Free will? I dont think so

[awesome14]

God does not exist within the constraints of time and space. He sees all together, everything at once, past, present future. We live within time and space, and it’s difficult to imagine anything different. As part of the distance that sin places between God and man, we are blind to many things. So, God left for us the truth as Jesus Christ and the holy Bible.

God is like people who can see. We are like a blind man. The people who can see warn the blind man to wait to enter the crosswalk, because he’ll be struck by a motor vehicle. The blind man protests being judged. He says, “Who are ‘you’ to judge me? Who do you are, God? You’'re not God! It’s my right to cross the road when I decide!”

And he is struck and killed. Jesus Christ and The Holy Bible are the advice to the blind man. So, God sees us in the midst of perilous hazards not visible to us, especially the future. It’s like being in a pitch black room strewn with razor blades.

If we accept the truth, we can navigate without serious harm. Since we don’t know for sure what is correct in every instance, have the option to do the wrong thing, which looks like free will. If we knew the correct thing all the time, we would always do the right thing, and free will would dissapear! So, free will is the ability to do the wrong thing.

The reason God knows everything is because because God understands how everything interacts on a subatomic level. Since the universe will do collecticely only one outcome during a given condifuration of e erything in it, and human behavior is a subset of that, God essentially must know what that is.

 

[njlisa]

1 Samuel 19:9
Then an evil spirit from the Lord came
upon Saul as he was sitting in his house
with spear in hand while David was playing
the harp nearby.

Here’s a question for the group. Did God (through the evil spirit He sent) take away Saul’s free will?

 

[John_Martin]

But please don’t insult me by trying to separate me from “you” who “know”.

I am writing to Catholics, to give them encouragement that they do not need to prove revelation, but simply to remember that since truth cannot contradict truth, they will be able to find the error in the erroneous theory that there is no free will. If a humanly developed theory is in error, the error will be discoverable.
There is no need to prove free will if every attempt to theorize “no free will” is shown to be in error.
And for the people to whom it is given, they need no proof of what was given - it is not our goal as Catholics to prove Catholic Revelation to anyone, but to announce it to those we wish to call.
We In-No-Way intend to prove to you “that which we know by revelation”. But we are convinced we will be able to show that “no free will” is an erroneous theory. Whatever you choose to think after the error is revealed is up to you; perhaps you will try to find a different proof because you would prefer to consider that free will is false - but any further proof you find for a theory that we know to be false already, we will also be able to find the error in your thinking. And you will have to find some other proof (or not, moving on to something else).

We do know there is free will, and thus we know we can find any error people make in purporting that there is no free will.

Proving an argument in error, though, does not in any way prove the opposite: an error to an argument for no free will does not prove there is free will. It only proves that the theory of no free will was not true in itself (you are free to try some other argument, which we will then also find in error).

It is strange; if I knew someone who could show me any mistakes I were to make in my logic, I would think I would go to him first before publishing a possibly error ridden thesis.

 

[Freddy]

the Golden Rule is by no means universally understood; the Aztecs had no problem with offering human sacrifices, and that goes for Carthage before the Punic Wars too, and there are many societies that had to be taught the actual meaning of the rule.

Nobody needs to be taught it. It is integral to the stability of any given society. That certain sections of any society choose to ignore it is par for the course.

And you need to realise that it is not specifically a Christian concept. And the majority of the world’s population has no interest in the fact that Jesus proposed that we all follow it.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Your proposal would mean that Man didn’t exhibit any reason at one moment in time and then was granted it the next. And he then instantly knows the reason why he’s doing something. So maybe he’s looking for a shelter or thinking about how to catch a meal and seemingly has no reason for doing so and then suddenly thinks ‘Hey, what just happened? Now I know why I’m doing this’. Does that make sense to you?

So, in a Judeo-Christian context, when you write “Man” here, it only means one “man” – the one we call by the name ‘Adam’. Everyone else with reason comes into being with a human soul and rationality.

• Pointing to one generation and saying “that’s when it happened” is precisely what finding the history of the evolution of humans is all about! If you’re saying we can’t do that, then you’re saying that the science of origins is pointless.

When I say Man I mean Homo sapien. I certainly don’t mean one particular man. The point I was making was actually rejecting the suggestion that one specific man was given rationality.

And your comment that it’s a requirement of evolutionary science to point to one generation and say ‘that’s when Homo habilis became Homo erectus’ is so far off the mark that it’s not even wrong. There are often significant differences between species and you are suggesting that a parent could give birth to an offspring that had all those differences.

Without checking, that might possibly be true for bacteria or funghi - I don’t know. But I do know that it’s literally impossible for a hominid. It would be like a wolf giving birth to a daschund. Do you honestly think we might find two fossils, one the mother and the other the child that show such significant differences that we could classify them as different species?

You need to come to terms with that problem. Your view is so fundamentally wrong that I can add nothing else from this point if you hold to it.

 

[lelinator]

When it comes to the subject of free will and God’s foreknowledge I’ve always been of the opinion that God’s knowledge of my choices doesn’t negate the freedom that I had in making those choices. From my point of view, for someone to claim otherwise would be akin to claiming that my knowledge of someone’s past choices somehow caused them to make those choices, a proposition that I find extremely tenuous.

However, after being compelled by this thread to reconsider the subject of free will, I’ve come to the seemingly unavoidable conclusion that God’s omniscience, and my free will, must be mutually exclusive. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have them both.

Consider the following scenario. Someone asks me to draw a card from a deck. Any card at all, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it’s my choice.

Now God being outside of time, knows which card I chose. Not because He in any way caused me to choose that card, nor because reality is completely deterministic so I was destined to choose that card, but rather God simply knows which card I chose, because He can see which card I chose. However, I supposedly had free will, so it was completely within my power to choose another card. But what even God can’t possibly know, is which card I would’ve chosen if I hadn’t chosen that one. If I truly have free will, then there’s no way for God to know which other card I would’ve chosen. God’s knowledge therefore, must be limited, and thus He can’t be omniscient.

If on the other hand, God does indeed know which card I would’ve chosen, then that choice was determined even without me having ever made it. Which means that if my second choice was determined without me having made it, then my actual choice was also determined before I made it.

So you can either have free will, or you can have an omniscient God, but you can’t have them both.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Nobody needs to be taught it. It is integral to the stability of any given society. That certain sections of any society choose to ignore it is par for the course.

Society just needs a power that keeps it together and the examples listed certainly didn’t care about the golden rule.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Nobody needs to be taught it. It is integral to the stability of any given society. That certain sections of any society choose to ignore it is par for the course.

Society just needs a power that keeps it together and the examples listed certainly didn’t care about the golden rule.

OK. Let’s just ignore it.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

OK. Let’s just ignore it.

It doesn’t have any moral weight just some appeal.

 

[Latin]

God does indeed know which card I would’ve chosen, then that choice was determined even without me having ever made it.

Determined from all Eternity. All events, Designed, Decreed and Preordained by God from all Eternity.

In my opinion, Lelinator you have very good logic, because you logically concluded the following dogmatic teachings of the Catholic Church, which is the heart of Catholic Theology.

.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Free Will explains;

“God is the author of all causes and effects, God’s omnipotent providence exercises a complete and perfect control over all events that happen, or will happen, in the universe.”

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains;

“His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.
All events preordained by God in accordance with His all-embracing purpose.”

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For Augustine says (De Civ. Dei v, 1) that the "Divine will or power is called fate. "
But the Divine will or power is not in creatures, but in God. Therefore fate is not in creatures but in God.

The Divine will is cause of all things that happen, as Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 1 seqq.). Therefore all things are subject to fate.

The same is true for events in our lives. Relative to us they often appear to be by chance.
But relative to God, who directs everything according to his divine plan, nothing occurs by chance.

Hence if this divine influence stopped, every operation would stop.
Every operation, therefore, of anything is traced back to Him as its cause. (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III.)

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There is a supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul, which precedes the free act of the will, (De fide dogma).
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Aquinas said, "God changes the will without forcing it. But he can change the will from the fact that he himself operates in the will as he does in nature,” De Veritatis 22:9. 31. ST I-II:112:3. 32.
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CCC 307 God thus enables men to be intelligent and free, causes in order to complete the work of creation, … Though often unconscious collaborators with God’s will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions. – By AIDED FREE WILL as follows.
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CCC 2022; The divine initiative (supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul) in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man.
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With God’s gift of our Aided free wills, we all freely perform every act what God wills and causes us to perform. – Only God has Libertarian free will, no one else.
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St. Thomas (C. G., II, xxviii) if God’s purpose were made dependent on the foreseen free act of any creature, God would thereby sacrifice His own freedom, and would submit Himself to His creatures, thus abdicating His essential supremacy–a thing which is, of course, utterly inconceivable.
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As God himself operates in our wills, we are freely cooperating with His graces, without even knowing it.
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God bless

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

OK. Let’s just ignore it.

It doesn’t have any moral weight just some appeal.

Jesus: And I say unto you, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Vanitas: Hey, that has no moral weight. Just some appeal!
Jesus: Um…OK. Just do what you want then.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Jesus: And I say unto you, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Vanitas: Hey, that has no moral weight . Just some appeal!
Jesus: Um…OK. Just do what you want then.

That’s a bait and switch not consistent with the foundation that you are using.

 

[o_mlly]

And you need to realise that it is not specifically a Christian concept. And the majority of the world’s population has no interest in the fact that Jesus proposed that we all follow it.

And you need to realize that the Golden Rule is an empty concept. It has no content, it tells no one what to do. Now, what Jesus taught in the Beatitudes, that’s content.

 

[o_mlly]

If on the other hand, God does indeed know which card I would’ve chosen, then that choice was determined even without me having ever made it.

If on the other hand, God does indeed know which card I would’ve chosen, then that choice is determined known … .

So you can have free will and you can have an omniscient God.

What logic requires knowledge to become a force, i.e. causation?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

And you need to realise that it is not specifically a Christian concept. And the majority of the world’s population has no interest in the fact that Jesus proposed that we all follow it.

And you need to realize that the Golden Rule is an empty concept. It has no content, it tells no one what to do. Now, what Jesus taught in the Beatitudes, that’s content.

The ten commandments it ain’t. But it covers all the commandments that aren’t a direct instruction to honour God in some way.

Do not steal? Well, if you think it would be wrong for someone to steal from you then don’t steal from them. Just apply the golden rule and that’s what you get. And more than just a commandment, it tells you why you shouldn’t do it.

Likewise murdering, lying, adultry…you name it, it’s covered. It doesn’t tell you what to do (because God says so), but it tells you how you should act. And it’s available to all. In fact, it’s universal. You don’t even need a deity.

And I do find it surprising that since I’ve been suggesting it’s a great source for formulating a moral code, a few people have posted negative comments about the rule. Is it simply because I’m an atheist that people assume that what I post must be wrong? I’m actually nominating that which Jesus taught us as a wonderful concept.

 

[o_mlly]

The ten commandments it ain’t. But it covers all the commandments that aren’t a direct instruction to honour God in some way.

Yes, He affirms the Ten Commandments:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

Likewise murdering …

Not “likewise” at all but a turning from merely the act as evil to the one’s evil interior disposition that always precedes the act:
“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,n ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’* 22* But I say to you, whoever is angry* with his brother will be liable to judgment,

lying …

Nope.
“Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.’ 34w But I say to you, do not swear at all;* not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. 37* Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.

adultry [sic]

Nope.
“You have heard that it was said,r ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

And, the capper:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’c 44But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.

That means you’re on the prayer list.

 

[Gorgias]

The point I was making was actually rejecting the suggestion that one specific man was given rationality.

OK, but why must we reject that thesis? After all, that’s how new species come into being, don’t they? It’s not that all of a sudden, a population of new beings pops into existence; rather, one individual – followed by his progeny – take on the identity of a new species. If that’s good enough for evolution, why not for rationality?

And your comment that it’s a requirement of evolutionary science to point to one generation and say ‘that’s when Homo habilis became Homo erectus’ is so far off the mark that it’s not even wrong.

I’m not talking about a generation, I’m talking about an individual.

Do you honestly think we might find two fossils, one the mother and the other the child that show such significant differences that we could classify them as different species?

Thought experiment: line up fossils from 200 sequential generations of animals. Analyze their characteristics. Do you honestly think that there won’t be one generation where we can say "a-ha! now this individual has all the characteristics we’d describe as ‘a new species’?

You need to come to terms with that problem.

Weird. I was thinking the same thing about you. Your viewpoint seems to be saying “we can never say anything productive about predecessor and successor species.” This so undercuts the ability of science to say anything useful, that it must be fundamentally wrong.

 

[whatistrue]

Wait a minute - you are saying if I directly hear God’s voice I would be hallucinating?

I don’t understand how you could have reasonably inferred that from what I wrote. I said:

I believe that many people would simply maintain that they (and everyone else) were hallucinating.

Where did I mention what I thought about you specifically, or that they would be correct, or for that matter what I thought about the veracity of other people?

 

[whatistrue]

I asked why doesn’t God come down and tell us directly his moral framework

And I said that even if He did, many would find some reason to disbelieve, no matter how much evidence there was. Do you dispute that? Many believe God Himself did come down and lay out the framework for morals, including miracles up to and including raising people from the dead and He was crucified for it. And then came back Himself and is still widely disbelieved.

But the only real answer I can give as to why God does or doesn’t do anything is “I have no idea; why don’t you as Him when/if you see Him?”

 

[Gorgias]

He actually never claimed to be God himself - at least it’s debatable.

He did so, time and again, in the Gospels. Even the Synoptics.

Jesus could have been - as you say - hallucinating just like anyone else who claims to have heard God directly.

Fair enough. He backed up his claims, though, with miraculous signs. Then there was the whole “rise again from the dead” thing. At that point, the “Jesus as lunatic” thesis is pretty untenable.

What I am referring to is a real, direct supernatural, indisputable, repeatable vision of God where there is no chance of arguing or disagreeing.

You’ve had it. And yet, for 2000 years, people have been arguing and disagreeing with it. Seriously – the issue isn’t “has He done it?”, it’s “no matter what God does, there will be people who nevertheless say ‘meh. I don’t buy it.’”

So why doesn’t God come down and tell me flat out what we should and should not do?

He did. See the Gospels.