Free Will isn't Free...



Come with me of your own free will or I'll kill you.  I'll just point this at you while you decide...



At least not if it is the "free will" that the Abrahamic religions offer. 

It is often said that god's first gift to us was free will, but how can we choose freely when the consequence is eternal torture?

Any choice that we make under duress is not really a free choice is it?

Read my blog, or the cat gets it!

Now I admit that society limits our free will as well, in the form of laws. Organized society gives us rights, but at the expense of giving us rules to guide our behavior.  There is even a justice system that deals with those who disobey, but nothing that even approaches the scale or scope of heavenly punishment. 

The eternal torture for finite crimes is not a punishment, it is more akin to revenge. 

Punishment is finite. 

It fits the crime and ends when a person has paid for the crimes that he has commited.

Revenge is emotionally motivated and is an expression of anger that can be cruel and far beyond the severity of the actual crime that it was enacted in response to.

Infinite torture for finite crimes?

That seems overly punitive. 

But all I did was read the "God Delusion"!

It surprises me when people act surprised when I tell them that I am offended by the concept of a loving god sending his creations to hell.  No one would argue that our prisons should physically and emotionally torture their wards for the rest of their lives for even the smallest crimes (unless they said they were sorry first).

INHUMANE

That would be the cry from the masses, and they would be right to cry thusly. It would be a grisly and immoral system of crime and punishment, not to mention completely ineffective at creating a society that could live together in harmony.  It would be an evil dictatorship that is hated by the masses. 

Once you put the parameters for that punishment into the mix, we enter the realm of the completely freaking crazy.

And there is really only one rule...

"LOVE ME OR BE TORTURED FOREVER!"

That remind you of anyone?

Love and obey me, cause I'm as nutty as squirrel poop!

It is an fantastic indicator that the only completely unforgivable sin is not loving god enough.  And it is a terrible and immature reaction to have hell as the punishment for it.  Does it even make sense to threaten someone to make them love you? Would that love ever even be genuine? 

Free will?  Not with the hell-gun to our heads it isn't.

So let's get this concept of religious free will out of our heads.  Neither the bible, the Torah, nor the Koran have set up a system of morality that is anything but terrifying.

Don't think...OBEY

Don't choose...FOLLOW

Don't love him....then you will be coerced to do so under pain of being sent to the eternal torture room in the sky.

That sound like a loving and moral system of codifying behavior?

Not to me.