I never said I was an atheist nor that I was a theist. I am an atheist, but I never said so.
All my arguments up to this point have been under the a priori assumption that God, as imagined by Abrahamic religions, exists, to argue that if He does, then free will is impossible. I'm not required to believe in something in order to ponder what it'd be like if it did.
Of all the things to cook up, it is that you are an atheist because God predetermined you to be one. |
This isn't a completely inconceivable notion if we rephrase it a bit: if God exists, He's the one who made me an atheist. This isn't a contradictory idea. I'm not arguing with 100% certainty that God doesn't exist, and I'm not discounting the possibility that I could be wrong about anything. But, regardless of whether I'm wrong or not, my opinion is the result of observation and introspection, which are determined by the local environment, and more generally the total state of the universe. All that my being wrong or right changes is the ultimate source of that state.
What is your definition of free will? |
Free will can be said to have operated on a decision if external factors were not the sole influence upon the decision. I don't think free will is possible outside of Cartesian dualism.
EDIT:
Well... Maybe God
isn't omnipresent. That's another alternative. I mean, He doesn't
appear to be, what Him not filling our entire field of view, or obstructing movement in any way.
Believing in God isn't logical because logicality is limiting. |
Well, yeah. Being sane is also limiting as far as feces smearing is concerned. That doesn't mean going mad is a preferable alternative.