Does proof of God smack of coercion?

@fmf said
The bible is a literary work. In reality, the heart pumps blood. The brain deals with evidence, emotion, belief, doubt, love, choices etc.

Save it for someone else who doesn't understand what is said.

@fmf said
This analogy doesn't work and doesn't appear to be related to what I said.

No, it's related to what *I* am saying.

Not every single thing that passes in this forum is about you.

-Removed-

Ok, sure, yeah.

🙄

@fmf said
And how is having the choice to remain unrepentant and ceasing to exist an abrogation of free will?

Not what I said.

Is reading a challenge for you? Apparently.

-Removed-

The point you are missing is that the choice is coerced and ceases being based on free will.

@suzianne said
Save it for someone else who doesn't understand what is said.

I'm just keeping it real about what the heart is. Assigning some of the brain's work to the heart, simply because poetic writers do so, does not disguise the fact that the differentiation between the emotional side of the brain and the rational side of the brain is a literary contrivance.

@suzianne said
Is reading a challenge for you?

No. It isn't.

@suzianne said
Not every single thing that passes in this forum is about you.

But if you declare what I said to be "patently false" and then offer an analogy to explain, then surely that explanation is about what I said, right? I have never once claimed that "every single thing that passes in this forum is about" me.

@suzianne said
When the robber shoves that gun in your face, the choice (such as it is) is immediate. You have no room for "grandstanding" what you want others to believe is your belief. Would you choose death, or life? 99 people out of 100 would choose at least the illusion of life, hoping the robber doesn't shoot them anyway, and comply.

So knowledge of God is like having a robber thrust a gun into one's face, and faith in God is a feeling that one is avoiding having a robber thrust a gun into one's face?

@suzianne said
I didn't say people do that about faith comments.

So you agree, then, that no one here has taken comments you have made about your faith "...out of context and then present them like the ravings of a madman". Right? If so why did you say what you did as a preamble to your first comment about the OP on this thread?

@suzianne said
I'm talking about the truth, where the rubber meets the road, not bravado on a website, Mr. Yakuza.

What is this in reference to?

@suzianne said
Regardless of how they'd talk to their friends about "beating the SoB with his own gun", etc. (Remember, I'm American. Dudes here talk crap. A LOT.)

Is God "the SoB" in this part of your analogy?

@suzianne said
You have no room for "grandstanding" what you want others to believe is your belief. Would you choose death, or life?

Is God holding a gun to believers' heads too?

@suzianne said
If God showed his face to everyone tomorrow, we'd still have those two (three) choices. 1: Comply, not through faith, but by coercion (knowledge of the result of non-compliance). 2: Overpower God. (Really? I guess if you were insane, you could try - leading us to the last choice) 3. Remain unrepentant and be annihilated (die).

choice 3. Remain unrepentant and be annihilated (die).

My perception of death is that it is the absence of consciousness and therefore the absence of regret that life isn't still going on. Are you suggesting that, if I had knowledge of God, and I ended up being annihilated, I would continue to be conscious of a feeling of regret that I wasn't experiencing everlasting life?

@suzianne said
The point you are missing is that the choice is coerced and ceases being based on free will.

I'm still struggling with the link between evidence and coercion. It sets evidence up as the enemy and ignorance of evidence as the hero.

Free will is not damaged by evidence, nor is it coerced. It is guided. - If a lighthouse truly wanted to save ships from the rocks, why wouldn't it put on its light?