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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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Imagine for a second that you have no choice but to worship a deity, is that actual worship?

If the Deity had created us such that we would always freely choose to love and worship the Deity, it wouldn't be an impingement on our free will, anymore than the Deity creating us without the ability to teleport is robbing us of our right to "choose" not to teleport.

I think that situation is different. I actually agree that If the Deity had created us such that we would always freely choose to love and worship the Deity, it wouldn't be an impingement on our free will. But I think creating us without the ability to teleport is actually a larger impingement, assuming it was ever an option.

The difference is, we want to be able to teleport, whereas beings engineered to love a deity wouldn't want to not love the deity.

One is constraining what you can think and the other what you can do no? I can't really think of any other desire or valuation (whatever mental category worship falls into) that can't conceivably be negated, though maybe somebody could suggest one. It would be odd to have one where there really is no choice.

One is constraining what you can think and the other what you can do no?

There are probably thoughts human minds cannot think, though obviously I can't think of any. I don't think it really makes a big difference though. Why would constraining thought be an unacceptable restriction on free will but not constraining action? When it comes to human government, thought-control is considered especially bad (hence Orwell), because controlling what someone thinks is impossible for a human dictatorship, so one that even attempts it is proving itself to be insanely megalomaniacal. But for God, who already controls everything, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference.

There are probably thoughts human minds cannot think, though obviously I can't think of any.

The squared-circle is the most common example, but then I am sort of thinking about it already and if I turn mad I might worship it.

Why would constraining thought be an unacceptable restriction on free will but not constraining action?

A Christian might correct me here, but I think the answer is that what you can or cannot do in this temporal world is simply unimportant compared to what you do in your soul. And so we have free will in the things that matter.

The squared-circle is the most common example, but then I am sort of thinking about it already and if I turn mad I might worship it.

This is my impression of how the trinity doctrines came about.

Thought control isn't really considered bad. Its just called different things depending on whether we think it's good or bad. Orwellian Thought Control is considered bad primarily because the party fails to control the thoughts of the lead character effectively. If the party had aligned its citizens more effectively, there would be no dissatisfied human to relate to. We'd just be reading a story about a Drone going about its day. At the very least it would look much more like Brave New World.