DRFseven

You are talking about something other than the meaning of the kind of Christian free will with which I am familiar. As I understand it, traditional Christian free will is not a party to human reason; it is completely arbitrary in its decision-making capacity.

I_C_THE_LITE

A definition of 'free-will' is necessary to answer this question effectively. The Hebrew God gives us a choice. Do this or suffer this. In essence we are free to decide;however,if we choose to not believe, then we are relegated to the fires of 'Hell'. Is this 'free-will'. It is more akin to coercion. Imagine your parents telling you that you can get that new bicycle 'if' you clean your room everyday for a month. Keep in mind that you don't have to, but if you don't you can kiss the bike goodbye. What would your 'will' be in this case. Of course, you would be a cleaning son-of-a-gun, wouldn't you. I think that we have no free will, if we are using the Hebrew God as the divine entity, since their is such a disparity in 'judgement' for the believer and the non-believer. Who in the 'Hell' would choose eternal death over eternal life. FREE WILL, AAaarghh <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

tronvillain

excreationist:
So you're resorting to some kind of magical randomness to salvage "free will"? Wow, sign me up for that.

DRFseven

Even without the coercion, it simply doesn't work. As Lady Shea pointed out in another thread, we are simply unable to decide to believe something is true. We are unable to NOT do a mental calculation to come up with a conclusion. For instance, if someone offered you a million dollars to believe that if you could kiss your elbow, you'd turn into the opposite sex, could you believe it? You could say you believed it, but unless it seemed to you to be true, you couldn't believe it. I'd have to kiss that million bucks goodbye.

Scrutinizer

Mageth,

You're still thinking of it in temporal terms. You describe God as knowing what we are going to do before we do it, as if he contemplates that we are going to do such-and-such, then waits for us to do it. If, however, we realise that from God's perspective, we are doing it, rather than it working in a linear temporal sequence, I don't see a problem.

Even if it were in a linear temporal sequence, I'm still not sure it would be much of an issue. God would know what we are going to do because he fully understands us and thus we act predictably, because we wouldn't choose differently in a certain set of circumstances given our natures.

Regards,

- Scrutinizer

[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: Scrutinizer ]</p>

Wizardry

That higher dimensional view of God really creates more problems than it solves.

First of all, if consider the universe throughout the totality of time to exist as a singular entity that simply exists with not temporal progression and consider God outside a temporal realm as well, then it seems as though he may not be termed the Creator. A Creator requires time, and in the timeless realm in which God is said to exist, there can be no Creation because there is no time. Put another way, Creation requires two separate states, an non-existent state and an existent state. The transition between the two would require what is generally known as time. However, as St. Augustine and modern cosmology suggest, the universe was created with time as opposed to in time. How then could the universe have been created?

Secondly, even if we assume that God is the creator in some acceptable manner, his separation from time presents another problem. If God views time from outside the universe, then his creation of the universe must have have similarly been from the vantage point of viewing time in its entirety, rather than just the beginning. His omniscience requires that he be fully aware of all of creation simultaneously and perfectly. When God acts to create the universe, (again, how in a timeless existence?) he must explicitly bring every event into existence. If one accepts that events would be different in other possible universes (common sense, I think), then it seems trivial to accept the conclusion that God has predetermined every event from the beginning to the end of the temporal dimension. Free will is thus eliminated as a logical possibility.

I take issue with the thought that we wouldn't act differently given different circumstances. If I were killed, for example, I would probably behave differently than if I were alive. Think we'd have just started acting differently on September 11 if nothing happened. Just all of a sudden, stock brokers would decide to stay home, baseball would be canceled for a week and we'd just have this unstoppable urge to bomb Afghanistan? Think it's just a coincidence that our behavior seems to be causally related to the environment, but in another, alternate universe, we'd appear to be acting randomly. Think you'd be reading this if I had never written it? I think you get my point.

Peace out.

Scrutinizer

Wizardry,

I have adopted Kenny's view of time, so I am largely indebted to him in attempting to answer this objection.

I don't think causing something to exist requires time -- I think it works the other way around: time requires causality. If there were no causal relationships whatsoever, there would be no 'time'. God's creation of the universe, therefore, doesn't require time to occur. I don't view time as flowing above God and the causal relationships occurring under this flowing entity.

I don't think God predetermined how we would act -- he simply actualised 'natures' that existed eternally in the mind of God. He actualised you, me and everyone else in existence, but he didn't choose how their natures would behave -- they simply exist as a given.

That's not what I meant. I understand your confusion, however, as I didn't word my sentence very carefully at all.

But let's take an example -- you might say that you would act differently if you had been hit by a bus instead of managing to cross the road in time. I'm simply saying that given your physical and mental ability to cross a road, the careful driving of the bus driver and your cautiousness in looking left and right, you wouldn't be hit by the bus. It is meaningless to say "If I had crossed the road more slowly, I would have been hit by the bus" in my opinion, because the fact of the matter is, you wouldn't cross the road more slowly because you are cautious by nature and were physically and mentally able to cross the road before the bus came along.

Regards,

- Scrutinizer

[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: Scrutinizer ]</p>

Amos

From Gods "perspective" we are not free until we become fully one with God.

Frome Gods perspective time is not "laid out to be viewed all at once," as you suggest, but in the present eternal now.

Kenny

excreationist,

FYI

Actually, this is the view of process theology. It has also been adopted by some in the evangelical community under the name of “open theism.” This view holds that God is omniscient in the sense that God knows all there is to be known, but not in the sense that God knows the future, since the future does not yet exist and (due to free will) is indeterminate. Consequently, this view affirms the metaphysical reality of time and holds that God is within it, developing and changing along with everything else. I completely disagree with this position, but, in answer to your question, yes, others have thought of it. There are entire movements in Christian theology built on it.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Mageth

Scrutinizer:

...we act predictably, because we wouldn't choose differently in a certain set of circumstances given our natures.

Is this not a succinct definition of determinism?

I don't think God predetermined how we would act -- he simply actualised 'natures' that existed eternally in the mind of God. He actualised you, me and everyone else in existence, but he didn't choose how their natures would behave -- they simply exist as a given.

So he actualized 'natures' that pre-existed, knowing how they would behave in every circumstance? Where is the room for "free will?" And isn't his decision/choice/compulsion to perform the actualization of a particular nature, knowing how it will behave, in effect him "choosing" the existence, and thus the behavior, of that particular nature?