Pre-destination vs Free Will...a uphill battle (without scripture)

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concerneduser

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The argument starts…NOW!
So, which is it, Free will, or predestination?
In favor of predestination is:
  1. Is it true that everything is interconnected, ie, everything and everyone who you come in contact with has an affect on you. Also, you have an affect on everyone/ everything you come in contact with as well.
  2. Put God into this situation, he knows everything that has happened, and will happen. God created all of us, programed us biologically to who we are. He chose this combination of our parents sperm/ egg to create us. (it’s not like your mom or dad determined to give you that learning disability or depression!!)
  3. God does interact with us, he does things such as performs miracles to change our course of direction. We believe this so much to say ‘everything happens for a reason’ and if not Gods will, he could quickly change the rate of people leaving the Catholic Church, or even stopped the protestant reformation…(and many other things as well).
  4. If God interacts with us to change our ways, and he determined our biology of who we are/ what we look like, he started the world and everything is connected to it as stated in number 1.
    Then…Where is our free will?
    And why is God’s will for people to suffer from disease and die young, while others smoke and don’t take care of themselves to live untill they are 80 years old?
    –Overall, where is our will if God created us all, knows what we are going to do, has the ability to change our paths (as we all have had times when we said ‘there was a reason I didn’t get on that bus’…for it crashed and killed all on it that day…or anything else horrible you can think of for this example)
    —Almost something I forgot, that Luck doesent exist in christianity ( so i was told), yet if everything is interconnected, it was predestined that you won that lottery ticket therefore we can only conclude that with your timing and the timing of every other interaction in the world that led up to that moment…it was predetermined from the beginning of the world that you would be in that situation, at that exact time, and that exact lotto ticket was pulled. For, if one thing was different (ie, you spend one more minute determining which soda pop to buy at the gas station…the person in line behind you at the scratch off machine would have won…So, was it gods will? Or your own? (yet you historically in your past have always only bought one type of soda pop…what if your interactions as a child made you like more of a variety and entirely changed the sitution so much that you would even be in a different country!..Yet alone spend another single minute to miss that once in a ‘time/ space’ chance of getting that winning lotto scratch off.)
    —I don’t want to hear stuff about how gabling isnt christian I know that, (but do try to explain the predestination/ luck/ free will part of it)
—Let the debate begin. And remember…NO SCRIPTURES!..
(this is a current debate between me and a friend who is an ‘a la carte’ Catholic/ Christian and I need help defending free will)
-THANKS!!
 
Emm… to have a “debate”, don’t you sort of need an “opening proposition”? 😊

Are you saying that “since the universe is pre-determined”, people have no “free-will”? :rolleyes:

If that is your intent, I suggest looking at those definitions that I posted on coolduudes thread. If afterward, you still want to “debate”, I will try to make it as painless as possible. 😛


  1. *]Within this argument;
    *]“Determinant” == having no freedom to alter from destination
    *]“Free Will” == the ability to accomplish a chosen goal
    *]“Transcendent” == independent of the limits of physics
    *]“Existence” == having the property of affect
    *]“Being” == an incident of existence
    *]“Maximal” == highest possible
 
I would guess that free will does not exist, since matter appears to be deterministic, and since our minds seem to be a property of matter.
 
True, I did not make myself clear.
The opening stance: Predestination is truth. Why? This goes back to since the beginning of the earth and universe as we know it.
Truth: Everything physically has an effect on something else. Whether it be from the weather, to a single persons actions.
Truth: We are made up of our biology, sociology, and psychology.
Truth: God creates our biology (he determines our sex, hair color, learning problems / proficiencies etc)
Truth: God creates our psychology- The way we think is determined by the way our brains are wired. Chemical inbalances and mental problems can be attributed to the brain and how it was developed/ underdeveloped.
Truth: God creates our sociology- How does God controll how we see the world/ others in society? Because everything is interconnected. God knew the future when he allowed the biology to come together and create you. Or did God throw a dice in the air when determining to give your child a chronic, untreatable, fatal disease? God knew the results of giving your child this problem, and if it was anyone elses will besides Gods that your child was born like this tell me now. And when such an example becomes a truth, don’t we attribute it to God by saying ‘there is a reason for everything’?
And as God knows that he is the ultimate provider of life and determines everything from the color of your childs hair, to the every day weather; Do we attribute all these things to god? OR do we attribute these to the ‘physical science’ and interactions that God has created? We attribute them to both. Thus, With such said, you can almost prove no good vs evil, no heaven or hell, and no judgement. For God knows all of this ‘years’ before it all happens. And the sense of ‘free will’ amougst us is all an illusion of Gods, as he is the ultimate determiner of the weather, of the effects of others on us (ie, he can change our course through miracles whenever he wants), and the ultimate determiner of who we are through these predetermined interactions. For God knows if we will end up in heaven or hell before all of these actions actually take place…And once again, no good or evil, no judgement, no reason for heaven/ hell for it is already known.
-From this, you can almost (name removed by moderator)ut that there is no God, for you can state that what we attribute to God or his will, is a mere lack of understanding of the physical world and it’s predestined interactions and ultimate unchangeable outcomes.
-Hope this helped!—your comments??
 
So now it seems you are saying “since the universe is pre-determined”, there is no “God”?? :confused:
 
Kinda,…Because everything in the physical world affects one another, and there can only be that once instance ever happen, it rules out any will of people. It is simply People, (who by Gods choice came to be through their biology as he chose what biology made them up) interacting as a result of being in the same place at the same time. But these ‘spaces in time’ will never be able to happen again with the exact same consequences (as like I said, everything is interconnected). CONCLUDING that the result, of today’s human interactions and interactions of the physical world are all interconnected and ‘piled’ on top of one another (ie a web-chain reaction). And in the sense that god is all knowing, and all powerful, it was his will that he determined that a mas murderer such as Hitler would live and do what he did. For god knew the consequences of chosing that DNA to make the twisted mind up. In this case, therefore, it was Gods will, and is gods will to create evil people on this earth. And that evil people therefore have no will either, but are merely the result of their God chosen biology and God chosen physical stance in terms of ‘time/ space’
…I need to make this simpler…hah
Basically…everything is physical and the reaction of another action. And you cannot simply say that some things are attributed to ‘god’ such as our DNA, for even that is determined by another physical reaction. (ie, if something was a certain way different, 😛 a different ‘you’ would have been a result of your parents)
-And then science, the knowledge of the ‘action/ reaction’ scenario is already in place for things once attributed to god from things such as weather to medicine.
 
concerneduser said:
The argument starts…NOW!
So, which is it, Free will, or predestination?
In favor of predestination is:
  1. Is it true that everything is interconnected, ie, everything and everyone who you come in contact with has an affect on you. Also, you have an affect on everyone/ everything you come in contact with as well.
  2. Put God into this situation, he knows everything that has happened, and will happen. God created all of us, programed us biologically to who we are. He chose this combination of our parents sperm/ egg to create us. (it’s not like your mom or dad determined to give you that learning disability or depression!!)
  3. God does interact with us, he does things such as performs miracles to change our course of direction. We believe this so much to say ‘everything happens for a reason’ and if not Gods will, he could quickly change the rate of people leaving the Catholic Church, or even stopped the protestant reformation…(and many other things as well).
  4. If God interacts with us to change our ways, and he determined our biology of who we are/ what we look like, he started the world and everything is connected to it as stated in number 1.
    Then…Where is our free will?
    And why is God’s will for people to suffer from disease and die young, while others smoke and don’t take care of themselves to live untill they are 80 years old?
    –Overall, where is our will if God created us all, knows what we are going to do, has the ability to change our paths (as we all have had times when we said ‘there was a reason I didn’t get on that bus’…for it crashed and killed all on it that day…or anything else horrible you can think of for this example)
    —Almost something I forgot, that Luck doesent exist in christianity ( so i was told), yet if everything is interconnected, it was predestined that you won that lottery ticket therefore we can only conclude that with your timing and the timing of every other interaction in the world that led up to that moment…it was predetermined from the beginning of the world that you would be in that situation, at that exact time, and that exact lotto ticket was pulled. For, if one thing was different (ie, you spend one more minute determining which soda pop to buy at the gas station…the person in line behind you at the scratch off machine would have won…So, was it gods will? Or your own? (yet you historically in your past have always only bought one type of soda pop…what if your interactions as a child made you like more of a variety and entirely changed the sitution so much that you would even be in a different country!..Yet alone spend another single minute to miss that once in a ‘time/ space’ chance of getting that winning lotto scratch off.)
    —I don’t want to hear stuff about how gabling isnt christian I know that, (but do try to explain the predestination/ luck/ free will part of it)
—Let the debate begin. And remember…NO SCRIPTURES!..
(this is a current debate between me and a friend who is an ‘a la carte’ Catholic/ Christian and I need help defending free will)
-THANKS!!
Click to expand...
We have the freedom to recognize our imperfections when weighed against the standard of love -and then to turn more and more towards love and away from anything that detracts from it.
 
But isn’t it true that our value of ‘love’…Our morals, are all determined by how we were raised, our interactions with other people, and the interactions of God. And since god knew that we were going to intereact with possibly ‘bad’ people, or that our parents would not bring us up in a moral way. That our sense of morality is therefore what we have learned and the way we percieve things. And what we have learned, and all that is created is all from God?

Something has got to give…and it’s our false sense of free will.
Because to say that God chose who we are through our DNA is also false. For he knew the future when those purely evil were concieved. He could have changed it, therefore…we get into the situation of everything being interconnected. For it is this that determined the DNA of Hitler or Stalin, who slaughtered millions. Not the will of God. Or would you say it was Gods will that they be born, instead of it being Gods will that their mothers had still births and therefore would have saved the lives of millions. -Case in point, this is evidence against God existing at all or the will of the God.
 
Actually, evil itself is sort of transcendent in the sense that when one witnesses it, they can know they’re in the presence of something that “should not be”. And if people are capable of committing acts that “should not be” then this points to 1) free will, and 2) an order or law pertaining to how things “should be”, implying the existence of a law-giver who has the right to obedience-whose will is being ignored by the commission of every evil act made possible by the persons’ free will.

But people are culpable to varying degrees for their actions, depending on their knowledge, intelligence, background, etc. So scripture says that more is expected from those who’ve been given more.

There is no such thing as a purely evil human-just people who are so severely misled by their own lust for power or whatever that they place their own agendas far above the demands of love, choosing a lesser perceived good over a greater one. And the value we place on love can change- we can change as our perspective on it changes-as we learn of loves supreme value and begin to place it on the higher level it deserves. That’s really the point of our faith and the essence of conversion. And that’s the true purpose of our freedom.
 
concerneduser said:
(this is a current debate between me and a friend who is an ‘a la carte’ Catholic/ Christian and I need help defending free will)
-THANKS!!
Click to expand...
here is my defense of free will.

we live in a determinant universe where every change is simply the sum of previous changes to the state of the system. in a closed system if one knows the state at the beginning of the systems developement than one can predict with complete accuracy the state of that system at any point in the systems developement. so if free will is an illusion of any kind in this determinant universe the beginning state of the system must be such as to create that illusory free will, not once, but trillions of times per day, for tens of thousands of years, for no more reason than pure chance.

is this possible? yes, in the barest of mathematical senses, is it reasonable to believe such a thing is random? no, of course not. it would practically scream of an inteneded design.

so according to occams razor we should prefer the simplest answer. and occam says we simply have free will.

a side effect of this is that there is no real question if G-d exists. if free will is an illusion, then it is surely designed, and if it is not it breaks determinism and then is transcendental to the physical universe proving then that there are transcendental beings. not a giant leap to G-d.
 
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