schu

Doesn't make sense to this old country boy. If an all-knowing god already knows what will happen how can that be random? Seems to me that fact alone NECESSARILY denies free will. What other outcome could there possibly be except what he already knew? If he already knows it there can be no free will nor randomness. What he knows will happen is what will happen.

Stephen T-B

God is Love in its purest form.
He made us with free will, able to choose to love Him or not, for only love which is freely given opens a channel through which His love flows unhindered into us.
He curtailed His own powers when He gave us free will, and He did it for the necessity of love, both for Him and for us, for we, being made in His image, need to receive it as well as to give it.

Christ made this explicit in the Parable of the Prodigal Son who, having rejected his father’s love could not then experience it; but when, of his own volition, he returned home, he received it in full measure.

The World we create for ourselves is the fruit of our free will., that same free will which allows us to love God and receive His love, or to reject Him and to reject His love.

We may judge from what we see how Mankind has used that Free Will so lovingly bestowed.

(Here Endeth the Lesson.)
And I am still an atheist.

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: Stephen T-B ]</p>

Jamie_L

Which, like most apologetics, denies an aspect of God to protect another one - here, omnipotence is sacrificed to maintain omnibenevolence. Why would an omnipotent God's love be hindered without free will? What would hinder him? Is God subject to rules?

Nothing new, I suppose.

Jamie

Stephen T-B

You shouldn't be asking me this, but since you are - and that's my fault for adopting the role of Preacher, here's my take:

We know nothing of God except the one aspect we share with Him: the need to love and to be loved.
The Bible describes a tribal god in which Jewish thought began, at around the time of Jesus, to discern a god in which love was a defining characteristic. Jesus took this notion and developed it, and gives us some ideas how we may express our love of God through our love for our fellow human beings, and in particular those who are in most need of it, principally the out-casts of society either by virtue of disability, ill-health, poverty or general obnoxiousness. We must even love those who hate us.
His love gave him access to God’s love to a degree which has turned out to be unique, which is why he became one of the most influential figures in world history, despite his obscure life in a remote backwater.
This entity of love we refer to as God set creation in motion with the intention that it should produce a sapient being in which He could implant the ability to love.
Love needed humanity in order to fulfill itself. But since love must be freely given, that sapient being had, by definition, to be free to give its love or withold it. Hence free will.

.

Butters

Good Job! It's crap like that that theists eat up, without ever giving a thought to what it means, which is nothing.

Freewill HA! Alls God has to do is take me up to heaven, show me around, then show me hell, and my freewill will tell me to stick with God. All this mysterious crap, books written in riddels by no one knows who. Miricals performed only while people that already believe are present. Evil abounds, even in his followers, damn, just like things would be if he didn't even exist!

Stephen T-B

What I was attempting to address was the contradiction of our having free will although we were created by an All-Knowing, All-Powerful god.
It seems to me that if you take the propositions that we have free will and that we were created by a god, then one way the two things can be reconciled is as I’ve outlined.

Since I’m already in the realm of speculation, I’ll speculate further:
1) heaven and hell do not exist;
2) Jesus was not divine, but became the centre of cult which attributed divinity to him because it was recognised that there was something of the divine in his teachings;
3) God does not punish anyone for not loving him, but it has a consequence in that only by loving him may we experience his love;
4) Religions and religious people have distorted the essential message of god’s love because it has been easier to love rites, rituals, dogmas, myths and power than to love god by loving the unlovable

(What AM I doing?)

geebob

1. the love issue has already been brought up. It is the most important reason. It is reasonable to believe that a love who's necessity does not arise from one's self is more intense and gratifying. compare self guaranteed and originated love with a back rub you give yourself. Not as fun.

2.God who in christian theology is the most wonderful entity that could possibly exist choose to creates something of much worth because it is in his image. Part of his nature is free will, thus as we are created in his likeness, part of the way we resemble him is in our freedom.

3.As God created us in the image of the creator, we are little creators. the ability to create argueable requires free will.

4. possibly the degree of concious thought that we display may only be possible with free will that is genuine to our experience of freedom. This arguement is one which I am only vaguely familiar with and wouldn't put much effort into defending, but it seems very reasonable to me.

maybe free will does go away and maybe it doesn't. If it is impossible to do evil in heaven, then the simple aspect of libertarian free will is no longer present in the person.

But I believe that libertarian free will is too simple to describe our nature. The freedom I believe we possess involves libertarian freedom but so much more. I call it self determining freedom, though not to be confused with self determing freedom that compatibilists believe in. I don't know how that can even be rationally conceived of as self determining.

This is the simple definition of libertarian freedom. One is free with respect to an action if that person may perform that action or refrain from performing that action.

Self determining freedom is this. One is free with respect to an action if the necessity for that action arises within that person's self in time.

So what's the difference. there must be truly open options for every self determining act in libertarian freedom. In self determining freedom, it must be true of a person that he could've done otherwise in his life. In other words, options must be available at some point in ones life, but not for every action.

Let me give an example.

in libertarian freedom, you are only free with respect to smoking a cigarette if you can choose to smoke it or not to smoke it. Every time you pass a cigarette or consider it must be viable that you will smoke or not smoke.

in self determining freedom, you are free with regard to smoking if you could've choosen to smoke at some point in your life or refused to do so. But just because it is not a real and viable option in some particular instance when someone offers you a cigarrette and you pass because you have a habit of not smoking, it doesn't mean you are not free. As long as it at one time was a libertarian free option, it is a self determining free option almost every time after word.

this is a superior definition of free will because it doesn't sacrifice libertarian free will and at the same time it affirms something that is fundamental to human beings. They are historical creatures whos past forms and influences them. This is a more human definition of free will because the focus is not on a single choice, but upon the human.

hope this is clear.

so with self determining freedom, God does not lobotomize our freedom in heaven because we have already made the free choice which establishes our status as free beings.

according to most, not all

How could he know that if they were free.

amen and AMEN. excellent reason to dispense with some of the traditional thinking on omniscience. I don't know if God is totally omniscient or not, but I tend to believe that he is. Omniscience really doesn't require what you have so intuitively grasped though because if God created a world in which future possibilities were not settled then omniscience would required that he knows that those possibilities were unsettled

it is reasonable to believe that facts are tensed and that uncertainties (A is possible and -A is possible) can also be facts.

so if you have self determining freedom with respect to where you will ultimately stand with God, then God cannot know whether you will believe or not, because the certainty of either one does not represent the truth of the matter. This is the fact that an omniscient God must know: You possibly may believe and it is also a real possibility that you won't.

unless God by his soverign will decided to grant man freedom.

God knows the future but he is not the author of it

but I hope you can see from what I've written that no author has penned it all yet. God knows the future as partially unwritten, thus he knows all there is to know about it. God want's us to be co-authors with him.

really, it doesn't matter what God knows with regard to our freedom. The question is "what is the fact of the matter" regardless of who knows it or is ignorant of it. If it is a fact of the matter that you will choose A, then no other possibility will be open. If it is the fact of the matter that you might choose A or might not choose A, then the certainty that you will choose either is negated.

random is a poor term. It's more fitting of arrational/nonconcious beings. And necessarily arbitrary. Undetermined is a better term that doesn't imply those things.

wrong, You're confusing omnipotence with soverignty. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything logically possible. Soverignty is how that ability is excersized. there are two views of God's soverignty. There is specific soverignty, which you mistakenly called omnipotence, and there is general soverignty which is opposed to the notion that God is a micromanager and allows for real freedom.

[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: geebob ]</p>

schu

How can it not matter? And your answer is no answer. Look, you are talking about an all-knowing, all-powerful being here, no? If this being knows what you are going to do then there can be no free will. He already knows what you are going to do before you ever do it. You are constrained to do what he knows you will do. If he doesn't, then he is not all-knowing. If he suspends his knowledge as has been suggested, then again, he is not all knowing.

Wyz_sub10

geebob, welcome.

I disagree. Why do you believe love from without is somehow "more intense and gratifying" than love from within? Even if this were the case, it does not stand to reason that this "gift" is necessary for anything.

I could use the same argument against god. If I am coerced into loving god, then it is not really a free gift, is it? So what value is my worship and praise if it is coerced? By your own logic, worship to god in this way is meaningless.

What makes this part of his image? Actually, it should not be - quite the opposite. If god is all-loving, then his "gift" of love is not the same as my "gift" of love, because he is without hatred and his love is unconditional. Thus, I would expect no less from god. Yet we are bounded in ways god is not, so when we *do* give unconditional love it is much, much greater an accomplishment. God has no choice but to do so. We do.

This doesn't address the question as to *why* free will is valuable. Part of creating us in his image could have entailed making us non-corpreal as well. He did not do so. Why is that less valuable than having free will? There are lots of things god can be said to do that we can't. Why not those things, but free will? The question remains.

Speculation. Still does not address what makes this (or any of the things you list as off-shoots of free will) "good". So we can't display some degree of conscious thought? Why is this good or bad?

So free will (even libertarian free will, whatever that is) is not essential in an all-good environment.

I think you'll need to explain a bit further here.

So we do not have such freedom in heaven?

Either we do, and evil can exist in heaven (which is inconsistent with the Christian definition)

Or we do not, in which case it is agreed that free will is not essential to an omnibenevolent environment.



It seems that all you are saying is that as long as you were free at one time, you could be said to have freedom regardless of the current environment. Please re-iterate if I am misrepresenting you.

If you are saying this, then I could not disagree more, but perhaps before addressing this I should be sure that I understand your position.

Okay, I think I *have* understood your position correctly.

No, I do not agree with this definition. You are free to commit a crime. You get caught and go to jail. You cannot be said to be still free because your earlier decision has now resulted in this "choice".

Yes, the cause and effect remains true, but you are no longer free - either this has been removed (jail) or forfeited (heaven). But regardless of *how* your loss of free will occurred, it did.

That's the whole point. If he didn't know, he's not omniscient and, therefore, not all-powerful. If your belief is that he is not all-knowing and not all-powerful, then I think the issue can rest because it could not be further challenged.

What is "traditional thinking" of omniscience? The word has a definition irrespective or interpretation.

No, if he is omniscient, he would know the outcomes of those possibilities.

Even I know that future possibilites are unsettled. Am I omniscient?

That reasoning is simply unacceptable to answer the question.

As soon as you admit that "god cannot know" you have forfeited omniscience and omnipotence.

Knowing that, given a choice of A or B, you will choose A or B, is not omniscience.

God does not know *anything* about the future other than it is partially unwritten?

Guess what, if we accept your definition of free will, then we all know it too. What exactly does god know that I don't about the future?

I do not see how this addresses schu's question. Basically you are saying that the question is irrelevant. Why? I think it is perfectly relevant because once one admits they "cannot" do anything, then they are not all-powerful.

luv luv? is that you??

"Logically possible" is a condition you are applying. But even if we accept that condition, it does not address the free will issue. What is logically impossible about having no free will?

Sovereignty is a red herring, of sorts. It's basically your way of saying that god can choose how he likes. But isn't that the question at hand? Why imbue us with free will?

Your post really does not address the question at hand - why is free will important? Some have said because of its role in benevolence. What role is that?

Regardless of whether god has any of the attributes you present, the question remains unaddressed. At the beginning you note that free will might be tied to a "better love". After that, you talk about types of free will, god's limitations, the definition of omnipotence.

But none of these things address the question.

[edited for typos]

[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: Wyz_sub10 ]</p>

geebob

finger slipped. still typing.

[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: geebob ]</p>