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Does God have Free Will?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Nope, I did not. God is the Creator of all of physical existence. That was described by me many many many times.
You are doing everything possible to justify your agenda including misrepresenting and misquoting me.
One day Sunstone will post this question on religious forums, This was also decided by God
Actually i will ask the same question you refused to answer.
"Are there any rational grounds for firmly concluding that god, if god exists, has free will?"
chinu
chinu
You will ask same question in some different way.. THIS WAS ALSO DECIDED BY GOD PRIOR TO HAPPENING OF THIS.
I refused, pardon me please because.. THIS WAS ALSO DECIDED BY GOD PRIOR TO HAPPENING OF THIS.
siti
Well-Known Member
@shunyadragon - so you cannot tell if some particular event is an "act of God's will" or a purely natural occurrence. And yet you claim that Baha'u'llah's appearance as a Manifestation was God's will and not Baha'u'llah's.
The rest of your post is gratuitous ad hominem and, frankly, unbecoming of someone who purports to follow a faith that seeks "unity" and harmony among the human family - I certainly will not respond in kind. I respect your faith and I particularly like that you seek to resolve the differences between the way science looks at the world and the way religion does - but I reserve the right to question your statements of faith from whatever angle seems appropriate when you post them in a debate forum. That said, I don't see any point in furthering our discussion in this thread - your arguments in this thread are inconsistent and untenable and you seem to be irritated by my questions - only you know why.
The rest of your post is gratuitous ad hominem and, frankly, unbecoming of someone who purports to follow a faith that seeks "unity" and harmony among the human family - I certainly will not respond in kind. I respect your faith and I particularly like that you seek to resolve the differences between the way science looks at the world and the way religion does - but I reserve the right to question your statements of faith from whatever angle seems appropriate when you post them in a debate forum. That said, I don't see any point in furthering our discussion in this thread - your arguments in this thread are inconsistent and untenable and you seem to be irritated by my questions - only you know why.
I believe I have been clear about this again, again, and again .. . alle events and the nature of our physical existence is natural and cannot be distinguished from supernatural events. Events and occurrences attributed to be supernatural from the human perspective are the natural not understood.
The above is not a coherent response to any of my previous posts and is gratuitous ad hominem and, frankly, unbecoming of someone who purports to offer an objective balenced dialogue-
You just did.
siti
Well-Known Member
OK - one last try then - how are these two responses consistent?
My belief in the nature of God's Will is a matter of 'belief' based on the apophatic God of the Baha;i Faith, and you simply do not share this belief. This is not in conflict in any way that the Nature of our physical existence is simply natural from the human perspective, and reflects the attributes of God's Creation.
If there was a conflict than it would be contradiction in the nature of God's relationship to Creation. There is no such thing as the supernatural. Nature simply reflects Creation as God Created with no contradictions. Theists definitely do face vast contradictions in their claims in opposition to the objective verifiable evidence that reflects the knowledge of science. Claims of the supernatural in ancient religious beliefs represents a contradiction of the nature of a consistent nature of God.
siti
Well-Known Member
I agree - but I am having trouble differentiating between the (more obviously fabulous) claims of supernatural interventions in those ancient religions and God's purported intervention in turning a normal, natural born human into a manifestation of God in 19th century Persia. Surely if God can turn a frail human being into a Manifestation of his very being, opening a few blind people's eyes and turning water into wine are not that special after all - are they?
And just to be clear - I am not being superficial or selectively biased in order to discredit your beliefs - I'm aware that neither of us can "prove it" one way or t'other - but I am (and have been for several years now) trying to make sense of the world through an independent consideration of what I know about what is known (if you see what I mean). One of the things that occurs to me is that if God (if there is one) did indeed need to intervene supernaturally every now and again, then he mustn't have done such a brilliant job of creating the world in the first place. That got me to thinking that either God (if there is one) can't be the all-seeing, all-knowing and all-wise creator he is often cracked up to be or perhaps he is - and this world is the Leibnizian best of all possible worlds in which God doesn't intervene at all because it can't be any better than it already is. For quite a while I was drawn to the latter idea and called myself a 'deist'. But more recently, I have begun to suspect that perhaps Nature is really just God intervening in perfectly natural ways - not all of which we understand of course. But that implies that God is also evolving - because it really does seem that nature is not as fixed and deterministic as we used to think...in a sense, sometimes nature actually 'decides' what to do next - we do that for example and we are (part of) 'nature'.
So this question of God's possession (or lack) of free will is very important to my developing worldview. If God is nature (a la pantheism I suppose) then does that mean 'God' is entirely devoid of free will and 100% subject to ultimately deterministic (though not necessarily predictable) laws. Or can 'nature' decide for herself what happens next under certain circumstances? And if the answer to that question is 'yes' - then who is to say that Baha'u'llah was not a Manifestation of God - even if he decided that for himself? Indeed - we would be unable to tell from an objective human viewpoint one way or the other - as you have pointed out (again and again and again). But I am certainly open to the idea that some individual humans are (so much) more 'in touch' with the deeper (or perhaps greater) reality - or perhaps of the inherent divinity - of nature herself that they, in effect, become manifestations of deity without ever having to actually transcend the natural life nature has granted them. And perhaps this is what is interpreted in different ways in different religious traditions - Christ, for example, was the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15), and the Hindu faiths have avatars, the Baha'i, Manifestations. I know they're not theologically equivalent - but theology is about human intepretations... perhaps they all in different ways point to a deeper truth about reality - we are all part of a living natural deity??? And how would we know? Does a fingernail 'know' that it is part of a much more complex organism?But in a sense, it must "know" because it moves according to the "will" of that organism.
Anyway, in terms of the topic under discussion here, perhaps God is just more 'ordinary' than we have been lead to believe. Perhaps God has no more free will than we have. And perhaps, like us, God is condemned to live 'as if' she had free will in abundance and take responsibility for everything that goes wrong and yet has neither the power nor the acuity of foresight to change much - if anything at all - that happens. I don't even know if I have free will - but I have no choice but to proceed as if I did.
I am not really atheist in the sense you seem to think I am. I am not even anti-religious - but I am anti-religious-error where it is clear there is error and I am anti-religious-claims when the claims are unsupported by any genuine evidence. But I can't sort all that out without asking probing questions. Isn't that the principle of independent investigation of truth?
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This the obvious of how ancient religions viewed their world.
It is obvious your atheistic agenda and skepticism comes into play, and you are simply not willing to comprehend the concept of the progressive Revelation and the spiritual education of humanity. We are not the same as the ancient world views as to what we are able to comprehend.
It has been is more than obvious that this has been your goal.
God never did intervene supernaturally in the physical world nor human affairs. This was simply how the primitive people explained what they did not have science to explain things like hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and such,
In the Baha'i view Messiahs, Avatars, Enlightened Ones, and other titles are all 'Manifestations' of God from the Baha'i perspectives.
I believe trying to define God, and the relationship with Creation is not a viable option if God eists.
It is possible.
It should be more than obvious we do not 'know,'
Far to anthropmorphic for my view.
OK
Yes, but you seem to be making assumptions that go beyond this. .
siti
Well-Known Member
@shunyadragon - I have explained myself very nicely to you and yet you persist in imputing negative motives...this conversation is over.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
takes a lot of will to form a creation so large
and with no one to say .....no
He did so.....freely
but having drawn lines to form creation
He will hold to the lines he drew
not as free as He once was
but ever so free as He ever was
(is)
I have explained myself very very carefully, but you persist in not comprehending my explanations.
I do not remotely expect any resolution, nor agreement in this dialogue.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
I never said he was human
. . . but you are describing him in anthropomorphic terms.
Again . . .
Can there be a Creation too large for God to Create?
Thief
Rogue Theologian
can there be a line of thought you cannot follow?
Not easily given your responses. I believe I have already made my beliefs clear and specific.
Note: I believe 'Created in God's image' is a spiritual image, and not a physical image.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
we agree
can we do so further?
God has freewill
He simply won't compromise His reality
God's ultimate reality is unknown to fallible humanity, and no the question of God;s Will cannot be determined from the human perspective.