There's a widely accepted Christian belief that God never gave us free will. Either way, it doesn't really matter. People are going to believe what they believe, no matter how illogical it is to someone else. Most people of belief or lack thereof are not willing to be proven wrong, so you might as well just wallow in your "knowledge". It will save you a lot of wasted time.
Yeah, there is no proof. But Atheists/non believers aren't the ones making the claim of this fairy tale fictional obviously fake God Burden of proof lies solely on those silly enough to believe it I honestly can't believe what some people buy into lol....makes me fear for the future of humanity
Well that's not the belief I'm talking about lol, I'm trying to express how easily people are willing to abandon reason and logic for certain ideas. Obviously it is funny because you realize there can't be evidence for such an idea, but for many more uneducated Christians, they really believe they have substantial evidence and that atheists are the one's who have something to prove. That is where my quarrel lies (the spread of irrationality and misinformation).
I'm pretty sure everyone knows this though, even the deluded. Yeah, I would never beg for negative proof. However, I'm not about to say I don't have "any" proof whatsoever for my God. There is proof, but indirect and it depends on your cosmological position to really accept it as "proof". Anyway, you take care man
The one thing I love about gc is that I often realize (after forgetting) that through everyone's differences here, we're all united under the great mary jane
And why exactly couldn't an omniscient God know every possible outcome while allowing man to choose his own path?? Philosophy section, y u no have deep thinkers?
Okay, look at life like this God knows each choice we are going to make. Free-will suggest that we are free to make decisions and change the outcome of events. While this is somewhat true, we are not free to do it. There's no way we can change a choice or outcome of something if God, transcending time, space, and matter, is omniscient. If we do change a decision or the outcome of an event, that just means it was meant to happen in the first place. We make choices, but not freely.
Without free choice, what was God's incentive to create us; what is his goal? Just curious of course...
I don't mean to attack your beliefs, I just want to explain mine. We do have free will, because we are God (although we are not the "supreme consciousness", it would be more accurate to say we are "pieces"/manifestations of God). We have the ability to alter the future, because we are God incarnate in time. God is also unmanifest outside of time, he knows the consequences of all actions but he does not know which one he (us) will make because we (like God) have the enormous power to change our minds/destiny. People today no longer realize the true meaning of those words "changing our minds", that's literally what we have the power to do. We can change our mind, change our body, but we cannot change our spirit. This is where a bit of "predetermination" may come into play.
Yeah I saw your post after I posted mine. It was late at night so I just wanted to put in my 2 cents n go to bed.
Ask God No, but I would say it's to bring us into a relationship with Him. Whether it's free or not we are still making choices.
you got free will as long as your in the boundaries. anything else is probably a sin in one way or another.
Okay. I find it any absolutely bizzare concept though. To create us with forknowledge of our destiny, yet reward/punish us. Why create us in the first place, if you don't need to, to know the outcome? Why not just create the one's that will come to a relationship with him? You could just skip the whole Universe creation thing, and go right to heaven where you can spend the rest of eternity with your puppets. Argh...I just can't make any sense of it.
Free will contradicts predetermination, omniscience implies predetermination. I'm sure there's a lot of very liberal (in terms of theology) ways resolving the contradiction, but I'm also sure there are a lot of Christians out there who whole-heartedly believe in a single supreme omniscient deity that created humans and proceeded to allow them the capability of free will. For a good laugh
Paul addressed this in his letter to the Romans. Check Romans 9. I don't believe God has revealed the entire reason we exist. I think if I, or we, had that answer faith would decrease. He obviously wanted all of this to happen. I can only assume it was to share His love with a world who hates and despises Him and die for the haters.
That really depends on how you define hatred. Non-belief, no. However, non-belief usually translates to a certain lifestyle. We place ourselves and our priorities above God, we are hostile towards Him. Love is self-sacrificial. I believe, He exhibited His love on the cross and giving a hostile people the chance at salvation through His own blood. Yet we reject His offer and continue to make ourselves the gods and rulers of our lives. That is not love, if love sacrifices the self.
This is called the problem of free will. It's a straw man, in essence. You've created a definition that is imposible to satisfy, then by not satisfying it, you've made the jump to a particular conclusion. While I may agree with your conclusion, there is still a gap in your logic, and it's a bit fallacious. People who write the relevant literature on this subject don't even try such a simplistic approach. It's too easy. In your example, you haven't even defined free will. Does it mean uninhibited freedom? Or simply the freedom to choose between two alternatives? If both the alternatives create the same outcome, is it still truly free will? If you wanna seriously do some religion trolling, and you're interested in the problem of free will. There are places where the problem, and the alleged solutions are articulated much better. Check this out, there's a paper written by a man who was almost inarguably the greatest analytic philosopher of the past 50 years, (at least 50, maybe more). It's called, "evil for freedom's sake?". The author is David Kellogg Lewis. If you google, "lewis evil for freedom's sake", you'll find the paper. He basically rips this Christian guy, Alvin Plantinga, a new asshole. The entire paper is centered around the problem of free will. Lewis explains every possible explanation that the theist can give, and refutes them in formal logic one by one, trimming down the theists position to it's only actual philosophical certainty, which is that there is some structure to the language in which the arguments are presented. Very interesting stuff if you're seriously into the religious debate.