Why does that not invalidate freewill? What difference does it make if you have freedom over your choices if you don’t have the freedom over the outcome?
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Theists who believe in freewill?
- Thread starter The Sum of Awe
- Start date
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
It makes all the difference. The smallest choice is still a choice. The sun will explode one day, and this Earth will be consumed in fire. This isn't prophecy or a maybe, this is an eventuality. Yet that does not mean that I cannot live my life how I choose, free of the hypothetical strings of a god or what have you.
To what degree does fate extend in your opinion? Only on the cosmological level? Are our own individual lives fated to a certain degree? The exact person we grow to become for example?
As much as I am a huge believer in self change and becoming who you want to be, which I think could be seen as freewill, I can’t help but believe determination undermines it. It takes a certain mindset, in the first place, for a person to come to the conclusion that they can live their lives how they want to. Not everyone comes to this conclusion, only those who stumbled upon the conclusion.
For me, it doesn't matter if will is free or determined. These might be very different universes, but whichever one we live in works fine and is obviously not just acceptable, but amazing, so we should resist our tendency to guess which it is and have an emotional stake in it being either way, since whichever it is supports this existence. I'm open to either possibility, although my intuition is that will is not the freely generated desire of the self, and that what is called free will is what I have called the illusion of free will.
But this is a big issue in Christianity and perhaps all of the Abrahamic religions, which insists that will is free. It's an essential element of a worldview that has a deity punishing man for his choices. Whereas I'm happy to give up free will if that's how reality is, the believer is not. And as we see, this creates problems of coherence when one throws in that the creator is omniscient. Not at the temporospatial scale man lives at if free will as I define it below manifests there.
To clarify what I mean, what most of us call free will is the experience of discovering an inclination and being able to execute an action in its service. That inclination may well be determined by material processes outside of consciousness and delivered to the self to be discovered, and be mistakenly understood as having arisen from the self-uncaused - the so-called illusion of free will. Even if that desire is the result of indeterministic quantum processes, still, if it is generated outside of consciousness and delivered to it to be discovered and experienced, it is not chosen or created by the self.
This is an example of the inherent self-contradiction of this philosophical position. We have a will called free despite its output being known in advance by an omniscient deity, and yet man is warned to behave a given way by this deity that knows what the decision will be in advance, and worse, punishing the individual for doing what it was created to do and what it was known in advance it would do. The Garden story epitomizes that incoherence well, which it is apparently easy for the believer to ignore and understand as reasonable, fair, and loving instead.
Such a god would have no reason to be aware of our existence, and such a universe would need no god to direct it. You've made this deity meaningless in our lives just as we would be meaningless to subatomic particles if they could think, since we can make similar statements about them. We have no control over how the atoms in a table move, and no knowledge of their current positions or directions in the table, but we can control the table and its short-term fate nevertheless. And even if a human mind had the ability to track all of that atomic and subatomic activity, why would it? And now imagine adding in watching all of those subatomic particles constantly with orders that they need to behave in a given way such as none transforming into other particles knowing that they would, being angry at them, and punishing them for it.
I'm here to tell you from personal experience that that is not correct. What tyranny of desire do you suppose the mature humanist who does not align his will with any religion's god's commandments is experiencing? It is very possible to live a satisfying life outside of religion, one characterized by love and beauty, and by purpose and contentment. How much more freedom do you think such a person can use if his needs are met?
Aligning my will with the Christian deity did not do those things for me, which is why I left the religion four decades ago and have not only never regretted the decision, consider living outside of religion and god beliefs a personal achievement. It's why I can disagree with your comment, which might have been true for you, but not for many others, who found the opposite to be the case and left religion.
Sure, God as Creator can choose to gift His creation with free-will choices or not.
God chose to give to mankind to have control over their own free-willed choices.
Adam and Eve were Not programmed to do wrong. They had the ability to choose.
God purposed that we all be descendants of Adam and Eve - Genesis 1:28
Because we are innocent of what Adam and Eve did is why God's purpose for us and Earth does Not change.
Since God's will for Earth is the same as it is in Heaven that purpose does Not change.
The passing of time was necessary for us to be born and to think who we would like as Sovereign over us.
God's will for Heaven is: No violence, No crime, No war, No sickness and No death in Heaven.
We ask for those same peaceful heavenly conditions to come to Earth and they will.
God's will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven.
So, God's purpose will be done, but as to who will be part of God's purpose still remains to be seen.
Jesus, as King of God's Kingdom, is the one who makes sure God's will is carried out - Matthew 25:31-34,37
At the soon coming ' time of separation' on Earth Jesus will separate the ones who want to do God's will from the ones who do Not want to do God's will. Definitely God's will, His purpose will be done just as Jesus promised at Matthew 5:5 from Psalms 37:9-11 that humble meek people will inherit the Earth.
A beautiful Earth as described in Isaiah 35th chapter.
As known science knows, but God's Word assures us Earth abides forever - Ecclesiastes 1:4 B; Psalms 104:5
In Scripture often 'fire' is symbolic. Today's bad elements will be gone because God will bring to ruin (Not Earth) but bring to ruin those ruining the Earth - Revelation 11:18 B.
Sure anyone can choose to be free of ...... what have you.
But No one is free from dying or death.
Without a resurrection, then anyone can choose do as they choose.
Resurrection to me is Not a string of God but the reason for belief in God.
Without the Resurrection Promise then eat, drink because tomorrow is only death without any hope.
..... and I find jumping to conclusions seldom leads to happy endings.
Living your life the way you want to seldom leads to a happy ending?
It might or might not matter. In the same way it matters if gravity is the warping of spacetime or created by gravitons - in the end the models only help us understand how it functions, but it has little significance in actually being “correct” in a literal way.
While I don’t believe in eternal Hell, I believe we can experience a life of Hell on earth if we fail to make wise choices. And I do believe one’s choices, wise or unwise, was planned by God. In this case of “punishment” I think the reason for the misery is just to experience the misery of making unwise choices.
I would wholeheartedly agree
To me, living the life the way Jesus wants us to is what leads to a happy endingLiving your life the way you want to seldom leads to a happy ending?
Remember: Jesus forewarned that MANY would prove false to him / his teachings - Matthew 7:21-23
I find the Bible agrees with you that there is No eternal hell. Bible hell ends - Revelation 20:13-14
Biblical hell comes to a final end when everyone in biblical hell is resurrected (delivered up) out of hell/grave.
The modern expression 'hell on earth ' figuratively underscores the failure to make wise choices/decisions.
Or, as you say the misery is just to experience the misery of making unwise choices.
In Scripture choices are Not planned or purposed by God but done by one's free-willed choices.
What is purposed by God is Resurrection Day ( Jesus' coming one-thousand year day of governing over Earth )
Both the righteous and unrighteous will be resurrected - Acts of the Apostles 24:15
Some people are called to heavenly life, but the majority of people to have a happy-and-healthy physical resurrection.
stvdv
Veteran Member
A Wise man once asked his student "You know how to make God laugh?", the student could not answer..."Tell Him your plans" the Wise man replied
(I just love this one...since I heard this all my plans seem to fail)Now imagine, we tell God what God's Plan is
I think God may have a blast
DKH
Member
It is my opinion that the only guaranteed free-will is God's free-will…Thus, all others are subject to the will of the Great Creator. This can be illustrated by the story of Jonah and others. However, humans do have free-will (as well as, the benefits and consequences associated with such free-will choices). But, human free-will cannot derail the will of God.
Foreknowledge is not the cause. The purpose of God gives us our ability of change. Abdul'baha gave this thought at a table talk of Freewill and its Limits.
Some Answered Questions | Bahá’í Reference Library
The garden story is a metephor of free will, it is not a literal story. Adam is the Spirit Humanity, Eve is our self. Abdul'baha gave this table talk on Adam and Eve.
Some Answered Questions | Bahá’í Reference Library
These are good logical explanations given on these topics.
Foreknowledge was not the cause of the choices we made. We have been warned about turning awful from God, which is all Virtue and Morals, set within God's Laws. Neglected, they bring great evil upon humanity.
Regards Tony
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The future is already set. As well as the past.
So, what do you mean?
Ciao
- viole
Exaltist Ethan
Bridging the Gap Between Believers and Skeptics
God does not have a "plan" and that is a misrepresentation of authority.
The plan is that humans will produce and harness so much energy that we'll eventually create habitats and lifeforms on other planets. We'll take planets that have too much energy on them (like Venus) and transfer that energy to planets with not enough energy on them (like Mars), essentially terraforming other planets to be more similar to Earth. We will send then send a myriad of different animals to live on these planets.
Essentially our role is to be God's plan.
The plan is that humans will produce and harness so much energy that we'll eventually create habitats and lifeforms on other planets. We'll take planets that have too much energy on them (like Venus) and transfer that energy to planets with not enough energy on them (like Mars), essentially terraforming other planets to be more similar to Earth. We will send then send a myriad of different animals to live on these planets.
Essentially our role is to be God's plan.
Maybe that’s because you want to live the way Jesus wants you toTo me, living the life the way Jesus wants us to is what leads to a happy ending
Remember: Jesus forewarned that MANY would prove false to him / his teachings - Matthew 7:21-23
Sounds like God does have a plan then?
Quran 8:30
Remember how the Unbelievers plotted against thee, to keep thee in bonds, or slay thee, or get thee out (of thy home). They plot and plan, and Allah too plans; but the best of planners is Allah.
Regards Tony
Exaltist Ethan
Bridging the Gap Between Believers and Skeptics
If by God you mean the urgency of human agency and condition, then yes. But if you are referring to the general fate or luck of something, such as the kind of God you believe in, then no. If you don't believe in some amount of free will regarding your own fate or luck than God's plan is everything you cannot control - yet we do have by some degree some control of what happens, creating our own path. It is because we do have free will that the human condition will eventually forge on and create life on other planets. If we did not have that free will there would be no plan. Or fate would be synonymous with that plan, an idea I don't ascribe to. Extropy is too narrow and focused for that.