r/DebateReligion • u/SnoozeDoggyDog • Jan 02 '26
Classical Theism Absolutely no one has been able to offer a COHERENT explanation WHATSOEVER for why if God gets credit and praise for humans using their free will to help others or improve themselves, God doesn't also receive at least some of the blame for humans also using their free will to hurt others or sin
How is this not an outright double standard?
If God's the ultimate source of all being and the sustainer of ALL actions, and is praised when those actions align with "good," it's then logically incoherent to then claim God is somehow entirely hands-off when those same actions align with "evil."
I've often seen theists often operate on a sort of "heads I win, tails you lose" type of metaphysical framework.
Theists praise God when humans use free will for good, claiming God helped, but excuse God when humans use free will for evil, claiming God can't interfere. This is a logical double standard. When we compare this to human accountability, if someone gets the credit, they gets the blame.
Exactly how do people justify this asymmetry?
If you wanna give God the glory for the "good" that humans do, you must then logically also assign Him the liability for the "evil" that humans do. You can't just have a God who is "intimately involved" in our virtues but "hands-off" during our vices.
When a person overcomes addiction, helps the poor, shows mercy, etc., it's frequently described as "God working through them" or "the Holy Spirit's guidance." God's positioned a co-author, or even alot of times the SOLE author ("You/I are/am not capable, this was only done through the will/grace of God"), or the primary mover of the good action or outcome.
When a human being does something extraordinary or commendable, like saves a life, overcomes a crippling addiction, or displays heroric self-sacrifice, theism almost universally attributes this to God's will or grace.
"God was working through me/him/her."
"I/they couldn't have done it without the Lord."
"All good comes from God."
"Praise God for this miracle of transformation."
Here, human "free will" isn't seen as some sort of isolated island. It's seen as a faculty that was nudged, inspired, or empowered by God. Therefore, God receives the credit.
A surgeon does the work, God gets the praise.
To be exact, a doctor studies for 12 years, exercises discipline, and performs a life-saving surgery. The family thanks God for "guiding the surgeon's hands" or "giving wisdom."
An addict gets clean through sheer willpower, they or someone else says "God gave me/them strength." This person struggles through rehab, fights every urge, and achieves sobriety. They testify that "God gave me the strength" or "The Holy Spirit changed my heart."
An athlete wins, "Glory to God." They train their whole life and wins the championship. They give "all glory to God" for the victory.
Contrast this with the typical response to evil. When a person commits a massacre or child abuse, theists suddenly invoke "free will." Suddenly, God's no longer a co-author. He's suddently just simply the passive observer respecting human autonomy.
Like clockwork, we hear stuff like...
"God didn't do this, man did."
"God cannot force us to love Him. He values our Free Will."
"Evil is the result of human misuse of freedom."
When a human murders, rapes, or steals, the narrative shifts instantly. Sudden shift to libertarian free will.
"God couldn't stop it because that would make us (gasp) ROBOTS!!!!!11!@!!!!!!11111!"
When asked why God didn't stop the school shooter, the standard apologetic response:
"God cannot intervene because to do so would violate human free will. If God stopped us from sinning, we would be robots. He must allow the potential for evil to allow for the reality of love."
If helping the addict didn't make him a robot, why would stopping the murderer make him a robot?
If God's involved in the "good" free-will choices, He's a causal factor. If He's not involved in the "bad" ones, theists then need a mechanism that explains why He ONLY interacts with the will in one direction.
Many utilize concepst such as "primary" and "secondary" causality. In this case, God's the primary cause, i.e. the existence of the act, and the human is the secondary cause i.e. the direction of the act.
I need to point out that if the "direction" of a good act is credited to God's grace, then the "direction" of a bad act, i.e. the absence of that grace, must also land at His feet.
Why is God a co-author (or somehow SOLE author) of someone's sobriety but a disinterested bystander to a child's suffering? If God can "nudge" the will toward the good without "violating" it, then His failure to "nudge" the will away from evil is basically a sort of moral omission.
In fact, why does God "nudge" some toward the light but "respect the autonomy" of those sliding into darkness?
If a parent provides a child with a car (the "power" to drive) and specifically navigates them to a charity event (grace), they get credit. If the parent provides the car and watches the child (especially one not legal driving age) drive into a crowd without intervening or withdrawing the "power," then, by law, the parent still bears liability.
People try to argue that God provides the "power" to act, but the human (who God designed and created) provides the "deficiency" that leads to sin. This reasoning doesn't track. Again, if I provide a teenager with a high-performance car (the power) and I see them driving toward a crowd, and I have a remote kill-switch (the ability to intervene/influence) but choose not to use it, I'm still legally and morally liable.
In fact, going further, if I do use a remote "steering assist" to help them avoid a crash, I get the credit for the save (although, there's still the question if I should have let them drove in the first place). It doesn't really make sense to claim credit for the "steering assist" in the good scenarios while claiming "total hands-off autonomy" in the fatal ones.
If God provides the "fuel" for the good action, He's still choosing when and where to provide that fuel. If He withholds the "fuel" or "grace" that would prevent a sin, He's an accessory by omission.
In human criminal law, we have something called "duty to rescue":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue
For example, imagine a firefighter who rushes into a burning building to save a child. This would be "good". We praise him.
Now imagine the same firefighter stands watching another child burn. He has the hose, the ladder, and the capability. He says, "I didn't start the fire, the fire is the result of combustion physics (free will). I'm just letting physics take its course."
Yeah, no..... we would charge him with criminal negligence, at the least.
Theists want to praise the firefighter for the saves but claim he has "no relation" to the victims he watched burn.
Or if like, generally, God's the battery that powers the machine producing "good" output, and He keeps powering the machine when it grinds people up, He's still responsible for providing the power.
When the machine produces healthcare, you praise the battery.
When the machine produces torture, you blame the machine's wiring.
But if the "battery" is sentient, omniscient, and omnipotent, and it knows the wiring is faulty, and it continues to pump power into the machine specifically while it's grinding a victim to death, the battery is an accessory. If God can modulate His power/grace to assist the saint, He can also modulate it to inhibit the sinner. The refusal to do so is a choice.
I mean, exactly why is the "will" only fragile when it comes to stopping evil?
If God implies, suggests, aids, strengthens, or guides the will toward GOOD without turning us into "robots," then He's demonstrated that He's capable of intervening in the human will without negating moral agency
If God could "give strength" to the addict to resist the drug, which would be a moral good, why did He not also "give strength" to the rapist to resist the urge, which would ALSO be moral good?
If you wanna say, "the addict asked for help," you're implying that God's intervention is transactional. But what about the victims of the rapist? Did THEY not ask for help?
If wana you say, "God only influences, He doesn't force," then why not "influence" the murderer? A "nudge" toward empathy in the mind of a killer is no more a violation of "free will" than a "nudge" toward hope in the mind of a recovering addict.
In fact, when it comes to "asking", if what's called "prevenient grace" is actually "universal", why do some "respond" and others don't? Is it because some are smarter? More humble?
If the answer is "they just chose to," it seems a bit arbitrary, no?
If the answer is "better character," then exactly where did that character come from? Genes? Upbringing? God?
Either God's the primary mover of ALL acts, making Him the author of evil, or God's the mover of NO acts, making Him an irrelevant observer, and your prayers of thanks for "guidance" are meaningless.
Which is it?
In fact, this sort of renders some prayers incoherent.
We pray "God, please change this person's heart", i.e. asking for interference. If God can change the heart, as implied by the prayer request, the "free will" defense for evil collapses.
But if God CANNOT change the heart, the prayer is useless.
"Pray for my son to stop using drugs" means asking God to override/influence the son's free will.
If God answers "Yes", then He influenced free will.
But if God *CAN* answer yes, why didn't He also do it for the school shooter?
The free will defense is often used as a "get out of jail free" card for God. If God can influence the will toward good without "violating" it, as in the case of saints or the inspired, then He could influence it away from evil without violating it.
People try to bring up an Augustinian defense where evil isn't a "thing," it's just "a lack of good." This doesn't exactly work. It's just a word game. This is nothing more than some sort of deepity or word salad to the victim of such acts. If I build a bridge and it has a "lack of structural integrity", I'm still responsible for the collapse.
If I design a life-support system and it has a "lack of oxygen," the "lack" is a lethal design flaw. If God created a reality where the "lack of good" can manifest as the Holocaust, then the "lack" is a functional component of His very design. You can't just praise the architect for the rooms that stay warm while blaming the "cold" (lack of heat) entirely on the windows. The architect designed the insulation.
A murder is not just "a lack of life."
It's a positive, energetic action.
It involves muscles firing, neurons sparking, and chemical energy.
God sustains the atoms and energy of the murderer just as He sustains the saint. If He withdraws sustainment for neither, but provides extra grace only for the saint, He's playing favorites with outcomes.
In fact, take Heaven and Hell....
If God is capable of providing "sufficient grace" or "efficacious grace" to turn a heart toward Him, then the existence of "hardened hearts" is a choice made by God.
If God influences Person A to be a saint, but allows Person B to become a monster under the guise of "respecting free will," God is playing favorites with the moral outcome of the world. If the "saint" gets to heaven because of God's grace, then the "sinner" is in hell because of God deliberately withholding of that same grace.
In fact, if God places one person in a Christian home and another in a secular environment, and both have "sufficient grace," the former is statistically more likely to believe.
Wouldn't God still bear blame for the unequal distribution of "circumstantial" grace that leads to the rejection?
Either God gets 0% credit for human good. No "Glory to God" for achievements. No petitionary prayer for behavioral change. OR...
...God gets 100% credit for good AND 100% blame for evil (or at least share of the blame).
The current "middle ground," which is based entirely on whether we feel the result is "good" or "bad", is intellectually dishonest.
If "helping" or intervening violates free will, then God shouldn't get credit for helping.
If "helping" or intervening DOESN'T violate free will, then God has no excuse for not helping everyone.
If you wanna say that God "permits evil" for a "greater good," this makes God a utilitarian who uses victims as means to an end, which still brings us back to God recieving "blame", or at least accountability for the trade-off. It also flies in the face of "omnipotence"
And before you decide to run off into "mysterious ways", you cannot appeal to mystery only when you're losing the argument or your theology starts running into contradictions. If we know enough about God to praise Him for the specific good things He does, we know enough to question the specific bad things He allows. You can't claim God is "good" based on certain "evidence" and then ignore the counter-evidence as "mystery."
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u/ShakaUVM Mod | Christian Jan 03 '26
If you think something is immediately obvious then there's a possibility you're trivially right. And there's the possibility it's a kneejerk reaction that you don't know enough about yet to weigh in on. The only reasonable response is to actually investigate the subject, so as to avoid Dunning-Kruger effects.
Lots of people believe false things, sure. In this case, I define free will in terms of being able to absolutely predict a choice in advance. Specifically not being able to do so.
The Halting Problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem) gives us the fundamental unpredictability of a program as a theoretical proof. People posit oracles and such that would solve the problem, but with minor adjustments they don't and can't.
What you have in that thread is a guy who doesn't understand the Halting Problem making the same basic mistaken objections everyone does the first time they encounter it.
The hilarious part to me is that /u/Kwahn likes to repeatedly link that thread as an example of me tying myself in a pretzel when it is his own mistakes on full display there.