Free will only permitted when full knowledge available!

  • Thread starter Thread starter John121
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

John121

Guest
I’m struggling how any one has free will when we don’t have the opposite of knowledge in most cases to do what is right!

For example if I’m in a position to commit intercourse but don’t know that the opposite is chastity and that the reason for why intercourse is a sin before marriage how can you have free choice when you are missing all this knowledge about the right choice.

Please help I genuinely don’t think anyone has proper knowledge therefore lacks the freedom to chose the right choice all besides God who had Godly knowledge on earth !
 
Last edited:
I feel like my whole life on earth I did not have full knowledge I may have stolen things because of lack of money and because of my lack of knowledge on morals I justified theft as we are thought survival of the fittest in school!

Please give examples how I’m wrong or right !
 
I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at. To use your example, are you saying that the person having intercourse doesn’t know that they can not have intercourse?
 
Last edited:
I think Catholics believe that natural law is imprinted on the hearts of everyone, so that knowledge of what is right and wrong is instinctively known to all. Further, Christians are believed to have the grace of the Holy Spirit to guide them toward knowing, even if not always practicing, what is morally right and avoiding what is morally wrong.
 
Sin is sin, wrong is wrong, regardless of our knowledge. Knowledge, however, makes us culpable or responsible for our sin. We often “know” inside, with a sort of tugging feeling or inner pain, that some things are right and some wrong but for various reasons, including the values of the culture we live in or due to strong physical impulses, etc, many “wrongs” are overridden within our consciences-and we might need to hear from an outside authority what the truth really is. St Augustine put it this way:
"God wrote on tablets of stone that which man failed to read in his heart."

Anyway, we see this “overriding” performed daily in our world. The alternative is that murder, rape, beheadings, torture, etc, are really natural and intended for man.
 
Last edited:
Lol. Well I think full consent is more common as well! Sometimes. Especially on these forums people think because something is hard, consent of will is gone…
 
Having free will is an essential component of human nature, of being human beings. All human beings have free will or they wouldn’t be human beings. Another essential component of human beings is their intellect which pertains to knowledge. Normal human beings are always acting through their intellect and will. Ignorance does not nullify the free will faculty although it may, though not necessarily, reduce the culpability of some human actions. A human person is still acting through their free will even on incorrect knowledge or ignorance.
 
John121 said:
For example if I’m in a position to commit intercourse but don’t know that the opposite is chastity and that the reason for why intercourse is a sin before marriage how can you have free choice when you are missing all this knowledge about the right choice.
Click to expand...
This could actually be a thing, where a kid is raised in an environment where concepts of chastity and waiting before marriage simply isn’t discussed, and there aren’t any examples to go by.
Or even, conceivably, where sex education was so lacking that the person didn’t know what intercourse is until the time they actually did it.
Rare, but possible.

But here’s the thing—you might not have a moral culpability, but you still entail the real risks that immoral behavior involves, like STIs or unwed parenthood or a broken heart.
Or even to learn that you are entitled to the exclusive, forever love of marriage .
 
My parents have been together for 32 years and are still not married. My father was catholic( until his mother told him the Catholic church was wrong and changed religions my grandmother has now changed religions 5 times ) my mother well let’s say she’s atheist at best
Beacuse of this I was never brought up to know that intercourse was only supposed to be between a husband and wife beacuse it’s not what I knew growing up

There are many things I wish I had learned growing up and then their are many things I wish I knew why we would do them.
 
Right, or they say that the ‘culture’ or society taught them wrongly or encouraged them by glamorizing the sin and downplaying it. Like until the last few decades society or culture never, ever did such a thing.
 
That is why it is a parents responsibility to know what the kids are watching or doing on the internet. It’s a parents responsibility to enforce rules and teach their children right from wrong and also explain when appropriate why something is wrong.
 
Richca said:
A human person is still acting through their free will even on incorrect knowledge or ignorance.
Click to expand...
Free will Is the decision to make a choice and a choice is when you are giving a option to choose if you are not presented with knowledge of good over evil you will always automatically have to pick the wrong decision without the right freewill to choose…

I don’t accept it’s written on our hearts when we’re not thought the difference between what comes from our heart or evil inclinations and passions and desires I will argue with this to God that if he wanted people to have free will then they the human race should all be brought up with a standard education on the difference between good and bad you might say we are but why does it take years of practice to become a saint.

Like one of the apostles said I don’t do what I want to do and I do, what I don’t want to do. This is and seems to be that our natural inclination is towards evil so how can we have free will when we majority of the time are choosing evil when it is written on our heart should our inclination not to be all loving and not full of sin.

I sin so much because I lack discipline and genuinely don’t have perfect knowledge of the law so can’t make a sound decision on most of my choices …

If I new the law off by heart knew all the different morals examples that you could be tested on the law and truly knew what I was doing was wrong literally said it in my head out loud in my head and choose the opposite and evil way I say this is a sin but I genuinely never have this happen.
 
For example I was told loads of misconceptions growing up about white lies are ok and dilemmas were a poor man has no money to buy food is it ok to rob food to eat when there is literally food throw out every day of the week.
I might of herd the the church did not agree with sex before marriage but when I read the 10 commandments when I was younger I did not say thou shall not have sex before marriage.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the only people who truly have a freedom to choose are those who study the law or theology or studied philosophy and how to take control of the will and intellect so they are able to choose.

When you look at a baby they have no knowledge therefore they will eat soap gladly or keep change from a table in there pocket so what I’m saying is the only thing that changed when we get older is were are thought knowledge but this knowledge does not cover completely all the fundamental dilemmas we face so does not give us the right to choose because we don’t get choices.
 
Even for those who say full knowledge is not necessary to use free will, it certainly allows us a better opportunity to properly use it.

This is why I’ve never bought the idea that God could not reveal himself lest he remove our free will. Having more knowledge increases freewill. It doesn’t eliminate it.
 
Now God in all his knowledge might have a Good answer but I’m nearly 100% sure Jesus was able to be sinless because he knows something we don’t know or/and practiced something we don’t.
in all of human history one person became sinless who Is Jesus which is God because he carry’s omnipotent knowledge about sin and how to avoid it.
 
Last edited:
Mike_from_NJ said:
Having more knowledge increases freewill
Click to expand...
The other Question is the effect grace has on people it is written in St Faustina book that she asked to get the grace of knowing and doing Gods will this to me is so confusing because surely if God wants us to operate with free will should we not know what this will is before asking him so we can make the right choice to follow his will.

I just seems to me like the average person does not have a hope of doing Gods will when a religious nun who devoted her life to God still had to ask for the opportunity to do and know Gods will.

By this example you would have to ask God in every circumstance what is his will and only religious people could sustain this!

The other part is that Jesus says obedience pleases him more then a lot of penances.

I guess my point is how is a average person in this world supposed to know all this, the whole world would have to be like Jerusalem and have proper education on God and Good parents by Godly standard, my next answer would be oh ya Lucifer the fallen angel has decided to deceive the world so we definitely don’t get the truth and the right choice to make a decision with or free will impeding or free will how would you stop this oh ya stop Lucifer why doesn’t God stop Lucifer before he deceives the world you’d have to ask him why he lets demons and one of the most powerful angels and millions of years of knowledge target someone who barely gets out of high school and sends legions of demons after people till they drag people to Hell If someone could answer how this is fair in Gods eyes that would be great ?
 
I think there is something to what you’re saying here—some significant truth in it. In a separate thread, I just now wrote on a similar topic.

Whatever you think free will is, it seems to me that if you are operating within an existentialist framework, something along the lines of John Paul Sartre Who spoke of “absolute freedom,” you’d be very much mistaken. Tabula Rasa kind of freedom, the type of freedom where in any and all situations you are entirely free to choose x or not x almost certainly doesn’t exist. The thing is, there simply is no such thing as absolute freedom. Whatever limited freedom you possess is conditioned in about 1000 different ways. And this is true for all of us.

@oliver109 here has a repeated refrain, but it usually gets discounted by those who interact with them. He makes the point that no one chose to exist. Your coming into existence quite literally in no way factored in your will/desire at all. He usually stops at this point, we could go much farther than this. It’s not just that you were brought into existence. You were brought into existence in a particular gender, which you did not choose. You were born into a certain country that you did not choose. You were born with a certain IQ that you did not choose. You were born into a certain Socioeconomic situation that you did not choose. You were born with certain inclinations that you will carry over the course of a lifetime, again, which you did not choose. You will accidentally form various habits, some of them bad ones, that you do not consciously choose to form. Etc, etc

And let’s not forget the influence of demons and good angels, the principalities and powers that Saint Paul refers to, all of them interacting with us and imposing themselves on us on a continuous basis. And then there is you yourself. As Saint Paul eloquently points out in the book of Romans, we war even against ourselves. We have this Bizzarre lack of freedom within our own persons. The things we want to do, we don’t do. And the things we do not want to do, we do. And how does Saint Paul end that contemplation? He says “oh wretched man that I am. Who will save me from this body of death?” And then he goes on to thank Jesus Christ his Lord for being the salvation.

Our freedom is severely constrained and conditioned by all sorts of factors.
 
John121 said:
if you are not presented with knowledge of good over evil you will always automatically have to pick the wrong decision without the right freewill to choose…
Click to expand...
Again, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Does the person not know what is right or wrong, or do they not realize that it is even possible to do the thing that is good, whether or not they understand that it is good?
John121 said:
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the only people who truly have a freedom to choose are those who study the law or theology or studied philosophy and how to take control of the will and intellect so they are able to choose.
Click to expand...
Wait, how does that follow? Knowledge of right and wrong are not required to make a choice. If I’m taking a test and choose the wrong answer on a multiple choice question, I obviously didn’t know the right answer, but I also chose the wrong one of my own will.

Sure, lack of knowledge makes it more difficult to make the right decision, but it doesn’t remove one’s ability to choose among options.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top