If God knows what we are going to do, he has no right to reward the good and punish the wicked (35 marks)

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If God knows what we are going to do, he has no right to reward the good and punish the wicked (35 marks)

First let us consider whether God has the right to reward or punish anyway. This assumes God has a complete and perfect understanding of human morals, and that the human concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are identical to him. This seems unlikely given that he is not equivocal to us, but is permissible for the monotheistic Abrahamic God as “God made man in his image” (Genesis), therefore has the same concepts.

Reward and Punishment are integral concepts to what Psychologists call Operant Conditioning; if you touch a burning flame, you brain punishes you with the pain sensation as this behaviour is detrimental to the body. As with a parent punishing their child for dangerous behaviour, the brain does this a reason, to prevent reoccurrence of the same, damaging behaviour. This is where God differs as his punishment of eternal damnation has no effect upon the existing world and so it cannot be classed as punishment; nor heaven as a reward. This shows that God has no right to inflict pain or grant pleasure after death, so he can only legitimately reward and punish on earth. Even so this brings in the problem of evil; he clearly does not always punish the wicked (changing their ways) and if so why does he not do this?

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Furthermore, if he can interfere with the world but chooses not to, allowing us our free will, he is logically responsible for evil and so can neither blame nor punish us. This is the same as if I saw a man about to rape a woman, and I possessed sufficient force to stop him, but chose to not act saying that both the man and the woman had to learn the extent of their free will and choose to be good like me.  He chose not to help us, and gives us an unproductive punishment in Hell.

So If God ...

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