Is Free Will possible?

Which only establishes that 1 person had that motivation. Not that they all do. Is it any different for Christianity or anything else. Haven’t you met those who admit they go to church in order to meet girls?

I have heard of such, and at least it gets them in the door where they might hear some truth. :slightly_smiling_face:

I don’t agree with what you have said about predestination. But apparently you have been thinking about whether this last post I made applies to you. What is your conclusion?

In any case, having understood and forever remembering everything you said are two different things. A search revealed that you equated an objection to absolute predestination with thinking that prophesies are invalid. It seems you were obsessed with this idea of God outside of time and like a person with the antiquated concept of absolute time from old physics equated that with God being incapable of time.

On the topic of predestination, I replied to you as follows

There is no question that SOME things are predestined, elected, chosen, or ordained. The question is what things. There is NOTHING in the Bible that says EVERYTHING is predestined, elected, chosen, or ordained.

Yes, God predestines people for a role in His providence, elects people for tasks, chooses them for something He wants them to do, ordains all kinds of blessings and challenges. But do things always happen as God plans or desires? It is a demonstrable FACT in the Biblical narrative that this is not so! There are plans which go awry, people which fail their appointed tasks, desires of God which are unfulfilled, things which people do which disappoint God and grieve Him to the very core. Could God control absolutely everything? Easily! But is God such a shallow person that He must control everything? No. Is God incapable of making anything which He does not control? A God incapable of this looks rather pathetic to me and will not have my regard or worship.

You didn’t make a response of any substance to this however.

It establishes that Huxley was deceiving himself less than most.

On a purely personal level the whole notion that I am being controlled in some way by anyone or anything is abhorrent.

This does cause a problem with a certain view of Scripture. Did Paul believe that God deliberately control the minds of fallen Jews? Yes. Does that mean that God does? NO. I do not think that Paul had that connection God or that God reveals that to anyone. It is quite common for Old Testament writers to claim that God is manipulating individuals or even whole Nations to His will, from specifics like Cyrus or the Babylonians to the two people walking on the road to Emmaus. It is simplistic, trite and naïve to just take these things at face value.

The ultimate question here, it seems to me, is whether we take a literal view of Scripture and hold it above everything that we see around us, know about God, and believe about the world that God made.

If you want to worship a manipulative, selfish, (human?), God with no care for the individuals He manipulates, curses (or blesses) then bully for you. I could not.

I know Scripture and believe that the lessons it teaches are not simplistic, nor is it dogmatic. The God it reveals does not conform to this cruel and uncaring vision promoted by callous uncaring Christians who are more concerned about their own salvation than the Great commandments of Love and respect.

If you read the bible as a whole instead of trying to dissect it into short citations or rulings. (Sentences that taken out of context do not mean what people claim) you will get a completely different view of God and realise that these selfish and manipulative notions are being superimposed by the writers to put across their personal view of God. And that view of God is not consistent throughout Scripture. The understanding of God is revealed slowly despite what conclusions people jump to both at the time and looking backwards.

Christ preached a God of Love and self sacrifice which does not gel with the ideas of manipulation which is why many seem to think that Paul was preaching a different Gospel. But that is only because people seem to need to take every idea personal belief of Paul as Inerrant and “God Breathed”. You only have to read the middle passages of his letter to the Romans to realise that Paul was agonising over his people and desperately trying to find some excuse for them not accepting the Good news of Christ. His conclusion: God must be stopping them!

So we “Box” people into categories of “Calvinism”, Dispensational, "Charismatic, Non Conformist, Fundamental, Universal, Lutheran, Catholic, Christian, Heretic, and so on. And so .each one is ether saved or condemned by the rule of what we individually believe to be correct. And, surprise, surprise, God is completely silent on the matter! (Unless you insist that you know 100% what is written and meant by Scripture!)

Gnosticism was seen as a curse because it dared to question, and maybe, like all revolutions it takes its revolt too far, but…

Steven Hawkins claims that we worship the God of our own making and looking at some of the doctrines promoted on (so called) theological forums you can see why.

It seems to me that the only conclusion to be made is to throw out corrosive Theology and Doctrines and try and concentrate on what we agree… that there should be harmony and accord amongst all humans. Leave the specific judging to God who has all the information that we do not.

Free will? within the obvious limitations of Personalisation and circumstance? Of Course. Anything else would make God intolerable and not worthy of our worship. (IM not so HO}

Richard

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This is very good, and the way I like to think in many ways; but I am currently reading Oord’s “Uncontrolling Love of God,” and I’m not sure that we can’t rule out materialistic determinism (in contrast to his argument that we believe in randomness with a coin toss; I’ve only started, though). Isn’t the concept of responsibility a very advantageous idea, evolutionarily? It’s something that is appealing to me that there is such a thing as randomness, but I’m not sure what that means. Using a coin to determine who starts a game is sort of like a “God of the Gaps” argument for randomness–because we don’t know what miniscule variables cause the eventual result, we assume it’s random.

It won’t make much difference in my life whether I can make decisions or not–I have to live as though I do.

I’ve read, interestingly, that those who believe in materialistic determinism sometimes become depressed and donate less to the poor, for example; so that’s an argument that we shouldn’t take it too far! (and here I go with “should” and “ought”–which imply a belief in free will!)

Thanks.

I am certain that we can give our freedom away, either by conforming or imposing some outside standards onto ourselves. We can even allow materialism or other forces to influence our freedom, but ultimately we can still choose. There may be consequences, and some maybe uncomfortable or even remove the freedom we are claiming but history is replete with people who have fought for their freedom and paid dearly for it.
I guess that the ultimate “punishment” or Consequence of Eternity is something we will only discover at the appointed time. Whether there will be a “Deathbed” choice still to be made is something we can only postulate. I , for one, would hope that , when we have the full information, we will be offered the final choice.

Richard

We obviously have free will. Without free will, we couldn’t know anything. It is like asking “Is consciousness possible?”. Obviously we have free will, because any mental concept whatsoever requires free will in order to make any sense at all.

But free will is a form of determinism. It is called self determinism. It is the ability to choose certain reasons over other reasons

But are those choices “free” or hard wired from either instinct or experience. As soon as you use the word determine it negates free. We act within a set of guidelines. There is limited freedom within those guidelines but is it real freedom?

Richard

To the OP: it’s not a concept that has any meaning to me. Does God have it? Or ‘choice’ generally? Whatever that is.

In some sense you have a point here, few things are as hard to define as “free will“. Tentatively one should restrict oneself to the definition of “being able to do otherwise“.
Since you have the idea of a panentheistic God and due to some of your other comments, am I right to assume that you are influenced by Spinoza? For Spinozists free will is literally a meaningless idea

Spinoza was pantheist, so not good enough :slight_smile:

I’m influenced by uniformitarianism above all which is another way of saying God changes not.

I’m happy to believe in free will if anyone can demonstrate it.

He was adamant in his letters that he was not.

As a Catholic I affirm the same (“Divine Immutability“), but I don’t see how that can be squared with panentheism since God (in parts) is identical with the world on that view and the world is clearly changing.

Free will is a philosophical concept and rarely any philosophical ideas can be proven to be conclusively false. I can’t even prove that we are having this conversation right now.
I’d just use common sense to argue for it; a) put in practice a denial of free will becomes immediately self-refuting and b) that we are free is as much sure as that we are conscious since by every conscious thought we experience something we recognize as freedom (of the mind). If we are THAT wrong on such a basic aspect of our daily experience, how could we be right about anything else?

If the agent determines that does not make the agent determined.

I defer to his adamance.

The world changes in an unchanging way. Otherwise it couldn’t be eternal. No parts. Just thought. But not as we know it. From the fact of eternity.

My mind doesn’t feel free at all. I wish it were. If free will is significant, real, what can it be used for in the real day to day world? Where do I get it?

I agree. Too many seem to think that unless you are free to choose the wants and desires that motivate you then you are determined. That has always seemed foolish. What in the world would your base the choice of your druthers on if you didn’t already have any? Having a real choice between alternatives seems like what we mean by choice in most cases. But I’m happy to acknowledge our degree of freedom in choosing can be constrained at time, I just wouldn’t call that determinism.

This is how I feel about determinism :slight_smile:

Oh determinism is utter nonsense John. If by that we mean any from of predestination whatsoever.

I didn’t mean it in a theological sense, but maybe it’s the same difference. I hear a lot of people lately saying determinism is the logical conclusion of a universe governed by inalienable physical laws, down to the last movement of the last particle. Maybe I just don’t understand it, but it doesn’t make sense to me. I await some kind of practical explanation I can understand and some usable predictions :slight_smile: Until then I will rest easy assuming I can make choices which may have radically different consequences.

Och no John. I agree. Reality is indeterminate, chaotic, stochastic. Particles don’t behave predictably. You can rely on that! It’s predictable. As for choices, hmmm.

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