Please help me understand free will

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lemondiesel

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I am stuck on this whole notion that “God knows all, yet somehow you have the ability to make choices that are truly your own.”

Seriously… how? What if I notice repetitive behavior about myself and decide to change it? Am I really making that decision, or was I destined to? Why would a loving God create us already knowing our deaths and legacies. When do we really get a choice?

Personally, I want to believe in God, but I don’t want to believe in God for the sake of believing in God. What if life is the Fall of the Angels, and physical reality is the battlefield with all of us being angels. There are people out there saying that this is a godless reality. What if I already am in hell and my life is determined to show me why?

How could an angel really understand and appreciate Good without having something to compare it to? How do you make a choice without choices!?

DId the accumulation of my life experiences create an mental emotion which urged me writing on here?
 
lemondiesel said:
I am stuck on this whole notion that “God knows all, yet somehow you have the ability to make choices that are truly your own.”

Seriously… how?
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How not? You know all the things your child should eat. On his birthday you let him choose to eat whatever he wants.

God knows. God allows you to choose. How is this a problem?
 
lemondiesel said:
Personally, I want to believe in God, but I don’t want to believe in God for the sake of believing in God.

How could an angel really understand and appreciate Good without having something to compare it to? How do you make a choice without choices!?
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My friend, the best part of believing in God is the God we are believing. Look at the fallen world around you. People in the fallen world, as God’s creations, don’t believe in God, and live in selfishness, blindness and deception. God’s opposite side is simply the absence of God. Which one is better to choose? I think the answer is crystal clear.
 
Julia_Mae said:
How not? You know all the things your child should eat. On his birthday you let him choose to eat whatever he wants.
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You know what your child should eat because we have things like the health department to help us guide our decisions.

Was me letting my child eat whatever he wants my own choice? Or was a choice predetermined on the conditions that it is his birthday.
Julia_Mae said:
God knows. God allows you to choose. How is this a problem?
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Personally, I believe we are given the illusion of free will, just as reality itself is an illusion based on the interpretation of the interpreter.
 
Just because He knows what’s going to happen doesn’t mean He’s controlling us. If He were controlling us, no one would sin.
 
ChibiViolet said:
Just because He knows what’s going to happen doesn’t mean He’s controlling us. If He were controlling us, no one would sin.
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God knows what we choose but doesn’t choose for us. God plans good for people all the time, grace, mercy, punishment, testing … He simply doesn’t plan people to sin or Hell, because he desires no one to perish but all come to eternal life. Only we chose to sin or to go to Hell. Why do we choose not to go to Hell? Well, you know why, obviously.
 
Just a curious question. Does the question you seek have a detrimental impact on your day to day acitivities? Are you burdoned to such a degree about this choice question that you find yourself losing interest in any aspect of your religious faith? Free will has been a standard in religious teaching regarding our relationship with God. I am not sure why individuals find it almost offensive to have to live with a God who knows everything to the point of questioning oneself’s desire to live out a good life. Is in not enough that we have the words of Jesus coming from the Father…and take it from there. I am not berating your comments, just suggesting that sometimes we as individuals can get too caught up into the outside frills of a matter and miss the essential points that we should take and run with to advance our journey to be closer to God. Hope you get good answers to your questions. The late Mother Theresa of Calcutta was supposedly made this comment…“God did not ask that we succeed, only that we try.” I think the integrity of a person is one who seeks from the heart and not just from the mind. Hope you are on that path.
 
Julia_Mae said:
How not? You know all the things your child should eat. On his birthday you let him choose to eat whatever he wants.

God knows. God allows you to choose. How is this a problem?
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There’s a big difference between knowing what someone ::should:: do and knowing what they will do. Actual knowledge of the future seems to me to entail fixed, factual occurrences - if God actually knows the future, rather than doing what we do and predicting probabilities, then the future cannot happen in any other way than what God already knows to be the case.

I’ve seen arguments stating that foreknowledge on the part of God does not cancel out our freedom to choose, but I haven’t found such arguments convincing - whether or not this is simply because I don’t really understand the philosophy involved, I’m not really in a position to say!

However, those same arguments, if they are indeed valid for God’s foreknowledge, it seems to me, ought likewise to be valid for the determinist notion that all our actions are preordained by existing circumstances within the physical universe. It may just be our lack of knowledge of all the particulars involved in our decision-making that produces the illusion of free choice, if, indeed, it is an illusion.
 
poptown said:
God knows what we choose but doesn’t choose for us. God plans good for people all the time, grace, mercy, punishment, testing … He simply doesn’t plan people to sin or Hell, because he desires no one to perish but all come to eternal life. Only we chose to sin or to go to Hell. Why do we choose not to go to Hell? Well, you know why, obviously.
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I still, really, don’t understand how it’s possible for God’s plans and God’s knowledge to be different. In our own experience - which is all the reference we have, after all - planning for something to happen when we already know it to be impossible (such as, for example, planning a roast dinner when we know we have no oven, spit, or other roasting means available!) produces not the outcome we plan, but the outcome we know will happen - no roast dinner. If God has foreknowledge of everything we will do, nothing could possibly surprise him. Therefore, God’s plans and God’s knowledge can scarcely be distinguished - if he knows a certain contingent of people will end up in hell, it’s not much use planning - or wishing - it might be otherwise.
 
Sair said:
I still, really, don’t understand how it’s possible for God’s plans and God’s knowledge to be different. In our own experience - which is all the reference we have, after all - planning for something to happen when we already know it to be impossible (such as, for example, planning a roast dinner when we know we have no oven, spit, or other roasting means available!) produces not the outcome we plan, but the outcome we know will happen - no roast dinner. If God has foreknowledge of everything we will do, nothing could possibly surprise him. Therefore, God’s plans and God’s knowledge can scarcely be distinguished - if he knows a certain contingent of people will end up in hell, it’s not much use planning - or wishing - it might be otherwise.
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Many years ago Antony Flew - although he was an atheist until recently - pointed out that foreknowledge does not entail causation…
 
lemondiesel said:
Personally, I believe we are given the illusion of free will, just as reality itself is an illusion based on the interpretation of the interpreter.
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Free Will is a theoretical concept; for all practical purposes there is no such thing.

God gives you a “free will” and for the most part you can do whatever you want. But if you don’t do it “His way” there are dire consequences.

So what choice do you really have?
 
tonyrey said:
Many years ago Antony Flew - although he was an atheist until recently - pointed out that foreknowledge does not entail causation…
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No, it doesn’t entail causation, in the sense that God knowing the future is not the impetus for bringing the future about - but it does imply, at least, that the future is able to be known, in a concrete sense (presumably God does not merely indulge in speculation) and is therefore fixed and unchangeable, as much as it would be had it already happened.
 
Sair said:
I still, really, don’t understand how it’s possible for God’s plans and God’s knowledge to be different.
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They are indeed the same, but not in the way that you’re thinking.
In our own experience - which is all the reference we have, after all - planning for something to happen when we already know it to be impossible (such as, for example, planning a roast dinner when we know we have no oven, spit, or other roasting means available!) produces not the outcome we plan, but the outcome we know will happen - no roast dinner.
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You’ve hit on something very important here when you say “in our own experience”. The analogy you describe reflects only our limitations of understanding, not a limitation on God’s part. God can have a plan without violating our free will, as bizarre as that sounds. We’re just not able to understand it because we’re finite creatures and He is infinite.
If God has foreknowledge of everything we will do, nothing could possibly surprise him.
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That’s accurate. Nothing ever surprises God.
Therefore, God’s plans and God’s knowledge can scarcely be distinguished - if he knows a certain contingent of people will end up in hell, it’s not much use planning - or wishing - it might be otherwise.
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You’re almost there. To our limited way of understanding, it would be useless to hope or plan for salvation, but not for God.

Consider this: God knows (from all eternity) that certain people will end up in Hell. But He doesn’t want anyone to go to Hell…how can this seeming contradiction be true??

I think the answer is that God also designs each person’s life (again from outside time) so that we’re all given every possible opportunity to make the right choices, but we’re never given so much grace that it would violate our free will. God knows exactly how far he can “encourage” or “nudge” each of us without ever forcing us. It’s always our fault if we end up in Hell, and just because God has the ability to see (from all eternity) that we will make the wrong choice, doesn’t mean that He didn’t do everything short of violating our free will to help us make the right choice.

Hope that is helpful. 🙂
 
Sair said:
if he knows a certain contingent of people will end up in hell, it’s not much use planning - or wishing
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Does anything surprise God? You are right, there is nothing.
Does God simply do nothing? If he does plan nothing, then all of us, the fallen children of Adam and Eve, will go to Hell. Yet he foreknew the Fall and planned Jesus Christ beforehand.
One’s rejection to God doesn’t make him end up in Hell. One’s continuous rejection to God makes him end up in Hell …

CCC 600 “To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace:”
 
lemondiesel said:
You know what your child should eat because we have things like the health department to help us guide our decisions.

Was me letting my child eat whatever he wants my own choice? Or was a choice predetermined on the conditions that it is his birthday.
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It’s an analogy. God knows h because he is God. God allows us totally free choice. There’s no contradiction, is the point.
Personally, I believe we are given the illusion of free will, just as reality itself is an illusion based on the interpretation of the interpreter.
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If you already have your mind made up, why did you ask for help understanding? Believe whatever you want. Won’t change the fact: without freewill life is meaningless.
 
Sair said:
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			*Many years ago Antony Flew - although he was an atheist until recently - pointed out that **foreknowledge does not entail causation***...
		 		 	 	 No, it doesn't entail causation, in the sense that God knowing the  future is not the impetus for bringing the future about - but it does  imply, at least, that the future is able to be *known*, in a  concrete sense (presumably God does not merely indulge in speculation)  and is therefore fixed and unchangeable, as much as it would be had it  already happened.
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Divine knowledge does **not **entail a fixed and unchangeable future because God transcends time and space! To think otherwise is to put the Creator in the same category as that which He has created - which is clearly absurd.
 
Free will is not an illusion. If you believe in Christian God, you need to accept the following fact:

“If man is a good, and cannot act rightly unless he wills to do so, then he must have free will, without which he cannot act rightly. We must not believe that God gave us free will so that we might sin, just because sin is committed through free will. It is sufficient for our question, why free will should have been given to man, to know that without it man cannot live rightly. That it was given for this reason can be understood from the following: if anyone uses free will for sinning, he incurs divine punishment. This would be unjust if free will had been given not only that man might live rightly, but also that he might sin. For how could a man justly incur punishment who used free will to do the thing for which it was given? When God punishes a sinner, does He not seem to say, ‘Why have you not used free will for the purpose for which I gave it to you, to act rightly’? Then too, if man did not have free choice of will, how could there exist the good according to which it is just to condemn evildoers and reward those who act rightly? What was not done by will would be neither evildoing nor right action. Both punishment and reward would be unjust if man did not have free will. Moreover, there must needs be justice both in punishment and in reward, since justice is one of the goods that are from God. Therefore, God must needs have given free will to man.” St. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will
 
Sair said:
There’s a big difference between knowing what someone ::should:: do and knowing what they will do. Actual knowledge of the future seems to me to entail fixed, factual occurrences - if God actually knows the future, rather than doing what we do and predicting probabilities, then the future cannot happen in any other way than what God already knows to be the case.

.
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There is two senses of “future” that are expressed in different contexts. There is what might happen, and there is also what will happen. When we talk about what might happen, this simply represents a limit in our knowledge. Its an epistemological limitation relative to our physical states. But there is also that which will happen, and this is simply everything that will occur regardless of our knowledge.

If it is in fact true that i will decide to go to the shop tomorrow, then it is simply true that this is what will happen tomorrow. That does not mean that i am not the one who freely chose to go to the shops. If i am going to be hit by lightning tomorrow then it is true that tomorrow i am going to be hit by lightning, but that does not mean that i am not the one who freely went to the place where lightning just happens to strike. It just means that it is true that it will happen. Some event in the future will have some kind of effect on me; this general metaphysical statement is true, and yet has no effect on my freewill in terms of actions. Things will happen in the future so long as there is a future.

God having knowledge of what will happen, doesn’t change the fact that i am the one that made it happen. It just means that God knows what is true. It is also true that God cannot know me as doing something different to what he already knows, because it is not true that i did something different. My actions have determined what will happen, not Gods knowledge. Truth doesn’t have to be linear. What will be true is true, and God knows that truth, from his perspective insofar as he is timeless and non-physical and is the act of reality. There is nothing about God knowing all truth that conflicts with our free actions unless you choose to limit God to the confines of physical laws.

The future is fixed in the sense that it will happen, but in order for there to be a future things have to happen in the here and now. The future is not an independent entity.

Therefore i don’t see a contradiction. A Contradiction arises for you, becuase you are treating future-states as if it is not something caused by or actualized by that which is in the here and now
 
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