malookiemaloo

My own definition of will would be a 'concious voluntary decision to do or believe something'.

Not sure if the passive will is valid after all. I think I'll ditch it again!!


m

Infidelettante

Helen it is more likely that I have confused me than that you have...I mean it may not have been what was being said that got us conf...no, it's me, I'm sure of it, yes it is me because you said that is that is how I took it was that when we.........

I'll get back to you OK?

JT

HelenM

Yes, it's fine for you to get back to me later, JT

Helen

schu

I like to make fun of the way believers use the term "faith". I think they misuse it to mean something that it really doesn't mean. Word twisting in other words.

It is pretty obvious to me that faith should mean something like, "to a high degree of certianty". One would know this because of direct personal experiance and/or a understanding of how the information was obtained. Religion provides neither personal experiance, i.e. everthing is second hand nor any understanding, just look at the contridictions and conflicts with reality in the Bible.

As an example, just look at how one has "faith" that their brakes will work in their car. We know from personal experiance that the brakes will work. We also can know how and why they work.

Clarice O'C

Hiya,

I think the will is a conscious act of choosing, as JTVrocher has said; it is a decision. It is "judgment" that JTV is talking about when we weigh the pros and cons of something. "Faith" doesn't weigh the pros and cons nor does it involve a decision. Faith is passive as is defined in Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

And so we have the following order:

Experiencing, understanding, judging, deciding, acting.

Out of our experience we ask questions in order to understand. Once we think that we understand we go on to judge whether what we understand is true or not which also involves asking questions. And then the will/choosing/decision/deliberation/evaluating comes into play when we ask what we will believe according to our experience, understanding, and judging. And then we act on what we have willed/decided to believe.

This is just the bare bones of conscious experience. On any of the levels of consciousness we can screw ourselves up with our biases, wishful thinking, naivete, skepticism, dogmatism, relativism, optimism, pessimism, etc.

Best,
Clarice