Free will? I dont think so

[Gorgias]

But also tell us if you started with a belief in God before you did this rigorous process or did that follow on once you’d concluded the claims to be true?

Irrelevant, especially since it attempts to work as an ad hominem argument: “oh, you can’t believe him, because he was predisposed to believe the story!”

By the same token, we would have to disregard seemingly all atheists’ beliefs – after all, ya’ll had already experienced doubts in the truth of Christianity before you started your “rigorous process” of discernment, right? That would disqualify you, then!

(In any case, yes: I started my process of learning as an adult, and not during a period when I was a practicing Catholic. I needed to be able to say that I believed in the teachings of the Church fully, as an adult and with an adult’s intellect and reason, if I were going to return to the practice of the Catholic faith. Thanks for asking!)

 

[Gorgias]

If I told you there earliest biography of George Washington was written in Japan in 1860, wouldn’t you question it’s accuracy? That’s what the gospels are like.

They really aren’t. These stories had been being told, over and over, at each liturgy for decades. The people already knew the stories! Imagine if you read the biography of Washington, having heard it told and retold, and then you read “Washington cut down a pear tree with a butter knife”. See, if the story changed – that is, if it were unreliable, as you assert – then people would have recognized that fact. They didn’t. The stories retained their integrity.

We are talking about Jesus’ QUOTES. Not narratives.

Yeah, but they’re telling the story in a target language that wasn’t the source language. So, they tell it in the target language, using its conventions. So, that’s the legitimate way to phrase the quotations in that target language!

It is literally impossible for Jesus to have said some of the things that the gospels claim he did.

Example, please?

The Gospels are NOT translations from Aramaic!!! They are ORIGINALLY written in Greek.

That’s my point.

There are stories in the gospels that can’t possibly be true.

OK… let’s have an example of this, too, then, please!

But he was a proxy. That’s why he was a man. I mean, come on. You really deny Jesus was a man?

The Church teaches that Jesus is fully God and fully man. Not a ‘proxy’ or a ‘stand-in’ for God: fully God. Not a ‘proxy’ for a human: fully man.

it was written by men CLAIMING to speak for God. It is MAN-MADE. This is indisputable.

It is written down by humans. No doubt. We claim that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, though, and so, we claim that there is both divine and human authorship therein.

I get it that you don’t believe that this is true. Yet, if you don’t have anything with which to disprove it (other than a healthy dose of skepticism), then the best you can say is “I don’t believe it.” And that’s fair.

 

[o_mlly]

And in response to why we think we have it it…it’s nothing but an automatic response.

If we did not have free will then what need would we have for a jury room to deliberate a verdict? What need would we have for a jury at all? The external evidence and the law has been put forward for all to see. The response is automatic. No.

The externalties are filtered differently by each juror. In the process of deliberation, some jurors freely change their minds in order to come to a unanimous decision. In the course of a lifetime, we all change our minds, change our affections.

Changes in affection drive changes in attitudes. Those who love themselves above all else have markedly different attitudes to those who love Jesus Christ above all else. Of course, those whose self-love allows them to say, “My will be done”, will want others to see their selfishness as unavoidable.

 

[EndTimes]

There might be the illusion of free will, but it just isnt so

You’re free to think whatever you will.

 

[Gorgias]

That is what is being doubted. Not the belief, but the object of the belief. Is that not obvious???

Except that you admit that the object of the belief – yellow-pink polka dot unicorns – “could exist.” You yourself wrote it. So, you’re still tangling yourself up in your inconsistent assertions: on one hand, you admit that unicorns could exist; on the other, you’re castigating theists for the assertion that God exists.

Consistency is a beautiful thing, Jupp. Keep working on it. You’ll get there, eventually…

 

[EndTimes]

Can we from Reason employ
any imagined notion from the the potentially infinite Realm of Speculation
as a tool of Proof / DisProof?

 

[Hume]

Is it “better” to describe this liquid I’m drinking as H2O than it is to describe it as water?

Better is a subjective value judgement; it depends entirely on one’s goals.

Physics is better than metaphysics for accomplishing a specific set of goals, but that does not make it objectively better, and it does not make metaphysics incorrect or irrelevant - any more than describing water as H2O makes describing it as water incorrect or irrelevant.

Sure, I’m not saying we have to abandon ourselves fully to whatever is the most scientifically accurate.

I’m just saying that when we’re trying to discern hard truths about this universe, Aristotle and Aquinas were some of the sharpest guys of their time.

They and most of their explanatory viewpoints have been fully replaced by better, more observable and demonstrable explanations.

That’s it. No need for anyone to get emotionally invested.

The “nature and essence” and “the acts and possible potencies” of, say, carbon is no longer meaningful.
Now you can take organic chemistry and learn about left- and right-hand orientations, chemical bonds, valence and so on and so forth.

 

[Hume]

Do you deny all human responsibility?

Not particularly, no.

I just don’t buy the idea that there’s some god that’s supposedly in control of it all yet not responsible for it, somehow.

 

[stoplooklisten]

Not particularly, no.

I just don’t buy the idea that there’s some god that’s supposedly in control of it all yet not responsible for it, somehow

I am glad that you don’t deny human responsibility. IMHO/IMAO, free will and human responsibility go together.

I don’t believe in an irresponsible God. But, I’m also not assuming that I know enough to judge Almighty God and find fault with Him in something like a “gotcha game”.

I do believe that Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the dead. I believe that means that all of us will live again after death. With the Church’s creed, I believe “that He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His Kingdom will have no end.”

 

[EndTimes]

I just don’t buy the idea that there’s some god that’s supposedly in control of it all yet not responsible for it, somehow.

And you’ve the God-given free will to do exactly that!

 

[Freddy]

So, to sum up: first, you argue against an assertion that I didn’t make, and then, when you don’t have an argument against the assertion I did make, you simply ridicule it. That’s one approach, I guess…

I initially argued against what you first implied because it made no sense. And I ridiculed your follow up because it deserves ridiculing.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

But also tell us if you started with a belief in God before you did this rigorous process or did that follow on once you’d concluded the claims to be true?

Irrelevant, especially since it attempts to work as an ad hominem argument: “oh, you can’t believe him, because he was predisposed to believe the story!”

It’s just good to know if confirmation bias needs to be accounted for. No more. No less.

So it seems that you did believe in God before your further education. You were effectively looking for an intellectual backing for your belief. You mentioned ‘adult’ a few times. It appears that you are suggesting that you had a less mature understanding of God when younger (as we all do) so needed to ground that belief in something more concrete. You were building a more solid basis for your existing beliefs.

As to my atheism, the opposite happened. My initial belief was chipped away by those very people teaching me about Christianity. I became an atheist a long time before I knew anyone who was an atheist. I didn’t read anything about atheism until I was in my forties. The church itself did all the work.

 

[ASC]

Fauken:

Freddy:

I can see the future and I knew you’d put the chicken out. It’s ‘already happened’ in the future. There was nothing you could have done to change it.

Do you still class it as free will?

Yes, because my actions still are done in the present time. I can’t change it in the future, but I also can’t do it in the future because I can’t act in the future, but the present.

Let’s put it another way. Putting out the chicken has to happen . It’s in your future. It’s fixed. I’m able to see the future and I see it happening. Can you change your mind and give the dog beef?

I’ll give the answer for you to speed up the discussion: It’s an emphatic ‘NO’.

So the question then becomes: Do you have free will to change your mind if you cannot change your mind?

It’s easy to go back and forth on things like this. I feel that these sorts of questions get more confusing the more you try to explain it. I like to acknowledge in these situations: I’m not that smart. I’m no genius or scholar or philosopher—and I don’t have to be. There’s no point in trying to understand it perfectly, because I believe in God and know that what he says is true. And he said both that we have free will, and that he himself is all-knowing and entirely outside of time. Therefore, I know without understanding or needing to understand.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

And in response to why we think we have it it…it’s nothing but an automatic response.

If we did not have free will then what need would we have for a jury room to deliberate a verdict? What need would we have for a jury at all? The external evidence and the law has been put forward for all to see. The response is automatic. No.

The externalties are filtered differently by each juror. In the process of deliberation, some jurors freely change their minds in order to come to a unanimous decision.

I keep having to say this, but an ability to change a decsion is not an example of free will. Because, as I keep saying, there is always a reason for doing so. You appear to believe that we can change our mind for no reason at all.

Again, I will use a jury as an example. You are saying that if presented by exactly the same evidence under exactly the same conditions, you could change your verdict. Your problem is how to explain how you could possibly do that.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

The decision you make can only be in response to (name removed by moderator)ut. It cannot be any other way. So it is based on (name removed by moderator)ut. Same (name removed by moderator)ut, same decision. Different (name removed by moderator)ut, different decision.

So I agree with all this.
The point I am adding is that even if you allow for a probability distribution for such choices (ie, given this state of affairs, it is 50% I choose A, 50% I choose B) - which does not conflict with your reasoning - the evaluation of this probability is STILL random. There is still no choice.

Agreed. Although I have used the term abitrary in earlier posts, as opposed to random. If you have no reason to pick A over B then deciding on one or the other is not a free will choice, by definition. A choice means expressing a preference. If you have no preference then it’s a mental coin toss and not a choice.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

And in response to why we think we have it it…it’s nothing but an automatic response. No different to the natural instincts with which we are born.

Natural instincts are the result of evolutionary processes. It’s like firmware versus software. But there are clearly advantages. The challenge I am asking is what evolutionary benefit does thinking we have free will convey? In other words, why don’t we think we are robots if we have no free will? All logic, reasoning, and analysis leads us down a path where the only conclusion is that free will is an illusion. So why do we BELIEVE it is an illusion? Think of it this way - if we DIDN’T think we had free will, would anything change? A Determinist must say no. So then why do we have such illusions?

Animals have instincts. And they can also think. But we’ve reached a point where we can go a level higher and think about thinking. So we have built this idea that we are (mostly) in complete control, whereas it’s our subconscious that makes most of the decisions. We don’t know this - or at least we’re not (obviously) conscious of it and it feels slightly offensive that we are guided by emotions and instinct so we put it down to decisions made by ‘us’ - the conscious us.

We actually do make decisions ourselves but these are based on the external environment. And most of our reactions to the environment are subconscious but they bubble up into the conscious mind and we think we’re still in complete control.

A simple example is some guy threatens you in a bar. You automatically tense. You stand taller. You clench your fists. You draw your lips back. You turn side on. You’ve probably made no conscious decision at this point but all those actions are for specific and easily understood reasons. If the other guy backs down you could turn to your friend and say ‘Hey, I showed him’. Well, ‘you’ didn’t show him anything. You were running on auto pilot.

More complex examples and you need to dig a little deeper to find out why we do what we do. But there are always reasons. They’re just a little harder to find. And we don’t generally go looking for them because we think ‘we’ made all the decisions. Free will decisions!

The more I understood about why we do what we do, the less I came ro realise how little we actually control what we do. And the concept of free will becomes more nebulous. You eventually reach a point where it becomes unsupportable.

 

[Latin]

PLEASE FREDDY CONSIDER

When an architect designed a building, he designed every event down to its minutest details which need to take place to complete his building.

He gives the builders the building design, which contains every event down to its minutest details.

He causes every event/ act, which events/ acts tailor made to each of his builders to complete the building.

His building design creates/causes the builders their DETERMINED WILL and their DETERMINED CHOICES which determined choices need to perform to complete his building.

.
GOD DESIGNED THE UNIVERSE AND WE ARE HIS BUILDERS

God designed the universe includes this world, He Designed, Decreed, Foreordained and He causes every event/ act according to His design down to its minutest details which need to take place to complete His creation.

Without even knowing, we are God’s builders, every choice we make, every act we perform, tailor made to each of us, and Designed, Decreed, Foreordained by God from all eternity and He causes us to do in order to complete the work of creation.

.
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.” – This can be happen only if God Designed, Decreed, Foreordained and He causes every our actions.
.
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.

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De gratia et libero arbitrio 16, 32: “It is certain that we will when we will; but He brings it about that we will good … It is certain that we act when we act, but He brings it about that we act, providing most effective powers to the will.
.
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. Gaudium et Spes 22;
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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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St. Thomas teaches that all movements of will and choice must be traced to the divine will: and not to any other cause, because Gad alone is the cause of our willing and choosing. CG, 3.91.
.
As we see above Freddy, every our act down to its minutest details, Designed, Decreed, Preordained by God from all eternity and He causes us to perform every our preordained acts. – CCC 307, CCC 308, CCC 310, CCC 314, etc.
.
CCC 301 God does not abandon his creatures to themselves.
He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, utter dependence enables them to act and brings them to their final end.
Recognizing this with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence.
.
God bless

 

[valencia]

Eh. So i thought its like we and God see our future and dont determines

 

[Latin]

THIS IS OUR FUTURE VALENCIA, DESIGNED, DECREED/ DETERMINED AS FOLLOWS.
.
History is not just what He sees will be, but is what He causes to be , especially in every aspect of the redemptive process.

.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains;

Life everlasting promised to us, (Romans 5:21); but unaided we can do nothing to gain it (Rom.7:18-24).
.
This, the beneficent purpose of an all-seeing Providence, is wholly gratuitous, entirely unmerited (Romans 3:24; 9:11-2).
.
It extends to all men (Romans 2:10; 1 Timothy 2:4), even to the reprobate Jews (Romans 11:26 sq.); and by it all God’s dealings with man are regulated (Ephesians 1:11).
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It extends to every individual, adapting itself to the needs of each (St. John Chrysostom, “Hom. xxviii in Matt.”, n. 3 in “P.G.”, LVII, 354).
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All things are created and governed with a view to man, to the development of his life and his intelligence, and to the satisfaction of his needs (Aristides, “Apol.”, i, v, vi, xv, xvi.
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His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.
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God preserves the universe in being; He acts in and with every creature in each and all its activities.
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He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.
.
Evil He converts into good (Genesis 1:20; cf. Psalm 90:10); and suffering He uses as an instrument whereby to train men up as a father traineth up his children (Deuteronomy 8:1-6; Psalm 65:2-10;
.
Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI, xxxii in “P.L.”,
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God is the sole ruler of the world. His will governs all things. He loves all men, desires the salvation of all, and His providence extends to all nation.
.
Again, from the fact that God has created the universe, it shows that He must also govern it; for just as the contrivances of man demand attention and guidance, so God, as a good workman, must care for His work.
.
That end is that all creatures should manifest the glory of God, and in particular that man should glorify Him, recognizing in nature the work of His hand, serving Him in obedience and love, and thereby attaining to the full development of his nature and to eternal happiness in God.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12510a.htm
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God’s will is the cause of all things, every event that happen or will happen in the universe.
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Nothing that is outside of God’s creating, sustaining, and governing will.
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God bless

 

[EndTimes]

Animals have instincts. And they can also think.
But we’ve reached a point where we can go a level higher and think about thinking.

We’re Created with Free Will to accept God or Evil… is a better way of realizing “we”…
Man gave Names to all the Animals…

_