water said:
On earth, we are subjects to our free will.
Is this one of those self evident things..?
Note: it is not the superior that wins. It is the one who wins that is regarded as superior.
There is no difference.
In the course of human psycho-sociology, the mistake has been made and the causality relationship misinterpreted. It is the fight that decides who the winner is, and who is superior. One cannot be superior in advance.
However, humans like to consider themselves to be something already in advance, or based on previous experience -- but this, by no means means that the future will be the same as the past.
Humans like to say, "I am a winner, therefore I win." Or, "I am superior, therefore I always have to be superior, or I am not myself anymore."
The very means by which the "I" is defined necessitates permits such a standpoint. Otherwise we would be having another one of those double standards.
John Evander Couey, who was clearly superior to his victim, dominated her satisfactorily. Terry Schiavo, who is an inferior being, is inefficient and of no use and must therefore be terminated. If she were to recover tomorrow, that would not make her any less inferior. In case of such an event, just because Opera makes her out to be some sort of hero doesn't mean she is. She was clearly an inferior - why else, prithee, did she fall victim to such a pansy's condition?
Say a tennis player lost all his life. And then halfway through his career, he started winning. We would do well to call him a winning loser, after all, losers win (sometimes). There is no need to define the 'I' according to circumstance, for we have "free will" (as you say), and if we have free will, then circumstance does not dictate the 'I'. If it did, then we wouldn't have free will, for the two are incompatible.
can easily be interpreted into "God makes some people rich, but some other people poor" with the implication that being rich/poor is the identity of a person.
The fight for survival is the fight of one free will with another. God has nothing to do with that, He does not interfere with one person's free will for the sake of or at the cost of another person's free will -- that would be injust.
God gave people rules by which they could direct their actions of free will in a manner that would obstruct each other's free will as little as possible. He also gave people the freedom to either accept those rules or not -- for his is the completion of giving people free will.
Well, you can see how people choose ...
Well now that God changes the 'I' from sinner to saint, is there really free-will? Of course not. Either God must defend free will, or God must exist. For if God existed, then He must allow us free will to never infer Him (from the get-go). If Adam or whatever mortal came up with the inference of God, it must necessarily have been because God facilitated the inference. And so there is no free will. As I have said before. Either we have free will, or we don't. Now I have been graciously lenient on free will - I have allowed it to mean we are able to do
something volitionally. Neither breathing, nor thinking, nor salvation, fall under that umbrella. Either knowledge is our own (free will), or no free will at all - I believe that is logical enough for you and I to agree on. Any other description of free will by necessity must agree with such a premise.
If his is the completion of free will, then I say, who is responsible for environment? Who placed Adam in the garden, where he would sin? Not Him? Who placed those children in the desert, where they would starve and die (
of their own free will..)? Not Him? Who placed us in the comforts of our homes, where we could philosophize about other's sufferings? Not Him? I say, this free will business exposes its own hollowness.
Did I mention that the very
act of giving peoples rules to follow is a very rejection of free will? Leave them with two choices, follow the rules that they did not sire, or don't follow them. As I said in the other thread and here again, this influencing of knowledge is simply incompatible of free will. Just as placing you in a specific society necessarily limits your knowledge to only your environment, so you will either know or not know a God, so that you will either like or dislike or even not know what ice cream is, so that you will grow up knowing love, or grow up knowing shame, or hate, these rules He gives influence the way we do or do not interact with society. Why?
Because as soon as the first domino is tipped, the whole shebang too is set up. And so the Prime Mover MUST have His cake and eat it too. We must not skirt the very implications of a God to whom we ascribe such power. He either influences us, or He does not. We either have free will, or we do not. You cannot have two masters: free will and God.
14What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! 15For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion."[f] 16So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. 17For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth."[g] 18Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
19You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" 20But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
Romans 9
You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?"
* * *
As for the tsunamis and earthquakes etc.: Such is life on Earth. A planet that sustains life has to be of a certain kind (size, atmosphere, active core, ...); people tend to think that such planets aren't exactly peaceful, and that life on them is "unfair".
As long as He was responsible for their placement in the globe, in an earthquake prone zone, near an oasis, in a desert, in a rainforest, in rich farmland, He is the Prime Mover. And we already know the implications of a Prime Mover. We are only dominoes; we are only meant to fall.
