A tiger, a claim, and at least three pathways

[RRL]

A few years back, I remember seeing a thread where people were talking about someone being in the forest, and being able to choose between three pathways, and some guy comes running up and warns you there is a tiger on one of the paths ahead, or something like that. They were using this analogy to try to support theism, Christian theism IIRC, and someone wrote a rebuttal, and said "actually, what reality is actually like, is XYZ." Does anyone remember this discussion? Can you direct me to the thread? If not, do you remember the specifics? It was one of the best analogies I have ever seen that is problematic for Christianity and other similar religions, like Islam, Judaism, etc. I wish I had bookmarked it and/or quoted the text in a document...Thanks!

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to post 1 by RRL]

I don't remember this particular discussion, but you can use the search feature on this site and try to find it. I found some discussions with 'tiger' in them, but I did't go through them all.

If you are interested in the multitude of issues with Christianity, just read through the Christianity and Apologetics subsection. Any claim that is put forward to support Christianity is normally met with a number of clear rebuttals for you to peruse.

[ttruscott]

I use the tiger analogy fairly often in my definition of free will having a necessity to not actually have the future consequences proven before one chooses although one must be aware of all possibilities.

I seem to recall using the tiger also to differentiate between a threat and a warning, also in the context of a discussion about free will which sounds more like what you describe...but it was a long time ago maybe within my first year.

Are the posts archived for that long a time?

I do not remember the rebuttal of course since I did not find it to be problematic at all so I could not help with recreating that side of the discussion.

[Bust Nak]

This one?

viewtopic.php?t=31734

[Divine Insight]

This one?

viewtopic.php?t=31734

If it is that one then the Tiger analogy was offered up by ttruscott and I immediately blew it out of the water in the very next post:

Ted's tiger analogy:

I have decided that a real choice can only be made if the consequences of choosing each option are known in the abstract, ie, academically, but not by proof since proof would end all discussion and coerce the will for that choice.

I completely disagree with this. It is precisely when we know what will happen when a real choice can be made. Until then, we are merely guessing. I see no reason why proof will strip us of our ability to make a choice.

Choose the red pill of life or the blue pill of death.... Two door scenario; one door to freedom, one to a tiger. A full guess is to have to choose with no idea which door is which, just guess. Being told the red door is freedom and the blue door is death by tiger, helps you analyze the situation a bit more but you still must trust that your info is real and true, your hope is bigger than your own guess.

BUT if you got a peek behind the doors and saw the path away and saw the tiger, are you not coerced by your own sense of survival and well being to choose the red door? Proof forces you to choose in your own best self interest even if that is not that which you might really want to do, that is, you would bow to proof of HIS divinity even if you did not like the idea or want to bow to HIM. A true free will cannot be coerced but must be able to choose what it wants for itself without force.

No info is a pure guess. Info about heaven and hell is a trust issue with the person who told you (and without any info on him, is also a guess, but if we had to choose, then we chose by our unproven hope, which answer we thought would give us the better chance at happiness. Our guess at our choice became our hope for our future...

That is what I mean...

My rebuttal based on the story of Adam and Eve is in the very next post:

And you totally ignored the fact that Adam and Eve not only knew that God existed, but were even told ahead of time that eating the forbidden fruit would result in their immediate death in that very same day. Obviously that last claim made by God turned out to be a lie. But still, Adam and Eve had precisely what you just described in Post #7 yet they chose death over life.

So obviously, according to the Bible knowing that God exists, and knowing that a very specific act will lead to death does not coerce anyone into making any particular choice.

In fact, think about this:

God told Adam and Eve directly that they would die the very day they eat the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve didn't read about this in stories that could have been fables. According to Genesis it was the LORD God himself who commanded Adam not to do this.

Genesis 2:
[16] And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
[17] But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

So Adam and Eve we're supposedly told precisely where the tiger would be by God himself. They had no need to place their faith in anything. They had all the information they needed to choose self preservation, yet according to this theology they chose the tiger over God.

So this can't be used as an argument that we now must place our faith in things we cannot know. No one today has ever had any God speak to them directly telling them which tigers to avoid. All we have today are hearsay rumors from ancient God myths that are grossly unconvincing and appear to many as nothing more than poorly made up fables created by male chauvinist men who even used their made up God to condone wars and slavery. There's simply no sane reason to believe that any intelligent benevolent God would be behind any of those fables.

I agree with RRL, the tiger apology fails miserably.

In fact, any "Free Will" argument for Christianity fails miserably in any case.