A theological question about Heaven and Hell

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

This is why if Christianity were actually real, Satan would be the good guy while God is the most unwiped anus of them all.

But Satan invented evil and is therefore responsible for all the evil that happens in the world.

Not according to the bible.

Isaiah 45:7 King James Version (KJV)
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things

Behold, this evil is of the Lord. 2 Kings 6:33

What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? Job 2:10

Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? Lamentations 3:38

Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? Amos 3:6

Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him. Job 42:11

Your bullshit Catholic Douay-Rheims interpretation notwithstanding.

[Jacob Harrison]

It is true that omniscient means knowing everything, however the future of what choice someone makes is not knowable and doesn’t count as part of everything because it didn’t happen yet.

No, not how it works. If he doesn't know a thing, any thing at all, he's not actually omniscient. Stop trying to bullshit your way out of it, you're not fooling anyone.

From the wikipedia

“Other means of reconciling God's omniscience with human free will have been proposed. Some have attempted to redefine or reconceptualize free will:

God can know in advance what I will do, because free will is to be understood only as freedom from coercion, and anything further is an illusion. This is the move made by compatibilistic philosophies.
The sovereignty (autonomy) of God, existing within a free agent, provides strong inner compulsions toward a course of action (calling), and the power of choice (election). The actions of a human are thus determined by a human acting on relatively strong or weak urges (both from God and the environment around them) and their own relative power to choose.[4]
A proposition first offered by Boethius[5] and later by Thomas Aquinas[note 2] and C. S. Lewis, suggests that God's perception of time is different, and that this is relevant to our understanding of our own free will. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that God is actually outside time and therefore does not "foresee" events, but rather simply observes them all at once. He explains:

But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today". All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday, He simply sees you doing them: because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way—because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.[6]”

[Jacob Harrison]

This is why if Christianity were actually real, Satan would be the good guy while God is the most unwiped anus of them all.

But Satan invented evil and is therefore responsible for all the evil that happens in the world.

Not according to the bible.

Isaiah 45:7 King James Version (KJV)
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things

Behold, this evil is of the Lord. 2 Kings 6:33

What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? Job 2:10

Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? Lamentations 3:38

Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? Amos 3:6

Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him. Job 42:11

Your bullshit Catholic Douay-Rheims interpretation notwithstanding.

The evils of afflictions and punishments clearly refers to those things. The Douay-Rheims interpretation withstanding.

[Art Vandelay]

Alright, let's see what you've got.

God can know in advance what I will do, because free will is to be understood only as freedom from coercion, and anything further is an illusion. This is the move made by compatibilistic philosophies.

Basically, God is indeed omniscient and free will is non-existent. Especially so when you consider God is all powerful and the creator of everything. In other words, pretty much exactly what I've been saying from the start.

The sovereignty (autonomy) of God, existing within a free agent, provides strong inner compulsions toward a course of action (calling), and the power of choice (election). The actions of a human are thus determined by a human acting on relatively strong or weak urges (both from God and the environment around them) and their own relative power to choose.[4]

Once again, falls apart when you remember that God is omnipotent, omniscient and the creator of everything. Humans only have as much "power of choice" as God gave them, and the exact choices were known from the moment of creation. Once again, no actual free will.

A proposition first offered by Boethius[5] and later by Thomas Aquinas[note 2] and C. S. Lewis, suggests that God's perception of time is different, and that this is relevant to our understanding of our own free will. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that God is actually outside time and therefore does not "foresee" events, but rather simply observes them all at once. He explains:

But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today". All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday, He simply sees you doing them: because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way—because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.[6]”

Meaning the future is just as set in stone as the past, which kind of does the opposite of prove that free will and omniscience are compatible.

Never mind reality, Christians can't even reconcile their own lore with itself. To quote one of the truly greatest deities of all time, "that would be funny, if it weren't so sad".

[Askold]

We have had this debate before and I still don't think that someone or something knowing everything that is going happen removes free will.

I think the example I used was that if I use a time machine or spell or whatever to look at what you have for breakfast tomorrow and then come back, does it really matter? As long as I myself won't do anything that would change the future, the future will play out the way I saw it, but this does not mean that you won't make the choices out of your free will.

It does mean that I have knowledge of how things will work out unless I change anything before it happens and that gives me the power to attempt to change the future by doing something that wasn't in the original timeline.

This means that God being omniscient doesn't (at least in my understanding) remove free will from anyone but does mean God would have the necessary information to prevent tragedies and wrongdoings. (but that would interfere with free will which humans were promised to have depending on the methods used.)

[Art Vandelay]

Personally, I would argue that such a scenario would prove that free will doesn't exist. Our choices are 100% predictable, if not outright predetermined, which is functionally the same. Which in my view makes perfect sense, since I would also argue that basic neurology already disproves free will. Our decision making is bog standard information processing, exactly the same principle as a computer, just with neurons instead of transistors. It's unfathomably complex, both in terms of the inputs and outputs as well as how they're processed, but no less governed by simple causality as literally anything else that exists. Unintuitive as it may seem, we're not exercising free will any more in our choices than a rock is choosing to roll down hill.

But that's a bit of a semi-related tangent at best. In the case of an all knowing and all powerful creator who designed humans and the rest of the universe down to every last insignificant detail, it's absolutely not possible. Everything that has happened and will ever happen was set in stone from the very beginning by design. You're no more capable of choosing something God didn't intend than rain is capable of falling up.

[Jacob Harrison]

Askold is right, traveling to the future and seeing what decisions are made, does not have an affect on the decisions made, because they get observed after a decision is made. You can travel into the future and see someone having donuts for breakfast, or you can see someone having pancakes. It does not affect that person’s decision whether to have donuts or pancakes.

[Art Vandelay]

I'm quite sure I addressed everything you said in my reply to Askold.

[Jacob Harrison]

I'm quite sure I addressed everything you said in my reply to Askold.

And I explained how seeing what that person eats for breakfast in the future does not mean that it is predetermined because you see what that person choses to eat.

[Art Vandelay]

You did not explain anything, you just repeated what Askold said.

[Jacob Harrison]

You did not explain anything, you just repeated what Askold said.

I was replying to your reply, saying that such a scenario does not disprove free will and explaining why.

[Art Vandelay]

You made exactly the same argument as Askold. Just because you worded it slightly differently doesn't mean you've actually added anything to it.

[Jacob Harrison]

You made exactly the same argument as Askold. Just because you worded it slightly differently doesn't mean you've actually added anything to it.

I added the additional point that seeing someone eating breakfast in the future has no affect on that person making that decision. I don’t think Askold mentioned that.

[Askold]

Personally, I would argue that such a scenario would prove that free will doesn't exist. Our choices are 100% predictable, if not outright predetermined, which is functionally the same.

How does that work? Just because the result is known in advance by a separate entity that doesn't mean that the entity that is the subject in this scenario isn't making the choices out of their free will. They have their own motivations and aspirations. And this is the philosophical difference that we have. You argue that knowing the next step that a person does is the same as that person not having a choice to do anything else. I argue that the fundamental difference is that the person does that choice out of their free will because nothing is forcing them to make that choice. They could have done something different and the only thing changing in the scenario is that the omnipresent observer would have seen them doing that other thing.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

This is why if Christianity were actually real, Satan would be the good guy while God is the most unwiped anus of them all.

But Satan invented evil and is therefore responsible for all the evil that happens in the world.

Not according to the bible.

Isaiah 45:7 King James Version (KJV)
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things

Behold, this evil is of the Lord. 2 Kings 6:33

What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? Job 2:10

Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? Lamentations 3:38

Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? Amos 3:6

Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him. Job 42:11

Your bullshit Catholic Douay-Rheims interpretation notwithstanding.

The evils of afflictions and punishments clearly refers to those things. The Douay-Rheims interpretation withstanding.

Special pleading bollocks. Also your habit of throwing in nonexistent psuedolegal clauses and loopholes doesn't alter the fact that they weren't there in the original text. It only shows that the Catholics, among others, intuitively understand that the bible is unethical so they're forced to make up reasons to make it reasonable from whole cloth because they sure as shit know they won't find the justification for their apologetics in the bible!