Do we have freewill ? is it biblical ?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by zacariah88, Feb 22, 2023.

?

Do you believe you have freewill

  1. yes

    5 vote(s)
    45.5%
  2. no

    6 vote(s)
    54.5%
  1. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    zacariah88:

    Thank you for your reply.
    It seems to me that you're making a lot of assumptions about the source of the free will that you believe we all have. You write a lot about your God, but you write as if the words you are writing are self-evidently true, but if there were self-evident truths to free will then it would be puzzling that people have been arguing about whether it even exists for as long as they have, don't you think?

    If somebody doesn't believe in your God, for starters, then you have quite a bit of preliminary work you need to do before you'll be able to convince them that your God is the source of free will.

    But even if somebody does believe in a god of one kind or another, that doesn't necessarily mean they will accept that we have free will or that your particular God gave us free will.

    Quoting from a book such as the bible isn't much help, because again you are assuming that the contents of the bible are self-evidently true, but they aren't. (Again, if the bible was self-evidently true, people wouldn't argue about it.)

    What you need to try to do, if you believe we have free will, is to make an argument for it that doesn't rely on somebody accepting in advance both that your God is real and that religious teachings about your God are self-evidently true. Alternatively, you might like to take a step back and lay the necessary groundwork, if you plan to rely on the existence of your God and the perfection of the bible to make your case for free will. But that would require that you first make a case for your God's existence, and a separate case for the accuracy and inerrancy of the bible.
    How do you know the Mosaic law is not wrong? Is it right on absolutely everything it says, or just right some of the time?
    God must have known human beings would fall from grace. Why plant the Tree of Knowledge and then forbid human beings to eat from it? God was setting us up to fail, wasn't he?
    I think your views on Freemasonry might be better discussed in a separate thread. What's wrong with Freemasonry?
    The nation of Israel was essentially destroyed, until it was re-established following World War II. If Israel was perfect, why did that happen?
    Obviously, God doesn't give us everything we need. Most of us need to work to live, for example.
    I'm not sure you understood my question. If God were to say "Eating eggs on Thursdays is evil", would that be the only reason that eating eggs on Thursdays would be wrong? Or would God only say such a thing if God already knew it was evil for some reason other than God's decision to designate it as evil?

    In other words, what is it that makes things right or wrong?
    Britain fought a war against Nazi Germany, you know. There must have been some points of disagreement.
    Are you saying that biblical laws that allowed the owning and beating of slaves were good? Are they still good for today? Are they God's laws?
    There are many stories in the bible in which women are treated essentially as the property of men, to be sold, given away, traded or whatever. Does God approve of treating women as the property of men?
     
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  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Can you please give me an example of a miracle that God made today? Tell me how you know it is a miracle, too, please.
    How do you know what God planned?
    Isn't the idea of destiny incompatible with free will?
    Is it hard to make a king out of an ordinary person? Is only God able to do that?

    Can you give me an example of a miracle? I need you to explain how you know (a) that it happened; and (b) that it was a miracle from God.
    If he loves us, why does he allow so much evil in the world?

    Why does he allow innocent people to be killed in earthquakes?

    Why does he allow righteous people to be killed by unscrupulous people?

    If God loves us, why won't he save the innocent?
    Which scientists say that?
    Are you saying that God doesn't decide things because it's hard for him? I'm having some difficulty understanding what you're trying to say.
    But your position is that God gave us all that freedom to make mistakes. Isn't it?
    How do you know God has a special thing for you in heaven?

    If there's a special thing in heaven, why does God keep you here on Earth? What are you here for?
    God gives them the free will to mess up. That's what you're saying, isn't it?
     
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  5. ThazzarBaal Registered Senior Member

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    Same as with a belief in God and gods, I'm sure
     
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  7. ThazzarBaal Registered Senior Member

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    We learn as we go, make mistakes along the way, and tend to find ways to get things right, or at least some try to understand enough to make better decisions. It's a survival thing associated with defense mechanisms that we learn over time. : ----------- :
     
  8. ThazzarBaal Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    645
    Balancing between poles is relevant also. Between free will and determinism is where we are as autonomous beings. Souls might be the seeds from which we grow when appropriate environments are present to accommodate the growth itself. Religiously speaking, that's the wayside, rocks, thorns, and good ground of the equation. These are or can be viewed as stages also.

    Somewhere between freewill and determinism, based on inherent quality or seed type is what I'm alluding to. (Gene pools and species, etc - soul stuff)
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    Notes on the Obvious

    Just because: We are all aware, are we not, that if the Universe was deterministic, there is no guarantee that we could know, perceive, or otherwise easily recognize that determinism? It is even possible to convince ourselves the Universe is not deterministic even if it turns out to be. The key is remembering a basic ratio: Put any value you want on one side, because the other is infinity. Does some aspect of my human brain make my mind capable of achieving some sort of infinity? No, it is a finite thing with finite potential. Thus: The scale of determinism can easily exceed our ability to recognize. It is similar to a theological answer: If God exists or does not exist, you would not necessarily know.

    That said, we do have some reference point:

    Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and tongue and nation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it, every one whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain.

    (Rev. 13.7-8↱)

    †​

    The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to perdition; and the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will marvel to behold the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.

    (Rev. 17.8↱)

    †​

    Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and if any one's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

    (Rev. 20.11-15↱)

    While predestination is not the only possible interpretation of the Book of Life and God's judgment, most discussion on that point seems to be a sort of political bickering in which disputing factions orbit and fight over what are generally impossible interpretations.

    Free will is not explicitly Biblical; most of our modern-day consideration will involve a very much weakened and constrained assertion of the boundless monotheistic godhead. Discussions of free will can encounter the same complication as discussions about the Devil; if the easiest path through is that God cannot account for human decisions, or that the Devil exists and operates outside God's will, then God is not God, and that discussion is mere parlor-gossip idolatry.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Weigle, Luther, et al. The Bible: Revised Standard Version. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1971. Quod.Lib.UMich.edu. 27 February 2023. http://bit.ly/2rJddky
     
  10. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Ok... i got it... the new thangs we learn come exclusively from our brain/soul (the home of freewill)... i.e.... not influenced by previous conditions/circumstances.!!!
     
  11. mathman Valued Senior Member

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  12. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Its self evident to those who beleive it.!!!

    Perty simples... really.!!!
     
  13. ThazzarBaal Registered Senior Member

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    645
    No, but it's through these that we experience life (everything) and make our choices.
     
  14. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Oh no… that sounds like “compatibilism”.!!!

    Paraphrased… heres what Sam Harris said about that:::

    A compatibilist… like a puppet… is ignorant of its strings effects.!!!
     
  15. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    "Do we have free will?" ain't a yes or no question.
    It seems most likely to be a matter of degrees of freedom and degrees of constraints.

    And, then there is pattern---habits---reflexes--etc. and we become/create constraints for ourselves.
     
  16. ThazzarBaal Registered Senior Member

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    645
    Or not ... Whether aware of outside players or not, it doesn't change the reality of the environment. Chess and boxes and end of game scenarios come to mind. Who's playing who or what might also - after all is said and done.
     
  17. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    2,002
    What about agnostics?
     
  18. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    3,324
    Yah, with emphasis on "create" and often choosing to accept or not accept external influences in that department over the course of a lifetime, when it comes to cultural add-ons to the inherent primate template we're born with. Because it is indeed the body/brain that performs such processes -- not external space aliens doing it by remote control on the planet Marklar.

    While we indeed don't have absolute freedom to do what we want, there's nothing compromising about having regulated constraints and personal tendencies (i.e., having an identity). Organization and preferences (biases) are necessary for sapience, decision-making, and guided behavior, in the first place. That's why randomness (indeterminism) would not yield autonomy:

    (1) a lack of governance means utterly no intelligence and life status.

    (2) and if it was capable of disrupting the systematic activity of a brain/body, randomness would be just another external agency seizing (mock) control, rather than the unnecessary liberator which many mistakenly champion it as. Albeit a nonsensical and pattern-less puppet master, rather than a deliberating one. ​

    The idea of autonomy requiring immunity from the properties of a natural world (where objects have past and future states, cause-effect relationships, etc) falls out of the astounding daftness of incompatibilism. Where the standards for evaluating "free will" stem from either consciously or subconsciously adopting the underlying assumption of a supernatural entity being a person's authentic identity (rather than abstracting a criterion from the actual physical brain/body).

    The former might be fine for the theists inhabiting the incompatibilist thought orientation (libertarianism or wherever sub-category they would slot in). But it's an inconsistent benchmark for naturalists to adopt (ergo the sheer self-conflicting madness of the view). They essentially define FW in a way so that is dead before it leaves the starting gate -- there is no legit conversation to have if (analogously) one's definition of an average "fish" is a creature that lives on land (endowing _X_ with contradictory features for that habitat).

    My particular body/brain and the psychological configuration it carries would cease to exist if it was optionally replaced by a different person and/or with a different past. That's a superpower for a prior-in-rank soul choosing the shell it will inhabit, not a human only existing as a body/brain ("Oh, goodness -- I could have been Drew rather than Francis, or even a parallel universe version of myself!"). Again, the evaluating standard for FW is being abstracted from an imaginary entity rather than the actual situation.

    How can anyone with a knowledge of how the body/body works pretend that it is incapable of generating its own judgements and actions? That it requires a string-puller from the outside, especially when the only external agency available with significant deliberative intelligence is other humans, not the dumb and non-conscious "rest of the universe".

    And even when a malefactor is holding a gun on an unfortunate individual and making them do what they otherwise would not, it is still the brain in that body that is making the decision to comply with the gunman's demands. An artificial muppet with no internal apparatus would indifferently take a bullet to the head. Predictability is agreeable with autonomy, since randomness (absence of pattern and routine) is not a contemplative agency, is not an alternative, does not yield living behavior (intelligent or otherwise).
    _
     
  19. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Bein aware… or not bein aware are different realities in itself.!!!

    Who or what... etc... are just links in a unbroken chain of causality.!!!

    I will double check… but im perty sure they goin strate to HELL

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    Last edited: Mar 1, 2023
  20. ThazzarBaal Registered Senior Member

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    645
    Cause and effect? That sounds accurate enough to stand on. The variables in-between determine outcomes based on choices. Ill suggest freewill and determinism are both relevant and accurate also. At least for some species.
     
  21. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Very interestin... but please give an example of a freewill choice that was determined by an inbetween variable.!!!
     
  22. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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  23. ThazzarBaal Registered Senior Member

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    I just chose to sit down in the shade at a facility that serves lunch. My situation itself an in-between variable as was the choice to be here today.
     

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