How is there free will in heaven?

Is there free will in heaven (or rather the new heavens and new earth)? How can the people in heaven be free if you know they will always do the right thing for an eternity?

Here is an answer I like to this question, that involves a certain view of evil.

In traditional Christian theology, evil is an absence of good like cold is the absence of heat. Evil is not an independent thing, but exists only because good exists and sometimes there is not much good in a situation. So evil is a lack of empathy, a result of a person not processing things morally.

For practical example of this, suppose someone wants people to treat them well, but they are really rude to staff at restaurants and other places. If someone could make them feel the pain they cause others for no reason, then this person would change their behaviour because they wouldn't want to be treated in this way. So their bad behaviour is actually the result of them not being consistent with their own principles in terms of how they want to be treated. In general terms, this shows how evil is not being truthful about how one's actions affect others in ways one's own self would not like (assuming someone endorses the Golden Rule, that is).

So if evil is something like this, then in heaven God has solved evil by making us completely truthful, through Jesus taking our sins (1 Pe 2:24). Because we are completely truthful, we can never choose to be evil because we will always be aware of how we would like to be (ideally) treated.

We will be unable to do evil in the sense that you, the reader, are unable to find it desirable to rob banks or murder people - that is, you are free to do it, but you can't do it because you can't be tempted by it. It's an inability to find something a good (or 'truthful') idea rather than any sort of physical inability.

Does free will contradict the laws of physics?

People often say that free will contradicts the laws of physics because free will implies a 'garden of forking paths' where you can do A or B. But the laws of physics imply that either history was fixed at the time of the Big Bang or that where chance exists it is merely randomness and probability. Where does that leave free will?

An interesting way of imagining how free will can be compatible with the laws of physics comes from quantum mechanics. The 'Schroedinger's cat' idea gives a good account of it (from Wikipedia):

Schrödinger's Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

This article explains a bit more about why the cat is both alive and dead:

The principle of superposition states that if the world can be in any configuration, any possible arrangement of particles or fields, and if the world could also be in another configuration, then the world can also be in a state which is a superposition of the two, where the amount of each configuration that is in the superposition is specified by a complex number.

There is superposition with regard to the Geiger counter detecting radiation, because it's a subatomic phenomena. Therefore, after a while an atom has in some sense both decayed and not decayed, releasing and not releasing radiation. Thus, after a while the cat is both dead and alive.

In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place. This experiment makes apparent the fact that the nature of measurement, or observation, is not well-defined in this interpretation. The experiment can be interpreted to mean that while the box is closed, the system simultaneously exists in a superposition of the states "decayed nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living cat", and that only when the box is opened and an observation performed does the wave function collapse into one of the two states.

Schroedinger's cat illustrates how quantum mechanics seems, at least superficially, to allow for something that sounds like a 'garden of forking paths'. The cat is both alive and dead, two contradictory possibilities exist, and our conscious observation forces reality to 'choose' one. Perhaps our brain has many possible configurations and our consciousness/the soul can make out of them one reality?

But does quantum mechanics apply to the workings of the brain? Some scientists have come up with theories of how it could (link).

So with free will, imagine that until our consciousness/soul affirms a value, e.g., 'I think it's important to be truthful', then the neurons in our brain are simultaneously affirming a 'truthful' brain state and a 'not truthful' brain state. But after the conscious decision is made then the 'truthful' brain state 'resolves' into being - just like the cat is alive or dead only when the scientist looks into the cage and 'forces' an answer.

This type of analysis doesn't explain what free will is, it just indicates how the soul or consciousness might be able to change the brain using free will. (Libertarian) free will's workings would still be beyond our understanding.

I apologise in advance for my scientific ignorance if this idea is fundamentally flawed, but, as others have said, it seems that a genuine free will can be compatible in theory with the laws of physics.

(Edited 5 April 11).

Why God can't just forgive sin

Forgiveness doesn't do a lot of things. For instance, it doesn't necessarily make people better. If I forgive someone for stealing from me, then I won't seek revenge, but it won't necessarily mean they'll stop stealing. So forgiveness won't necessarily make the forgiven person better.

This could be a problem for religious people if you need to be perfect to be with God. If you have to be perfect to hang out with God forever, then it raises the question: how is God's forgiveness going to make people perfect? If my forgiveness doesn't make someone who steals from me perfect, actually they could easily steal again, then how is God's forgiveness going to make a religious person perfect? Maybe the religious person will feel so grateful or remorseful that they'll never do anything wrong ever again. But experience teaches us that this is unlikely...

This is partly why Christianity teaches a type of forgiveness where forgiveness DOES make someone better. When Jesus died for us on the cross, God put our evil onto Christ, as well as the punishment for it. You can imagine all our badness, like a great pool of black sludge, being poured onto Christ on the cross. So "We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives" (Rom 6:6) and in return we will "be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of [our] own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ (Phi 3:9). Luther called it the 'Great Exchange'.

2 Cor 5:21: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Isaiah 53:12: "Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Unfortunately, Christians still do the wrong thing a lot because God has decided that what Jesus did for us will be fully manifested at a later date. Until then, "The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions" (Gal 5:7). In fact, in our present state, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8).

Is belief in God natural?

Suppose I created a robot to pick up rocks and for some reason gave it consciousness. In that circumstance, it would be OK for that robot to feel an obligation to pick up rocks and have beliefs reflecting that desire, because that's what it's been programmed to do and think. In the same way, if God has programmed humans to believe in a 'divine reality', then it would be intellectually acceptable for humans to believe in a divine reality under that circumstance. We'd just be fulfilling our 'programming', which would make religious belief perfectly fine regardless of other considerations.

But what if such a God doesn't exist? If there's only a 1% chance of such a God existing, then this viewpoint should sound silly.

Yet, it's not silly to affirm this point of view if there's a 90% chance of such a God existing.

So then what are the chances that there is a God who wires religious belief in this way? If it's 90%, then we can easily affirm the point-of-view described above. If it's 50% or a bit less, then maybe we can believe that it applies to us but in a way that leaves room for a fair amount of doubt.

If there's no evidence for or against God, then the principle of parsimony (if you can cut something out of an explanation without losing anything, cut it out) reduces the chance of God existing. But the chance that God exists does not thereby become nothing, because the debate about God is also part of a broader debate: is the realm of subjective experiences (mind) one of reality's accidents? Or something that has a place at the very foundation of reality? The latter idea will always be somewhat appealing to people in some form or other, even if it has no other evidence for it.

Also, a lot of believers would say that looking at the beauty of the natural world and the physical laws of the universe (the 'fine-tuning' argument), arguments from the big bang, other apologetics, etc., gives some evidence for a God. If so, then there would be a higher chance of a 'hard wiring' God existing.

What's the lowest chance that a 'hard wiring' God exists for believers to take the scenario above as seriously applying to humanity? In one study people found a 'reasonable doubt' that someone is guilty of a crime to exist at about a 25+% chance of innocence, given the evidence. I suppose that indicates you can get reasonable people believing in something with a 25+% likelihood that it's true. So if you bring this idea into the discussion, then there needs to be a 25+% chance of such a God existing for believers to take the scenario above seriously on purely rational grounds.

A God with emotions makes sense

Is it really a massive assumption to say that God can feel emotions?

It's true that God didn't evolve and has none of the physical components of emotion, like the release of certain chemicals in a brain, etc. That's true. But think about what emotions involve in terms of reason...

Can you feel anger without perceiving that someone has failed to meet an obligation? I don't think that you can. Can you do something on the basis of, "I will treat others the way I want to be treated," without feeling empathy? No - if you incorporate that value into your actions, then that = feeling empathy. Can you feel envy without perceiving a lack in your life? No, you have to perceive a lack in some area of your life to feel envy, etc.

So acting on certain kinds of practical reasons, or reasons to do with action = feeling certain emotions.

When you think about it logically, one would have to conclude that any kind of practical reason could probably be matched to an emotion. This would include emotions that humans have no experience of if you assume that there are practical reasons that humans never relate to but which other species do (uniquely alien or animal emotions).

So a basic emotion, a chemical emotion, like anger is actually an act of practical rationality or exercise of practical reason. In the case of anger: someone not meeting a perceived obligation.

And rationality is something that is very broad and goes way beyond evolution. Rationality is something not even restricted to the physical universe! It is something we could share with robots, aliens, and even creatures outside our universe.

So, at the end of the day, that's why I think that a God who feels emotions makes sense if you interpret emotion as rationality to do with action. Because a God who acts is a God with some understanding of emotion, of what it basically is, even if God's version of emotion is very different to ours.

And, of course, any creator God is a God of action, because God has proved He/She/It acts. Of course, a creator God has created the universe.

Going beyond this issue, a vague 'God who acts', who feels something like emotion, is different from a loving God who cares deeply about His creations, like the Christian God. But I don't see why God having no love is seen automatically to make much more sense than God having love. We probably feel that the existence of a loving God needs more of an explanation than a God of pitiless indifference. But if you, on the other hand, assume that finite reason cannot understand an infinite God, then how do we know an (infinite) God of love needs more of an explanation than an (infinite) God without love? If we can't use finite reason to understand what's going on when it comes to God?

For freedom Christ has set us free

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." - Gal 5:1.

One of the 'paradoxes' of Christian teaching is that loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and loving our neighbour as we love ourselves actually sets us free rather than 'enslaves' us.

So what's going on with that? Surely loving your neighbour as you love yourself is impossibly difficult.

I think a key element in explaining why it's not some kind of 'slavery' comes from the Christian view of human nature: that when God made us He made our minds like His mind in many ways (the image of God idea). One aspect of God's mind is that it is love (1 John 4:8). So our minds were designed to be just as loving as God's. Just like God fulfills His nature through love, so do we.

We don't feel our minds are really like this (in that you can be happy without being very loving), but that can be explained as a result of people being able to create their own happiness from contradicting this system, as one of the 'powers' of free will, so we can make our own happiness from other things.

The Christian 'system' gets legitimacy because when we act according to the above described view of human nature we are actually acting according to the original 'blueprints'. Because of the 'blueprint' idea God's desire for us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is not supposed to be this horrible duty we are obligated to fulfill, but, ideally, in some way 'freeing', despite its incredible cost (1 John 5:3).

Okay, this may sound nice in theory, but how does it address the arduous nature of 'love your neighbour as you love yourself'? Why should we beat ourselves up for not following an impossible standard? As the Bible says, it is, after all, impossible to follow even though it's a legitimate standard (1 John 1:8).

One point that Christianity makes is that God just wants us to accept what Jesus has done for us on the cross and doesn't want us to beat ourselves up for failing to keep an impossible, but legitimate, standard that He knows we can't meet (trying to meet it in order to please God would actually contradict the accepting Jesus part according to Gal 5:4). Because of what Jesus has done, we won't need to try hard to follow it one day, but it will, one day, come as naturally as drinking water. I think Phil 3:9 explains some of the mechanics of how this works: "[I have given up everything to] be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ."

Broken free will

We like to think that we have free will and can decide our own values and to act on those values. But let's say someone's free will wasn't working properly. There are probably a number of ways this could manifest, but what would be the main problem that you'd see if it did happen?

Let's say that I have a certain principle that in certain circumstances people should do XYZ, including me. And that's not a principle I reluctantly accept, but one that I want other people to follow and for me to follow.

A free will that doesn't work properly would be a free will where I'm unable to act consistently on the principles that I hold near and dear. That sort of free will would be like a car that occasionally breaks down for no reason, or a computer that crashes every now and then for no reason. Because a free will like that is a free will where someone is effectively unable sometimes to choose what they have chosen.

Using that standard it seems that possibly everyone has a free will that is broken in some ways, because we all seem to affirm principles that we hold near and dear, and yet no one, unless those principles are very prosaic, can consistently act on those principles 100% of the time. So our free will, if we have it, is broken in some way. It doesn't work the way you'd expect it to work in theory, and perhaps the way it was intended to work.

These thoughts were prompted by a reflection on John 8:34-6: "Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.'"

And Romans 7:15: "I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it."

Where does sin come from?

An interesting theory on where sin ultimately comes from...

God is perfect, but why couldn't He make us perfect just like He is? Where does sin come from?

There's an answer that I find helpful on this issue: because of reason X, which is true in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4 is true, only God can be 100% perfect. That is, only God can be a completely perfect being.

Therefore God cannot make any other being equal to Himself in perfection. So God can make beings that are 99% perfect, or 99.999...% perfect, but only God can be 100% perfect. This is a fundamental limit on the nature of reality and God's power, because only the creator, only God, can be completely perfect.

Of course, in reply, it might be said that a computer program can be made to perfectly calculate someone's tax returns, and what about a perfect circle existing? So some types of perfection can be made outside of God, mainly relating, I guess, to something achieving a defined purpose. But only God can be completely perfect in every way. So a perfect circle cannot be completely perfect like God can be completely perfect. I think this makes sense.

So Adam and Eve could be created 99.9999...% perfect, but not perfect like God is. And neither can we.

And from that tiny, tiny amount of imperfection, after maybe billions and billions of years (it doesn't say how long they were in the Garden), Adam and Eve experienced the 'Fall'. And we would have done so in the same position, because we have a tiny, necessary amount of imperfection as well. The Garden was a good situation but, ultimately, it can't work forever.

The only way around it is for God to insert Himself into reality as a created being, with our vulnerabilities, and overcome our 'necessary imperfection' - our ability to be tempted by evil - by being God as well as human.

The way it works for God as a created being is that, for instance, Jesus would never sin in any possible situation because He is God although He was tempted because He is human (Heb 4:15).

Then God-as-a-created being absorbed all the effects of our necessary imperfection - our sin - into Himself on the cross, as a result of which everyone can "be found in [Jesus], not having a righteousness of [their] own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ" (Phil 3:9).

That solves the problem created by our necessary imperfection, which is the way it always led to sin - it's not a problem if you have a goodness which is not your own, but which is Christ's.

Ultimately, God found a way to forever sidestep our necessary imperfection through the cross, in a way that wasn't available in the 'Eden setup', although the Eden setup was 'very good' (Gen 1:31).

Objective morality

Atheists and Christians often argue about what makes morality 'objective', and whether you need God for morality to be 'objective'. But what does 'objective' in 'objective morality' mean, exactly? And why is a world without God unable to express whatever it means?

Instead of answering this directly, I'd prefer to imagine a situation that makes morality pack the most 'punch' out of any situation I can imagine.

This is the situation: suppose that humans are made to be perfectly loving towards each other and relate to one another in an 'ideal' way. So it's impossible to really live out your nature without relating to others in an 'ideal' way. That way, even though doing evil can make people happy, no one can really be themselves - who they really are - without relating to others in an 'ideal' way.

This situation would seem to make morality pack quite a punch. So maybe morality is more' objective' if this situation is the case than if it's not. Also, clearly, it's easier to believe this if you're a religious person plus you believe that things have somehow 'gone off the rails' for humanity so that, somehow, no one lives out their true nature in a complete way (at least in this life).

Perspective

Is there one face or are there two faces in this picture? Two people can see something different and yet they are looking at the same thing.

Sometimes looking at different perspectives on the world can feel like you're looking at this picture, especially regarding different explanations for people's behaviour (as outlined below).

Social sciences point out that in any population of people some are really nice, some people are quite selfish, and most people are in the middle - they are nice if people are nice to them and mean if people are mean to them.

An explanation of this from an evolutionary point-of-view is as follows: if everyone in the group is very selfish then the group will self-destruct. So the best evolutionary 'strategy' is for people to be 'reciprocally nice', or 'conditionally nice'. That way, the group won't self-destruct, but people can secure their own self-interest and thus have a greater chance of effective reproduction. Naturally, evolution has selected for this. And, of course, extreme niceness is explained as either a random 'there has to be a bell curve and naturally people at the nice end', or there's some kind of evolutionary strategy going on there, as well.

Looking at the same evidence, there is also another, completely different explanation (albeit a bit more mysterious because of the 'free will' factor):

Suppose we have free will, and everyone can pick their moral character: really nice, really bad, or in between. On one hand, it makes rational sense for people to be selfish because then they can always pursue their interests. But on the other hand, we don't like being treated in that way, and so we feel bad about it because we feel we should 'Do unto others'. These are the considerations, and based on them, some people freely choose to value extreme niceness, extreme badness, or something in between.

As it so happens, the in between personality, 'conditional niceness', is the perfect compromise between securing our self-interest and 'Doing unto others' a fair bit. So, naturally, it's the most popular 'choice' when we pick and choose our characters. So in every population, through free will, you get a bell curve with some people at either extreme and most people somewhere in the middle, like with the first explanation, above.

As it so happens, this personality - the 'conditionally nice' - is also the most evolutionarily effective. But, actually, it comes through a process involving free will, rather than genetics.

So if you have free will + selfishness makes sense + we feel a moral obligation, then you can explain what we see, and if you use the idea of evolutionary strategies, then you can explain the data as well. So which is right?

Does going to heaven involve missing out on the richness and variety of human experience?

There's a common perception that going to heaven involves being 'lobotomized'. That it means being turned into a perpetually happy 'machine' where you are unable to express natural emotions like sadness, cynicism, and so on. Meanwhile you are constantly 'high' on love which enables the saints in heaven to care about people and God the way God wants, like a parody of 'positive thinking' gone wrong.

This view is based on a misunderstanding of how the saints in heaven will be different. The entire difference is summed up thus: whereas now we don't treat other people the way we would ideally like other people to treat us, the saints in heaven will. Whereas now we don't follow the Golden Rule perfectly, the saints in heaven will (Matt 7:12).

Jesus (who is God) felt sadness (John 11:33-36), anger (Mark 3:5), cynicism (when justified, Mark 12:14-15), extreme anxiety (Luke 22:42-44). Jesus felt a full spectrum. He felt every emotion that was compatible with treating others the way Jesus would have ideally liked to be treated.

Heaven won't change people so that they can't get sad, lonely, feel grief, pain, feel cynical (as long as it allows for giving people the benefit of the doubt), anger (when justified) and so on. It only means that we will follow the standard above, which goes along with loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. When someone adds something to this then they are in danger of adding something to heaven that heaven doesn't have - this is where the 'heaven involves a lobotomy' view comes from.

So if our idea of heaven involves missing out on the richness of human experience, then either a) following the Golden Rule perfectly means missing out on the richness of human experience, or b) something has been added to our understanding of heaven that heaven doesn't have.

Two kinds of forgiveness

The Bible describes two kinds of forgiveness, one of which is a lot more 'powerful' than the other.

The first kind of forgiveness works like this: imagine a thief who keeps stealing someone's stuff - let's say John's stuff. John is so nice that whenever the thief steals from him, he forgives the thief. But the thief never changes his behaviour. John can forgive the thief all he wants, but it doesn't deal with the thief's wrongdoing. Forgiving the thief doesn't make the thief a better person.

John's kind of forgiveness doesn't do much. John's forgiveness won't make the thief stop stealing, it will only prevent John from taking revenge or seeking justice.

If God's forgiveness is like John's forgiveness then God's forgiveness won't accomplish that much. It will do something, but it won't really deal with humanity's issues.

The second kind of forgiveness is more powerful because it changes the person who gets forgiven.

The second kind would work like this: imagine that John accepted the thief's apology and somehow took away from the thief whatever it was that made the thief ignore the badness of stealing. So the thief didn't steal again (unless there was some exception that made it OK).

The Christian view is that to solve humanity's problems, God needed the second kind of forgiveness. Otherwise people would keep doing the wrong thing and apologising for it in a never-ending cycle of wrongdoing and forgiveness.

Col 2:13: "You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins."

The Bible says that for God to use the second kind of forgiveness Jesus had to die on the cross for us (Matt 26:39). God made it so that "our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ" (Rom 6:6), and "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). Some kind of 'goodness transfer' happened.

Did God design our brains to enjoy sin?

God is responsible for the way our brains are designed, and the design of our brains makes us enjoy some things and not others. Actions that involve doing the wrong thing can be enjoyable, although in the long-term they create suffering. So did God design our brains to find wrongdoing (e.g. pride, envy, hatred) enjoyable?

No. Part of the answer is that the way free will works (it seems) is that we have the power to change our brain structure over a long period of time. Free will gives us the power to make certain things enjoyable and other things not enjoyable to our brains (here is a link to a good article on the science supporting this view, click 'show transcript').

So we have the power to change our brain structure against the way God intended our brains to function. An example of this might be someone who occasionally gives in to anger. They start getting angry more and more as they stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. Then they start assuming the worst about people. This process literally changes their brain structure, so the angry person changes their brain into one that 'thrives' on rage and anger.

But this is not the way God originally intended their brain to work.

OK, so why did God design us so that anyone would ever find it a good idea to change their brain structure in bad ways?

Our desire to do this is actually an unintended byproduct of something good. It's important that everyone has a sense of self-interest. If we had no sense of self-interest, then people would forget to eat, sleep, and would do things like walk off cliffs without any fear of death. Our sense of self-interest keeps us alive and enables us to perform very many sensible, everyday actions.

But there's not just 'good' self-interest, there's also 'bad' self-interest. We have various needs and wants (like food, security, shelter) and messing other people around will sometimes fulfill them better. Bad self-interest is e.g. murdering someone if it will make your life easier, or abusing someone to get them to do what you want.

God can't give us 'good' self-interest without making us aware that our life would be easier if we did 'bad' self-interest sometimes, and thus all sin.

For this reason we all change our brain structure to find 'bad' self-interest enjoyable to some extent - like pride, envy, unjustified anger, and so on. Sometimes, those things will fulfill our needs better than being honest. It wasn't in God's original plan for our brain structure but free will gives us the power to do it.

And God had to give us these needs and wants, because if we had no needs and wants then we would be self-contained 'social islands', which is not a better situation.

But isn't there evidence that personality can be influenced by our genes?

Yes, but there's a reason why God made it like this. To start off, there's an important difference between personality and character. Character is about good and evil, personality is about everyday (non-moral) choices. Personality can never be morally bad (when it's defined as choices not connected to moral issues), although it can be 'inconvenient' in some ways.

If God designs much of our personality, then God is not thereby encouraging or enabling us to sin. I think that God gives us certain personality traits to glorify His plan (like if you are an extrovert God may want you to meet a lot of people and encourage them in some way or something, so God designs you to be an extrovert). So there's really no problem if God has a hand in designing our personalities.

If God designed us to have flaws in our character then there is an issue, because that would make God the author of sin. But I don't think there's evidence for this view in the same way there's evidence that our personality is designed partly by God. Studies will show that personality has a genetic aspect, but it doesn't show that with an evil or good character.

Practically, these ideas can be encouraging - we are becoming more like our true selves when we reject the 'dark side' of our nature (Gen 1:27; Col 1:15). We are not betraying 'natural' desires to do wrong, actually we are becoming more like the kind-hearted people God intended us to be.

Is morality relative?

Is morality relative? Many people have argued that it is. Consider how there have been cultures throughout history that have approved of horrible practices.

But there is an argument that moral differences between cultures are not that deep - even though they seem to be at first.

Imagine that you had to explain to someone how they could do the right thing in every circumstance. One classic answer would be that you should follow the 'Golden Rule'. As Jesus says in Matt 7:12: "Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets." This is a pretty good, short summary of how to be a good person.

One interesting aspect of the Golden Rule is that it's considered an important moral principle in so many (all?) cultures, in one form or another. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, Islam, and of course Christianity (as well as numerous other religions and cultures) all endorsed the Golden Rule (source).

So if there's such widespread agreement on the Golden Rule between cultures, then it sounds like moral disagreements between cultures can't go that deep. They have to pay attention to something like the Golden Rule (whatever they call it).

You could also say that it's hard to imagine any culture rejecting this principle while continuing to talk in moral terms (although you might find the occasional evildoer who rejects it). Why? Because when you think about it, rejecting the Golden Rule seems like rejecting the concept of 'morality' altogether. Let's say you have someone who doesn't care at all about treating others the way they'd like to be treated. Have they come up with an alternative moral system? Or have they discarded morality? It feels like the latter.

If so, then the Golden Rule is really fundamental to any kind of morality, and therefore every culture shares a fundamental moral principle (even if it doesn't look like it on the surface). Perhaps cultural 'moral differences' are more like differences in application and not fundamental principles.

It should also be noted that this isn't a minor thing that cultures have in common - you can do quite a lot with the Golden Rule. The Bible points out that if we wrong someone we'd rather that they not take revenge on us, because revenge is painful (Lev 19:18). The Bible argues that 'Doing unto others' implies you can't hold grudges, which is taking the principle quite a long way.

So if it's like this then how can you get horrible cultural practices? There are two things to keep in mind here. First of all, people can have dangerous false beliefs and that might lead to evil cultural practices. For example, human sacrifice won't really appease the gods. Secondly, what we think is right can be influenced by our self-interest - surely self-interest can affect the views of groups and even cultures as well. For example, if slavery had a big economic benefit for a society then you would probably find people there rationalise it a lot more than if it had no benefit. Same thing with a patriarchy supporting a patriarchal culture.

The Christian view of human nature

Here is a visual illustration of the Christian view of human nature, below. Click on it to see it full size:



(I'd like to note that even though I refer to God using male pronouns, God is not a guy. God has no specific gender, but has chosen to refer to Himself in the Bible using male pronouns. I think that's mainly for two reasons. First of all, using a gender neutral pronoun is a bit awkward ('It created the universe') given the way our language works. Secondly, when God came to earth He chose to be born as a man (Jesus), rather than a woman, and so that probably led to every member of the trinity being referred to as a 'He'.)

How does human nature change in heaven?

A lot of skeptics have this question about heaven: why won't people in heaven do bad things? Especially when you consider how Christians cannot avoid sinning in this life.

Is it that God changes human nature? Well then why didn't God create Adam and Eve with a nature that wouldn't sin? It doesn't make sense. But what other explanation is there?

So does God prevent evil in heaven by changing human nature?

In one sense yes, in another sense no. The answer lies in what Jesus did on the cross for us.

You could say that humans are made out of two components: a body-brain, and a soul-mind.

People will always have a body-brain (whether physical, spiritual, or glorified resurrected body) and a soul-mind. So in the sense of the 'components' of human nature, human nature never changes.

Is it a problem that the components of human nature never change?

Yes. For some reason God can't make anyone with these components like Himself when it comes to sin. By this I mean, only God can never be tempted by sin (James 1:13). And we're smart enough to know that if we mess other people around then we can often fulfill our needs and wants better. And if God hadn't given us needs and wants then we would be self-contained social islands (not a good alternative).

So how can God make heaven perfect if we're stuck with these components of human nature, and these components lead to sin?

Part of the answer is that human nature isn't the only issue. There is also the issue of our own individual moral characters.

We have free will, so in theory, heaven could have no evil in it if people just chose not to do evil there (despite our bad track record on earth).

But in practice, having free will doesn't really help things that much. We are smart enough to know that selfishness/evil often makes a lot of sense, and so we can't make ourselves do something like 'be perfect' that is clearly against our self-interest.

But maybe, the problems of human nature could be sidestepped if just one person lived a morally perfect life.

How so?

Well, if one person lived a flawless life with a body-brain and soul-mind, then perhaps God could 'give' their moral character (pattern of moral choices) to others... That would make the human nature problem irrelevant.

If God could just 'give us' a morally perfect character, then we'd still have our human nature, but it wouldn't be a problem because now everyone would have a perfect moral character.

There was such a perfect person, according to Christianity. Although Jesus had a body-brain and soul-mind exactly as we do (Rom 8:3), for Jesus sin wasn't ever a problem. This is because Jesus had God's soul (John 10:36). So Jesus had the soul of someone (i.e. God) who had chosen to never sin from eternity.

We don't exactly know how it works, but Jesus' moral character (pattern of moral choices) can be handed out to others. On the cross our sinful selves somehow died with Christ, and in return Christ now lives in us (Rom 6:6, Gal 2:20). This is referred to as getting a new nature and being a new creation (2 Pe 1:4; 2 Co 5:17).

This world is the 'choosing period', where people decide whether this is something they want. For some reason, God waits until after we die to 'fully manifest' the effects of the 'swap' - but the 'swap' is fully accomplished as soon as someone genuinely believes in Christ (Col 3:3).

So heaven makes sense. We will still have a body-brain and soul-mind, but this time there will not be any problems. Because our moral character has been changed through the cross.

[1] Part of the idea of Adam and Eve is that you can have a body-brain and a soul-mind and nevertheless avoid sinning. I think this is possible because the 'Garden of Eden' situation is one where God protects our understanding of good and evil. So we rely on God's understanding of what to do, whether to get angry with someone, or help someone, for example, rather than our own. The 'Fall' seems to be a situation where people decide to rely on themselves for working out good and evil and to let go of God's protection.