Do you prefer "free-will suffering"or "robots

[Jagella]

As we all should know, apologists often employ the "free-will" defense against any argument from suffering or evil that serves to cast doubt on the existence of the Christian god. Doubters might maintain that no good god would allow suffering. Since suffering exists, God probably doesn't exist. Apologists often counter telling us that God needs to allow suffering so that we may have free will to do evil as well as good.

Needless to say, there are several objections that might be raised to this apologetic, but I'd like to start out by pointing out that it makes an assumption that may not hold for all people. That assumption is that suffering and evil is universally preferred over our being robots programmed to do only good. Personally, I'd take the robots! My being programmed to do good is fine with me, and giving up my choice to do evil is a small price to pay to attain safety, security, and happiness. Besides, I have no desire to do evil. So my being programmed to do only good would make little difference for me.

Question for Debate: Do you prefer suffering or people being "robots"?

[Bust Nak]

And, is suffering really always bad? If it helps to understand things better and doesnt cause any real damage, is it really bad?

Are we still working from the premise of the existence of an omnipotent entity? If so, then any understanding that can be gained by suffering, can be gained via another method that does not involve suffering. In that context, yes, it is still bad even if suffering helps to understand things better and doesnt cause any real damage.

[William]

[Replying to post 31 by Bust Nak]

Are we still working from the premise of the existence of an omnipotent entity? If so, then any understanding that can be gained by suffering, can be gained via another method that does not involve suffering. In that context, yes, it is still bad even if suffering helps to understand things better and doesnt cause any real damage.

Can you elaborate on your belief above please. What is this 'other method' you infer, which doesn't involve suffering, actually gain anyone understanding of and through suffering?

[William]

[Replying to post 29 by Jagella]

I find it very hard to believe that anybody would really choose a world of evil and suffering over good, kind, loving robots.

So these robots will have emotions?

How will they know they are "good, kind, loving" if they have nothing in which to make comparisons with?

[Jagella]

As for which I'd prefer, well, I'm an independent kinda guy, a bit of a maverick, even a loose cannon at times. Robotic conformity might be well enough for some others, but my gut reaction is to prefer the freedom to think and act for myself.

But why would you want to be able to choose to do evil? As I've already explained, I have no desire at all to choose to murder, rape, or rob. I wouldn't miss being able to choose to do so one bit. If my thoughts were limited only to what I can choose that would result in good, then that would be great! I already try to make such choices.

I should point out that we for the most part already try to "program" others to act in ways we think are good. Children, for example, are often rewarded for good behavior and punished when they act antisocially or destructively. Should we stop disciplining kids and just let them run wild because we think it's better for them to freely choose to be bad? Of course not. So what you're arguing here is against common practice and common sense.

Finally, if a murderer was pointing a gun to your head ready to pull the trigger, would you prefer he do so because then he's acting freely, or would you prefer he was a robot programmed so that he would never murder? If you see things my way, then you'd live. If we accept your philosophy, then you'd die.

[Jagella]

I prefer freedom.

Does that include the freedom to suffer extreme pain and die? You may get your wish!

And, is suffering really always bad? If it helps to understand things better and doesnt cause any real damage, is it really bad?

It's hard to say. Maybe if you contract cancer, then you can let us all know how bad suffering is.

[Divine Insight]

I find it very hard to believe that anybody would really choose a world of evil and suffering over good, kind, loving robots. I think the members here voting for the "free-will suffering" are doing so because it is their theology and their way of defending their beliefs.

For my part I find it very hard to believe that anybody would really choose a dead world of mindless automatons over a world of freely chosen good, joy and love. I think the members here voting to be robots are doing so because they're already not thinking for themselves and merely defining their views in opposition to some religion or other.

What a fun way to have a 'debate' that is

As far as I can see you simply aren't understanding the scenario.

No one is saying that we wouldn't be able to have free will. All that is being proposed is that we will not be able to chose to do evil.

You can still freely choose from anything you'd like to do that is not evil.

So free will would still be alive and well.

[Divine Insight]

So these robots will have emotions?

Sure why not?

How will they know they are "good, kind, loving" if they have nothing in which to make comparisons with?

But they would have plenty of suffering to compare this with.

Even if no humans chose to do evil things you'd still have all the horrible things happening in nature. Animals attacking people. Bacteria and viruses causing horrible suffering and death via diseases. You'd still have natural disasters killing innocent humans. You'd still have innocent accidents occurring, like Jumbo Jets crashing on occasion, or people being hurt or killed in car accidents, or perhaps coming home to find their home in ashes after a natural house fire.

There would still be plenty of nasty suffering in the world even if no human ever chose to do any evil thing.

So we'd still have plenty of comparisons to make. No need to worry about that.

We'd need to have been created by a creator who actually knew how to create a perfect world before we'd need to be concerned about no suffering at all.

Moreover, there is no need to have humans be able to make evil choices to teach them about suffering. Just living on earth alone is more than sufficient for that, even if not a single solitary human ever does so much as one evil act.

There simply is no need to provide humans with the ability to make evil choices. It's a totally unnecessary thing. Especially in a religion that claims that humans aren't capable of not choosing evil anyway. That's a theological oxymoron that exposes the fallacy of the theology that makes the claim.

[Mithrae]

As for which I'd prefer, well, I'm an independent kinda guy, a bit of a maverick, even a loose cannon at times. Robotic conformity might be well enough for some others, but my gut reaction is to prefer the freedom to think and act for myself.

But why would you want to be able to choose to do evil? As I've already explained, I have no desire at all to choose to murder, rape, or rob. I wouldn't miss being able to choose to do so one bit. If my thoughts were limited only to what I can choose that would result in good, then that would be great! I already try to make such choices.

I should point out that we for the most part already try to "program" others to act in ways we think are good. Children, for example, are often rewarded for good behavior and punished when they act antisocially or destructively. Should we stop disciplining kids and just let them run wild because we think it's better for them to freely choose to be bad? Of course not. So what you're arguing here is against common practice and common sense.

Parents teach, guide and correct their children to some degree, yes. And you seem to think it's a good idea to go much further than that. Perhaps we should impose laws to ensure that parents raise their children in an optimal manner; make it illegal to say things that are offensive or just plain wrong; enforce mandatory educational and life paths to minimize risks of criminality; implant everyone with RFID chips so we always know where they are and what they're doing?

In the real world, we do have some freedom of choice both biologically and legally: If there is a God, apparently she considers it important that we have the option of questioning or rejecting her, or even of hurting our fellow human beings. Whatever personal preferences you might have to the contrary are more or less irrelevant therefore - we're not able to change that reality. However we as a society could theoretically change the legal realities to more closely match your utopian ideal of closing off all possible avenues for bad behaviour. But frankly, that is a 'utopia' which I find quite horrifying to contemplate. I have a similar mistrust towards any anarchist idealism, but authoritarian idealism is perhaps even more scary; even if the rulers were genuinely good and really smart people, a world of such control would be a bleak and joyless existence, or at least that's the gut feeling I have of it.

In my view as children and as adults and as societies we tend to need some limits, some guidance, some discipline; trying to completely eliminate any possibility for failures and wrongdoing is at least as worrying, if not moreso, as eliminating any positive influences.

[Mithrae]

For my part I find it very hard to believe that anybody would really choose a dead world of mindless automatons over a world of freely chosen good, joy and love. I think the members here voting to be robots are doing so because they're already not thinking for themselves and merely defining their views in opposition to some religion or other.

What a fun way to have a 'debate' that is

As far as I can see you simply aren't understanding the scenario.

No one is saying that we wouldn't be able to have free will. All that is being proposed is that we will not be able to chose to do evil.

You can still freely choose from anything you'd like to do that is not evil.

So free will would still be alive and well.

No one is saying that? The OP explicitly and repeatedly contrasts our 'free will' against being 'robots,' so perhaps you are the one who is not understanding that. It seems Jagella's thinking has evolved over the course of the thread - which should be the main purpose of discussion after all - so now we're at the point of merely limiting choices to those which are deemed 'good.' And as I noted in my post above, if that is really an ideal you prefer then there's certainly steps which could theoretically be taken towards it on the level of our human societies at least. But even if we were to assume genuinely good and intelligent leadership in that enterprise, it's still an approach which I'm intuitively inclined against.

More broadly, what do you suppose it would really mean to limit choices only to those that are good? Supposing we could measure health, prosperity and overall happiness in a single metric of wellbeing, most decisions will necessarily mean either greater or lesser wellbeing for you or your family; so if option B in any choice means decreasing the potential wellbeing of you or your family, can it be said to be a 'good' choice or should all sub-optimal choices be removed as possibilities? Or conversely, if being a victim of some violence or abuse somehow causes a person to become the next Galileo or Gandhi and produce far more good for themselves and the world than they otherwise would have, is it bad that those evil acts were a possibility? Perhaps in very specific terms, okay, we could say that it's now impossible for someone to try to kill another; so does that mean no euthanasia, no abortion? Or we could say it's impossible to try to physically harm another; so does that mean no boxing, no surgery? Or it's impossible to try to do to someone something that they don't want; which would mean no parenting, no competitive business practices, no regulation of businesses, drivers and so on!

Here in the real world, the question is moot; we have some freedom of choice and that's all there is to it. Moving off into the theoretical but still somewhat feasible possibilities of what we might do with our societies, I find this ideal of limitation and control quite horrifying. But venturing even further into the wilderness of philosophical abstraction of how God might limit our choices, I'm not even sure that what you're describing really forms a coherent concept at all... let alone one which I'd like. Robots yes, I can understand that, and free will I can understand; but being unable to do 'evil' while still having morally-significant free will? On face value that seems to be a contradiction in terms, and I'm not sure how coherent such limitations could be even we ignored the moral significance aspect of it.

[Divine Insight]

No one is saying that? The OP explicitly and repeatedly contrasts our 'free will' against being 'robots,'

The OP is specifically speaking to the issue of being able to have free will to choose to do evil.

Any attempt on your part to change that is a strawman.

Edited to add:

By the way, everything else in your post was addressed from the perspective of humans trying to restrict humans to only choosing to do good. Again, yet another strawman.

You would need to address this question from the perspective of an omnipotent omniscient God restricting humans to only choosing to do good. So there would be no questions concerning what constitutes "good". That simply wouldn't be an issue in this context.