So you died for our sins, big whoop? What have you done for me lately?

Yikes! That’s going get me a few extra years in purgatory.
A Short Conversation between Myself and Kenneth on Autonomous Beings on Sacrilegious Sunday...
I posted part of this a long ass time ago, but drug it out tonight, dusted it off, and cracked down on it again within the spirit of one of my favorite hobbies, which is trying to destroy religion. Still haven’t got all the kinks worked out. If you got any ideas, please share…

Michael: “Are we autonomous beings Kenneth?”
Kenneth: “Shit son, just ‘cause God made us free, don’t mean he can’t make us do what he wants.” Michael: “What do you mean?”
Kenneth: “Well, why don’t you take a look at poor Jonas there from the bible…? God had his path picked out for him to take a journey to Nineveh, and when Jonas didn’t wanna go… Well you know the story.”
Michael: “So you are saying that God made Jonas go to Nin-uh—that place you said—out of force? Then, how are we autonomous?”
Kenneth: “See you’re getting it all wrong, boy. Of course we’re a bunch of crazy mixed up free livin’ souls. But the fact is that like with Jonas, God had a plan in his mind for Jonas to follow, but Jonas didn’t wanna listen, see. He don’t have to listen to God if he don’t wanna, but God can still try and persuade Jonah. You see, if we don’t do what he wants us to do, he can make it really piss poor place to live until you decide to listen to him. The choice is ours if we want to live in that setting or not. It is always better not to make decisions that will piss off God.”
Michael: “Wait a minute. So you’re saying that God had a plan for us all?”
Kenneth: “Sure, at least in the case with Jonas he did. Maybe the plans he’s got for us in his mind just ain’t been revieled to us yet. Mayhap he’s already shown us the plans and we ain’t listened like Jonas.”
Michael: “So if we listened well enough for the plans, we would live happier?”
Kenneth: “Don’t you think so?”
Michael: “So there is a master plan then?”
Kenneth: “Why, what’s it got to do with anything?”
Michael: “It’s just that if God has a master plan for us all, he is supposed to be infallible, and if we are autonomous, then God simply could not punish us for not doing what he wanted us to do or not do.”
Kenneth: “I’m not following you…”
Michael: “Let’s just say that if it were true that God could do no wrong…”
Kenneth: “I know what infallible means…”
Michael: “Okay, and yet, if he made us free from him and what he wants, then why would he try and force us to do it even though we didn’t want to it?”
Kenneth: “That’s not the point boy; you could keep on living in that whales tummy all you wanted if you wanted too. But that would also be your prerogative not his.”
Michael: “Well, so you say, but it is also his prerogative to keep us there until we make up our minds to do what he wanted in the first place. Look all I am saying that if he had a master plan as you say, and he can make us do what we want, then we cannot be autonomous.”
Kenneth: “Look and listen boy, I told you once before, that if you would like to be happy living in that tummy of the whale go right on ahead and do it. It is all the same to him.”
Michael: “So then is God fallible or is there no master plan, or worse are we not autonomous beings? Cause if he wanted us to do something and we did not do it, having our own free will, it would mean that if there was a master plan for each of us, then God would know in all his great omnipotence that we were not going to do it in the first place. So, why would he put us through the hell to change our mind unless he either knew we would ultimately do as he planned, hence him being right, or not do what he had planned, which would make God fallible. Or he would have known we would not listen to him and made it part of his great plan, thus burdening us with all that pain and suffering for no good reason except for mere cruelty, which by the way, does not seem very God-like (unless it was some sort of fickle god from Greek mythology). Since God obviously had a master plan in hand, as in with the story of Jonas, that means if we were to turn him down then God would be in fact fallible. Since it is most obvious that there in no way God can be not infallible then we are to assume that since God has a master plan and he is infallible, then we are not autonomous creatures. But since you also say that we are, then there is something completely wrong with everything.”
Kenneth: “Look my boy; I think you are putting too much credence in this master plan, boy. It is not a set in stone sort of thing but more like God’s nature (as it is a part of the Devine), which is to be characterized by infiniteness. Whereas God is infinite and ominous, so too must his plans be, infinite and riddled with possibilities, plausablities, pluralities, choices, and decisions. It is all endless and God would know every angle to every problem. Hence the whole omnipresence and omniscience he’s got goin’ for him. The plan changes with every decision we make, like a chess match, a new strategy is chosen to make us listen to his will.”
Michael: “So that in the end we will decide to play part to his original intent for us?”
Kenneth: “Yes, that’s right.”
Michael: “Yet that seems a bit like there was no real choice at all for us, if in the end we always do what he wants. It’s more or less like a cat playing with a mouse before it eats it.”
Kenneth: “But there is a decision to make, in the end, whether or not to follow his path. It’s what I’ve been tryin’ to get through that thick skull of yours.”
Michael: “And what happens if we don’t listen to the plan, make a decision autonomously as you say we can, against the wishes of God, even if he planned for us to not make the decision to his will or not?”
Kenneth: “Easy, you go to Hell.”
Michael: “Hell? That’s a little bit harsh don’t you think?”
Kenneth: “No, not really. Not if he had been hammerin’ you on the head with the correct answer all you damn life. If you still can’t bend to his persuasion, whether it be gentle or as bluntly given, like with Jonah… that was one hell of a blunt hint. You can’t get it right after that then you deserve to go to Hell.”
Michael: “So then you are saying that our true decision on this earthly plane is to decide whether or not to go to Hell? Our autonomy stems between the blessings of heaven or the banishment to Hell?”
Kenneth: “Yes.”
Michael: “We are rewarded for our ‘good’ decisions and punished for our ‘poor’ ones?”
Kenneth: “That’s right. All of our decisions should be based on that little fact. God helps us, hints to us, pushes us to make the right decisions because he is a loving God.”
Michael: “That’s not how I see it.”
Kenneth: “What in the hell is it now?”
Michael: “Well, it’s more or less back to the same question of being autonomous again.”
Kenneth: “Oh not that again. I thought we took care of that problem.”
Michael: “Not quite yet. It’s just now that we have discovered that we are autonomous creatures in the eyes of the Lord based upon the decision between Heaven and Hell—”
Kenneth: “Maybe you’ve discovered... this is goin’ nowhere.”
Michael: “Just hear me out. Then we can drop the conversation, never bring it up again and we can talk about something else.”
Kenneth: “Okay—whatever.”
Michael: “It’s just that if we make our ultimate decisions on the basis of a reward, i.e. Heaven, or a punishment, i.e. Hell, then we really cannot be autonomous creatures at all—”
Kenneth: “How do ya figure?”
Michael: “Well, just like any animal, we all have the simple choices of whether we want to turn left or right, right?”
Kenneth: “Right.”
Michael: “And those wouldn’t be considered autonomous decisions according to our logic would they?”
Kenneth: “No, any animal can choose those sorts of decisions.”
Michael: “Right, as you said, those kinds of decisions don’t qualify as being autonomous. What does is the Heaven or Hell bit. Yet, I don’t see how it is any different than turning left or right, still. Instead of just turning left or right without consequence, autonomous decisions, which are classified by whether we choose well or poor, which qualify us for Heaven or Hell, are decisions of left or right with a piece of cheese or an electric shock at the end of the turn. Like lab rats that chose as we do to go left or right. Under the watchful eyes of scientists, these rats are trained to choose the wise course for a reward. If they choose poorly, they receive some sort of shock or punishment. Ours is the same choices of left and right with a piece of string or a shock behind the next corner. How would any rational person make a choice which would be detrimental to their own health? Especially if there is someone we know watching over us, taking little notes, changing the course, pushing us toward the cheese? Would anyone take a chance to steal if they were standing under the gaze of a police man? No, not unless they were complete morons. What kind of autonomy do we have if all of our decisions are: A) being coerced, or B) biased by the known outcome that will come at the end of our supposed free willed decisions? How is it any different from that of the lab rat?”
Kenneth: “You stole that argument from Berdyaev.”
Michael: “Well, I guess kinda...yes I did.”
Kenneth: "What do you mean kinda?"
Michael: "Well, kinda cause I actually stole it from Hartshrone who stole it from Berdyaev..."
Kenneth: “Well, it’s not a very good one. To the question of free will and then we drop it, right?”
Michael: “Right.”
Kenneth: “I guess there is no difference between us and the lab rats. Except, though we all know the cheese at the end of our decisions, yet there are those who still do not chose the cheese and go toward the shock instead. Why is that? Shouldn’t they be punished for being so idiotic?”
Michael: “What if they did not know any better? I mean we, though I do not want to get into it, and I am sure you do not as well, would then have to talk about morality and how it plays within society. But for our measures and for quickness’ sake, if a person knows not that his actions will be judged as inappropriate then how could his decisions be judged? Isn’t that we don’t try juveniles, because they are too young to understand their wrongs?”
Kenneth: “Yes, you’re right, yet just like the inexperienced rat, like in your analogy, eventually it would learn from its mistakes, and that’s a good point to tie all this here together again, cause like Jonah, God made him learn from his mistakes by sending him that big ole whale.”
Michael: “And so we’re back to square one. I still don’t think that we resolved anything. And I still don’t think that if we are coerced into taking a dangling piece of cheese that the decision to take the cheese is all that autonomous to me. To me it seems like we are nothing more than mere puppets for the Lord. And right now he is telling me to dance mother fucker dance.”
Kenneth: “Well, since I get to say that last say in this, I say we change the subject to talking about the football game coming up ‘cause this is starting to give me a headache.”
Michael: “Agreed.”
Kenneth: “So, how ‘bout them Bengals?”