I dunno if anyone has said it, yet, SetarcosNous, but welcome to JU. So far I've found all of your comments interesting and thoughtful.
Thanks and thanks.
But you're right, how would you detect a free will if the choosers always chose to do God's will? I don't know if you could, as an outsider. But what would be important is that you know yourself that you have a choice, but have given it up.
But how do you know you have the choice? How do you know you have not been manipulated into making that choice? People do a lot of things without fully knowing the reasons why; that is why self-knowledge is one of the most important kinds in my opinion.
More on topic: Perfection is in the eye of the beholder, far too subjective to individual desire to be broadly defined by any one person. ...
I mean more in the objective sense that those that use it all the time seem to imply.
And I certainly don't think that whatever created us is perfect and incapable of farking things up royally. One need only look around to see the truth in that. I simply refuse to bear ALL the blame for our human condition, as so many Christians would have me do. I didn't ask to be here, after all, so someone, something, somewhere screwed up before I had any choice in the matter. Original sin? Not mine, it ain't.
That is exactly my point. If this God people speak of is supposed to fit the definition of perfect I think of when I hear it said, it includes the adjective "infallible". If it is infallible, how did it create such fallible beings? Then the usual response is that the devil corrupted it. But didn't this infallible being create the devil too?
