Wednesday, September 29, 2021

The God Of This World

When pressed, whether or not they truly believe this or have even personally thought about the issue of choice and responsibility, many people are quick to mention some sort of excuse for their beliefs, behaviors, and the inconsistencies they might have therein.  Perhaps they will say God, social pressures, neurochemistry, overwhelming emotion, or something else "made" them do or believe something they are trying to absolve themselves of (an inescapable error on their part because the nonexistence of free will could never be logically proven if it was true and because free will can be proven to exist [1]).  Another possibility is that certain people, if they are Christians, will claim Satan influences others in such a way that he is responsible for their actions even though it is they who carried them out.

The issue of whether Christianity is true or probable (for only fools think they could know if the whole of Christianity is outright true or false) aside, those who blame a demonic figure like Satan for human actions are still engaging in the same kind of infantile blameshifting that they think will make a person seem innocent of that which they have done.  Unless literal mind control or possession is involved, though, one being cannot actually control the will of another being.  There is a specific passage in the Bible that is perfectly consistent with this despite the potential for some people to mistakenly think it teaches a form of Satanic determinism with regard to non-Christians.

2 Corinthians 4:4 does say that the "god of this world" has blinded non-Christians to the full nature of the gospel, but it would be impossible for anyone to truly not understand anything at all about something--at least on a vague level, they are aware that the concept or issue is that concept or issue and not something else (the logical "law of identity"), even if they misunderstand what they think its exact qualities are.  However, if this verse did teach that non-Christians have no free will thanks to Satanic interference, this would only mean that any Christian who gets irate with non-Christians for this reason has reacted as if they have control over their worldviews when they do not; there would be no point in either objecting or punishing them with words for literally anything they believe, do, or say.

Whether or not Christianity is true, it is not as if people can rationally blame all of their thoughts, behaviors, or hypocrisies among these on some other being, supernatural or not.  That Satan--or at least a figure very much like the conventional description of Satan--is called "the god of this world" is a mere reference to how the egoistic, distorted values of the world do not align with Yahweh's will.  No sort of override of free will or shifting of moral responsibility is as much as hinted at.  At most, 2 Corinthians 4 says that the god of this world has obstructed some people from orienting themselves towards God, but even then, it is not as if people cannot contemplate their worldviews and pull themselves out of any error or assumption by sheer rationality and determination.


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