Predestination and Free Will

[Adstar]

I am able to digest what you guys talked about here.
I just want to know, am I free to choose?

Yes you are free to chose.


All Praise The Ancient of Days

 

[Sarkus]

That's interesting because it took the death of the Son of God to buy back genuine freedom. Such an expense was not necessary for a fake freedom.

And who says (1) we initially had genuine freedom, and (2) that we then lost it and had to have it bought back?

Manipulation is much easier, yet never indulged in by God.

Conscious manipulation without cause is "much easier"??

How I relate this to what you said about physical laws, since the Son is responsible for maintaining all matter, our physical world may be displaying a loss of freedom as the result of sin.

Sure, if you want to wander off into the realm of fantasy, feel free.
Otherwise you may want to support your ideas?
Afterall, we can all talk about any of the infinite unfalsifiable possibilities but they are as much use as mudguards on a tortoise.

 

[Saint]

No God does not predetermine your response God foreknows your response. We are not pitiful puppets.

God predetermined your eternal destiny from His foreknowledge of your response. Once again God knows the Begging and the End.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

No， wrong！
Before I made decision, how could God possibly knew my decision, I even did not know it.

I think God predestines "generally", not specifically on someone.

 

[Saint]

I think what is true is:
1. God made his plan from the beginning, how to save us.
2. God exercised his plan on earth, in time frame.
3. We are feeble and tend to die in sin, but God helps us through Gospels to turn our hearts to him. If we respond positively, we are saved. If we reject, we are doomed.

Right?

 

[gmilam]

No， wrong！
Before I made decision, how could God possibly knew my decision, I even did not know it.

I think God predestines "generally", not specifically on someone.

Apparently God knew what Judas was going to do before Judas was even born. Judas was crucial to the "plan". Did Judas have free will?

 

[Syne]

But a weatherman can't know what the weather will be with absolute certainty without having the ability to control the weather, because there is an element of chance in play. Just as God couldn't possibly know what path we will choose without actually making the choice for us.



It's an interesting post, but his assertion that randomness does not exist is debunked by Prometheus in his following post.

If you think he was asserting randomness does not exist then you must not have understood RPenner's post. I suggest you read it again, as Prometheus was actually reiterating what RPenner said, not "debunking" him.


If you drop something, and there is no interference, can you not absolutely predict that it will fall? Do you cause it to fall, or do you only cease to cause it to be supported? Is not gravity a force beyond your control that actually causes things to fall? You do not cause gravity, so how do you predict things will fall without causing them to?

This differentiates your assumptions about prediction and cause (control). Again, correlation does not imply causation.

 

[wynn]

Correlation does not imply causation.
God's foreknowledge does not cause people to do things.
An intelligent guess (such as one by the weatherman) is not the same as foreknowledge.
If something can be foreknown, then said thing must have been predestined.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

And who says (1) we initially had genuine freedom, and (2) that we then lost it and had to have it bought back?
Conscious manipulation without cause is "much easier"??
Sure, if you want to wander off into the realm of fantasy, feel free.
Otherwise you may want to support your ideas?
Afterall, we can all talk about any of the infinite unfalsifiable possibilities but they are as much use as mudguards on a tortoise.

Nobody in their right mind thinks that a life with disease and death is a proper world. Nature is not free, it is surviving and yet going nowhere.
But the problem is not with the physical world acting improperly, which can be changed quite easily, it is the disconnection of human beings in their heads towards God. And they must have choice and free will, otherwise there is no such thing as love in them. Right and wrongs choices are made through process, through experience, consequences, etc. This world is a reflection of both function and dysfunction. God has not interferred with this condition that allows people to be what they want to be, but it cannot be allowed to go on forever, and as soon as it comes to its full potential, it will end.
Not sure this is what you queried.

 

[wynn]

Nobody in their right mind ...

Speaking of being in one's right mind -

Why would any god, in his right mind, set up the running of the Universe so that it is only by god staging a suicide
that living beings can be spared from this same god's wrath?

It's as if that god is saying, "I love my children so much that I am going to pretend to kill myself, so as to spare them from my eternal wrath."

??

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

Speaking of being in one's right mind -

Why would any god, in his right mind, set up the running of the Universe so that it is only by god staging a suicide
that living beings can be spared from this same god's wrath?

It's as if that god is saying, "I love my children so much that I am going to pretend to kill myself, so as to spare them from my eternal wrath."

??

In keeping with the thread theme, Saint asked the question on the assumption of familiarity with the basics of Christian faith. What you have suggested shows that you don't recognise the principles of love and freedom, as they are upheld in the Gospel.
People who loose their lives in order to save others are not suicidal. Why God sent His Son to die as a human being, is a mystery to be worked out, before any comment.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

I think what is true is:
1. God made his plan from the beginning, how to save us.
2. God exercised his plan on earth, in time frame.
3. We are feeble and tend to die in sin, but God helps us through Gospels to turn our hearts to him. If we respond positively, we are saved. If we reject, we are doomed.

Right?

It seems like your original question needed this answer, but your thoughts about foreknowledge... people think prevents freedom of choice, and I don't know why people insist on that view...

 

[Sarkus]

Nobody in their right mind thinks that a life with disease and death is a proper world.

"Proper world"?
You're going to have to explain what you mean by "proper" in this regard.

Nature is not free, it is surviving and yet going nowhere.

Again, you've lost me... I can't reconcile your usage of the terms with my own.

But the problem is not with the physical world acting improperly, which can be changed quite easily,...

And how do you propose one changes the way in which the physical world acts, given that you think it can be changed "quite easily"?
As far as I am aware, the physical world acts according to the laws of the universe. But if you know differently...?

... it is the disconnection of human beings in their heads towards God.

Ooookay.

And they must have choice and free will, otherwise there is no such thing as love in them. Right and wrongs choices are made through process, through experience, consequences, etc. This world is a reflection of both function and dysfunction. God has not interferred with this condition that allows people to be what they want to be, but it cannot be allowed to go on forever, and as soon as it comes to its full potential, it will end.
Not sure this is what you queried.

No, it's not. And to be honest I'm not sure I understood anything you said. You may want to either elaborate or at least clarify what you mean.

 

[wynn]

In keeping with the thread theme, Saint asked the question on the assumption of familiarity with the basics of Christian faith. What you have suggested shows that you don't recognise the principles of love and freedom, as they are upheld in the Gospel.
People who loose their lives in order to save others are not suicidal. Why God sent His Son to die as a human being, is a mystery to be worked out, before any comment.

First of all, to be clear, God didn't really lose anything in the Crucifiction.

What you have suggested shows that you don't recognise the principles of love and freedom, as they are upheld in the Gospel.

They are principles of "love and freedom" for people who are into scapegoating.

Only someone who is into scapegoating would accept as plausible a scenario in which god pretends to get himself killed, in order to spare mankind from his wrath.

 

[gmilam]

"Proper world"?
You're going to have to explain what you mean by "proper" in this regard.
Again, you've lost me... I can't reconcile your usage of the terms with my own.
And how do you propose one changes the way in which the physical world acts, given that you think it can be changed "quite easily"?
As far as I am aware, the physical world acts according to the laws of the universe. But if you know differently...?
Ooookay.
No, it's not. And to be honest I'm not sure I understood anything you said. You may want to either elaborate or at least clarify what you mean.

I can't swear to it, but I believe he is alluding to the idea that death and disease are caused by sin... Not sure where germ theory fits into this idea. I am also unsure as to what terrible sin the dinosaurs were guilty of...

 

[Rav]

If you drop something, and there is no interference, can you not absolutely predict that it will fall? Do you cause it to fall, or do you only cease to cause it to be supported? Is not gravity a force beyond your control that actually causes things to fall? You do not cause gravity, so how do you predict things will fall without causing them to?

Are you essentially arguing that an omniscient being could predict that I would have a particular fleeting thought at precisely 8.24am on the 31st of August, 2015, based on nothing more than a complete awareness of every variable present at the first moment of creation?

 

[Syne]

Are you essentially arguing that an omniscient being could predict that I would have a particular fleeting thought at precisely 8.24am on the 31st of August, 2015, based on nothing more than a complete awareness of every variable present at the first moment of creation?

Omniscience is a completely different issue. This degree of specificity is never claimed of such prediction. Given the person's nature, history, and the stresses and stimuli likely, predictions such as who will or will not "find" a god over their entire lifetime become probabilistic.

Or think of it this way. The probability that you will make a specific choice in a specific moment is vastly lesser than that of making that same choice some undetermined time within an entire lifespan.

 

[Rav]

Omniscience is a completely different issue. This degree of specificity is never claimed of such prediction. Given the person's nature, history, and the stresses and stimuli likely, predictions such as who will or will not "find" a god over their entire lifetime become probabilistic.

Or think of it this way. The probability that you will make a specific choice in a specific moment is vastly lesser than that of making that same choice some undetermined time within an entire lifespan.

Yeah, we're on a different page then. I have no issue with the logical consistency here. There is certainly an abundance of theists however who claim that God's knowledge of future events is absolute, and that probability doesn't factor into the equation at all. It is that position that I take issue with when it is accompanied by the claim that free will is something more than just an illusion.

 

[Syne]

Yeah, we're on a different page then. I have no issue with the logical consistency here. There is certainly an abundance of theists however who claim that God's knowledge of future events is absolute, and that probability doesn't factor into the equation at all. It is that position that I take issue with when it is accompanied by the claim that free will is something more than just an illusion.

But do they claim the accuracy you implied?

There is also the matter of what may be "future" to a god. If our future is a god's present then there is nothing "yet to unfold". In that case, it does not even take omniscient, only omnipresence, to know what happens.

Or let me put it this way. Omniscience is not absolute knowledge, only maximal knowledge. Quantum physics has shown us that some things are fundamentally indeterminate, so until they occur there could be nothing to be known, as nothing determines their specific present state. In that case, only present knowledge is "absolutely" possible.

 

[Rav]

But do they claim the accuracy you implied?

There is also the matter of what may be "future" to a god. If our future is a god's present then there is nothing "yet to unfold". In that case, it does not even take omniscient, only omnipresence, to know what happens.

The above is most often the sort of assumption that underpins the claim that God's knowledge of future events is absolute. This is what I was exploring with RoccoR earlier in this thread:

To reiterate, if what we call the future already exists (which is one of the possibilities that you're positing), then it always has. Every "slice" of time, so to speak, exists eternally. If we can say that there was a creation event (as much of a difficulty as it may be to talk in those terms given a transcendent creator) then such an event was not merely the creation of a first moment destined to dynamically unfold into subsequent moments, but the creation of the fullness of all things present and future simultaneously. In other words, you, me, everyone else, and indeed every single thing that any of us will ever do, was predefined in that creation event.

 

[kx000]

So then there is a contradiction. If God foreknew, then there is no way I could have made the choice myself.

He knew which you would choose based off of your personality, and things going on around you.