[Viscus89]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

You've just earned Infraction Points for Insulting Brother W-O.

not really an insult, more of an observation.

[Talitha]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

not really an insult, more of an observation.

You not only have a closed mind but you obviously observe through closed eyes as well. It's typical of a person who reads ScIeNtific Ill-Literature

I am stating that you insulted one of our Members. That accusation stays. If you do it again you'll either be Banned or put on Moderation.

[peanut butter]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

ScIeNtific

ChriStIaNity

Not to offend anyone, but I think that the s-i-n thing is just coincidence.

[Talitha]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

PEANUT BUTTER

[peanut butter]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

Pardon me for asking, but what is a nuter?

And I didn't come here to make mock anyone.

[One-eyed Jack]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

Ugh! A most unpleasant conundrum. I've thought about this now and then, and posed various arguments pro and con.

Now, I have to admit, I too am a bit cheesed-off that you could not even be bothered to restate the argument in your own words but merely used the handy keyboard shortcuts to plagiarize it.

So the following is a test. Respond with intelligent counter-arguments in your own words, and you pass. Fail, and...you fail.

1. Suppose that God is indeed omnipotent. There is nothing He cannot do.

2. Question: Can God implement freewill in His creations despite the apparent problem posed by His prior knowledge of all that will occur?

3: Resolution: Of course He can. He can do anything: see #1.

For example, suppose that His omniscience includes something like, oh, the many-worlds (multiverse) hypothesis of Hugh Everett. In this scenario, all choices lead to branchings of reality, each branch in effect a separate universe. Suppose that God's knowledge of the final endpoint of any situation -- the point at which He gives "sure word of prophesy" -- does not discriminate between the path used to arrive at that endpoint. In that case the "choices" not specified in God's divinely chosen endpoint-knowledge, the path to reach that state, THAT is the realm of human freewill.

For another example, events in the quantum realm are not deterministic. Strict causality is broken when we reach the realm of particle physics, and only probabilistic rules apply. In much the same way, God's foreknowledge may be classically deterministic -- that is, like classical physics it can predict the position of the planet Mercury with great precision -- but at some arbitrary level it may be "smeared out" by what we may call quantum freewill.

You see, omniscience is unknown to human minds. We do not know what it really means...we know that He marks the fall of a sparrow, but does He mark the disintegration of a single atom of uranium-238, an event governed by the non-deterministic laws of quantum physics? It is not known at the present time what omniscience means in practice as opposed to theory.

So, Sir, what say you to these arguments? How respondeth thou?

~~ OEJ

[Ezekiel Bathfire]

There is no Paradox in the Word of The Lord!

There has been a grievous misunderstanding of the power of the Almighty, He is omniscient and He did give us the free will that we proudly exercise as a sign of our love for Him – there can be no paradox for He has spoken and His word is Eternal and Truth.

Let us suggest that a servant of the anti-Christ, the vicar of Rome, is placed in charge of a group of sweet True Christian children. Now, both thou and I know what will happen - there will be unholy fondling! Yet the impostor is exercising his God-given free will! So how didst thou know this would happen?

Art thou as omniscient as the Lord!!!? (Think carefully about the holy laws of blasphemy before thou answerest!)

No! You are not! Thou art nought but unworthy and wretched and have the untutored mind of a peanut, yet thou saysest that thou knewest!

The Lord (praise Him) is hugely more intelligent than thou willt ever be, for He is omniscient – how much more obvious will the answer be to Him? And how much more obvious will ALL our doings be to Him? And surely on these things will be known on Judgement Day, where upon thou art cast into the Pit of Eternal Flame!

Friend, consider a game of chess – if thou couldst but foresee all the possible moves that both thou and thy opponent could make, thou wouldst win each time. Such minor mental gymnastics are, to The Almighty, no more difficult than thine deciding whether to wash today or not!

Our lives are stretched out before Him as that very game of chess. He has given us the Way, the Truth and the Light. Thy exercise of freewill, in all its abominable and vile manifestations, is known unto Him in the greatest detail.

And remember friend, as in the chess game, the Lord God will always win! Thou canst be on the winning side and dwell in sun-dappled Eternal Bliss on the right hand of God or thou canst roast in the fires of eternal damnation – it is thy free will.

"And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God..." (Deuteronomy 13: 5)


Amen.

Yours in The Lord,

Bathfire E.

[Ahimaaz Smith]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

If God is omniscient then humans do not have free will (see argument above) and the apparent arbitrary choice of God to condemn many individuals to eternal damnation is evil. I.e. God does not possess the property of omni benevolence and is therefore not worth our attention.

You're saying that, since God knows that some people are going to go to Hell, you're so pissed off that you will reject Jesus, and therefore you will ensure that one more person (you) will burn in Hell. That is totally, mind-blowingly illogical.

Anyway, what kind of life would we have if God had dictated our every decision and every act? That's the life of a puppet, not of a human being. Any creator who would do that is, in my view, the immoral one; only a moral god would leave our choices to us. Of course, with freedom comes responsibility, and every choice has consequences.

The fact that God gave us free will, knowing that some people will burn forever in Hell because of it, is a manifestation of God's love for us and his respect for human independence and dignity. Like any good parent, He gave us some rules and advice to ensure our happiness, but He lets us live our own lives.

If humans have true free will then God cannot be omniscient

You are confusing foreknowledge with predetermination. They are completely different concepts. Let me give you an example: I know that our great President, George W. Bush, will never advocate raising taxes. It is simply not in his character for him to do so. But if he wanted to raise taxes, he could. Would you say that President Bush doesn't have free will in the matter of raising taxes just because I happen to know that he won't do it? Because that's exactly what you are saying about God.

If he is not omniscient then he also cannot be omnipotent since knowledge of the future is a prerequisite for total action. Without these abilities God can no longer be deemed a god ? i.e. God does not exist.

Again, you're missing the point. Foreknowledge of one's own actions is not the same as the absence of choice.

Say you are hungry and decide to go to McDonalds for a Quarter Pounder. You know you're going to go to there, and you know what you are going to order. You are omniscient (at least as it applies to whether or not you will dine at Mickey D's). Nevertheless, nobody is forcing you to go to McDonalds and order a QP, so you are also omnipotent (again, within the limited scope of selecting your dinner). Think of the Earth as God's Quarter Pounder. With cheese.

If humans do not have free will then the choice of whether to choose Jesus as a savior or not makes total nonsense of Christianity...

That's a non sequitur, since God did give us the gift of free will.

Well, seeing as how you have yet to refute the argument, copy/pasted or not, I assumed you had no rebuttal for it, and instead, only ad hominems to try and save face. Prove me wrong?

Easily done, and I did.

You might find that fewer people will attack you ad hominem if you stop using circular reasoning. You assume, without establishing any basis for this (other than, perhaps, your inability to imagine anything different) that choosing is the same thing as knowing what you or someone else will choose. It isn't.

The Book of Romans is pretty clear on this subject of free will and predestination:

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? Romans 6:16 (we can choose sin and death or obediance and eternal life with God)

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.... Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. Romans 8:29-30 (God already knows what choice we will make, and acts accordingly)

If you won't read the Bible, you might at least want to take a glance at a book on logic.

[Joshua Brooks]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

Omniscience vs. Human Free will. A Paradox.

Omniscience: Perfect knowledge of past and future events.

Omniscience is to know everything. Your first mistake was the assumption that the future exists already as a seperate entity from our present selves, in which case time is an illusion created by our own limited breath of perception being limited to what we refer to as the present. In which case our free will is evident to God as God is cognizant of all space-time, the totality of our entire limited existence.

Free will: Freedom to choose between alternatives without external coercion.

False. Free will the the capacity to act outside the influence of ANY kind. That includes nature including sexual urges, emotion, biological necessity, physical sensations, and even thought. The Straight and Narrow Path to Salvation requires true free will in that we True Christians are not subtlely controlled by animalistic sexual urges, emotion, thought or any other weakness of the flesh. Our speech and actions are product of conscious thought and delivent awareness of the subtle nuisance of the flesh.

Where a True Christian chooses to abstain from fornication because it is a conscious choice we decide upon, the heathen population fornicate uncontrollable like beast; the whole time being under the impression that the thoughts they think and the lusts they lust genuinely originate with their own consciousness(soul). In reality you simply identify with the impulses of the flesh which find their origins in Satan.


Paradox: Statements or events that have contradictory and inconsistent properties.



Proposal:

Christianity cannot claim that God is omniscient and also claim that humans have free will. The claims form a paradox, a falsehood.

I will repeat, "In which case our free will is evident to God as God is cognizant of all space-time, the totality of our entire limited existence."

Reasoning:

If God is omniscient then even before we are born God will have complete knowledge of every decision we are going to make.

Correct, because the decision was made from the beginning. The perception of time is merely a reflection of our limited cognition of time-space.

Any apparent choice we make regarding the acceptance or denial of Jesus as a savior is predetermined. This must be true to satisfy the assertion that God is omniscient. Effectively we have no choice in the matter. What we think is free will is an illusion. Our choices have been coerced since we exist and act according to the will of God.

Alternatively if human free will is valid, meaning that the outcome of our decisions is not pre-determined or coerced, then God cannot be omniscient, since he would not know in advance our decisions.

Question:

If God knows the decision of every individual, before they are born, regarding the acceptance or denial of Jesus as a savior, then why does he create one set of individuals destined for heaven and another set destined for eternal damnation? This seems unjust, perverse and particularly evil.

When we came into existence we immediate took the actions that would either damn or Save us.

Conclusions:

If God is omniscient then humans do not have free will (see argument above) and the apparent arbitrary choice of God to condemn many individuals to eternal damnation is evil. I.e. God does not possess the property of omni benevolence and is therefore not worth our attention.

If humans have true free will then God cannot be omniscient (see argument above). If he is not omniscient then he also cannot be omnipotent since knowledge of the future is a prerequisite for total action. Without these abilities God can no longer be deemed a god ? i.e. God does not exist.

If humans do not have free will then the choice of whether to choose Jesus as a savior or not makes total nonsense of Christianity since the choice is pre-determined and we are merely puppets at the hands of a discriminatory puppeteer.

I believe you have been schooled enough for one day. You'll be hard pressed to match wits with an honour student attending LBU.

[Brother Temperance]

Re: Free Will and Christianity cannot coexist

Do you happen to know the meaning of the word "gullible" ?

More importantly, I wonder if he knows that the word gullible isn't in the dictionary?

Pardon me for asking, but what is a nuter?

Neutered is what you'll be if JESUS declares it to be necessary for your Salvation. Fix up look sharp, boy!