Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
Nobody is saying you do not make choices....they are saying you do not make unencumbered choices.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Free Will as Nonsense.
- Thread starter Ellen Brown
- Start date
Nobody is saying you do not make choices....they are saying you do not make unencumbered choices.
Sure, we have tendencies that influence our choices in one direction or the other. This is standard Christian belief. Free will does not mean that our will is completely without influences on it.
Free will means that we had the capability to choose something other than what we did. It doesn't mean that our free will has no restraints on it whatsoever. Naturally, my desires are constrained by my instincts and my physiology; I cannot, for instance, really truly desire to eat bamboo stalks like a panda, short of a mental illness or complete and total starvation.
Even if the number of options we can choose between is limited by various factors, and even if we tend towards certain decisions based on those factors, that's still not a refutation of the idea that we are in fact capable of making a free choice (that is, choosing Option A while still fully possessing the ability to have chosen Option B or C instead.)
Faithofchristian
Well-Known Member
Well let's see, when you chose whether it be to do something or not to do something. You made that decision by your free will, to chose or not chose.
If someone forces you into do something that you do not want to do, that took away your free will of making that decision for yourself.
When you decide what you want to eat, you made that decision by your free will, Now if someone tells what your going to eat, That took away your free will of making that decision
for yourself.
God gave to everyone free will to make decisions for themselves.
God did not want robot's that are programmed into doing what God wanted them to do.
God wants everyone to have the free will to make decisions by their minds and not robots that are programmed.
What ever decisions that you make it's your free will to make your own decisions in life for yourself.
Now if you want to be someone's slave to be told what your going to do and what your not going to do. Then that takes away your free will of making those decisions for yourself.
Last edited:
As I see it, choices are made either by yourself (such as when you choose a slice of pumpkin pie over Boston crème) or by influences outside yourself (as when someone has already taken the Boston crème and you are stuck with the pumpkin, i.e. circumstance, i.e. fate). That someone or something has removed an option hasn't "robbed" you of free will; it's simply a case that free will is only represented in one of the two scenarios.
What influences your decisions (i.e. the "mechanism") is a separate issue from free will. Free will is represented at the point when a decision is to be made (that it is made by you, or by something else).
Edit: The only influences that matter, that you must be "free" from to have free will, are those that can make choices for you: god and fate. Like so much else that stems from 18th Century American enlightenment (natural) philosophy, this version of free will is about self, specifically ownership of the choice. We might suggest that nature (physiology, psychology, etc.) has made the choice for us through the mechanism, but that's only valid if we give that nature owns that decision. But we don't. Nature is objectively neutral. We might give that a computer program "owns" the decisions that it makes, but we also don't. We would feel foolish patting the computer on its back and congratulating it. Instead, we pat ourselves on the back, for designing such a fine program. Those decisions that are ours are made freely; those that god or fate (circumstance) make for us are not.
Last edited:
I was using "equivocating" in the philosophical sense of the word. Google gave you the legal sense, apparently. To equivocate in the philosophical sense is to use a word in such a way that two separate meanings of it are conflated. You seemed to me to be conflating choice in the sense of having free will with choice in the sense of making a routine decision -- which does not necessarily imply free will. Computers make routine decisions, but have no free will, you see.
At any rate, I don't want to debate the issue because I believe debates are futile. I've stated my position, you've stated yours. That's all I'm interested in.
Those choices, whether encumbered, unencumbered or subconscious are made freely..
Ellen Brown,
Why do you believe that freewill is a fantasy? When a person is grown, he is not forced to go one way or another, he can choose his course in life.
The Almighty God has Inspired a Book, The Holy Bible to tell us the best way to live, but He does not force us to follow His council, or even His Laws.
God even sent His son to earth to tell us the way that God wants us to go. To show the great love that God and His son has for mankind, His Son, Jesus even gave his life as a Ransom Sacrifice for us, to give all who would believe in him would not die, but would live forever, John 3:16- which is called, The Gospels in Miniature.
It is true that all who want to live in the promised Paradise Earth, must follow Jesus’ footsteps, no one forces anyone to obey, they can choose to die forever, if that is what they want to do with their freewill. In my mind it is much wiser to follow Jesus, and live forever in Paradise.
Many people think that people are brimmed in by God’s laws, but that is not true, we are Protected by God’s Laws, because no human knows, on his own what is best. The course a person chooses for himself may be a very bad course, and God knows what the best course for all of us to follow, that will lead to endless life. The Almighty God is a Father to us all, but unlike all other Fathers, He is able to provide us with everything we need, and wants to make us happy, as His children.
So, everyone has freewill, but isn’ it much wiser to use our freewill, in the way that leads to endless happiness??? Remember, God wants the very best for His children!!! If we truely love God we will want to please Him, and by pleasing Him we also do what is best for us! Agape!!!
.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
Free will is the ability to make choices, without any emotional, psychological or physical cost. It is a "free" choice. For example, if you had to choose between an apple and an orange, and you like both, there is no psychological or emotional cost, no matter which you choose. If you strongly prefer apples but willfully choose the orange, there will be an emotional cost in the sense of less satisfaction. This choice is possible, but it is not a free choice.
One is not born with free will. Free will is developed through moderation in all things. It also has a connection to being analogous to an omnivore of life.
The original free will was connected to humans breaking away from natural instinct. Natural instinct has it own set of preferred choices. The Koala Bear only eats eucalyptus leaves.
Free will implied a secondary center of consciousness formed in the human brain, which could be objective to the original or the primary center,connected to natural human instinct. The ego center or the secondary was able to expand upon the choices of the primary. Free will was about adding new parallel choices while not creating potential in the primary, so there is no cost.
For example, the natural human before civilization might hunt and gather to eat. Civilization satisfies the same instinctive urge to eat, but does so in ways that are more based on processed food; cooked, prepared and served. This is a free choice without physical, emotional and psychological cost in terms of the instinct to eat. If you overeat and the body is made unhealthy, there is a physical cost, so this is not free will. It is willful choice, but it is not free of costs.
The concept of the Holy Spirit is also connected to free will. Back in the day, people were unconsciously enslaved to the mass mind of their culture. Departure from the mass mind of their culture would bring fear, guilt and shame. This made free will, in terms of trying, learning and including other ways, difficult. The Holy Spirit was the guilt free impulse to live in the now, so there is no cost in terms of choosing alternate things.
1Corinthians 9:19-23
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. 20 And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law, though not being myself under the Law, that I might win those who are under the Law; 21 to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. 23 And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it.
One is not born with free will. Free will is developed through moderation in all things. It also has a connection to being analogous to an omnivore of life.
The original free will was connected to humans breaking away from natural instinct. Natural instinct has it own set of preferred choices. The Koala Bear only eats eucalyptus leaves.
Free will implied a secondary center of consciousness formed in the human brain, which could be objective to the original or the primary center,connected to natural human instinct. The ego center or the secondary was able to expand upon the choices of the primary. Free will was about adding new parallel choices while not creating potential in the primary, so there is no cost.
For example, the natural human before civilization might hunt and gather to eat. Civilization satisfies the same instinctive urge to eat, but does so in ways that are more based on processed food; cooked, prepared and served. This is a free choice without physical, emotional and psychological cost in terms of the instinct to eat. If you overeat and the body is made unhealthy, there is a physical cost, so this is not free will. It is willful choice, but it is not free of costs.
The concept of the Holy Spirit is also connected to free will. Back in the day, people were unconsciously enslaved to the mass mind of their culture. Departure from the mass mind of their culture would bring fear, guilt and shame. This made free will, in terms of trying, learning and including other ways, difficult. The Holy Spirit was the guilt free impulse to live in the now, so there is no cost in terms of choosing alternate things.
1Corinthians 9:19-23
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. 20 And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law, though not being myself under the Law, that I might win those who are under the Law; 21 to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. 23 And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
call it revenge ....instead
I've heard this before, and even argued it for a time on the forums. I inevitably revert, though, to arguments of self and ownership. They are a better fit for me.
This argument has a marvelous connotation, in that god or fate both represent the moral imperative: it is as it was meant to be. If one chooses wisely, one feels no discord.
Last edited:
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
Does scripture say god doesn't know everything before it occurs?
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
What do you guys mean by free will?
To me, "free will" would imply, at the very least, control over one's own mind. The ability to make one's choices would presuppose that one also has control over the mental and emotional processes leading to that choice.
But we're dealing with an infinitely fallible mechanism where even one's own memory can be faulty. I can't remember what I was doing at 7:22am on August 11, 1993. I did not "will" myself to forget, so how does "free will" explain this?
shmogie
Well-Known Member
Correct, it is a theological concept called the open view of God, or open theology. A plethora of verses in the Bible show that God does not know all before it occurs. If he is completely omniscient, then free will is an illusion, it is not.
shmogie
Well-Known Member
Free will cannot exercise itself over natural processes. I certainly did not will that I get old, but I did, against my will
The Emperor of Mankind
Currently the galaxy's spookiest paraplegic
It certainly doesn't make sense for anyone to claim humans have free will when they belive in an omnimax god.
shmogie
Well-Known Member
Don they have free will to determine what they believe ?