I don’t doubt that it’s believable, because there are a lot of folks around here who claim to believe it, and if it weren’t believable, then those same folks would be claiming that they believe in something that they believe is unbelievable, and I’d have to wonder what the heck am doing hanging around in an insane asylum’s on-line forum.
Thanks, by the way, for your permission to disbelieve in it.
The whole is more than the sum of its parts = transcends ? Yeah, I suppose so, in a manner of speaking. But “independent of its parts”? I ain’t buying.
Ahhh! To tell you would bring out a clash between your view of Time and Space and mine, I suspect. Are you sure you wanna go there? You’re one of the few around here that I can endure.
Terry, my permission for you disbelieve it is not a good thing, it only means free will allows it, perhaps you should not thank me for it. Regarding “independent of its parts” mind is designed to become soul so it depends on ‘parts’ to emerge but later becomes independent and permanent.
Do you really think so? If so, you must be mystified by Jesus’ resurrection. One moment he’s dead and wrapped in a shroud and a short time later, there’s no body and he’s out of the tomb and hobnobbing with folks that have some difficulty recognizing him, and a short time later seems to ascend and disappear in the clouds. Where did the body go?
1 Corinthians 15:50 I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed
Put on your wading boots.
I inherited what I’ll share with you by PM from a now-deceased agnostic atheist. So surprise! Someone other than me used to use the idiosyncratic definition. Now, as far as I know, I’m the only one who uses it. But it’s a fundamentalist Pythagorean definition and contrary to Biologos’ mandate to stick to mainstream science. That’s why I have to share it secretly.
Really??? OK, so maybe “final blow” was too strong a phrase to use… If you really never came across anyone making this argument it goes like that “Bible says God gave people free will so we can choose good deeds over bad, choose to believe in Him, it distinguishes us from animals blah blah blah but since science disproves it, then we are just like marionettes and can’t do all of the above, hence there can be no God(and what sort of God would create us to be some sort of puppets?)”
Now since you disbelieve free will, how do you square this circle?
Okay. Let’s start way back: “Shortly after 'In the beginning”. Once upon a time, some number of humans lived in an area that some of us now refer to as “the Garden of Eden.” Everything was hunky-dory in the Garden. Whatever the humans needed or wanted was available with no fuss or sweat or tears.
So if the humans had Free Will when they were in the Garden and someone wants me to believe that God gave them Free Will after they left the Garden, I have to ask: Why the heck did they leave the Garden to begin with.
That’s the important question. But did God actually take it away? I say “No”.
I don’t have kids, but I was one once and I’ve been around a couple in my 72 years.
Have you ever seen or been around one the first time he or she said “No” and/or did something they were told not to do or refused to do something they were told to do?
I have seen it although it probably wasn’t the first time since I don’t have children of my own. So where is this going? I’d say it was the other way around, no free will in Eden, the fall was a result of suddenly aquiring free will and the rest is history…
Cart before the horse. I don’t believe in Free Will because the issue of its existence was first brought to my attention in my teens when I read about Erasmus and Luthers’ debate over the Freedom of man’s will. Since then, the only time the issue comes up is in a conversation in which at least one person says “Human beings have it and are refusing to use it.”
And I say: Uh-uh, once upon a time some humans had it; then, when given a simple instruction: “Don’t touch that”, they complied with the instruction, until a four-legged snake came along and said: “The Gardener isn’t the boss around here, you are. Go ahead and touch that fruit.” And then, although they had everything that they wanted and needed, they touched the fruit. And humans have been touching the fruit every chance they get ever since.
Then what happened? The humans realized what they had done: they had done something that the Gardener instructed them not to do, … and they saw their own nakedness and tried to cover it up. In doing so, they revealed their act of disobedience to the Gardner who asked them: Who told you that you were naked?
Right, all this is a very nice metaphor for growing up, both en masse and at individual level, but why would humanity loose free will as a result? If anything I’d say the opposite.
Losing free will is a consequence of disobedience to the Gardener and living outside the Garden is the burden we all now share as a consequence of that first disobedience.
But if we lost free will, then how can we even obey God now? That’s my point, if we are some kind of automata then how can we choose to obey God? If we do, then it’s meaningless anyway as it’s not really a choice. And how can God, or even man, judge those who commit bad deeds because if there’s no free will, it is not their fault, right? So what do you say to that?
