From: davidch@ZIMMER.CSUFRESNO.EDU (David Choweller)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Why is free will so necessary?
Date: 11 Apr 92 21:48:04 GMT

In article <4575@unccvax.uncc.edu> ta00est@unccvax.uncc.edu (elizabeth s tallant) writes:
|In article <9204032324.AA12881@CSUFresno.EDU>, davidch@ZIMMER.CSUFRESNO.EDU (David Choweller) writes:
|> In article <rh0deINN2vf@matt.ksu.ksu.edu> parsons@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Scott Parish) writes:
|> SP>GBC_Computer_Lab@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU writes:
|> SP>DC someone writes:
|> SP>>dc>	But why is Free Will so 
|> SP>>dc> important?  Why is it so important that it justifies all the Evil,
|> SP>>dc> natural and moral, in the world?
|> SP>
|> SP>Some anonymous person follows with:
|> SP>>  To appreciate Light, the *potential* for Darkness must exist.
|> SP>>Likewise for Hot and Cold, Strength and Weakness, and other such
|> SP>>concepts.  This is the concept of Free Will.  In order for a person to
|> SP>>do good, the potential for doing bad must exist.  You could not even
|> SP>>speak of "Good" and "Evil" if this potential did not exist!
|
|
|I suppose that there may be several reasons why a good God allows bad things
|to happen.  Yet, there is one that I find very easy to relate to, and
|I find it Scripturally sound.
|
|The Scripture talks about gold, and it says that in order for gold to
|be purified (get the impurities out, become shiny and new ) that the
|gold must be burned.  When it's burned, all those impurities burn out,
|but the gold stays, and it becomes beautiful.

But gold cannot feel anything; it's not sentient.  When it burns it isn't
put through torture. 

|
|Likewise, the Scripture says that God will put us through the fire to
|refine us, just like gold.  This precious metal is a good analogy,
|because it's probably the most precious of metals, and to God, we
|are even more precious than gold.
|

Then being precious to God is a liability, in my view.  I don't want
to be precious, thank you.  I'll just be myself, and skip the hellfire.

|God is making us into something.  Instead of  "This is how
|so-in-so will be." and then in .0001 seconds - blip - here's so-in-so,
|God is using a processing method on us. This is how he makes us into
|the people that we should be.  He's still working on us, still perfecting

It isn't clear that it is logically neccessary for an omnipotent God
to use a "processing method" on us to make us into what we "should"
be.  Why not create us like we "should" be.  Why punish us for the
fact that God didn't create us as we "should" be?

|us.  In order to be perfected, we must "go through the fire" - we must
|endure hardships and we must experience the effects of evil.  This is
|how we become the perfected people God wants.  If you think about all

You say that "to be perfected" we *must* endure hardships and experience
the effects of evil.  I don't see why we *must*.  An omnipotent God could
have created us perfect.  Do you see my point?  If indeed there is a
rule that we *must* endure hardships, who made this rule?  Didn't God
make the rule?  Why doesn't he rescind it?

|the good things that have come out of hardship - renewed neighborliness
|in times of trouble, "everyone pulling together", "necessity is the mother
|of invention", etc., you see that all those troubles are being used in
|a plan of overall good, even though we may not see how at the time.

It isn't clear what this overall good is, or whether it is logically neccessary
for us to go through hardship to achieve it.  Furthermore, it isn't apparent
that this good makes up for the suffering we are put through.

|
|In Christ,
|
|Elizabeth
--
                                                 davidch@zimmer.CSUFresno.EDU
"Unlike most of you, I am not a nut."
                -- Homer in _Homer's_Odyssey_