Let's talk about free will...

This was just supposed to be a comment, but it turned into a longer spiel than I expected it to. So I decided to blog about it. For this blog, we're going to discuss the christian concept of free will, and why it's not compatible with the christian view of god. I had a discussion about this with a Calvinist not too long ago and it left him confused and a bit irritated with me since he couldn't provide an answer that I would accept as logical. For this blog, we will pretend that a god exists. This is to point out how much logic is missing from christianity. You may ask why I even bother with this since I am an atheist. I have found that no one likes to have their security blanket ripped from them all at once. The trick to open eyes to reality is to do it slowly and in pieces.

Anyway, the christians believe that their god is omnipotent and omniscient. They also believe that the reason that this oh-so-powerful being won't do anything to clean up the shit on earth is because he has given us the freedom to do as we please and won't interfere in our choices. The problem with this idea is that it contradicts itself. If a being is omniscient, it means that he knows EVERYTHING. Which means that he already knows what's going to happen before it happens. To break that down further, if he already knows what's going to happen, then that means that it was predetermined. If the future is already predetermined, then there is no free will. Predetermination negates free will. You are going to do exactly what was already foretold and that makes us all puppets on a stage.

Now a lot of people don't like the idea that they are not in control of their own lives, so they invented the concept of free will to explain why they aren't robotic pawns in a supernatural chess game. Well, if you have free will, which is the ability to make your own choices whether good or bad, then god can't possibly be omniscient. At the very most, he can know every possible outcome to every decision that you could possibly make, but he can't know what will happen until you actually choose that course of action.

So, religion is a moot point either way. Either god isn't really omniscient or life is predetermined. If he's not omnipotent AND omniscient, then why worship him? If it's all predetermined, then it's predetermined who was supposed to be a christian and who wasn't and it doesn't matter what we do since it'll all be the same in the end. So live your life the way that you want to. Break free from the chains of religion and be good just for the sake of it. Why keep pretending that it's all real when you don't have to? All it does is add unnecessary stress to your life. For all that people say it brings comfort, the reality is: religion brings unnecessary pain, guilt, suffering and death. The sooner we get away from such archaic views, the sooner we can truly reach our full potential as human beings.