...and now for something completely different: Free Will!

[Willamena]

I am confused. You said, No. But then you seemed to agree with me. What am I missing?

Free will has an attitude. It isn't itself an attitude.

attitude: "a feeling or opinion about something, or a way of behaving that is caused by this"

 

[ppp]

See Policy. In this world, it could be that, you are on to the truth. I don't know. Just because the whole world cannot fathom what you have in mind does not mean you don't have something no scientist or philosopher has come up with. So put your model into words and justify it. Maybe one day it will be a new stream of thought. A new school of thought.

I don't know what you mean. I reject that the claim that we can make decisions that are not the result of a causal chain because there is no demonstration of such an ability. I reject the claim that the universe is deterministic, because the prevailing scientific position is while it is largely deterministic at the macro level, it is probabilistic at more fundamental resolutions. What else is it that you think is necessary there?

 

[ppp]

Free will has an attitude. It isn't itself an attitude.

attitude: "a feeling or opinion about something, or a way of behaving that is caused by this"

Keep going please. The obvious next two questions are:

1. What is free will?
2. What is the attitude that free will has?

 

[firedragon]

Your previous post was clear to me, that you did not mean "we could do without God". My reply also was just to these concepts (Determinism, Free Will).


God provides the perfect "existential riddles" to solve, keeping both Theists and Atheists intrigued, which is a miracle "an sich". When I start thinking about all the marvels in the universe, it just blows me away, I have no clue how and why all this, I just call it God or Consciousness. This Consciousness is amazing. I gave up understanding it with the mind, but it does leave me with a feeling of awe and wonder. Tiny ants, with even more tiny legs, running around, even at reasonable speed (compared to their size).

So much more advanced than the robots the scientists can make nowadays. How could their model about this ever be correct?

I didn't say it's correct.

 

[firedragon]

I don't know what you mean.

I mean well. I think you didn't understand my post.

Cheers.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

What have all those children who he does not protect from sexual assault done to displease god so much that he will just watch them being raped despite being able to protect them as he does with the ones you mentioned?

I remember wondering what I could have done to make God hate me so much when I was growing up in an abusive home. I was abused for 13 and a half years, and for 12 years, I was constantly bullied and harassed at school. I suffered years of abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual), neglect, and bullying despite my desperate prayers to God to save me. And when I was a teenager, I was emotionally manipulated and sexually assaulted by a man twice my age. I struggled to reconcile "God is love" and my hope that God might love me with the awful reality of my life for the thirty years that I was a Christian. I also struggled to reconcile "God is love" and "God loves me" in light of the mental trauma I've endured for years as a result of the abuse and bullying I experienced as a child.

And to make matters worse, whenever I confided in other Christians about my skepticism about God's love and mercy or plan for my life, they would scathingly criticize and shame me. I was callously criticized and told that I lacked faith in God and that it was wrong of me to ever question him. And as a result of these negative experiences, I developed a constant fear of offending God or afraid that if I sinned against God and then suddenly died without repentance, I would lose my salvation and go to hell. I lived in constant fear.

To cut a long story short, I'm no longer a Christian because being one was detrimental to my mental and emotional well-being. It left me emotionally traumatized and severely depressed. I compare the experience of renouncing my Christian faith to being imprisoned, except that the door to my cell was always open and I was unaware that I could leave whenever I wanted to. I genuinely believe that renouncing my faith and belief in God was the best decision that I've ever made for my mental health and emotional well-being. Being a Christian was a nightmare for me. I feel like Christianity was a prison, but now that I've freed myself from it, I never want to go back.

 

[Willamena]

That cannot be correct. Free will is not the determining factor. "I can" with or without free will.

Free will isn't a determining factor. It is you doing things.

You are the determinant factor in free will. When you do things (choices/actions), "the exercise of free will" is happening. The important part is that the thing that happened is "up to you." No one and nothing else.

 

[ppp]

Free will isn't a determining factor. It is you doing things.

You are the determinant factor in free will. When you do things (choices/actions), "the exercise of free will" is happening. The important part is that the thing that happened is "up to you." No one and nothing else.

Ahhhhhh. That makes much more sense than what I was interpreting from your words. I think I understand now. The "free" part of free will is the difference between you walking out the door, and me picking you up and forcing you out the door. Neh?

 

[stvdv]

Not that their model is correct.

God provides the perfect "existential riddles" to solve, keeping both Theists and Atheists intrigued, which is a miracle "an sich". When I start thinking about all the marvels in the universe, it just blows me away, I have no clue how and why all this, I just call it God or Consciousness. This Consciousness is amazing. I gave up understanding it with the mind, but it does leave me with a feeling of awe and wonder. Tiny ants, with even more tiny legs, running around, even at reasonable speed (compared to their size).

So much more advanced than the robots the scientists can make nowadays.

How could their model about this ever be correct?

I didn't say it's correct.

Aha, I probably wrote that a bit clumsy, I meant it to "confirm what you said". "Not that their model is correct", meaning at this moment, and I upped it a bit by saying "how could it ever be correct"? As in "Not now, not ever"

It was a rhetorical question (not in reply to your line)

 

[Willamena]

Ahhhhhh. That makes much more sense than what I was interpreting from your words. I think I understand now. The "free" part of free will is the difference between you walking out the door, and me picking you up and forcing you out the door. Neh?

Self-determination is another word for free-will. It's not some magical thing determining that you do things. It's you doing things.

The question, then, is what is the freedom that you bring to the picture?

 

[firedragon]

Aha, I probably wrote that a bit clumsy, I meant it to "confirm what you said". "Not that their model is correct", meaning at this moment, and I upped it a bit by saying "how could it ever be correct"? As in "Not now, not ever"

It was a rhetorical question (not in reply to your line)

Lol. Im so sorry I misunderstood. I need some coffee. It was a bit of a long day.

It's like this brother. Let me give my personal opinion. I mean, this is a widely held opinion but it's arbitrary, not based on quantitative research or anything like that so I prefer to call it my personal opinion.

Atheist or theist, everyone has a gut feeling that there is some kind of determination in the universe and our personal lives at large. Also, everyone has this gut feeling "but I am doing what I want on a daily basis". That's free-will. Both of these things are contradictory. Scientifically, one could justify determination. But what's gonna happen in the next moment, can only be predicted by psychoanalysis or just purely "thinking about it". Do you understand? If I tell you what kind of person I am, my history etc etc, and I tell you to predict what I am gonna do next, you can simply "think about it". That's philosophy.

So atheists are trying to make this reconciliation. How in the world can one reconcile between determination and free-will? I have read material since maybe 2500 years ago. I mean, everyone has read. So at least for 2500 years we have been thinking about it. Theists believe that this "gut feeling" is something that is instilled in human beings because something beyond this material world exists. This "feeling" is just there in human beings, what ever your worldview is. Why do you think in the united states, 20% of those who claim to be atheists also claim that there is something called a higher power existing?

So what you say is true. I also believe that some form of theism is the only explanation to all of this. None of the other models are "ultimately correct". They are ultimately, only hypothesises. Even philosophers of science clearly state that.

 

[Alien826]

You still don't get it. It's not about what the penalty we decide on should be. That's just humans deciding the fine, and it's based usually on the amount of harm an action causes. But that's not how God determines what is good or evil.
In regards to what is offensive to God, you have to understand that he is perfect. There's no little sins. Eating a forbidden fruit doesn't seem that bad to us, because we measure by our own flawed system, but God looks at the heart and understands the motivation.

I've been looking for a good place to jump in on this, and decided to start at the end. I have read all your previous posts on the thread though.

One thing that I find really troublesome about what you say is that though we are told (by God) that he wants us to be "good" he also tells us that we can't achieve it. All our efforts are "filthy rags", right? All we can do is to rely on God to save us, and that only in one way (through Jesus). So, my question is, what's the point of trying? I'm not sure you agree with this part, but it seems to me that if a person did actually manage to live his whole life without any sin at all, then he should be OK without God's grace. Imagine this, though. A (nearly) perfect person lives to be 80. Throughout his life he has avoided all sin, a monumental achievement I'm sure you will agree. Then, one second before his death he commits some trivial sin (yeah, no sin is trivial) like maybe he looks out of the window and covets his neighbor's ***. That's it. Off to hell he goes, and all his efforts, all his sacrifices, don't count, all because of one little covet. Can't you imagine him sitting in hell thinking "Sheesh, I could have had a lot more fun and the punishment would still be the same!"

Next one. You seem to be saying that God has two codes of morality, one that he sets out for us in various ways, and one that he applies to us when deciding on salvation. Now he has his thumb on the scale even more. The poor guy in the first example could actually achieve a sin free life (by Biblical morality, say) and still be damned, because God is applying different rules.

And finally (for now). If God hates sin so much how can he allow the saved to be with him? Admittedly they had a "get out of hell free card" in Jesus, but they are still sinners. We already know we are not capable of living without sin. So the dilemma is, if we stay the same, how can God stand being around us, and if he changes us to be sin free, would we be the same people? And, another point but I'll include it here, if he changes us to be what he wants, he could have just gone straight to that and skipped all the rest of it. He ends up with obedient automatons either way, no?

 

[Alien826]

So atheists are trying to make this reconciliation. How in the world can one reconcile between determination and free-will? I have read material since maybe 2500 years ago. I mean, everyone has read. So at least for 2500 years we have been thinking about it. Theists believe that this "gut feeling" is something that is instilled in human beings because something beyond this material world exists. This "feeling" is just there in human beings, what ever your worldview is. Why do you think in the united states, 20% of those who claim to be atheists also claim that there is something called a higher power existing?

About the "higher power" question, I think the answer lies in the fact that a "higher power" can be pretty much anything in people's mind. An atheist doesn't believe in the existence of "God" (another variable definition there), but that need not exclude the idea of a being or force more powerful than us, but still not really to be seen as "God".

This story may amuse you. Alcoholics Anonymous require a belief in a "higher power", which is probably deliberately loosely worded to allow people with different religions to participate. I heard of someone who chose his doorknob to be his "higher power". I think the idea was that it allowed him to get out of his house and was an analogy for getting out of addiction.

 

[firedragon]

About the "higher power" question, I think the answer lies in the fact that a "higher power" can be pretty much anything in people's mind. An atheist doesn't believe in the existence of "God" (another variable definition there), but that need not exclude the idea of a being or force more powerful than us, but still not really to be seen as "God".

This story may amuse you. Alcoholics Anonymous require a belief in a "higher power", which is probably deliberately loosely worded to allow people with different religions to participate. I heard of someone who chose his doorknob to be his "higher power". I think the idea was that it allowed him to get out of his house and was an analogy for getting out of addiction.

Lol. One day some person in this very forum brought in the AA as soon as I mentioned "Higher Power". This is like Deja vu.

Read their manifesto and you will see that its a methodological approach.

 

[ppp]

Self-determination is another word for free-will. It's not some magical thing determining that you do things. It's you doing things.

The question, then, is what is the freedom that you bring to the picture?

Rhetorical question?

 

[stvdv]

Lol. Im so sorry I misunderstood. I need some coffee. It was a bit of a long day.

That's fine, and I straightaway saw "where you misunderstood", so, it just was one of those lines that are easily read wrong. I did notice you on RF since this morning (well in Holland), the last 12 hours or so. So, you do still very well, considering all the posting you did

It's like this brother. Let me give my personal opinion. I mean, this is a widely held opinion but it's arbitrary, not based on quantitative research or anything like that so I prefer to call it my personal opinion.

Atheist or theist, everyone has a gut feeling that there is some kind of determination in the universe and our personal lives at large. Also, everyone has this gut feeling "but I am doing what I want on a daily basis". That's free-will. Both of these things are contradictory. Scientifically, one could justify determination. But what's gonna happen in the next moment, can only be predicted by psychoanalysis or just purely "thinking about it". Do you understand? If I tell you what kind of person I am, my history etc etc, and I tell you to predict what I am gonna do next, you can simply "think about it". That's philosophy.

So atheists are trying to make this reconciliation. How in the world can one reconcile between determination and free-will? I have read material since maybe 2500 years ago. I mean, everyone has read. So at least for 2500 years we have been thinking about it. Theists believe that this "gut feeling" is something that is instilled in human beings because something beyond this material world exists. This "feeling" is just there in human beings, what ever your worldview is. Why do you think in the united states, 20% of those who claim to be atheists also claim that there is something called a higher power existing?

So what you say is true. I also believe that some form of theism is the only explanation to all of this. None of the other models are "ultimately correct". They are ultimately, only hypothesises. Even philosophers of science clearly state that.

Thank you for sharing your view, I appreciate that

Aha, so although the Atheists on RF seem so confident of themselves, deep down (their gut) something really "eats them up", hence their continuous effort to prove us wrong. I did not know about the 20% you mention, but that must be bugging them a bit.

Atheist or theist, everyone has a gut feeling that there is some kind of determination in the universe and our personal lives at large. Also, everyone has this gut feeling "but I am doing what I want on a daily basis". That's free-will. Both of these things are contradictory.

I did notice that widely held opinion (definition) of "Free Will". From Sai Baba I got a bit of a different definition, hence I could not use all these formulas, because with those definitions none of all of this makes sense to me, I can't make all fit together.

But on RF I better stick to their definitions, otherwise they totally don't get what I mean

So, my day on RF is finished. See you later brother (Inshallah)

 

[Willamena]

Philosophers, from Aristotle to the 17th Century Enlightenment, on to today, had an image of a person immersed in god, which was everywhere and everything. A lot of heavy discussion went on about whether the being we today call "mind," the entity that experiences the world, i.e. the person (or philosophical "agent"), was or was not a part of its world. Existence vs essence.

Existence is about what we personally know about the world. We can say this and that exists because we experience the world or have the information passed to us. Essence is what is really there. The issue that leads to the argument about the freedom of the person is the issue of individualism. Is the person immersed in god's essence (the world) distinct from what it experiences by virtue of having experience? If you believe (as most modern people do) that the mind is distinct from the world, and that at its death it ceases to be, then it is ultimately free of the world. It is something other.

This is where the discussions of free will begin.

Here are some free agent theories:
Libertarianism (metaphysics) - Wikipedia

 

[firedragon]

That's fine, and I straightaway saw "where you misunderstood", so, it just was one of those lines that are easily read wrong. I did notice you on RF since this morning (well in Holland), the last 12 hours or so. So, you do still very well, considering all the posting you did

Haha. There's a lot of purpose behind this my friend. But I don't put my personal life out. Hope you understand.

Thank you for sharing your view, I appreciate that

Aha, so although the Atheists on RF seem so confident of themselves, deep down (their gut) something really "eats them up", hence their continuous effort to prove us wrong. I did not know about the 20% you mention, but that must be bugging them a bit.

You should note that I say it's my personal opinion.

But the 20% is not. It's PEW research done with about 25,000 samples. I mean, samples are human beings while in research they are called with such dead words.

I did notice that widely held opinion (definition) of "Free Will". From Sai Baba I got a bit of a different definition, hence I could not use all these formulas, because with those definitions none of all of this makes sense to me, I can't make all fit together.

But on RF I better stick to their definitions, otherwise they totally don't get what I mean

So, my day on RF is finished. See you later brother (Inshallah)

Alles gut brother. Have a fantastic evening. Cheers.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Free will would certainly be restricted if what God created for good could not be used for evil.
What you are asking for is perfect humans incapable of doing wrong. You only pick a certain sin because most everyone agrees that one is wrong. But if you were honest you'd have to apply the same standard to all wrong, even destructive thoughts that never result in actions. That would eliminate freedom of choice.

I'm still waiting to hear why this god doesn't just cause the offender to drop dead after his first offense, instead of letting him claim a number of victims before dying of old age. The only reason I can think of is that this god being actually wanted the offender to claim additional victims. So apparently this sex offender isn't perpetrating evil, he's actually fulfilling this god being's will.

 

[Wildswanderer]

And finally (for now). If God hates sin so much how can he allow the saved to be with him? Admittedly they had a "get out of hell free card" in Jesus, but they are still sinners. We already know we are not capable of living without sin. So the dilemma is, if we stay the same, how can God stand being around us, and if he changes us to be sin free, would we be the same people? And, another point but I'll include it here, if he changes us to be what he wants, he could have just gone straight to that and skipped all the rest of it. He ends up with obedient automatons either way, no?

No. Yes, in this life we will always be imperfect. But remember what I said about motivation?
Perhaps you've heard this quote by the apostle Paul: " what I do not want to do, that I do."

His motives are right but he can't woolly achieve sinlessness. That's why a sacrifice was necessary. If we could achieve sinlessness, why would Jesus have to die for us?

We are now of two nature's, where before there was only " me" and what " I " want. Now there's also what the Spirit wants me to be.
I know I've asked a question:why did God start the whole thing?
Why not just live in perfect Harmony as he did before man? Why subject himself to suffering?
Because of his love.
God is love. It's not just one of his attributes, it's his essential nature.
If he just skipped over the test and made us like the angels to begin with, we would not be able to choose him from love, but from obligation. And remember, even the angels had that choice at one time, and many of them choose the wrong thing. He still didn't force any of them to remain.
Just like he doesn't force us to accept his love.
He can stand being with us because he's already covered us in his righteousness. He doesn't change us against our carnal natures will even after salvation, BTW. Sometimes I wish he would. He still asks first. Sure, there is an element of mystery to salvation. But we don't have to fully understand... we only have to accept.