Predestination and Free Will

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Saint, Aug 14, 2012.

  1. Adstar Valued Senior Member

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    3,782
    Yes you are free to chose.

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    All Praise The Ancient of Days
     
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  3. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    And who says (1) we initially had genuine freedom, and (2) that we then lost it and had to have it bought back?
    Conscious manipulation without cause is "much easier"??
    Sure, if you want to wander off into the realm of fantasy, feel free.
    Otherwise you may want to support your ideas?
    Afterall, we can all talk about any of the infinite unfalsifiable possibilities but they are as much use as mudguards on a tortoise.
     
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  5. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    No, wrong!
    Before I made decision, how could God possibly knew my decision, I even did not know it.

    I think God predestines "generally", not specifically on someone.
     
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  7. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    I think what is true is:
    1. God made his plan from the beginning, how to save us.
    2. God exercised his plan on earth, in time frame.
    3. We are feeble and tend to die in sin, but God helps us through Gospels to turn our hearts to him. If we respond positively, we are saved. If we reject, we are doomed.

    Right?
     
  8. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Apparently God knew what Judas was going to do before Judas was even born. Judas was crucial to the "plan". Did Judas have free will?
     
  9. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    If you think he was asserting randomness does not exist then you must not have understood RPenner's post. I suggest you read it again, as Prometheus was actually reiterating what RPenner said, not "debunking" him.


    If you drop something, and there is no interference, can you not absolutely predict that it will fall? Do you cause it to fall, or do you only cease to cause it to be supported? Is not gravity a force beyond your control that actually causes things to fall? You do not cause gravity, so how do you predict things will fall without causing them to?

    This differentiates your assumptions about prediction and cause (control). Again, correlation does not imply causation.
     
  10. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    Correlation does not imply causation.
    God's foreknowledge does not cause people to do things.
    An intelligent guess (such as one by the weatherman) is not the same as foreknowledge.
    If something can be foreknown, then said thing must have been predestined.
     
  11. Gerhard Kemmerer Banned Banned

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    Nobody in their right mind thinks that a life with disease and death is a proper world. Nature is not free, it is surviving and yet going nowhere.
    But the problem is not with the physical world acting improperly, which can be changed quite easily, it is the disconnection of human beings in their heads towards God. And they must have choice and free will, otherwise there is no such thing as love in them. Right and wrongs choices are made through process, through experience, consequences, etc. This world is a reflection of both function and dysfunction. God has not interferred with this condition that allows people to be what they want to be, but it cannot be allowed to go on forever, and as soon as it comes to its full potential, it will end.
    Not sure this is what you queried.
     
  12. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Speaking of being in one's right mind -

    Why would any god, in his right mind, set up the running of the Universe so that it is only by god staging a suicide
    that living beings can be spared from this same god's wrath?

    It's as if that god is saying, "I love my children so much that I am going to pretend to kill myself, so as to spare them from my eternal wrath."

    ??
     
  13. Gerhard Kemmerer Banned Banned

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    649
    In keeping with the thread theme, Saint asked the question on the assumption of familiarity with the basics of Christian faith. What you have suggested shows that you don't recognise the principles of love and freedom, as they are upheld in the Gospel.
    People who loose their lives in order to save others are not suicidal. Why God sent His Son to die as a human being, is a mystery to be worked out, before any comment.
     
  14. Gerhard Kemmerer Banned Banned

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    649
    It seems like your original question needed this answer, but your thoughts about foreknowledge... people think prevents freedom of choice, and I don't know why people insist on that view...
     
  15. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    "Proper world"?
    You're going to have to explain what you mean by "proper" in this regard.
    Again, you've lost me... I can't reconcile your usage of the terms with my own.
    And how do you propose one changes the way in which the physical world acts, given that you think it can be changed "quite easily"?
    As far as I am aware, the physical world acts according to the laws of the universe. But if you know differently...?
    Ooookay.
    No, it's not. And to be honest I'm not sure I understood anything you said. You may want to either elaborate or at least clarify what you mean.
     
  16. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    First of all, to be clear, God didn't really lose anything in the Crucifiction.


    They are principles of "love and freedom" for people who are into scapegoating.

    Only someone who is into scapegoating would accept as plausible a scenario in which god pretends to get himself killed, in order to spare mankind from his wrath.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2012
  17. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    I can't swear to it, but I believe he is alluding to the idea that death and disease are caused by sin... Not sure where germ theory fits into this idea. I am also unsure as to what terrible sin the dinosaurs were guilty of...
     
  18. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    Are you essentially arguing that an omniscient being could predict that I would have a particular fleeting thought at precisely 8.24am on the 31st of August, 2015, based on nothing more than a complete awareness of every variable present at the first moment of creation?
     
  19. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Omniscience is a completely different issue. This degree of specificity is never claimed of such prediction. Given the person's nature, history, and the stresses and stimuli likely, predictions such as who will or will not "find" a god over their entire lifetime become probabilistic.

    Or think of it this way. The probability that you will make a specific choice in a specific moment is vastly lesser than that of making that same choice some undetermined time within an entire lifespan.
     
  20. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, we're on a different page then. I have no issue with the logical consistency here. There is certainly an abundance of theists however who claim that God's knowledge of future events is absolute, and that probability doesn't factor into the equation at all. It is that position that I take issue with when it is accompanied by the claim that free will is something more than just an illusion.
     
  21. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    But do they claim the accuracy you implied?

    There is also the matter of what may be "future" to a god. If our future is a god's present then there is nothing "yet to unfold". In that case, it does not even take omniscient, only omnipresence, to know what happens.

    Or let me put it this way. Omniscience is not absolute knowledge, only maximal knowledge. Quantum physics has shown us that some things are fundamentally indeterminate, so until they occur there could be nothing to be known, as nothing determines their specific present state. In that case, only present knowledge is "absolutely" possible.
     
  22. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    The above is most often the sort of assumption that underpins the claim that God's knowledge of future events is absolute. This is what I was exploring with RoccoR earlier in this thread:

     
  23. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    5,134
    He knew which you would choose based off of your personality, and things going on around you.
     

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