Divine Blackmail - another quite long one......

When confronted with the problem of evil - i.e., why a loving God allows pain and suffering to exist - theists of the Western traditions often invoke the "free will" defense, that God wanted us to be truly free and that such freedom necessitates evil; we must have the option to either choose him or reject him.

However, this argument cannot by itself solve the problem of evil, in part because it cannot explain the existence of natural as opposed to human-caused evils (see "All Possible Worlds" for more on this). Additionally, a strong case could be made that human behavior is not entirely free. The way a person acts and thinks is undeniably affected by environment and upbringing - personality is the product of nurture as well as nature, and no human being is completely free of outside influences. It could well be argued that our nature is the product of conditioning and circumstance, perhaps even that all human behavior is ultimately deterministic, even if all the relevant factors are too numerous and subtle for any outside observer to ever measure completely (although I do not subscribe to this extreme view).

But more important is the objection that, according to the monotheist religions' own beliefs, humans are not free. What they claim to be free will is really a hollow mockery, a choice that is not a choice at all.

Imagine you are accosted one night by a mugger in a dark alley. He jabs the business end of a pistol into your back and demands your wallet and valuables. Understandably, most people in that situation would hand them over. Now imagine the mugger was caught and brought to trial. On the witness stand, could he legitimately claim this? "I didn't commit any illegal act; I offered my victim a choice to hand over his wallet or not and he chose to give it to me. He acted out of his own free will. He could have chosen to refuse if he had wanted to."

Would any rational jury accept such a defense? Of course not, because the mugger's claim that you acted out of free will is false. There are several qualifications for a decision to be genuinely free, one of which is that it be an informed choice - the party making the decision must fully understand the options and the likely ramifications of each. But another, more relevant one in this instance is that the decision not be coerced. If undue force, pressure or intimidation is applied to steer you towards a particular choice, then you're not acting out of free will.

Such is the case in the monotheist worldview. According to its proponents, God has offered humans a choice: to accept and worship him, or to reject him. People who choose to worship him will ascend to Heaven when they die, where they will receive an infinite reward. People who choose to reject him will be cast into Hell, where they will receive an infinite punishment.

This choice is not free at all - it is the most transparent and blatant attempt at coercion imaginable. One of our two options will earn us eternal torment; the other will not. God is like the mugger in the dark alley with the gun shoved into our back. Of course you could theoretically refuse to hand over your wallet (and likely get your brains blown out), if you were that stubborn or that perverse. But that doesn't mean your choice is free; the mugger can't claim at trial that you acted of your own volition. You were given a choice that was not a choice at all.


contd;