Yuku free message boards

> Do you believe there are any constraints on us exercising our free will in our current existence? If so, what are they?

In one sense there are none. I am free to try and defy gravity or be in two places at once. I could spend my life attempting those two things, of course without success, but I am free to do so nonetheless. It is not the success or failure that counts, but the freedom to try.
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if I stop someone from committing a crime I have not prevented him from exercising free will, he freely chose to commit the crime, but the fact that I stopped him does not negate free will because he had already exercised it.
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your stopping him is irrelevant it that the moment he decided to axe his girlfriend he had exercised free will. Free will does not guarantee success.

> Why does your God allow him to suffer?

Why indeed? It is part of the human condition, it is what makes us human.

> What I was saying is that there is much suffering in the world that is not caused by free will. The free will argument in defence of suffering

Not all suffering is caused by the exercise of free will, but where that suffering is caused by another human being it is. Evil in our human community is caused by someone exercising their free will. Hitler freely chose to have 6,000,000 Jews killed.

> Of course the logical conclusion to this is that there is no reason God cannot intervene to prevent suffering after a person has made his choice.

What would be the point? If there are no consequences to our actions, then no lesson is learned.

True, but the problem is that in God's case he is in effect taking away free will because every time you made the wrong choice he thwarts you.

In other words, if you could be certain that whatever you decided to do would be right or God would stop you then you have no choice but to do what is right.

Why? He gave us the tools to do what is right and for whatever reason lets it play out. Those who suffer because of those who exercise their free will to the detriment of others receive God's justice at both ends, their own and those that perpetrated the cause of their suffering.

When we die we become immortal and the suffering is over.

> On the contrary. Imagine the message that would be learned by God intervening in this way!

Human nature being what it is eventually we would stop making choices altogether.

If you second guessed every decision your children made in their early lives you would be scratching your head wondering why they have no ambition or initiative at 30 years old.

The problem is that after a few interventions after I have made the choice two things might happen; first I might stop thinking my decision through because I cannot make a mistake, thus ceasing to grow as a human being, or I throw in the towel and stop making decisions altogether. Either way God has thwarted his own plan.

> To use your own argument, you are still free to make the choice to try but success is not guaranteed.

Ah, but failure is guaranteed.

By the same token, I could jump off a cliff, fall straight down, land in a fortuitously placed grove of evergreens and walk away with a few scratches. I learned a valuable lesson, I cannot fly.

As for God, he has set creation in motion and is allowing it to play out in the course of events, rarely intervening.

In one sense God is between a rock and a hard place. He created us with certain attributes, gave us the owner's manual, so to speak, and free will and turned us loose on the rest of creation. If he constantly interfered we would not develop as human beings, if we did not suffer we would not grow as human beings.

As I have said before in the end God will hand out justice to all.

> We live within the constraints of our world. If one constraint was that God always intervened to prevent suffering we would have a much more pleasant existence, but that would not stop us exercising free will.

Would we?

But that is the point? There is no possibility of making a mistake, so why bother choosing. Like the society in H.G. Wells' book everything is provided.

The problem is that we will eventually stop choosing altogether and that includes good choices.

If I see someone about to attack a child I just keep walking because God will take care of it. If I see an old lady about to fall off the curb I ignore it because God will take care of it. Why bother learning anything God will provide everything I need.

> I don't see the problem. We intervene all the time with our children to help them learn.

The difference is that you are not always there and your child might learn the lesson the hard way.

As human being we have certain attributes that make us human. You may wish to argue why God made us the way he did, but he did and there it is.

The question was would we have a much more pleasant existence? Pleasant perhaps, but fulfilling? I doubt it.

The point is that after a number of interventions you would stop choosing.

Most mistakes cause suffering of one sort or another even if it is only to one's self. If there is no suffering then that includes the person who will make the potential mistake.

If you eliminate suffering you have eliminated part of what it is to be human.

Empathy would not exist because it would be unnecessary.

> Why would you want them to risk learning the hard way when they can learn the same lesson without suffering?

Easy lessons are easily forgotten.

> If there is a God who made us then he made us with attributes that, according to you, require us to suffer.

Require has nothing to do with it. By making us mortal suffering follows.

He could have made us immortal, but he didn't.

As much as we hate to suffer it is part of who we are, for better or worse it makes us who we are.

> One can have a very fulfilling life without suffering.

Can we? At first blush the answer would seem to be obvious, but we do not have very much to measure it against.

My point is that we do not know what a world without suffering would do to our human psyche. I doubt that we would recognize ourselves and I would suspect that we might be disappointed.

It is not a question of need, but one of consequence. We are mortal and the consequence of that is that we become old and die. Suffering is a natural process of being human.

Empathy is a byproduct of suffering.

While the suffering of others may lead to empathy for them, it is our own suffering that makes us human.

The rape of a child is not meant to be,

I guess we could say there are two kinds of suffering, one that naturally comes to us with age or infirmities and that which is imposed on us by others.

but we learn the most from our own trials and tribulations.

The athlete whose goal is to win Olympic gold trains through injury, trains until he can hardly move. He goes to his first Olympics and fails to even make the podium. He misses in his second, but he carries on and the older he gets the more painful it is to continue. On his third and last try he makes it, Olympic gold. He has the medal, no more training, no more pain, but wow a feeling of sheer happiness that will last him a life time. Heaven will be something like that, we will remember the suffering, but glory in the reaching the goal.

he chose to make us the way we are for his own reasons,

> you need to prove that it is logically necessary for suffering to exist in all worlds.

As long as we are mortal suffering is a logical part of our existence.

But if there is no suffering there would be no need to put yourself in the place of others. We would always have everything we need.

Required to suffer is overstating the case. It is the part of our nature that we spend our lives trying to avoid, but in its way it makes us who we are.

Don't get me wrong he is a pleasant individual, but his only interest in you is what you can do for him.

> Then why does God allow it [rape]?

Free will.

All those are a natural part of the process. Remember, our time here is but a nano-second in time. Let's say like a root channel in our life-time. The pain lasts a couple of days and then we are fine again. In our life case the pain lasts a couple of days and then we are fine for eternity.

Thousands of lives have been saved by the organization that sprang from that tragedy.

> So, if the joy of paradise is increased by suffering in this world don't we have a duty to torture and maim as many people as we can?

Don't be silly.

If you were guaranteed a sunset every time you wanted to view one it would soon lose its luster.
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In a world without suffering these diseases would not exist. There would be no pain, no need for doctors, lawyers et al. Life would be perfect, perfectly boring.

The girl's free will has nothing to do with her being raped. Free will gives us choices, sometimes we have no choice such as being raped or hit be a car.

> > You have implied that a pre-requisite for joy in eternal paradise is suffering in this life.

I have implied nothing of the sort. The infant who dies of crib death has not suffered, yet is in heaven.

> So I gather you are not looking forward to heaven?

You seem to be obsessed with this idea that because I say a perfect existence here would be boring, thus a perfect existence in heaven would be the same.