Is it really free will?

[Caballus]

I do appreciate everyone's input and perspectives on this topic. I also appreciate the adult way the conversation has been conducted which is rare in today's internet, especially with such a personal topic. Again thank you all.

Thank you for initiating such a thought-provoking conversation--one based on a question where there is no right or wrong answer. Well done!

Sponsored

 

[ArgentumS550]

I would say look at it from a time perspective and say that if there really is a god, then there is no freewill. A god would have unlimited powers to create a universe and everything in it, including time. Time would have to be planned out as nothing could happen unless every nanosecond was created...nothing can happen without the will of said god. Everything that was typed in this very thread occurred due to this particular page being "written" at the time time was created.

If there is freewill, then said god, being all-knowing, had to have invented it with the foreknowledge of how much confusion and debate it would cause. Also, with that foreknowledge, he would know that most people who have ever lived on this planet did not chose the correct religion, no matter which one due to every religion being a minority compared to the rest of the world's population. If a gamma ray burst hit the Earth tomorrow (part of the plan?), how many of the almost 7.6 billion people made the right choice, by freewill, and make it to heaven? I can't see an unfathomalby intelligent god setting this mental "virus" upon us knowing full well most will make the wrong choice and be sent to an unbearable afterlife. We puny microbes on this speck of dust are questioning it, right now.

 

[Hack]

I would say look at it from a time perspective and say that if there really is a god, then there is no freewill. A god would have unlimited powers to create a universe and everything in it, including time. Time would have to be planned out as nothing could happen unless every nanosecond was created...nothing can happen without the will of said god. Everything that was typed in this very thread occurred due to this particular page being "written" at the time time was created.

If there is freewill, then said god, being all-knowing, had to have invented it with the foreknowledge of how much confusion and debate it would cause. Also, with that foreknowledge, he would know that most people who have ever lived on this planet did not chose the correct religion, no matter which one due to every religion being a minority compared to the rest of the world's population. If a gamma ray burst hit the Earth tomorrow (part of the plan?), how many of the almost 7.6 billion people made the right choice, by freewill, and make it to heaven? I can't see an unfathomalby intelligent god setting this mental "virus" upon us knowing full well most will make the wrong choice and be sent to an unbearable afterlife. We puny microbes on this speck of dust are questioning it, right now.

It's obvious that we have free will, don't you think?

 

[ArgentumS550]

It's obvious that we have free will, don't you think?

Yes, but not bestowed upon us by a supernatural being.

 

[Hack]

Yes, but not bestowed upon us by a supernatural being.

To me whether or not there is a God is an entirely separate debate than the free will debate. My position on whether there is a God or not is that it doesn't matter. I think whether or not there is a God, it's a good idea to behave as though God exists. To be clear, I'm talking about the christian God that encourages good behavior, not someone's idea of a god that asks you to lie and kill.

 

[watisthis]

To be clear, I'm talking about the christian God that encourages good behavior, not someone's idea of a god that asks you to lie and kill.

Oh, thank goodness you cleared that up. I was worried you meant the Christian God that killed man, asked man to kill, and man kills in the name of. I'll take your word for it though as I have not read the entirety of that specific scripture nor have I read any other biblical book. As you must have to know that other biblical books ask man to lie and kill, I'm sure you would not be so ignorant to believe 2nd hand accounts as they can be biased or interpreted differently. These books are awfully vague you know.

As for free will, I agree with SiMul.

 

[ArgentumS550]

To me whether or not there is a God is an entirely separate debate than the free will debate. My position on whether there is a God or not is that it doesn't matter. I think whether or not there is a God, it's a good idea to behave as though God exists. To be clear, I'm talking about the christian God that encourages good behavior, not someone's idea of a god that asks you to lie and kill.

If I understand your response correctly, I believe you see that I think there is freewill. I put the second part in due to believers who would disagree with debate of the separation of freewill and religion. As I have no religion or deistic beliefs, I believe freewill is natural. For a believer, depending on which religion (or even just a deist) and where they are on the spectrum of how religious they are, their god can play a role. Their choice to believe and to what extent.

 

[Burkey]

I do believe that God could stop me if "he" wanted to.

In which case you wouldn’t have free-will...

 

[Burkey]

It’s always interesting when this subject comes up.
An all-knowing being can’t see the future if you’re free to choose any path available to you. Ok, I hear you say “he can see ALL paths”....
So this god can SEE all paths but doesn’t know which one you’ll take? Really? This is an all-knowing being? You mean to tell me that an all-knowing god was just as surprised as the rest of the world when Trump won the election? Seriously?

Next.
This god is all-powerful and all-good.
Ok, so the same god from the earlier version can see all possible events, allows a child to develop cancer in utero, does nothing and somehow that’s “good”? Did the parents need a life lesson of some sort?
I think this being has some severe limitations. Limitations to the point where I don’t think you could even call it a “god”.

The latest versions describe this being as “optimally” (insert characteristic here).
The idea being that this being can’t defy logic. Ok, fine.
Now explain to me how something that has no body or mind, can logically have any thoughts or impact upon things outside of itself (being a “self” that doesn’t even exist in any sense of existence that we might use).

We are literally talking about ghosts and magic at this point.

 

[CrashOverride]

I think there is a misconception between knowing everything, free will, and making someone do something. As a Christian, I believe that God is all knowing. There are some Christians that believe in free will (me) and other's that don't (Those that believe that heaven is capped at 144,000 people for example). So how would I explain my seeming at-odds beliefs? Quite simple, He designed us and we are not robots. Any one of us can decide to read this, or turn off the computer, or any number of things. There are (With some exceptions of course) nothing that permits people from doing a great number of things. Do I have free will? I say yes. Did God know what I was going to do? Of course.

Now, suppose you have a friend that wants to buy a car. He's on this site, He has a Ford Tattoo, knows everything about Mustangs, and uses Camaro ads as target practice. If he asks you to go to Carmax to buy a car, and there happens to be a Mustang parked next to a Camaro, what is he going to choose? You're not confining him in any way, but, because you know (a lot) about your friend, you are all-but-sure he's going to buy the Mustang. He still had free will, yet you more-or-less knew. Now, is there a possibility he could pick the Camaro? Of course, but then again, you are not all-knowing, you don't know every thought, every experience in his psyche nor every genetic component involved in his brain, so extrapolating further to the God that created you (And knows every one of your hairs on your head as the Bible says), He would know with 100% certainty.

I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying what I believe.

I don't know enough about other religions to compare the God in whom I believe to their god that they believe, but the Bible is full of tragedy. Despite the sadness that occurs, including the baby with cancer example, there is no promise that with God, on earth, all will be good. In fact, the Bible actually tells Christians it will not be good, that they will be attacked for their faith. In the Bible, Jesus wept when Lazarus died. Some Pastors have said this was to show us that despite having the ability to resurrect him (Which, if you believe the Bible as I do, would believe he did) nevertheless, he didn't just say "No biggie, I got this" - he still cried. Is it fair that some people go through life and have everything going for them, yet others always have it rough? I think the argument of "How can a God allow this to happen" is a great way to refute any god, not just the One that Christians believe in. This is a problematic theory though, because if there was a god that made everything awesome all of the time, for everyone, then there would be no understanding of sorrow, and thus nothing to compare happiness to. So essentially, the world wouldn't be happy, but simply mindlessly trudging along. I think if you find a Christian that can explain why God has allowed bad to happen, then you haven't actually found a Christian, because the truth is nobody knows. People can take guesses in hindsight (Oh wow, I'm so glad I didn't get approved for the loan for that AMC Pacer back in the 70's) but those are at best, stabs in the dark.

I don't think I understand your last point, but I'll try to address what I think you are saying. Understand that everything I'm saying here is from my interpretation of the Bible, which I believe is the truth. I can't empirically point you to another reference because that's why it's faith. That being said, the Bible says that in the beginning there was God, and he is everywhere. So right there, many people drop off. How do you define a beginning if he was/is everywhere? I'll get to that in a minute. Now, the Bible says that God exists in 3 beings, one of which is actually sometimes referred to as the Holy Ghost - so your statement there is quite literally what I do believe. How can a being have 3 states? The Bible doesn't say, even if God explained it to the authors, at the time they wouldn't have the education we have and quite possibly wouldn't understand. (Point in case, when John was caught up into heaven in the book of Revelation, he was dumbfounded for words to describe Heaven). Now, as far as the 3 beings go, I have heard Pastors use water as an example, and I think it could be a good way for us feeble-minded people to understand. Water is water, H2O. Yet, if exists as a solid, liquid and gas. It's still water though. We conveniently call it ice, water and steam just because laypeople don't walk around saying "H2O at 1 atmosphere at 35 Celsius". Nevertheless, if you looked at all three states with an electron microscope, you would see the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, of each.

Getting back to our feeble-mindedness as I believe it relates to your last question. How can such a being have actions? Well, we humans are pretty stupid actually. We constantly prove it every century or so. The world is flat, no it's not. The smallest component is an Atom, no it's an electron, no it's a quark... Light is a particle, no its a wave, no it's both. Point being, we're really pretty dumb. I think if you talk with any self-respecting scientist, they will agree. The more we learn, the more we realize how dumb we are. While I'm by far from the brightest bulb in here, as I went through graduate school, I left with more questions than answers (I graduated summa cum laude, so according to the school, I wasn't an idiot for leaving with unanswered questions). In 100 years, people will shake their heads in agony as they talk about how stupid we were to further irradiate people that already had cancer. (* Or at least I hope they have a treatment better than that figured out by then). Think about how times have changed in just the last 30 years. The Fox body 5.0 made, what, 225HP? Now we get more than double that? Using the same octane fuel, same displacement, with even more pollution control devices!

Going back to the "in the beginning" vs. "Was and is and always will be". Again, they seem to be at odds. I can't explain it as it's human nature to say "Ok well if we start at zero, what about negative 1?". How can there, then, be a beginning? Again, I think we're too ill-educated to figure it out. What I do know is that there "seem to be" natural limits. We assert that 0 kelvin is the lowest temperature. It can't be any colder because 0 kelvin means all motion stops. But, mathematically, it doesn't make sense, you "should" be able to get colder. What about velocity? If you are on a bus going the speed of light, and you walk toward the front of the bus at 3mph relative to the bus, then why aren't you going c+3 mph? It doesn't make sense mathematically either, yet physics seems to indicate there is a hard speed limit at the speed of light. Scientists (for now) have faith these assertions are true, but as we cannot approach either extreme, it cannot be proven.

I suppose the past 3 paragraphs is a long-winded way of saying "I don't have an answer for you", but I will say that I personally think it is interesting how a flower can move towards the sun with no brain; a fly trap flower can close on the fly with no brain; and the jellyfish does it's thing with no brain. Nevertheless, "faith" is just that - believing in things you can't see. (Merriam-Webster definition 2 (b) 1). We all have faith, just some of us don't see it that way. You can't see gravity, yet we trust in it. When you're on a road course, heading straight into the corner, foot on the gas, you have faith that your brakes will work when you need them right before you enter the turn. These items of faith are much more suitable for today's skeptical and instant-gratification mindsets because waking up in the morning still stuck on the big blue ball affirms your faith quite literally. Having faith that eating your veggies will help you live longer requires a longer discipline, but even then it has been "shown" to be true of generations and generations of people. People also decide on what satisfies the proof of one's faith. If nothing satisfies it, then you don't find out until you're dead. Others find "proof" through other things such as miracles. I think many people are skeptical about medical miracles and I get the skepticism. That being said, I was supposed to have died when I was 15 months old from blunt force brain trauma. Every doctor that came to care for me said I was going to die. They were wrong, and to much chagrin of many, I'm still kicking it. I have a colleague who in the 1980's had dozens of rounds of Chemo and bone marrow transplants for Leukemia. His doctor gave him 6 days to live, he had already settled his affairs and met with a Pastor or Minister. That was in the 1980's. This guy is also still (as he says) "Right side up". We laugh and call him the Energizer Bunny. Is it proof there is a God, or that He, not having a form that we can sense (see, hear, touch, smell, etc...) affected these things? I would argue yes, but again, faith requires one to believe in things we can't see.

 

[Hack]

In which case you wouldn’t have free-will...

I believe that one single event and the entire continuum of events that make up a life are different.

I think there is a misconception between knowing everything, free will, and making someone do something. As a Christian, I believe that God is all knowing. There are some Christians that believe in free will (me) and other's that don't (Those that believe that heaven is capped at 144,000 people for example). So how would I explain my seeming at-odds beliefs? Quite simple, He designed us and we are not robots. Any one of us can decide to read this, or turn off the computer, or any number of things. There are (With some exceptions of course) nothing that permits people from doing a great number of things. Do I have free will? I say yes. Did God know what I was going to do? Of course.

Now, suppose you have a friend that wants to buy a car. He's on this site, He has a Ford Tattoo, knows everything about Mustangs, and uses Camaro ads as target practice. If he asks you to go to Carmax to buy a car, and there happens to be a Mustang parked next to a Camaro, what is he going to choose? You're not confining him in any way, but, because you know (a lot) about your friend, you are all-but-sure he's going to buy the Mustang. He still had free will, yet you more-or-less knew. Now, is there a possibility he could pick the Camaro? Of course, but then again, you are not all-knowing, you don't know every thought, every experience in his psyche nor every genetic component involved in his brain, so extrapolating further to the God that created you (And knows every one of your hairs on your head as the Bible says), He would know with 100% certainty.

I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying what I believe.

I don't know enough about other religions to compare the God in whom I believe to their god that they believe, but the Bible is full of tragedy. Despite the sadness that occurs, including the baby with cancer example, there is no promise that with God, on earth, all will be good. In fact, the Bible actually tells Christians it will not be good, that they will be attacked for their faith. In the Bible, Jesus wept when Lazarus died. Some Pastors have said this was to show us that despite having the ability to resurrect him (Which, if you believe the Bible as I do, would believe he did) nevertheless, he didn't just say "No biggie, I got this" - he still cried. Is it fair that some people go through life and have everything going for them, yet others always have it rough? I think the argument of "How can a God allow this to happen" is a great way to refute any god, not just the One that Christians believe in. This is a problematic theory though, because if there was a god that made everything awesome all of the time, for everyone, then there would be no understanding of sorrow, and thus nothing to compare happiness to. So essentially, the world wouldn't be happy, but simply mindlessly trudging along. I think if you find a Christian that can explain why God has allowed bad to happen, then you haven't actually found a Christian, because the truth is nobody knows. People can take guesses in hindsight (Oh wow, I'm so glad I didn't get approved for the loan for that AMC Pacer back in the 70's) but those are at best, stabs in the dark.

I don't think I understand your last point, but I'll try to address what I think you are saying. Understand that everything I'm saying here is from my interpretation of the Bible, which I believe is the truth. I can't empirically point you to another reference because that's why it's faith. That being said, the Bible says that in the beginning there was God, and he is everywhere. So right there, many people drop off. How do you define a beginning if he was/is everywhere? I'll get to that in a minute. Now, the Bible says that God exists in 3 beings, one of which is actually sometimes referred to as the Holy Ghost - so your statement there is quite literally what I do believe. How can a being have 3 states? The Bible doesn't say, even if God explained it to the authors, at the time they wouldn't have the education we have and quite possibly wouldn't understand. (Point in case, when John was caught up into heaven in the book of Revelation, he was dumbfounded for words to describe Heaven). Now, as far as the 3 beings go, I have heard Pastors use water as an example, and I think it could be a good way for us feeble-minded people to understand. Water is water, H2O. Yet, if exists as a solid, liquid and gas. It's still water though. We conveniently call it ice, water and steam just because laypeople don't walk around saying "H2O at 1 atmosphere at 35 Celsius". Nevertheless, if you looked at all three states with an electron microscope, you would see the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, of each.

Getting back to our feeble-mindedness as I believe it relates to your last question. How can such a being have actions? Well, we humans are pretty stupid actually. We constantly prove it every century or so. The world is flat, no it's not. The smallest component is an Atom, no it's an electron, no it's a quark... Light is a particle, no its a wave, no it's both. Point being, we're really pretty dumb. I think if you talk with any self-respecting scientist, they will agree. The more we learn, the more we realize how dumb we are. While I'm by far from the brightest bulb in here, as I went through graduate school, I left with more questions than answers (I graduated summa cum laude, so according to the school, I wasn't an idiot for leaving with unanswered questions). In 100 years, people will shake their heads in agony as they talk about how stupid we were to further irradiate people that already had cancer. (* Or at least I hope they have a treatment better than that figured out by then). Think about how times have changed in just the last 30 years. The Fox body 5.0 made, what, 225HP? Now we get more than double that? Using the same octane fuel, same displacement, with even more pollution control devices!

Going back to the "in the beginning" vs. "Was and is and always will be". Again, they seem to be at odds. I can't explain it as it's human nature to say "Ok well if we start at zero, what about negative 1?". How can there, then, be a beginning? Again, I think we're too ill-educated to figure it out. What I do know is that there "seem to be" natural limits. We assert that 0 kelvin is the lowest temperature. It can't be any colder because 0 kelvin means all motion stops. But, mathematically, it doesn't make sense, you "should" be able to get colder. What about velocity? If you are on a bus going the speed of light, and you walk toward the front of the bus at 3mph relative to the bus, then why aren't you going c+3 mph? It doesn't make sense mathematically either, yet physics seems to indicate there is a hard speed limit at the speed of light. Scientists (for now) have faith these assertions are true, but as we cannot approach either extreme, it cannot be proven.

I suppose the past 3 paragraphs is a long-winded way of saying "I don't have an answer for you", but I will say that I personally think it is interesting how a flower can move towards the sun with no brain; a fly trap flower can close on the fly with no brain; and the jellyfish does it's thing with no brain. Nevertheless, "faith" is just that - believing in things you can't see. (Merriam-Webster definition 2 (b) 1). We all have faith, just some of us don't see it that way. You can't see gravity, yet we trust in it. When you're on a road course, heading straight into the corner, foot on the gas, you have faith that your brakes will work when you need them right before you enter the turn. These items of faith are much more suitable for today's skeptical and instant-gratification mindsets because waking up in the morning still stuck on the big blue ball affirms your faith quite literally. Having faith that eating your veggies will help you live longer requires a longer discipline, but even then it has been "shown" to be true of generations and generations of people. People also decide on what satisfies the proof of one's faith. If nothing satisfies it, then you don't find out until you're dead. Others find "proof" through other things such as miracles. I think many people are skeptical about medical miracles and I get the skepticism. That being said, I was supposed to have died when I was 15 months old from blunt force brain trauma. Every doctor that came to care for me said I was going to die. They were wrong, and to much chagrin of many, I'm still kicking it. I have a colleague who in the 1980's had dozens of rounds of Chemo and bone marrow transplants for Leukemia. His doctor gave him 6 days to live, he had already settled his affairs and met with a Pastor or Minister. That was in the 1980's. This guy is also still (as he says) "Right side up". We laugh and call him the Energizer Bunny. Is it proof there is a God, or that He, not having a form that we can sense (see, hear, touch, smell, etc...) affected these things? I would argue yes, but again, faith requires one to believe in things we can't see.

The bible is a book of theology written by imperfect human beings. It's not to be taken literally in my opinion. I think that getting too in depth and trying to analyze every single sentence and word is folly. However I'm glad you posted that and you have very interesting thoughts.

 

[CrashOverride]

The bible is a book of theology written by imperfect human beings. It's not to be taken literally in my opinion. I think that getting too in depth and trying to analyze every single sentence and word is folly. However I'm glad you posted that and you have very interesting thoughts.

Studying the Bible is a lot harder than the casual person might think though (I am not saying you are anyone else here is "casual") and I think scholars over the last 2000 years have struggled with the exact issue. The Bible was obviously not written in English, and it wasn't even written at the same time, so you have thoughts and words that do not line up. As such, you have the great debate of the "literary" translations of the Bible vs. the "thought based" translations. And everything in between. I work with attorneys all the time, so I am predisposed to "hang" on every word. (How would a causal person define "reasonable" as in "beyond a reasonable doubt" for example.) But, to borrow a saying from my former English colleague "Over the moon" quite literally portrays a completely different idea than it's intended purpose. This is why I believe it is so important to examine different translations, and then as many Pastors do, try to dig into the history of a saying or word, to try and figure it out. For me personally, I prefer thought based translations (NLT) however I love the poetic beauty of the KJV. When I want to analyze the word more directly, I turn to the NASB. (Bible Gateway is awesome for this).

Another former colleague I worked with believes the same as you regarding the Bible, and he and I are great friends. We have many great conversations about it actually so I totally understand your viewpoint. I think some Christians get too legalistic and the true meaning of the Trinity and Jesus' salvation gets blurred with debates such as free will, calvanism, pre/post-trib, what day is the sabbath day, church doctrine and so forth.

If you're replacing a water pump, one guy is going to use his Snap-on digital torque wrench and another is going to use a harbor freight adjustable wrench and tighten the fasteners "Gut and tight". Is one better than the other? Eh, if you ask an engineer, the former. If you ask a customer paying for a job to be done (Labor time + tool costs/overhead) then the latter. At the end of the day, as long as the water pump doesn't leak, who cares, right?

 

[Burkey]

After a bit of time to think about this a little further, here’s my response.
NOTE: this is not written to offend anyone and I’ve deliberately tried to use language and ideas that best represent my OPINION, but inevitably, someone’s probably going to get the shits.
I apologise for that.

It’s an interesting question but relatively flawed.
It pre-supposes that a god exists and then asks questions about the nature of such a thing.
You may as well be asking if zombies can read minds or if Tinker-bell is a lesbian....sounds ridiculous? I know.

Without any observable, repeatable, falsifiable, empirical evidence to support the conclusion that such a thing does exist, the argument is entirely academic and essentially useless in my opinion.
For clarity, I’m not claiming that a “god/deity/insert preferred title“ can’t exist. I have absolutely no evidence to support that conclusion.

In saying that I can’t confirm or deny that such a thing does exist or even could exist, although I’m open to the possibility. Having said that, I don’t include the Christian god in that list of possibilities unless we discard the bible almost entirely, which wouldn’t look much like the Christian god of course...

From where I sit, free-will is a given. There’s no reason to pre-suppose that it doesn’t exist, which is not to say that it categorically DOES exist, but I have no reason to question its existence given that I “feel” like my choices are mine and nobody else’s. It’s effectively like trying to argue that emotions exist or don’t exist.

Our legal systems are certainly built on the idea that we are to be held accountable for our actions, except in certain cases where a person is deemed to not be in charge of themselves for whatever reason. Even then, there’s no hint of pre-determinism or such, just a faulty capacity for reason.

I can’t argue a compelling case either way under the premise that a god exists because we would need to very clearly define the attributes and desire of that god before we could have a meaningful discussion with regard to logical inconsistencies etc.
The fact that even Christians can’t agree on what those propositions are, makes it very difficult.
The one thing they all seem to agree with, is that belief is foundational. Outside of that, you have versions of Christianity that believe you can be forgiven for ANYTHING except not believing. Others might have you stoned to death for eating Shellfish. Who even knows?

Sponsored