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And orthodox Christians rejected both molinism and open theism a long time ago. Both middle knowledge (molina's proposition) and the idea that God can learn something new (open theism in knowledge of the future) are answers to a problem that likely does not even exist, predicated on the idea of free will and moral responsibility. There are other solutions to the problem, such as deny free will and thus deny that free will is necessary for moral agency, or even go so far as to deny moral agency and shift it to character. Personally, I deny all 3: that free will is necessary for moral agency, that moral agency is necessary for punishment and that free will even exists. Instead I choose the path of the potter where in the potter makes some vessels to be glorified and in obvious beneficial service, some vessels to be used in other service (think bed pan) and still others to be thrown to the ground, broken and tread upon, all often from the same lump of clay. Romantic notions aside, the clay has nothing to say about how it is formed or used, it is entirely up to the potter. Does that mean it is unfair for the broken pot, or even the bed pan? No both are used as designed and as created by the will of the potter.

This is a view called open theism and it is gaining traction in the church. It's major opponent is Molinism. A lot of people have problems with the orthodoxy of open theism, and consider it at very least shaky ground. Most fundamentalists have no idea that this conversation is going on, but then I guess they have no idea about much beyond what is in front of them anyway.

... but that part is settled *regardless* of what your religion says.

Curious, given that it is "settled", you can't come up with a single objective basis for this or any other ethical conclusion you have, from your worldview.

Settled? You haven't even gotten started. Refer to the last 2500 years on complete non-consensus in secular philosophy for that. Or to a naturalism notion of evolution--what wins, works. Period. Nothing more to say.

No justification whatsoever other than ones stolen from theism itself = "settled". Hmm...

I regret to inform there was only 1 issue ... the readers kept applying the advice (*shock*) and thus was no demand for future issues.

How to live a meaningful life

Vol. 1, Issue 1.

Far too many people waste away their life complaining about X. They are unaware there are only 2 types of people:

1. Achievers: The ones making an effort to live their dreams one step at a time , and
2. Dreams: Everyone else, who complains that they never have enough time, money, or excuse ___ of the month. They spend the majority of the time wasting away their life watching other famous people.

The secret to living a meaningful life starts with a Healthy Body and Healthy Mind.

1. Quit filling your mind up with junk
Limit mindless entertainment to a few hours a week. Be it TV, movies, games, News, etc. Seriously, knowing which Hollywood actor divorced who, or who slept with who, does fuck all for your life.

2. Watching documentaries or TED is a great way to keep the mind up-to-date with meaningful content.

3. With all the free extra time you because you cut out all the crap in your life
- pursue hobbies
- spend more time outside
- spend more actual face time with loved ones, family, parents, friends
- read more
- exercise more
- bicycle more
- walk more

4. Holy Trinity of Exercise
The 3 disciplines of: Yoga, Martial Arts, Weight Lifting complement each other very well. If you can't do all 3, pick one.

5. Diet
As we get older we get fatter and slower. Cut out all High Fructose Corn Syrup. Read all ingredients to see if it is the first one. If mouthwash has alcohol skip it. Favor natural and organic products to "plastic" food. Try Raw. Limit fatty foods.

6. Practice Spirituality
Whatever path you take, Theism, or Atheism, is largely irrelevant because they are both incomplete. All that matters is that you always keep seeking -- learning and applying your philosophy in all areas of your life.

7. Secret to Happiness
Remove False Expectations

8. Keep pondering the big stuff, and enjoy the little moments.

9. Smile, Laugh, and Love more. It is the world's best medicine and miracle.

10. Remove negative influences, and focus on the positive.
Replace your vocabulary of "problem" with "opportunity"

11. Enjoy *your* life, not other's fake life.

I'm not saying it is a religion. I'm saying that the distinction between a theistic ideology and a non-theistic ideology is exaggerated. And that most of the bad things laid at the feet of theism are more appropriately laid at the feet of ideologies in general.

Did the soviets become nice and reasonable people because they happened to be atheists? Being an atheist doesn't mean you are moral, rational, reasonable, etc.

It just means you have rejected certain definitions of super natural forces. But if you likewise believe in ideologies that you will not compromise then ultimately you're still writing a blank moral check to an ideology.

I think you have your fallacy reversed. You could say that atheism like theism is an ideology, but claiming atheism is religion is like saying dogs are cats because animals are basically cats.

When are you disciples of the religion of atheism going to admit you and the fundies are looking at opposite sides of the same coin? You're both passionate, and you're both intolerant and outspoken. Only difference is you both believe you're correct in different ways.

That depends on your definition of "atheism". The word literally means "without religion" (a + theism), so it can both be applied to people who passionately don't believe in theology, and people who simply don't know and don't adhere to any religion.

Of course, we tend to call the latter "agnostics" these days, but many of them also call themselves "atheists".

atheism isn't a religion

Depends on the perspective. Atheism may not be as organized and formalized as theism, but it isn't a lack of faith as often portrayed. It is faith in the non-existence of god, which is just as much a faith as faith in the existence of god, since ultimately neither is provable. Note that the majority of people who consider themselves atheists take it further than merely rejecting the existence of god -- most are quite sure of the non-existence of god, which is a type of faith.

I am vehemently anti-religious, "religion" broadly construed as any system appealing to faith or authority, theism not required; so I take offense at my views being called "an atheist religion". I'm not writing a paper here, so I'm free to express my strong feelings against incompatibilism as incoherent, and its negation (compatibilism) as consequently the "sane" alternative. I am vehemently NOT a hard determinist, which position would deny the existence of free will at all. I am a compatibilist (specifically after the likes of Wolf or Frankfurt), which you might have noted if you'd paid closer attention to my assertion about the possibility of determinism and free will coexisting. (Not that it's relevant to free will for a compatibilist, but I do happen to deny determinism as well, because of quantum mechanics; but the macroscopic world is deterministic enough for our purposes).

"Natural evils" are absurd in the absence of a god, sure, but we're discussing them in the context of the hypothesis that there is a god. Supposing there's a god, who's all good and all knowing and all powerful by definition, we would expect to find the natural world, being completely under his control, to be a gentle and caring place for sapient beings like us, because that's what a good god would want and thus would make. But the natural world is cruel and harsh and full of pain and misery instead, so such a god can't exist. In the absence of such a god, that state of affairs can hardly be evaluated like the actions of a moral agent could be, sure; but supposing a god existed, it could be, and would then disprove the existence of such a god by contradiction.

I'm not going to bother with a full argument against moral nihilism here because it's philosophically bankrupt and I don't want to bother, but I will say this: moral relativism is incoherent and collapses to either moral nihilism or a liberal form of some moral universalism (usually consequentialism).

I never said "free will is theodicy". That sentence isn't even grammatically correct. I merely named the appeal to free will in argument against the Problem of Evil as "the free will theodicy". Any argument against the Problem of Evil is a theodicy; that's what the word "theodicy" means, though you appear to think it means something else, I can't tell what. A theodicy appealing to free will is, by simple definition, a free will theodicy. And all such theodicies employ an incoherent incompatibilist conception of free will. On a compatibilist account of free will, you don't need indeterminism to have free will, so such excuses for why a supposed god might have to allow evil to protect free will fall flat on their face. Free will, properly understood, is entirely compatible with a universe in which a God built all humans to always choose the morally correct way, so saying "but but but free will so maybe God might still exist despite evil" loses all argumentative force. If a God existed, he could have built a universe with free will and guaranteed no evil with no problems (in fact, a universe with guaranteed no evil would require being with stronger free will), and it's only a broken idea of what "free will" means that makes anyone think that's not possible.

Free will is not just random noise introduced into our decision-making process. Quite the opposite: free will is responsiveness to moral reasoning. Free will is self-control, the ability to direct one's behavior according to what one judges to be right, rather than just whatever one happens to feel like doing. Free will is almost exactly synonymous with moral judgement, and beings with more perfect moral judgement, better able to correctly discern right from wrong, plus the ability to bring their own behavior into accordance with that, would have stronger free will, not weaker.

Your talk about Calvinism continues to assume incompatibilism and try to paint me as a hard determinist. Yes, free will is not necessarily theistic, and I never said it was. (Incompatibilism

Atheism vs. Religion creeps its way into everything, eh? I am neither religious, nor atheist, nor would I label myself agnostic. I think if we look below the surface of the mantra "atheism is a lack of belief" we will find that there is still an ardent position at play. I've always found it curious how a lack of belief about something could still lead to an intense/defensible position. There is some personal identity wrapped up with the self-label of being a particular theist sect or atheist. The philosophic position of Atheism is a corollary to a general epistemic disposition: Do not believe in the existence of something without significant evidence for its existence. I don't know what the proper label is for someone whose belief system is such. Perhaps we should just call it part of being rational.

There is something going on when a person points to Atheism and Atheist, over simply being rational. Why fixate on the particular sub-domain. Why fixate on the conflict specifically with those who are religious? If we honestly take the time to examine ourselves we will find that we are not rational in many of our existential beliefs. So fixating on the demand to be rational about religion but not broadening our scrutiny to other domains is indicative of something more than just a "lack of belief in theism". The narrowed focus onto the specific topic of theism is putting a chip on one's shoulder. It's a line drawn in the sand and saying anyone that crosses this line is going to get at least my scorn.

To me this is where the "atheist" (subscriber to atheism) becomes religious (defensive) about their belief in the rightness of their lack of belief in a deity.

Defending the idea that there are no gods means you believe it.

Like I said, atheism is not an idea that there are no gods. Atheism is the idea that it's silly to believe that there are gods when there's no evidence indicating that this is the case. It doesn't refute the notion that gods exist categorically (doing so would be a statement of faith); it just refuses to deal with an unproven concept by taking it on faith.

There is no scientific proof on either side. In fact, from the very definition of gods, it is kind of hard to prove they don't exist.

It depends on the gods in question. But yes, for something like a monotheistic god of Christianity or Islam, it is in fact outright impossible to prove that they don't exist - because they, being omnipotent, can create conditions for any possible observation to happen, and so there's no way to disprove their existence through empirical methods, which is the cornerstone of "scientific".

In practice, though, if something cannot be so proven, it's easier to assume that it doesn't exist (less concepts to worry about), as a practical matter. You can't prove the non-existence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn, either, but you don't go around thinking, "hmm, I wonder if She exists, maybe I should behave accordingly just in case". You just assume that She doesn't for the sake of simplicity. Note that it is not really a belief because it is not categorical - it's just a convenience shortcut.

If you accept that we just don't know (why would we have to pick a side?), then you are agnostic, not atheist.

A common confusion. Agnosticism is not "we just don't know". It's a belief that it is, in general, impossible to know. It is orthogonal to atheism or theism (you may accept that it's impossible to know but still believe in God, or ignore the concept).

FWIW, there is a word for what you took "theism" to mean: "fideism", which is literally "faith-ism". Given the existence of non-theistic religions and non-religious ethics, my preferred way to define religion is just as a synonym for fideism.

Atheism does not mean "without faith (in anything)". "Theism" does not mean "faith", it means "belief in god(s)". Atheism, being the negation of that, is lack of belief in god(s). A subset of lack of belief in gods is belief that there are no gods; that subset is "strong" atheism, and the rest outside that subset is "weak" atheism, which I covered already.

Atheism is not a belief that there is no gods. Atheism simply means without faith (a theism).

As such, a rock is atheist by definition.

If atheism was a religion, it would be the biggest one on the planet.

is akin to "you have no evidence that homeopathy works, despite searching for it, but it could still totally be true". Sure, it might be true, but that's a ridiculously banal position to take in an argument: "I win because I don't need to assert anything".

Ummm.... No. The validity of homeopathy is testable and verifiable by scientific rigor. The question about God is purely philosophical and personal. It cannot be tested, verified, or even acknowledged by science. That question is a non-sequitur in science because it doesn't change the laws of nature that we have observed.

Seriously, if Odin, Zeus, or Jesus came from the sky and said; "Yep it was me all along, here is proof of me. See ya next millennium! BTW, be excellent to each other." Would that change the data observed from the LHC? Or would it change the theory of the Higgs Boson? (it might change what it is [It's really just the love touch of his noodley appendage which gives matter mass])

  It is all speculation and speculation has no place in science. Agnosticism recognizes that anything outside of reality is unknown and water is wet! However, instead of defaulting to the disbelief (atheism which is scientifically aligned) or belief (theism) they err on "outside of our reality anything is possible however unlikely therefore I don't know without evidence."

The problem with the statistical approach is that theistic belief holds that God is necessary - therefore, statistics don't really apply - either God is necessarily true (and the origin of all) or necessarily false. To use a lottery example: let's suppose that you're running a raffle with an infinite number of entries. Each entry has an asymptotically zero chance of winning... yet when you draw the winning ticket that particular ticket has in fact won, despite it's infinitely small odds. Let's suppose that you *could* calculate the odds of God existing (1 option among n) - one option must indeed be true, and if the one where God exists is true, then it's true despite your calculated odds.

The original assertion was that in an infinite, probabilistic universe if there exists any chance at all that God exists (one ticket in your raffle - I would guess that the author was thinking of a raffle with finite options) then the infinite nature of the universe means that all tickets must be drawn, meaning that the one where God exists will also be drawn. My problem with this assertion is the necessary nature of the existence of God - naturalism and theism are mutually exclusive and cannot coexist, despite the size of the universe - because they are axioms that apply to the entire universe, of which you only get one.

You still don't get it, for atheism to be a religion it would have to put a God in place to believe in,

For that to be true, Buddhism has to not be a religion.

And you'll note that even then, Buddhism variants everywhere have adopted various deities for worship.

What it comes down to is that religion is not actually defined by the object of the worship, it's defined by the practice. And faithful atheists like yourself practice an "Atheism" religion which apes monotheistic religions like Christianity ... badly.

atheism is the exact opposite of that.

Some treat hate as the opposite of love ... but they're still both emotions/actions.

Atheism may be the opposite of theism ... but as practiced, it can still take on a religious flavor, because no matter if god exists or not, man is a religious being.

I've thrown the ball in your court,

You have done nothing of the sort. Your pathetic attempts at arguments do not stand up to scrutiny.

either start doing that or you've shown you don't have any good reason to believe.

Not to be like you is reason enough to believe.

Utterly offtopic...

Regardless, the answer (assuming your unasked question is "why not?") is pretty straightforward: God won't let you. God gave you a life, and no, he didn't ask if you wanted it. You play a particular role, but you don't get to choose whether to accept the part or not. Depending on the particular brand of theism, you might get to choose how you'll say your lines or hit your marks, but according to other schools, you are simply a soul experiencing the story (including your internal thoughts and emotions) that God has laid out for you. Even if you "choose" suicide to escape, that may very well be exactly what God has planned, or it may be a grave insult to your director.

My perspective: Why bother? Either God is or he isn't, and if I have these thoughts and emotions, I might as well play them as my own. I'm not so arrogant as to demand that my free will actually be cosmically and ultimately free.

You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing.

-Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of the Will, 1839

So he meant Theism instead of theology, and not all religions involve a sky daddy. Big deal, no difference.

No. A theism means without a belief in a god. That doesn't exclude other myths an atheist might believe in.

Yes but those other beliefs are not part of the label that goes with Atheism. It doesn't exclude it, but doesn't include it either.
The difference with religion is that other myths don't get special treatment in the eyes of the law, so no-one really cares as much. Why Religion does I still don't understand.