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TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion about self-harm

OK I have to admit I’m really excited about publishing this post because the contradiction of free will with divine intercession through prayer is one of the major reasons for my turning away from believing in God. This contradiction helped me come to the realization that not only is there no God, but that there cannot be a God based upon what has been taught to us about such a divine entity’s existence, nature and abilities. Having been raised Catholic and having gone through 16 (yes, 16!) years of Catholic education, I’ve been repeatedly exposed to four fundamental facts of the Christian concept of God that are, to various degree, contradictory:

1. There is an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God. Stated another way, God is all powerful, God is all knowing, and God is everywhere.

2. This God has endowed humanity with free will, which means that I am free to do whatever I want. I am responsible from my own actions and the consequences of them.

3. This God, as motivated to act through prayers, intercedes in human affairs either to benefit those who have requested such intercession or because it is part of God‘s master plan.

4. This God, despite being perfect and able to do anything and everything, will still allow humans to be tempted by Satan and the forces of evil.

It goes without saying that I don’t believe any of this nonsense. After chipping away at my doubts with the question “why” for so long and having never received an answer beyond “it’s part of God‘s plan” or “you need to have faith,” my passive doubts regarding the existence of God came to full-blown atheism as I couldn’t continue to believe in something that contradicted itself. I won’t accept that any of these contradictions should be dismissed as part of “faith.”

Despite what theists may want you to believe or accept, an underlying paradox persists within the above statements they cannot be avoided, denied or rationally explained away, specifically points two and three. Free well and divine intercession via prayer cannot mutually exist within the same construct of reality. The argument – or paradox or contradiction or whatever you want to call it – is that if God CAN intercede and does so in any manner then we don’t have free will. This isn’t a denial of God or God’s abilities; it is simply saying that the two statements are illogical and impossible. They are completely contradictory and that – even if a “perfect” God existed – this scenario simply cannot exist.

There are some instances, I will admit, where prayer or intercession would work in the scenario of our reality. For instance, if a loved one developed a life-threatening illness, someone close to them such as a family member or friend could pray to God for intercession. God could simply alter the necessary atoms or molecules in the body to eradicate the disease and prevent death. These changes would occur on the microscopic scale and, as such, we wouldn’t be able to see what caused the healing to occur or definitively conclude that the termination of the disease was either attributable to the body defeating the illness itself or the work of a divine being.

The problem comes when we start looking at the lack of similar action for macroscopic events: those for which evidence of divine action would be easily seen or determined as the cause. All the prayer in the world hasn’t regrown an amputated limb. All the prayer in the world hasn’t stopped a crashing airplane from hitting the ground. They say there is no atheist on board a sinking ship, but that’s not because of the passengers suddenly becoming true theists but, I surmise, that they’re looking for some force in the universe – God or otherwise – to pull them out of a seemingly no-win scenario when all rational manner of problem-solving has failed. You can’t blame someone for appealing to some force in the universe to help them when all hope is lost. That is not a show of faith or belief in God or some other godly force; it’s simply the last grasping effort of a fallible human being who is looking for a solution where – rationally and physically – one can’t possibly exist. One could be said to be appealing for a deus ex-machina (loosely translated as “god machine”), a common plot device in movies – be it human, machine, circumstance or otherwise – that comes seemingly out of nowhere or unexpectedly to assist the protagonist of a story from otherwise certain calamity or doom.

The scenarios that we are going to specifically address in our argument are the times when prayer and the intercession of the divine directly contradicts with us having free will. People often pray for others – such as family and friends – because we as humans care for those who are part of our lives and their happiness brings us pleasure. This is not a personal intercession for one’s own gain but an intercession on behalf of another. One example will be praying that your offspring does well in a test. The success or failure of said student’s test is of no concern to God unless it is part of God‘s plan or is irrelevant to God’s plan. Assuming that the passing of a test is part of God’s plan, that means that if the student doesn’t study to the extent that is needed to pass the test, that the only way that the student will pass is for the necessary information to either be placed in the student’s mind or appear on the student’s test sheet. To my knowledge, there has never been an instance in the history of humanity in which a human being has had a massive amount of knowledge unexpectedly dumped into their head to fulfill a specific purpose as the result of a divine entity or otherwise. In other words, no human being has suddenly possessed a mastery of knowledge in a subject that they never studied for or had experience in or exposure to. The student in our scenario has the choice, through free well, to study or not study for the test. To state that the student can take the test without studying and still pass denies free will, as the student – through the inaction of not studying – chose to not pass the test. To impart that knowledge would go against free will.

Another example of this is imploring God – through prayer – to prevent another person from engaging in self-harm or harmful activities. Let’s say that you have a friend whose vices or other personal choices cause them to repeatedly and consistently self-harm. (To avoid triggering anyone with more specific examples, I’ll leave it vague but will be referring to any self-harm that can cause permanent injury or death.) You ask God through prayer to intercede. Seeing that your friend has free will, they have the choice to self-harm or not, so the only way God could intercede is by causing something to happen for your friend to choose on their own to decide not to engage in self-harm. More specifically, if God should act to prevent your friend from acting on their decision, such as causing their car not to start or impeding their transportation in another way, then God is still directly preventing your friend from engaging in a behavior and eliminating their free will.  

Another argument has been made over the years against free well is the fact thank God is an omnipotent, or all-knowing entity. It is believed by those who follow the Judeo-Christian faiths that God knows everything that has ever happened, that is happening at this moment and that ever will happen. If you were born into a human form (such as you were), then you will inevitably make certain choices that are pre-known to God. You then have a pre-destiny that says that you will make certain choices, even ones that go against God’s plan. Therefore, no matter what you do, God already knows it will happen and fails to intervene for your best outcome. In this case, God is not only knowledgeable but is also a co-conspirator in any actions you take and equally as guilty for not taking any action to prevent those actions.

While it’s easy to say things such as “God worked through the doctor to save someone’s life” or “God caused one sports team to defeat another,” the fact is that us humans, through our own free will given to us not by a divine force but through the nature of the universe, are responsible for our own actions. Without free will (regardless of the cause or source), humans are not completely free and thus do not have free will. Theists out there look to their belief in a God who will intercede to give hope to hopeless or impossible situations. If someone survives a life-threatening illness it’s “a miracle from God,” but if they don’t survive it’s “part of God’s plan.” In no case is their “perfect” God the “bad guy” in this scenario; theists blindly believe that everything bad that happens – even sin – can’t be bad because it’s part of God’s plan, which is completely ignorant from our own moral sense of right and wrong or good and bad. To believe in God’s ability to intercede is ignorant and denies one’s ability or to chart one’s own destiny.

We will have free will not imposed by a loving God or any other type of creator. This is imparted upon us by the universe, which is often cruel and uncaring yet grants all of those who are capable of doing so the ability to chart their own destiny. As Satanists, we must recognize that our free will denies the possibility of any type of divine intercession, and that we are solely responsible for putting forth the effort necessary to improve our life and the lives of those who matter to us.