A heated "debate" with a Christian....

I think free will comes from understanding the bible. The only free will we have is to choose to believe or not to believe. And the fact that you can do anything on earth you want. But end the end that does'nt mean their wont be conseqences for your sins.

Free will comes what God wants. He wants you to believe without knowing. He had people who knew him and his power and the devil gets all into himself and creat evil in one thought process, by thinking he wants what he wants and not God. God made earth for a place for people to not know him and choose him. A place where sin and good can be placed. You can choose evil or good. Thats free will.

Originally posted by slymattb
Free will comes what God wants. He wants you to believe without knowing.

That's fine, but why would God, an entity that is usually and poorly defined as an infinite, omnipotent being who controls every atom and subatomic particle in the Universe, want anything? What is it that God lacks that he can only get from your belief?

That's the problem. Either you have omnipotence, or you don't. Anything less than omnipotence is not God, by definition.

If we have free will, that means there is some portion of the Universe over which God has no control. And if that's the case, then God is no longer God. If he retains that control, then we really have no free will, but only the illusion of choice within a very limited range of options.

For instance, somebody leaves a sack of money on the bus. We can either steal it, or not. Is that free will? No, because it only provides us with a false set of options. With true free will, when confronted with a lost sack of money, we could choose to fly away to Jupiter, or transform ourselves into a rock, or go back in time and remind the person not to lose the money. That's free will.

That was a clever way to spin that to try to prove that example wrong.

There was no spin, only MY testimony of what I have learned to be true. We each have a purpose and a destiny. You can call it what you will, but, believing and prayer does work.

For me, it is easier to believe in the best possible outcome than the worst. I have chosen to NOT maintain a mindset that may contribute to, or enable the enemies of life to persevere. If evil can prance around uncontested, then I as a Christian can prance around upholding the name of MY savior, Jesus Christ.

God, Freewill, Destiny, and Fate

Now let me start by saying that I am still in the formation process of my beliefs as I think we all are. There have been many great posts on this thread and I felt I needed to contribute. I have been a lurker here for about six months but this is my first post. I am not a professional writer so please give me some slack with my grammar.
I do believe in God the almighty creator of everything and that he has a plan that he set forth into motion. That being said I do still believe in freewill, destiny and fate. These are all usually things that are not known for being part of the same idea. But as I see things they all play their part in the grand scheme of the universe.
First we must look at Destiny and Fate and what they mean.
Destiny is a destination, a stop or juncture along a given life path. With that one can have many destinies along any given life path. Along the way though we go through destinies that determine who we are and what we learn. Another way of looking at destinies is experiences. Moments of choice that determine where we are where we are going and where we have been. Destinies do not have predetermined outcomes as they are points of choice, or points of freewill.
Fate is the final destination, the end of a give life path. Every life path has a fate, an ending. We can all see this in the fact that we all die no matter the life path or the choices/destinies that we make only the length of the life path is changed and that is changed through destinies.
Freewill is the ability to make choices that effect the outcome of ones life path. The ability to choose which road you will take out of a given destination to another destination or choice.
Okay hopefully you understand me so far, but your asking how does God and his plan fit into this life path of destinies and fate. Well this is where it gets confusing, sort of. I will do my best to explain.
God set his plan into motion, as with all plans it has a completion point, and we are part of that plan. We choose our path and destinies. Depending on those choices we choose a time when our fate will come, our end. And this continues onward for an undisclosed amount of time as God exists outside of time. God being outside of our viewpoint of time means that his plan though we may not see it may go on indefinitely because of our freewill. In other words we are pushing his completion date back as we move forward. God has no time frame to be working against. So as far as when the end of his plan will come, who knows. It is stated somewhere in the bible that man should not try to understand Gods plan as it would be beyond comprehension. This does make since when you think of God being outside our perception of time. And yes God did know and does know everything that can and will happen as he is outside time but that doesn’t mean that he has a hand in our decision making. He just knows what fates are out there its our choice how we get to them. And all fate is, is the end of a path.

Siren, are you saying you would actually test this idea?

I guess you decided to play satan with the above quote. So let me say:
“for it is written you shall not tempt the Lord, God.” Personally, they have been trying to kill me everyday for the last several years.

You have missed my intent. I said testimony, meaning, it has been proven true for me in many ways and in several life and death scenarios. I know of others also who can testify to the same thing. I say by God’s grace, some say miracle, some call it good karma.

Are you saying that all those people died in the WTC didn't ask god for help and NOT receive it nor deserve his help?
Do you seriously believe that quite alot of them weren't religeous throughout their lives?
But they still died in the WTC which makes your idea questionable at best.

Truth be told, there were warnings. Some people heeded and went against the grain. Also, quiet as it is kept, less people died (thank God) than would have on a normal day, because several people were late to work because they went to vote before going in. Also, there were hundreds of people who for some unknown reason (even to themselves), who took the day off, called in sick, took a different route or did something different that morning. No body talks about that on TV. The media will not portray that because it will bring up the question as to how could anyone have known.

There are also millions of other examples where god could have intervened to prevent death of good religious people, but didn't.

“Voice of the Martyrs” has documented cases of how changes have occurred with prayer. They also have cases where people have been killed.

www.persecution.com

I do not claim to understand it all. If you read my post, I am saying that in formulating a mindset, why not believe the best. You are questioning me, without laying your cards on the table. So tell me, what pulls you through the rough times, or keeps you alive in the foxhole? On whom do you call? Or, are you one of those with a nice comfortable life and you sleep on a bed of roses and torture everyone else.

Also, If god threatens people with hell if they fail to do and act as he requires to get into heaven, this is also an example of how god doesn't give free will. His will forces you to bend yours to prevent negative consequences. At the very least, the heaven/hell thing proves outside influence to effect your decision making

I define Heaven and Hell differently than you do.

Would you like to walk a mile in my shoes?




[edit on 29-7-2007 by Siren]

Originally posted by Siren

Truth be told, there were warnings. Some people heeded and went against the grain. Also, quiet as it is kept, less people died (thank God) than would have on a normal day, because several people were late to work because they went to vote before going in. Also, there were hundreds of people who for some unknown reason (even to themselves), who took the day off, called in sick, took a different route or did something different that morning. No body talks about that on TV. The media will not portray that because it will bring up the question as to how could anyone have known.

So Siren are you saying that the religious people prayed and were shown not to go into work for some reason, but because they wanted to get to work on time they did not deserve to be saved?

Also the part where you mention 'many people were sick, or late' does not jive at all with me. The only way that you could possibly make that a relevant point would be to compare the amount of people that did not show up that day to the amount who show up on any other day. For example I bet a whole lot of people did not show up for work the Friday before the 9/11 attacks. Does that mean God told them not to go to work, even though nothing happened that day? No, I bet they just didn't want to go in, or they were sick, or they were late etc.
The amount of people who do not show up on any given day does not mean anything, unless something like 40-60% of the people did not show up.

Just because one knows something is going to happen it does not mean that, the person, god , or anything else made it happen. Heres an analogy, it's not a good one, lets say a phsychic (wheather you believe in psychics or not is not the issue just go with me on this) sees a murder than the next day the person watches the news and sees that it happend it doesnt make that person responsible for it... does it? Ya that wasnt very good, sorry, none the less knowing something is going to happen is different than making it happen. We could always say that well if god knew than he shoouldnt of created us, but if he didnt creat us because he knew we would mess up, he wouldn't have given us free will, he would then be a controlling god and we would now be complaining, saying well even if he knows that things will get bad he should still let us have our freedom to choose. Adam screwed up, srewed us all (if you are going to believe the bible at all) and made it so that we were born under sin, but because God loved us he sent Jesus, to be sort of a second chance to do it all again but right (hence the born again thing). i have gone a little off the point here, sorry but like I said knowing doesnt make you responsible and knowing everytihing doesnt mean you have no choiceit just means that your not as unpredictable as you all like to think. Do whatever you want it is your choice but know and accept that it is still known and yet amazingly enough you still have the freedom to do it. Don't you love freedom?

Originally posted by thereallgone
Do whatever you want it is your choice but know and accept that it is still known and yet amazingly enough you still have the freedom to do it. Don't you love freedom?

Unfortunately, God's idea of choice seems to be that we have the freedom to choose to either be hit on the head with an iron hammer, or be hit on the head with a bronze hammer. If we don't have a choice not to be hit at all, can you really call that freedom?

The problem is, your God is too small. God created everything including time itself. God sits outside of time and in fact created all of the past present and future all at the same time. Think of it as a giant sculpture with many faces. Each face or facet is but one moment in time, each face is loosely connected to previous face like a deck of cards all stacked on top of each other, but each one can be designed at will by God.


We have free will in that the final outcome of our actions is yet to be determined. Our uncertain information prevents us from knowing what the future holds. God put cause and effect into the universe for his purposes and saw that the outcome , as a whole was good. He even allowed evil to temporarily flourish, because again the final outcome was good. You can't see that if you are stuck in one of the lousy frames, but if you could see the whole thing you would probably agree with God's assessment that his creation was good.

In fact for the believer in Jesus Christ the Bible says that "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him" I Corinthians 2:9. Thus even the temporary misery and persecution we suffer will one day turn out for the best.

here just so you can get it just alittle bit it isnt just that God knows it that God is there at all times it isnt that he sees ahead its the very complicated point that he's already there its like if you watched a movie already you in no way affected the out come of the movie it ended either way you watched it happen its very different but at the same very much the same for God he had his plan from the beginning some movies don't make sense at first but they make sense at the end.....kinda like teenagers and their parents it doesn't make sense to some kids why parents have the don't close your door when you have a boy over....but then your friend Suzie didn't have those parents she ends up pregnant has to drop out of school to take care of the baby now it makes sense....right now some of you are like whats even going on!!!!!! but soon in the end it will make sense believe me why would i lie?

One of the interesting things about this discussion is that there does exist a right answer, whether we are capable of knowing it or not.

Personally I still feel that we must abandon ideas of dualism and time when thinking about this conundrum. If all things started from one thing, singularity, then logic would suggest that God is that one thing, and thus God is all things. Therefore God is operating through us and around us at every single moment of existence.

We are an extension of that existence. I feel that the very core intrinsic nature of the Universe is love and goodness. With that said, there exists free will, but it has already been determined that all choices ever made will eventually lead to a positive outcome. To sum up, God exists outside of time and expresses himself through the existence of intelligent beings like humans. Humans are free to exercise free will because ultimately their choices will return them to the fundamental love and goodness that defines everything. We are here to enjoy living in this very moment, simple as that.

Originally posted by thestatue...its like if you watched a movie already you in no way affected the out come of the movie it ended either way you watched it happen

What a sentence! But to make the point about free will, let me ask you whether the film has the freedom to end differently? Your analogy is a good one, but not for your point.

As for the poster above, you have some of the same views as me. The only trouble, for Christian (actually any) dogma, is that anthropomorphising such a God, one that is not actually omniscient as we are using the term but omnipresent, is nonsensical. Applying homocentric models of knowledge and understanding to such a being/entity is obviously pointless, seeing as our minds are biological functions and slaves to the necessity of being such (hence the mystical tradition of subsuming the instincts and natural drives).

When you look at this question from this point of view the idea of free will is redundant. We are all parts of a whole, and no more able to make independent choices than our fingers and toes. We are God's fingers.

Anyway, here's a piece I came across on the subject from the Stanford Encyclopaedia:

Fatalism is the thesis that human acts occur by necessity and hence are unfree. Theological fatalism is the thesis that infallible foreknowledge of a human act makes the act necessary and hence unfree. If there is a being who knows infallibly the entire future, then no human act is free.

Fatalism seems to be entailed by infallible foreknowledge by the following informal line of reasoning:

For any future act you will perform, if some being infallibly believed in the past that the act would occur, there is nothing you can do now about the fact that he believed what he believed since nobody has any control over past events; nor can you make him mistaken in his belief, given that he is infallible. Therefore, there is nothing you can do now about the fact that he believed in a way that cannot be mistaken that you would do what you will do. But if so, you cannot do otherwise than what he believed you would do. And if you cannot do otherwise, you will not perform the act freely.
The same argument can be applied to any infallibly foreknown act of any human being. If there is a being who infallibly knows everything that will happen in the future, no human being has any control over the future.

Source:plato.stanford.edu...

[edit on 3-8-2007 by Karilla]