Quote Originally Posted by Oneironaut
How can man ever be free with an omnipotent being of any sort in existence? ... The whole idea of monotheism is submission. [Lets be fair here, technically speaking, the whole idea of montheism is actually one god. Nothing more. Although its interesting to see where you decide to take that...] Unquestioning submission to a higher power. That is the exact opposite of freedom... [That depends on whether or not its your choice to submit. I notice you haven't even actually addressed my argument from the previous post. I assume you're familiar with the social contract. What do you think? By submiting to it do we void our freedoms or is this merely an expression of choice?] No matter what you decide is right or wrong, it doesn't matter because God already decided that for you, and you just have to agree or burn forever. And people have the nerve to call that free will. [I believe that's called predetermination actually. You're confusing your terms. Not that many Calvinists around these days, at least not in my area. You have this amazingly christian intuition of thinking that God sees and judges all, and so would find it necessary to take actions at all. I don't share this particular intuition so you'll have to explain to me why this would be the case?]

If God is, man is a slave, just as with any other totalitarian dictator.
[I believe I've already discredited this, but you haven't addressed my earlier post at all really in this text, so if you can justify this premise, please do.]

But when we look at the world today, we don't see people's choices being overriden. [How would you even know? I mean, if we grant the concept of god as all powerful, couldn't he just change the way it appears to you? But that's aside the point, because I reject your entire notion of a godfigure in any way conflicting with free choice. If you can demonstrate why it would, I'd love to hear.] If there is an omnipotent deity that knows the difference between right and wrong, it certainly isn't doing anything about it. Why? Because man does indeed have free will...


Edits and all bold are my own, hopefully nothing's out of context...

Erminaut, you're so focused on destroying the christian paradigm you obviously haven't realised that I'm not christian, and so I find your arguments rather misplaced. You're not developing any points you're merely attempting to combat rhetoric with anti-rhetoric. but we could be having a mature and developed conversation instead... I look forward to hearing back on this.