re: Do you believe in free will?

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Do you believe in free will?

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I don't know. Let me ask my wife.....

If you really wanted an intelligent discussion, this is not where you would go for answers

Obvious troll

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I don't know. Let me ask my wife.....

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Free Will (Feat. Wheezywaiter)

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Nerdwriter enlists the aid of Craig Benzine, otherwise known as Wheezywaiter, to discuss the concept of free will.

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uhhh...false. In the next 30 seconds, I could choose to stay seated, open a drawer, drink some water, turn off my computer, or 100 other things. I have the will power and the freedom to do any of those things I want. Just because God already knows what I'm going to do, doesn't mean I can't choose my own actions.






if he knows you're gonna post on tigerdroppings, you're gonna post on tigerdroppings. if he knows you're gonna post on tigerdroppings and you drink a glass of water instead, then he's not omniscient

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That was one of the dumbest replies ever. Just because the omniscient Creator knows what the poster is going to do does not mean the poster didn't choose that action. It simply means the omniscient Creator sees all paths and knows which one you will choose to go down. It's like the all seeing alien from Men In Black III.

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I hadn't read this whole thread, but to me, this is the toughest question for those that profess Christianity (me being one of them) to answer.

How can an omniscient God, who knows all moves before they are made, can change any move, or dictate any result of any move, give someone something called free will? They seem mutually exclusive to me. Can free will co-exist with a truly omniscient God? One that has predetermined every result or every action?

Admittedly, I don't understand how that can be. If the God I worship does exist, as I understand him, I'll stand before him one day, and ask him how that works. Until then, I choose to write off the conflict as something not meant for me to understand.

Or, in about 80% of the OT's view, I'm a sheep.

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Read my prior post in this thread. God can make a creature that has the power to decide for itself. God created the universe and everything in it (or at least created the processes and natural laws of physics that eventually resulted in it as we know it today) so of course he could create a truly free willed being. God gave humans free will because he wanted to make something that could decide for itself if it loved God or not. God did not want a creature that would praise him blindly or obey without question. He had already created angels who filled that purpose. God made humans to see if they would love him for him.

Imagine you have the ability to design your own girlfriend. You get to decide what she looks like, her personality, her interests, ect and she has to like you. Sure, it'd be fun for a while having this "perfect" girl who loves you. However, after a while, you'll inevitably get bored. You know in the back of your mind that she has to love you. You made her to love you. If she were free to love whomever she wanted, would she love you?

God wanted to make a being as much like himself as possible. A being that could think for itself, create, learn, build, strive, desire, ect. He wanted that creation to have all of these gifts and still love God, still obey God, but have the choice not to. He wanted a creation that would love and obey its creator because it wanted to. God wanted its creation to love God for God's sake and not because God designed him to have to.

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God did not want a creature that would praise him blindly or obey without question. He had already created angels who filled that purpose. God made humans to see if they would love him for him.

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It seems that Lucifer kinda pokes a hole in that way of thinking.

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It seems that Lucifer kinda pokes a hole in that way of thinking.

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It depends on what you believe Lucifer to be. Is Lucifer and Satan the same person? In the Bible, Satan is the tempter, a creation of God who is tasked with testing his creations. The book of Job explains his role in great detail. The Devil does not become this unstoppable monster demon until well after the new testament was written. What most people think of as the devil (the fallen angel who rebelled against God) is a story from Dante's Inferno, NOT the Bible. Lucifer, as you imagine, is an almagamation of the Serpent, Satan, the anti-Christ of Revelations (more on him later), and the Greco-Roman God of the Underworld Hates/Pluto.

The stories of the anti-christ only appear in the book of Revelations, which in my opinion, was not a prophesy but a political commentary on the events of the time when it was written. John of Patmos had been exiled to Patmos from the Holy Land in the first century AD by the Romans because of his writings critical of the Roman rule. The Romans, at the time, were fighting, and losing, a war against a Jewish Revolt in present day Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. John's previous writings had been in support of the revolutionaries who at the time had carved out a free kingdom surrounded by Rome, slaughtering an entire Roman Legion. John's Revelation is a veiled political statement, written in a style that the Jews would understand but the Romans would mistake for religious writings. The beast with 7 heads and 7 horns is Rome (the city of 7 Hills). The mark of the beast 666 is the numerical sign for Nero, the Emperor of Rome at the time who famously "fiddled while Rome burned". The Kingdom of God spoken of was referring to the return of the messiah whom John believed to have been leading the Jewish army at this time. His name was Bar Kochpah (translates to Son of the Star).

As history would prove, Bar Kochpah was not Jesus come again. The Romans of course came back with a vengeance and crushed the revolt. It was said that it was Kochpah's pride that turned the tide. He began crediting himself for his victories rather than his God. Regardless, the Romans won, exiled the Jews from Judea, renamed the land "Palestine", and demolished the Great Temple in 3 days, fulfilling Jesus's prophesy, "In three days I will destroy this temple, and not a stone will be left on stone". This diaspora of the Jews (who at the time made up 10% of the Roman population) inevitably lead to the spread of Christianity throughout the empire.

I guess I shouldn't be totally disappointed by the nature of discourse on this topic. I was expecting to come in and see references to Sam Harris' writings from the get go, but only got a shout out 3 pages in.

The concept of free will (or lack there of) is kind of disturbing once you think how drugs affect the brain. For starters, is someone addicted to to heroin truly exercising their "free will"? Then you get to things like neurosurgeons being able to make fingers move with electrical shocks to different regions of the brain.

I'm no rocket surgeon nor to to profess to play one on TV, but from what I've read on the topic, this is a concept that is more rooted in our brain chemistry. And there is PLENTY to read!