want to imagine you were standing on the mountain side that day in shock among this crazy cast of characters in this absurdist reality with jaw on the floor watching a horrendous act?

Did the fox ever get fed or did he die of hunger for failure of Aesop to feed him? That's what we ought focus on.

No such possible account would be literalism. Quite obviously. But if any such account would be true, neither would the myths which developed from these accounts and which have taken on a life of their own be completely concocted out of thin air. Which isn't to say the same must apply to all myths out there. Anyway. Musings. — javra

Makes sense the tales would come from real events. The best horror movies exploit our deepest fears. The Nile floods enough that it brings fear that one day it will consume the city. Something like that.

i was recently told by an 80 year old that it gets better every year. :grimace: — frank

Probably true, but I heard it flatlines at 99.

I'd also point out that the faith referenced in the Hebrew Bible is not the modern faith being addressed here. The question then was of what faith did the Hebrews have in the power of God, as in to what degree could he be trusted for protection and safety. It was not as to whether he existed or whether he could perform miracles. They saw seas split and manna fall from heaven. They didn't need faith to know miracles happened. They had empirical evidence.

Isaac was the offspring of a 90 year old Sara who God told Abraham he'd provide to her. This is why I've never been impressed by Kierkegaard's claim Issac's binding was a great act of faith. Miracles were abundant back then and a God that could make good on impregnating a post-menopausal Sara (and, yes, the text mentions that) probably should be trusted with whatever request he might make.

I'd also point out that by some estimates, Isaac was in his mid-20s and Jewish sources put him at 37 at the time of the binding. https://versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/how-old-was-isaac-when-he-went-to-be-sacrificed

Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born, meaning the 37 year old son must have been compliant when his 137 year old pops tied him up. My money would have been on the 37 year old in that slug fest. This speaks to a level of consent, particularly considering the text doesn't describe a struggle.

Which is all to say, stop with the literalism. These stories were not meant for such analysis. And stop with the sympathy for the characters. They aren't real. It's like feeling sorry for the fox who couldn't get the grapes. The fox wasn't real. He talked for God sake. Isaac wasn't real. Nuclear powered Viagra couldn't have made that happen, and I'll save the description of what Sara's physical response might have looked like.

The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith. Moreover these are held up as admirable, to be emulated. — Banno

Biblical interpretation is a field unto itself, and your interpretation based upon what you believe it means from a casual reading isn't really helpful without citation to sources. What you've done is just chosen the least generous read for whatever reason.

For the many diverging views on the story: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac#:~:text=According%20to%20Irving%20Greenberg%20the,sacrifices%20were%20the%20norm%20worldwide.

Quite so. And it seems we agree that the belief is not of much import, it's the acts, what one does, that is to be counted and evaluated. — Banno

It's the act that counts when evaluating the objective value of your citizenship, but you spend most of your time with yourself, so it makes sense to evaluate your beliefs upon what subjective fulfillment it provides.

There are no circumstances where their faith must be "rationally" rejected.

It's this incapacity to reconsider that marks an act of faith. — Banno

We're in complete agreement that the choice not to treat the cancer is the wrong one.

We're also most likely in agreement that Mengele's brand of science is the wrong one. Both faith and science have things not to be proud of.

This is to say we reach agreement, faith or no faith, in the vast number of instances. I care about the consequences of my faith, and if I learn that death results from my decisions, I'd not do it again. I've not said I'd just pray for the best and damn the torpedoes.

Nor have you said the exploration of truth, damn the torpedoes, is something you're committed to. The difference would be easy if it were stark, but our day to decisions are likely very similar.

The substantial difference arises in attitude and worldview. And it's a choice. If you find that commitment to a scientific worldview offers you greater fulfilment than otherwise, have at it. What I dispute is that it's not a matter of choice. That you believe as you do because it's a matter of inherent constitution is not something I agree with.

suggesting that stories give things meaning. For example, if you ask a theologian why God created the Moon, they might say its purpose is to control Earth’s tides—assuming they are aware of the science. The scientific explanation itself has a narrative structure, offering meaning and coherence, regardless of any theological interpretation layered onto it. — praxis

I agree, but not as to the purpose of the moon. I do think a scientist would tell you a bird flies south in the winter in order to eat, breed, etc. That is, a purposeful teleological explanation is required to make sense of that. Just telling me how the bird reacts to cold and the chemical processes within the bird causing its wings to flap would be insufficient as an explanation.

Teleological explanations become necessary with biological organisms.

We explain this apparent purposeful behavior with evolution, suggesting that the urges toward particular purposes being caused by the death to those that rejected it.

But I suppose if you make evolution uncontradictory in the sense that all that exists is by definition most suitable for survival, then you'd have a complete explanation, with the ironic result being that disbelief in natural causes is more advantageous than strict adherence to scientific fact.

Funny result.

highly recommend Nahum Sarna's work on Genesis if you're interested in exploring a little further. It left me convinced that many of these Genesis stories are Mesopotamian in origin brought down to Israel and repurposed. — BitconnectCarlos

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out.

The historical analysis, the authorship, the evolution is all super interesting, as is how it became to be looked upon as a for source dictating norms.

It's devotional use is an entirely different matter.

And Abraham is originally from Ur in Mesopotamia according to the Bible. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, lech lecha, another parable.

Like I said, it could be entirely fiction, which doesn't make it lack truth. It's like saying Crime and Punishment is nonsense because none of that stuff happened.

To be clear, “a cosmic coincidence awaiting a return to dust” also sounds rather meaningless to me. — praxis

What it means is that my being here under a purely causative explanation will have occurred without purpose, but just the result of various reactions over time (a cosmic coincidence) that will eventually result in my death and return to my constituive parts (decayed orderly cellular composition back to dust).

Along these lines, this popped up in my news feed. It's directly on point actually. Not coincidentally, as there is no such thing:

https://www.psychofuturia.com/best-philosophy-for-life/

Explaining away" is not necessarily what science does, but what science is sometimes used to do. The wonder of a rainbow is not lessened, but increased by knowing the scientific accound of it. — Ludwig V

I get that awe is an emotion, God or no God. I also don't proselytize. If you've found meaning in science, then you don't need to be told you're missing out.

The rainbow has special theological significance, so maybe it's why it was chosen. Genesis 9:12-15.

"Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life."

That us, the nectar of life will never cause death.

What I mean is that the things that truly nurture, sustain, and bring joy or meaning to life (the "nectar of life") are inherently life-affirming and will not lead to harm or destruction. It's a belief that true sources of vitality, whether they be love, wisdom, or purpose, cannot lead to negativity or death in a spiritual or metaphorical sense. Instead, they nourish the soul, promote growth, and enrich our existence.

And you see light from the sun scattered by water droplets through a process called refraction. So did I, but I also try to see burning bushes unconsumed everywhere I look.

And no, there was no flood, and God did not speak. I'm just trying to stop the responders who will insist upon pointing out the obvious literal absurdities before they begin.

good mind believes in miracles
— Gregory

A better mind explains them. — Banno

It's not as if reason evades the faithful more then it does the faithless. I can provide the same scientific explanations you do. It's not like I suffer a brain fog clear minded scientists don't.

If you experience a fantastical event and use it to provide meaning to your life or to inspire you to be a better person, how is your mind lesser than the one who explains the event away as a statistical anomaly? Is the fidelity to science the measure of the better mind?

Honestly, a planed existence awaiting an eternal reward sounds rather meaningless to me. The story of the existence would be meaningful I’m sure. — praxis

Then don't choose to belive in eternal rewards. I've not dictated a theology.

Members of her small and tightly-knit religious group were present when the diabetic eight-year-old died, singing and praying to God to heal her" while withholding her insulin. In this case the consequence of their belief was the death of a child and 14 folk being convicted of manslaughter. — Banno

All of which could have been avoided had their belief been evaluated for its consequences.

I'm not sure how the above occurs under my description of faith.

But yes, looking for the cure for diabetes through prayer won't work, nor will looking for the meaning of life in the laboratory work.

I'm arguing a pragmatism. You're not going to find where it's not pragmatic.

Nicely done. Can you provide an example? — Tom Storm

Sure. I believe in God because to not leaves me with a belief that we have no higher purpose for being here, that this conversation is just the crazy end result of billions of pool balls bouncing off each other.

The consequence of my belief is meaning and purpose, I'm not just a cosmic coincidence awaiting a return to dust.

The issue for me isn't whether you choose faith or science, so long as you know it's a choice.

Faith is not subjecting a belief to doubt despite the facts. — Banno

Faith is subjecting a belief to its consequences.

Pragmatism versus idealism.

I had a fascinating response where I was going to argue the arbitrary significance of pi. It was going to be based upon a pi based numeric system, where I would heroically show that decimal based systems would then fall to the same irrationality as pi once we standardized the pi system.

But I found out other folks much smarter than me have shown pi based numeric systems don't work like that. https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1320248/what-would-a-base-pi-number-system-loosystem.

But it occupied my mind through a boring conference, so there's that.

Whether or not the world is deterministic is a matter of metaphysics, not a matter of fact. I'm not sure I can convince anyone of that. — T Clark

If the world is deterministic, you may or may not convince someone of that. It just depends upon whether they were determined to be convinced.

Determinism is stupid. If you disagree, that's just the way it has to be.

Most of the time, there is not the little voice of my consciousness talking to me and telling me what to do. — T Clark

Sounds Freudian, describing a mediated superego and id by your ego.

If you are constantly being told what to do by your conscious self, you'd have an over active superego. If you are pure urge, you'd be all id.

That's just to say you're normal. Ordinary really. Beige.

More or less, you're not an impoverished mentality. Thus you don't feel attacked. That doesn't mean, that masculinity isn't reprimanded currently. Just because it's not on your radar doesn't mean it's not occurring. — DifferentiatingEgg

I'm generally opposed to victim searching, where folks go out and try to convince others they are oppressed or downtrodden. That's not to say some don't need a reality check, but generally it's hard to buy into the idea that I am attacked, but just don't know it.

Anyway, I don't question that there are those fully engaged in an attack against all that is manliness. My point was that it will fail by ontological force. Masculinity isn't an idea that emerged in the 1950s and now it's at the end of its run. Masculinity, feminitity, heterosexuality, homosexuality, etc are states of being and there will be manly men regardless of how condemned it is. And it's not like it's a small percentage of folks who fall into traditional male roles. It's probably around 40%+ of the billions on the planet.

I feel like not only am I going to be alright, but I'm on the winning end of whatever political battle is being waged.

However, I think the analyses so far provided are usually too one sided, not only in the threads here, but also in general. The tacit assumption that is usually made, is that it is a reaction of a powerful group, men, that would like to solidify its privileges and uses the same means of oppression that it usually uses to oppress women and other minorities. — Tobias

The reason that I have an objection to masculinity being under attack (to the extent it is) is because I have masculine traits. It's not that I decided to be masculine or that I found it a good way to assert power. It's just the way I am. I don't buy into the notion that had society given me dolls, then I'd have been maternal. Maybe it would have changed me some, but probably I'd have used them as flying objects and subjects of war games and what not.

My son when little liked fire trucks, dump trucks, and videos about great big machines. Had he wanted to play tea, I'd have played tea with the kid. Did I subconsciously push him toward trucks? I never really wanted him to be a heavy equipment operator, so I can't see why I'd have done that. But maybe I'm so in love with manliness I don't even know it and I pushed that on to my kid. I guess that's the argument.

To the notion that society is evolving toward the feminine, that is a political movement, not a fundamental change in behavior. Men and women are different (thankfully), and so you can try to forge men into women and women into men, but they will never fit in that square. And the same holds true for men that favor femininity and women who favor masculinity. Try as you might, they will remain who they are. The push-back is not because I loved the good old days when men were men and women were women. It's just I don't fully take seriously the suggestion they still aren't but with only the uncommon exception.

I generaly don't agree either that the day of the masculine man has come and gone. I have found myself quite in demand, not that others less masculine or that women are not also in demand, but I don't walk about as if a dinasaur in a changed world. We all have our roles, but not all is choice and not all is societal manipulation.

I had a dream once where I exited this universe. I was in this blackness — frank

Uni means one, which means it's all there is. You therefore couldn't be outside the universe. You were just outside, like being on the sidewalk out front of Taco Bell, wanting to get in, but at the same time wanting to chill outside.

Anyway, the point is that there's nothing clear about what's really going on. We have no clue. What drives you to believe this or that about determinism is emotion, not logic. — frank

So there's a few reasons you might say this: (1) you're the Cartesian devil, (2) you're the Kant's noumena, or (3) you hold that determinism robs us if the ability to judge facts. I'm none of those. I'm one of the faithful, so I do know, but you're unconvinced because you're not. Such is the value of faith.

And really you too have faith, but you just deny it but act as if you do for all practical purposes. Nothing is clear you say, your windshield smudged and foggy in the pitch of night, yet you amazingly navigate. You see clearly, but you're sure you don't, but can't explain how you keep getting home unscathed.

Of course you have free will. How could anything make sense without it?

It doesn't make sense to me that the feeling of intention and agency you are referring to is the free will. — T Clark

This comment just speaks to your privilege. You didn't grow up in a cage, and so what feels like the sunshine of freedom to me just feels like a normal Tuesday for you.

My people were enslaved for 400 years only to be stuck another 40 years in the hot desert. So I know the bitterness of freedomlessness.

But I digress.

Let me start afresh, de novo if you will. We live our lives partially on autopilot, halfway paying attention to much of anything. It's not until we see the sign welcoming us into Mississippi that we realize that home from Birmingham was right, not left.

So, sure, you can overlook the feeling of freedom just like you can brain fart your way through anything, but if we can't make sense of the notion of free will logically, yet blokes say certain things be free, what be they referencing other than a feeling?

And this is just my odd way of saying, "to be free is to feel free. " Fred sleeps in his crate, door closed or open, just as free either way.

That last sentence actually was interesting despite the rest of the post, designed just to be quirkier than you.

An interesting article, but I don't think it really says anything about whether or not there is free will. Why is it significant that "the feeling of volition is simply a sensation that precedes certain activity, but not that it has special ontological status," in this context? — T Clark

It's really confusing, right?

Here's the way I look at it. When I raise my hand, it can be the result of a variety of things:

1. I internally desire to raise my hand, so I raise my hand.
2. I have no desire one way or the other, but someone raises my hand for me.
3. I have a spasm and my hand flies upward.
4. Someone shocks my brain and me hand goes upward (I meant to say "me" here so I could sound like Oliver Twist).

I think we can say that 1 is the result of free will. We can also clearly say that 2 and 3 are not the result of free will.

Note that 1 and 3 are similar in that they are entirely the result of internal stimulation, but they are different in that 1 is a free will event and 3 is not.

Note that 2 is clearly not a free will event, and it's externally caused.

#4 is our interesting case and the subject of the article I cited (and which got a rave review by you, calling it "interesting"). #4 straddles the fence in being external and internal. It's external because some external fucker is sticking shit inside my brain, but it's internal in the sense that it directly stimulates as if it were an adjacent neuron.

What also makes it interesting is that the subject (the guy with electrodes coming out his noggin) self reports that he raised his hand on his own volition. That is, he insists he had free will, yet I'm sitting here staring at a dominatrix mashing a button and making him like a marionette.

What then is free will? The argument here is that it's just a feeling one has, much like the feeling one has of a gentle breeze up one's kilt. Free will, under this discussion (which I'm trying to pepper with ridiculous comments to keep you interested) is not a divine spark, a something from nothing, or a sudden spontaneous force. It's just a feeling fuck heads have when they do something. If it feel free, it is free. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no ontological, metaphysical difference.

When someone steals your mama's purse, the question of whether it was stolen freely then isn't whether it came from an uncaused event or even an entirely internal event. The question would be whether one would have expected the bastard to have had that feeling of freedom, much like a draft up the bawsack.

But there's more to be said about this. I've just run out of words. I don't actually buy into this because I believe in Cartesian freedom, a mind seperate from a body, a divine spark, and the holiness and sacredness of humanity. That will always be my belief. I feel it like an unmistakable gentle breeze. I just like to talk to the godless and hear what they have to say. It's important to listen to everyone so you can say you did it right before you go back to believing what you always did.

This view of decision is inimicably Christian. The concept of will must be inherently unconstrained so that the horrible crap in the world can be our fault. That's what it's for. Free will gives humanity legislative authority over our own evils. — fdrake

Christianity isn't a monolithic belief system, so to argue a Catholic theologian holds consistently with a Kantian concept of freedom being necessary for moral responsibility doesn't make it Christian.

The freedom of the will position I've described is consistent with Judaic beliefs and Greek views pre-existing Christianity.

For a general overview of theological position on free will: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_theology

There are Christian views on predestination of course as well, meaning Roman Catholic views do not define Christianity. Consider too that Christianity comes with a whole host of other theological baggage when it comes to moral responsibility. My eternal reward will not come from just a benevolent use of my free will, but it will require acceptance of Jesus as the messiah.

All activities are carried out by the three modes of material nature. But in ignorance, the soul, deluded by false identification with the body, thinks of itself as the doer. — Bhagavad Gita 3.27

I'm open up learning Hinduism, but my running down the rabbit hole trying to understand this didn't lead me to the conclusion that Hindus universally argue we lack free will or that one's karmic rewards aren't tied to freely chosen decisions. From the Wiki article, it's apparent there are differing views within Hinduisn on this issue.

Your quote I take to mean that only through transcending your physical being can you understand the soul as entirely without physical ability, which is the way to ultimately cease the birth/rebirth process. Sacred literature is often interpreted in highly contextualized ways, and it's hard to conclude much from a literal, four corners interpretation of a quote.

We could consume 100s of pages of debate on what Genesis 1:1 means for example.

As this is a foreign theology to me, it's hard to follow, as are many theologies, because they are not entirely rational. That is to say, I'm not convinced with what I've come across that freedom divorced from causation is not something you find within. Hinduism, and it's certainly something that pre-existed Christianity.