Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Good oratory to influence people. All leaders do that. Does it mean what they say is always the truth?
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Free will vs. predestination: Which are you?
- Thread starter CatholicVoice
- Start date
IndigoStorm
Member
Simple answer ..... No.
Skwim
Veteran Member
The "matter" is sentient operation. If I, apes, and skunks don't operate through free will or determinism, then just what is the engine prompting us doing X ?
Biology.
Skwim
Veteran Member
If you're going to include free will, we have to think biology here.
Biology is the study that we've set up to explain how we work, or psychology, if you want the mental slant. Free will explains nothing. There is no "truth" to espouse about how we work inherent in the idea of free will. We use the idea, it doesn't use us (which is, incidentally, a statement of free will).
It's only useful in a discussion that acknowledges responsibility taken for actions identified as ours, as apart from others who might otherwise be given responsibility.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Fine. You posted a one word reply and I took a shot at what I thought you were talking about. My mistake. So, what is the truth of the matter? If I, apes, and skunks don't operate through free will or determinism, then just what is the engine prompting us to do X ?
.
I don't pretend to know any truth about that. What is the engine prompting one effect to follow a particular cause? What is the engine prompting a particular decision from amongst multiple possibilities?
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
But you chose red, and that choice can't be undone. It was the choice that you made, and therefore the choice that was going to be made. What difference is there between the completely linear, singular-path version of time we traverse from a predestined/preordained version where all of the "choices" are plotted out? Is there even a difference to be called out?
Skwim
Veteran Member
But what you do know is that "Both free will and determinism or predestination are illusions." Okay, but even if you don't know what it is, what are your suspicions of the engine for sentient operation? Or is this simply one of those times where you throw your hands up and profess absolute ignorance?
Mycroft
Ministry of Serendipity
Neither.
The Relativity of Time guarantees the argument for predestination. If every thing that can happen, already has...then any action by an individual who exists in linear time...would be known and or 'predestined' from the pov of the "higher power". The Higher Power - for argument's sake - being a Supreme Conscious Entity with no manner of limitation. I.e., God.
Even so, the fact that God would both know the individual's choice even before the choice was ever presented to the individual (scenario), and ordain/allow it...such a knowledge would in no way affect the sovereignty and 'free will' of the individual.
Bottom line. Free will exist for the limited Individual...predestination exist for God. Seemingly contrarian...but just paradoxical (if that is the right word).
Ponder This
Well-Known Member
I think Robert Frost said it well...
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Moreover, I think that regardless of whether you think that actions are pre-ordained. Pre-ordination is not the manner in which we experience them. We experience actions as if we were free to decide them - illusion or not. A common paradox arises from the thought experiment of being able to fore-tell the future in that if someone could fore-tell the future, then it would change how he makes decisions in the present and thus lead either to a contradiction of the foreseen future (in which case he didn't really fore-tell the future but rather a possible future) or a self-fulfilling of it (in which case the act of fore-seeing it is what causes him to fulfill it and if he hadn't foreseen it he may very well not have fulfilled it).
As a practical example, consider the experiment of players that are asked to visualize making 3-pointers on the basketball court before going out onto the basketball court to make them vs players that are told to simply go out onto the court and make 3-pointers. The group that spends time visualizing the 3-pointers before hand makes more 3-pointers on average. I apologize I can't find the reference for this, but it seems a rather obvious result in any case.
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Moreover, I think that regardless of whether you think that actions are pre-ordained. Pre-ordination is not the manner in which we experience them. We experience actions as if we were free to decide them - illusion or not. A common paradox arises from the thought experiment of being able to fore-tell the future in that if someone could fore-tell the future, then it would change how he makes decisions in the present and thus lead either to a contradiction of the foreseen future (in which case he didn't really fore-tell the future but rather a possible future) or a self-fulfilling of it (in which case the act of fore-seeing it is what causes him to fulfill it and if he hadn't foreseen it he may very well not have fulfilled it).
As a practical example, consider the experiment of players that are asked to visualize making 3-pointers on the basketball court before going out onto the basketball court to make them vs players that are told to simply go out onto the court and make 3-pointers. The group that spends time visualizing the 3-pointers before hand makes more 3-pointers on average. I apologize I can't find the reference for this, but it seems a rather obvious result in any case.
Christ's Prophet
Member
As I see it there are a number of problems with the theory of predestination.
- If God has decided before the foundation of the world, who is going to be saved and who is not, why bother with evangelism? Why talk to someone about Christ, if you feel that Christ has not decided to save them. For a predestinational Christian to engage in evangelism would be to just go through the motions.
- It is one thing for God to know who is going to be saved, it is quite another thing to predetermine who is saved and who is not. Why create people who have no choice in their eternal destiny?
- If God creates people to fail into Hell, why create them in the first place? In the ‘Westminster Confession’ it talks about those who are foreordained unto damnation as if God has taken His hands off that part of creation and has nothing to do with their demise. If that were true, then wouldn’t it be true that God is not the God of all creation.
- Note that the words ‘predestination’ and ‘salvation’ never appear in the same verse anywhere in the Bible.
- Right from Genesis to Revelation, Christ wants people to freely choose Him and have fellowship with Him. He did not create us as robots.
Some food for thought. Christ’s prophet, Certainty for eternity.
GeelongFams4WldPeace
Uncle
First time posting.
Please no roasting.
The only way a parent can have complete control over his family is by ruling with law, not heart.
That is not God's way.
A parent would say what needs to be done (predestines), but allows the children to express our own personality (free will) in the fulfilling of the task.
Of course, we can ignore our conscience, and pass the responsibility onto the next sibling. That's when suffering multiplies.
When we know the will of God and don't do it, is that God's fault?
Please no roasting.
The only way a parent can have complete control over his family is by ruling with law, not heart.
That is not God's way.
A parent would say what needs to be done (predestines), but allows the children to express our own personality (free will) in the fulfilling of the task.
Of course, we can ignore our conscience, and pass the responsibility onto the next sibling. That's when suffering multiplies.
When we know the will of God and don't do it, is that God's fault?
Cap'n MacDougal
Member
I guess that depends on which version of God is being discussed. The Beta version did. Then, apparently, he had his morning cup of joe and relaxed.