Grateful,

There was a lot of non sequiturs there. Possibly too many to address in 350 words.

<<So I'm asking …: Are you denying that we can exercise choice?>>

That’s a big topic that is still hotly debated. More importantly, it has little-to-nothing to do with whether or not a god exists. Unless one believes in an omniscient god, in which case free will cannot exist; or is, at best, meaningless, because we could not possibly deviate what from an omniscient god already knew we were going to do. That would be a paradox.

But going back to your question, my answer would be: I don’t know. It’s possible that free will is only an illusion. Sam Harris presents some good arguments for this in his book, Free Will.

<<…"free will" [cannot] be negated by coercion.>>

According to the OED it can:
“The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate;” (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/free-will?q=free+will)

The constraints don’t have to be “prior”. They can also be succeeding and foreseeable. For example, "Love and worship me or your'll go to Hell", is conducive to free will.

You have not provided arguments as to why free will requires a god or a spiritual realm. All you have presented are reasons why the determinism/free-will debate is a tricky one. This next bit was a bit of a stretch, though:

<<The existence of [the choice to conform to a culture or not] cannot be explained by evolution.>>

Yes, it can.

The ability to exercise choice is advantageous in a social species like ourselves. So those able to do so, would have been more likely to pass on their genes. Total, rigid conformance to a culture and its rituals would hinder a people’s ability to adapt to change and see them eventually disappear when circumstances changed or their cultural practices were proving harmful. Indeed, there’s probably many examples throughout history of the disappearance of certain peoples for this very reason.

Dear Grateful,

Thank you so much for allowing me to read the refreshing wisdom of Shaikh Muhammad Al-Yakoubi.

This Fatwa ought to be studied in all schools around the world.

No-doubt, Shaikh Al-Yakoubi carries with him the SPIRIT of Islam as he is very able to transcend the LETTER of Islam. For a secular reader (and for a Khawarij), who is unversed in the spirit of Islam, or indeed in the spirit of religion in general, the literal printed words can easily be read as a call to violence - and this is what Robert Spencer is picking on: and why wouldn't he, so long as that many who call themselves "Muslims" agree with his interpretation while most others who know the truth, Shaikh Al-Yakoubi being an exception, are silent, often out of fear?

The other area that Spencer comments about, and is understandably untouched by this specific Fatwa that deals with current matters of higher priority, is the historical/forensic inauthenticity of the Quran and Hadith. Spencer concludes that Muhammad (peace be upon him) did not exist, whereas I conclude from his evidence that the Prophet Muhammad, p.b.u.h, existed and indeed was a great saint, yet the written books of Islam, at least in part, do not reflect his true spirit, life and works.

In my view, true Islam has such deep roots that in case the old books do it more damage than good, more misleading than leading, more injustice than justice, then it would do better by discarding them like a rotten tooth. The alternative is to clean up and repair those books, carefully and fearlessly sorting what truly is from Allah and His messenger and what is not: this will be an enormous and tedious work, but I can hardly think of a better cause.

Let me conclude that my intention is not to insult Islam, but to strengthen it.
Due to the gravity of human nature, EVERY religion eventually decays
(Buddha predicted that his own new religion will decay in 500 years),
yet the Lord promised to appear again and again to renew and uplift religion.

Yutsie: (Buddha predicted that his own new religion will decay in 500 years)

Considering Buddhism is not a "Religion" but a way of life, I can't see how the Buddha could predict that. Buddhism has been around for 2666 years give or take 10 or 15 & it's still going strong today.

Buddha is not a God, never was a God & will never be a God. In fact most of Christianity takes from the teachings of Joshua, aka Jesus, who is known to have studied Buddhism & Hinduism. Preferring Buddhism to Hinduism. I can see why.

Also, Buddhism didn't interfere with his own Jewish Religion, as he wasn't "Worshiping" a false God. He was just studying a lifestyle.

Dear Jay,

I am not knowledgeable enough to tell whether Jesus studied Buddhism. It is a possibility.

Buddha did not predict that his new religion will disappear, but that it would degenerate and gradually lose its purity. From http://buddhism.about.com/od/buddhisthistory/a/buddhistwomen.htm :

"Ananda had made his point, and the Buddha relented. Pajapati and her 500 followers would be the first Buddhist nuns. But he predicted that allowing women into the Sangha would cause his teachings to survive only half as long -- 500 years instead of a 1,000."

Buddhism is both a way of life and a religion in as much as it aids people in practical ways to come closer to God.

Buddhism happens to differ from the Abrahamic religions in that it doesn't use the specific technique of belief in gods, but belief is only one religious technique among many and doesn't suit everyone.

Rhian,
Through your comments as a whole, I don't get the impression that all that you adhere to, and all your understanding of the world, rests solely upon what exists in your church liturgy. So I would wonder why you tend to argue that way with regard to Christ's resurrection? For example, like Peter Selleck, you tend to accept/believe in evolution. That's definitely not found in any Anglican Church liturgy.

AJ,
It's sometimes thought (not necessarily true) that a more interesting article will provoke a high number of comments. There has been an unusually high number of responses here, but not many have really interacted much with the article itself.

So I'm interested in what you have under point six, where you accuse Don Batten of making stuff up. Could you elaborate on this. What has he just made up?

Hi Dan

I have used liturgy in this thread because it’s a way the church expresses and enacts its beliefs. I wouldn’t expect liturgy to have anything to say about evolution, for the same reason I wouldn’t expect the American Journal of Botany to have anything to say about liturgy. That's not its purpose.

I have also tried to convey that there is more to resurrection than an experience, supernatural or otherwise, that the disciples testified to 2,000 years ago. The church experiences Jesus as a continuing and living presence (“Christ is risen”). The church itself embodies Christ (“we are the boy of Christ”). The church also experiences the divine through the Holy Spirit, as we celebrated particularly at Pentecost last Sunday. All of these claims are not just part of the liturgy, they are biblically based.