Free Will, Hell, and God's Benevolence?

[Crescent]

Greetings,

This is a question I have been struggling with for some time now. I have asked many people in my personal life and have not been able to receive what I consider a satisfactory answer.

I will try to define the terms I use in the question so that, if there is an underlying fault in my thinking, it can be more easily recognized.

Free will - The ability to have even the smallest amount of influence over our own decisions, thoughts, and actions.

Omniscience - God’s knowledge of all things, including the reaction any individual might have to any scenario, whether hypothetical or empirical.

Benevolence - God’s encompassing love for His creation. This also includes His justice and wrath against those who oppress and harm His creation.

Decision-making - The systems within the human creature that dictate how we react to various scenarios. Furthermore, I propose that the human decision-making process can be represented as an adaptive automaton/state machine, with the initial state of the machine being determined by factors entirely outside of our control. External factors, as well as our internal reactions to those external factors, and the derivative consequences of those reactions, then act upon and change this adaptive automaton.

My quandary is this:

God is benevolent, and He is also all-knowing. God would not hold a man accountable for any action that was not truly his own, and because of His omniscience, He knows perfectly the extent to which any individual is responsible for any given action. God is also a righteous judge; He would not punish a man for an action for which he was not responsible.

Assuming these premises hold true, then for God to punish or reward people, they must have some extent of free will and accountability. For example, for someone to be saved, they must accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. If people did not have free will, and did not bear any accountability for their actions, the aforementioned decision seems to be deprived of its significance. The same is true for punishment. If a man commits a sinful deed, but has no control over the decision or action, it seems to me that a righteous judge would not punish this person for that sin.

Thus far, assuming even the smallest shred of free will exists, this seems logically and theologically sound.

But what if it does not?

Essentially, if we can represent the human decision-making system as some adaptive automaton, then God can be thought of as the omniscient programmer. Even though our actions, and the actions of others, influence the adaptive automaton, and this might lead us to believe that we have control or influence over it, God is the one who controls the initial design of the automaton. He is also the one who determines which external factors act upon this automaton by determining the instance, circumstance, and biology of our births. It seems to me that the outcomes of the automaton are entirely deterministic and entirely subject to God’s will.

For example, if the soul of someone who today is a heathen or great sinner were instead imbued by God into a different body at a different time, it seems to me that such a person might have lived a greatly different life. They might instead have become a deeply pious, God-fearing person of character and great virtue. Furthermore, God would know the difference in outcomes before creating the person. Therefore, for God to choose to birth that individual into circumstances where they would become a heathen, rather than a person of God, and then to punish or reward this difference afterward, seems inconsistent with His nature of benevolence.

Even if we have the smallest shred of control or influence over this automaton, I would be satisfied regarding this quandary, since a fair, all-knowing judge would take this into account and would judge accordingly. However, I have trouble finding any element of the adaptive automaton that, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is truly determined by the individual alone.

The current best answer that I have is simply that free will and its congruence with the other aforementioned circumstances is a miracle of God, and that we fail to comprehend it due to our limited understanding as mere men. However, I fear that to me this feels like avoiding the question.

Please forgive me if I have made any theological mistakes while posing my question. I am not a Christian, but rather a Muslim, and I fear that my understanding of Christian theology is not as strong as I would wish. I have been unable to find a satisfactory answer within Muslim circles, and since the premises of the question seem to be congruent with Christianity as well, I have decided to see whether the people in this forum might be able to help me find one, particularly because of the pure mathematics/theology overlap that I believe is common in this forum.

May God guide us in our pursuit of the truth.

[StudentDriver]

Hmm im not sure this would help, but the question "what if it does not?" is kinda like asking "what if gravity does not exist" ~ Perhaps you can have some sort of theory out of it, but that's not how gravity was discovered. It was experienced. And the question "What is gravity?" is an interesting question. It could be viewed as a force. There is a general relativity view of gravity. The truth is, THERE are views! And each view interestingly have a formal consistent framework. It seems like you are trying to derive freewill from a theological standpoint. But what if one can discern "freewill" from direct experience?

[Crescent]

Well, the issue is that inherently, this idea implicates that our experience of freewill is nothing more than a convincing illusion. I have a degree in computer science, so the analogy that comes most easily to me would be something like a NPC in a video game. The character's AI is generated by the programmer, the events that occur to the character are also chosen/implemented by the programmer, the actions and the reactions the character chooses to take in response to the events may change the NPC's AI (in other words, the AI could be dynamic). But, this wouldn't change the fact that the programmer could compute exactly what the NPC will do before he ran the simulation. It doesnt matter if the NPC is conscious, even if the NPC perceives or experiences its own decisions as internally driven, this perception would be biased and objectively false, its actions would be entirely deterministic.

[StudentDriver]

What is an illusion? So is gravity also an illusion to you ? You can call it an "illusion", but the "illusion" still exists perceptually. The "illusion" serves a purpose. Usually when someone labels something as an "illusion", the person will tend to additionally assume that the "illusion" does not serve a purpose. Because the "illusion" has a specific purpose that's why the "illusion" is substantial and meaningful. (However, we must be a little more discerning, which "illusion" to take seriously. )

If we go from a philosophical perspective, this is one of the most "fundamental assumption" to even function as a human. You are given choices all the time. Each choice has a certain consequence, whether u r conscious of the choice or not. To explain how one chooses, well it is reasonable to say that you have the capacity to choose. That's it. No need for God to explain this to me. We are staying in the context from your humanely point of view. Also I dont want to be like a child, where the child cannot see consequences. I want to see consequences or at least model the consequences, so that I can be informed on what needs to be done.

-Additionally why do you say it is objectively false? What do you even mean objectively false?
-"if the NPC is conscious, even if the NPC perceives or experiences its own decisions as internally driven, this perception would be biased and objectively false, its actions would be entirely deterministic."

-- Well yeah the npc character is entirely deterministic, cause I'm the one that created the character, so I can exactly predict what it is going to do. But I'm not going to assume that the way I created this npc character in the game is How God created man.


-- And then if you come back to me, and say but Look! There are so many npcs everywhere. I can predict their behavior! Tooo many bots everywhere. Then I'll say, well yeah that's obvious, because given enough information about a person, I believe I can predict their behavior. I mean there is a reason why collecting data on a person is valuable. Or why stereotypes exist. But you shouldn't say this is evidence that there is no-freewill. Simply look for people who have alot of agency. Or u be the proof for urself.

-- So what makes a person have a lot of agency? Someone who goes against greed(giving), hatred (love/compassion/equanimity), and delusion (clarity).

[mwtichen]

I don't think omniscience is as all-knowing as you think.

God is all-powerful, and yet we observe certain things like physical constants being constant, facts being either true or false, and the past being unchanging. God is all-powerful, but these appear to be things that God cannot (or perhaps will not) change.

In a similar manner, an all-knowing God may know all that is knowable. An all-knowing God knows every contingency, every outcome of every choice, every possible future, but may not know the conscious decision you or I make.

There maybe times when God exercises control over the human will, but this would be an exception.

An intact, normal and healthy adult can exercise control over their actions. Remove part of someone's brain, and I can't guarantee they have free will anymore.