Why did God create me if he knew I would spend an eternity in hell?

[benedictus2]

Not just those events but every other one as well. Everything down to the smallest movement of subatomic structures. If God has the previously mentioned characteristics then by definition nothing can happen which he didn’t intend to happen.

It does not mean that at all. What it means is that nothing can happen which He did not ALLOW to happen. There’s a big difference between intend and allow.

Otherwise he made a mistake.

Not a mistake. He allowed people free will because He knows He can make something good out of people’s mistakes, not His.

Ok, but I don’t make those kinds of claims (I don’t believe in any God, let alone one which has those characteristics). However, you seem to have realised one of the key results of these four characteristics. Which is that individuals could not be responsible for their actions.

Well no, I did not realize the results of those characteristics. I showed you the error in your thinking.

It does not follow that just because God is omnipotent and omniscient then He is responsible for your actions. You chose to do what you chose to do.

Suppose you decided to kill someone. But you are aware that God has commanded that you should not kill. Explain to me how He is responsible for your killing someone when you are very much aware of His will - do not kill.

Just like the toy train driver. Hence God “punishing” the toy train driver would be immoral.

How did we get to “punishing”. First off, God does not punish. The evil effects of our actions are consequences built into them.

If the train got derailed and the driver got killed, then it will be a punishment for his action but the consequence of it.

Many times in fact, God does not deliver us to the consequences of our actions.

Right, and he has in fact designed my soul in a way which means I won’t do millions of things and will do exactly every thing that I will do in my life.*

No, he designed you with free will. Free to choose good and free to choose evil. He designed a free soul.

Along side that free will are His commands which you are told to follow. These are commands towards the good. If you don’t follow them, it was your choice and you choice alone not to.

He allows you to make that choice.

So we seem to be reaching agreement here. Free will is an illusion if God exists and has those characteristics.

Not even close. God exists and has those characteristics but free will is real.

You have not been able to make a case.

Ok, but as previously discussed that would in itself not be sufficient to grant us free will.

What has sufficiency got to do with it? He granted us free will period. He didn’t have to but He chose to.

He would need to have limited his own omniscience as well.

Not necessarily. You have not been able to establish the necessity of that.

Right, I’m fine with God choosing to give away some of his omnipotence. but in your example the subjects have free will because their king does not have the four specified characteristics.

Well then, let’s suppose that this king has the four specified characteristics.

Think about the scenario and it will still fit.

No, I think that actually is part of the problem. I’m thinking of God having what I would call omniscience which is knowledge of everything at every point in time as well as every permutation of possibilities dependent on his own actions.

The eternal Now is not about having knowledge about every point in time. The Eternal Now is like saying that past, present and future are all happening at the same time. So there is no such thing as seeing into the future because the future is happening in the present.

It is hard to conceive because we are constrained by time and space.

You seem to be imagining some kind of mist which obscures Gods omniscience regarding human decisions. Clearly if that existed God would not be omniscient.*

No I’m not. I don’t even know which part of my post gave you such an idea.

If you are saying that the God you believe in is not truly omniscient and has taken away from himself the omnipotence to interfere with human choices then I agree that humans can have free will.

No that is not what I said.

As per my previous statement of God only being able to have 2 out of 4 if we are to have free will.*

According to you but not in reality. You have not be able to prove your thesis convincingly.

 

[benedictus2]

Benedictus, many, many Catholics and Christians [Leo XIII, Augustine et al] have said the residents of heaven (angels and saints) cannot choose evil.

That is true. You know why, because their will has been perfected in Christ. As I said earlier, theosis. In the same manner that Son wiil not disobey the Father, so too those who have been perfected in the Son.

In fact, as an aside, this idea has given rise to what is known as ‘the problem of heaven’, which has to do with the fact that God could therefore create a realm in which the greatest goods are realized but in which no one has the ability to cause or choose evil, so why didn’t he? How is a world with less good, tons of evil and suffering, better than all of us existing in heaven from the get go?

Actually, if you follow Christian teaching, the devil was an angel, and was therefore a resident of heaven. But still he defied God.

So the choice was there.

But, to answer your question, no. These Christians would probably respond by saying to be without this ability is not to be God,

The ability is still there but the desire no longer is.

it’s to have your intellect and will totally orientated towards the good, something Christians hope for, and which God already has.

I’d re-phrase that. It’s to have your intellect and will totally subjected toward the Good (capital G) which is God.

 

[sw85]

If the soul is not “you,” what is?

If you are a soul, how can you possibly have one?

The soul of man is simply the form of man. The form of a thing cannot exist independent of its substance.

Hmm, if the ability to choose an evil is a defining characteristic of ‘free-will’ and God doesn’t have this ability, then God doesn’t have free-will?

“St. Augustine and others urged most admirably against the Pelagians that, if the possibility of deflection from good belonged to the essence or perfection of liberty, then God, Jesus Christ, and the angels and saints, who have not this power, would have no liberty at all, or would have less liberty than man has in his state of pilgrimage and imperfection.” - Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum

That’s an old theological question and, I think, one of the ones we’re simply going to have to attribute to part of the great divine mystery. Aquinas, incidentally, had an argument about it:

Objection 1. It seems that God has not free-will. For Jerome says, in a homily on the prodigal son [Ep. 146, ad Damas.]; “God alone is He who is not liable to sin, nor can be liable: all others, as having free-will, can be inclined to either side.”

Objection 2. Further, free-will is the faculty of the reason and will, by which good and evil are chosen. But God does not will evil, as has been said (9). Therefore there is not free-will in God.

On the contrary, Ambrose says (De Fide ii, 3): “The Holy Spirit divideth unto each one as He will, namely, according to the free choice of the will, not in obedience to necessity.”

I answer that, We have free-will with respect to what we will not of necessity, nor be natural instinct. For our will to be happy does not appertain to free-will, but to natural instinct. Hence other animals, that are moved to act by natural instinct, are not said to be moved by free-will. Since then God necessarily wills His own goodness, but other things not necessarily, as shown above (Article 3), He has free will with respect to what He does not necessarily will.

Reply to Objection 1. Jerome seems to deny free-will to God not simply, but only as regards the inclination to sin.

Reply to Objection 2. Since the evil of sin consists in turning away from the divine goodness, by which God wills all things, as above shown (De Fide ii, 3), it is manifestly impossible for Him to will the evil of sin; yet He can make choice of one of two opposites, inasmuch as He can will a thing to be, or not to be. In the same way we ourselves, without sin, can will to sit down, and not will to sit down.

I admit my ability to grasp Aquinas is a bit shaky but I see this, essentially, as compatibilism. God can will what He wants; but He cannot will what he wills – which is, necessarily, goodness.

Personally, I see the discussion about God’s goodness as a little above our pay grade, anyway. Our understanding of goodness derives from our nature – that is, it is good that things act in accordance with their ends, and the end of a thing is informed by its essence. But God points to no end: God is the end.

The problem with this thought is that evil is actually defined in reference to God.
God has free will. His will is Good. Going against his will is evil.

I disagree that this is the case, at least directly. Goodness derives from our nature, not from God’s command (except insofar as our nature reflects God’s will). If God commanded man to hate Him, would it be good for man to hate?

 

[vz71]

vz: I’m not sure many would accept that definition of evil, Leo XIII certainly didn’t.

OK, but without God as the reference, how are you to define good or evil?

 

[Candide_West]

Sorry but no. You have not convincingly shown that we don’t have free will if God is omniscient.

…Nor have I tried to. What I have done is shown that if God possesses a full set of four characteristics, then free will is an illusion.*

At the most all you can say is that God knew we will be good/bad/love/hate and allowed us to will goodness/badness/love/hatred.

No, the least you can say is that if God is omniscient then he knew every last detail of your life when he was designing your soul. He also knew every permutation of every possible moment of your life and how it depended on how he designed it. And he decided to design it exactly as he did, knowing exactly what could be changed in your life by any given tweak to the design of your soul.*

As David’s incisive post said, you are equating knowledge with causation.

As my reply explained, I’m not. If you can see anywhere I have done this please let me know.*

You seem to be struggling with the fact that you are unable to make a case for that statement.

I have already made my case and to date nobody has provided a convincing response to it. Indeed you don’t even appear to be trying to but instead retreating into silliness in this post.*

This is suggested by your insistence that because God is omniscient and omnipotent we are therefore robots

No, again as I gave explained. There are FOUR characteristics which if God possesses all of them then free will is an illusion. If God was just omnipotent and omniscient but didn’t create us and didn’t intervene in the universe in any way then we have full free will, since effectively God in that case would have nothing to do with us or our behaviour. He would simply be a super powerful external observer.

So I presume your girlfriend/boyfriend was forced upon you, your job was not your choice and some deity must be holding a gun to your head which is the reason you post in this thread.

Now this is where you have descended into silliness. Obviously, as I have already explained, I believe I have free will, because I do not believe any Gods exist. Let alone one with the four characteristics specified. IF I believed that the catholic God existed then I would have to concede that my free will is an illusion.

Perhaps if you imagine the train driver is actually in control of the train because surprise, surprise he can control the train and the reason he is not in control was because he’d gotten himself mighty drunk.*

Oh, that’s right. It was God’s fault that he’d decided to drink himself to oblivion.

Again outright silliness. I am beginning to suspect that you are not seeking understanding in this conversation.*

Is this how you off load your culpability for your wrong doings? God made me do it.

As above, obviously I do nothing of the sort. I believe I am 100% responsible for my own actions. I have no choice since I don’t believe any Gods exist.*

So if you should happen to drive while intoxicated and kill a passerby in the process well, that was God’s fault. *Forget about the fact that you know that drinking and driving just don’t mix.

More silliness. As above (unsurprisingly) *I do not blame an entity which I don’t think exists for my actions. That would be rather absurd.

Sad. You must be in prison then, unable to think for himself, unable to make a choice. *If that is so then I don’t know if I should keep talking to you since I want to talk the Candide West who thinks for himself, not Candide West the robot.

And more silliness.*

 

[Perplexity]

vz: Personally? I don’t want to derail the thread so I won’t defend the moral theory I adhere to; but, I’m a non-cognitivist. I think ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are moral values, and ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are moral expectations/obligations. So, ‘evil’ is an evaluative concept. e.g., when I point to an object and say ‘That’s tall’ I’m describing its quantity. When I call it evil, I’m not talking about any aspect of it which occupies space. I’m describing its value. I think (x) is evil if its exemplification is undesirable, it’s wrong if it should not be exemplified.

 

[Lookup]

I think an important thing to remember is that God does not work in time like we do. To us a year ago is the past and tomorrow is the future. From what I’ve gathered, it’s understood by many theologians that to God everything is present… Meaning to Him “now” is the crucifixion, ‘now’ it is also your third birthday, as well as this moment right now, and something happening 100 years in the future. Everything is the present to God.

Understanding that, helps one to understand that God doesn’t just look at anyone’s life when he creates them knowing that they are destined for hell and say “oh well” and plop them on the earth anyway. He is with each and every one of us at every moment of our lives waiting for us to conform our will to His. God cannot see into the future because to God there is no future, only now.

 

[Magnavox]

Lets say that I reject God and choose to spend an eternity in hell. He knew I would make this choice, and yet he still made me.

If he loved me so much, why would he make me knowing that I would spend an eternity away from him?

I think the answer to your question is this.

Because he is God and he can do as he pleases. The clay has no power over the potter.

Romans 9:20; But who indeed are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Will what is made say to its maker,“Why have you created me so?”
Romans 9:21; Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for a noble purpose and another for an ignoble one?

 

[afiala2]

I didn’t desire to be created. God created me, and he knew I would go to hell. Free will aside. I Understand free will. I get to choose, but the fact is, God knows the outcome. He knows the path that my free will takes me, so why create something if you know it will fail?

Free will is a gift God gave us. It is freely up to us how to use this gift. Why would God want or allow people in heaven that don’t want to be there and why is someone who wants to go to hell upset about not being forced to be in heaven? Evil exists because of free will. An All-Good and All-Knowing God knew it would be more perfect to allow us to choose and not be forced to be good. Therefore, evil exists because of free will and people choose to go to hell. God doesn’t send people to hell, people choose to ignore God’s will knowing the result of their actions.

Don’t ever assume you are going to hell. All you need to do is be open to God’s Grace in the sacraments. If it was easy to be good, everyone would be.

We choose our own outcome, God just wants you to choose His desired outcome for you.
If you know then God knows, you don’t always get what you want. Even though God knows people will go to hell, that doesn’t mean He didn’t want everyone to be good and to go to heaven. But He does know it is a greater gift to get to Heaven through the gift of free will.

 

[vz71]

vz: Personally? I don’t want to derail the thread so I won’t defend the moral theory I adhere to; but, …

Exactly. Without a concrete basis for good and evil, we are left with a bunch of personal theories of what someone’s own morality is.

For the purposes of the question, God must exist. And as such, there is the concrete place to define evil and good from.
The fact that God cannot choose evil is not a limitation of God, but a property of evil.

 

[benedictus2]

…Nor have I tried to. What I have done is shown that if God possesses a full set of four characteristics, then free will is an illusion.*

No you haven’t been able to show that. The only reason you think you have is because you’ve confused “intend” with “allow.”

No, the least you can say is that if God is omniscient then he knew every last detail of your life when he was designing your soul. He also knew every permutation of every possible moment of your life and how it depended on how he designed it.

And he decided to design it exactly as he did, knowing exactly what could be changed in your life by any given tweak to the design of your soul.*

Knowing every possible permutation of your life still does NOT mean He designed your choices. That is something that seems to elude you.

All it means is He knows that you will make those choices. It does not necessarily follow that because He knows you will make those choices, this knowledge was based on His wiring of those choices into you.

As I keep saying, David was spot on in his succinct comment about your post.

 

[benedictus2]

I have already made my case and to date nobody has provided a convincing response to it. Indeed you don’t even appear to be trying to but instead retreating into silliness in this post.*

No you have not made your case. It is because you can’t even see the flaw in your thinking that you think you have done so.

So let me explain this slowly so that you can follow what I think and so you will know where your error lies.

**Firstly, **the reason you fail to grasp this very simple thing is because you think of God building this track and setting this train on this one way track and the train just goes down this track unable to change course.

A more apt analogy is God putting you in command of this train and this train is set NOT on this single track that ends at the tip of the cliff BUT rather on a junction. One track goes towards the ravine and the other goes up towards the mountain to Him.

The driver is in charge of the steering wheel and he alone decides which track to take as he sits on this junction: the left that goes to the ravine or the right that leads up to the mountain to God.

So I hope at this point you see the error of your analogy.

Secondly, as human’s we make robots unable too think for themselves. But suppose we are Omnipotent Creators, able to make beings who are able to completely, freely chose and decide what to do? (Stop here for a while and think about that).

Does that mean that we have programmed into them what they will choose and decide? Of course not. We have made them able to think and decide for themselves and we thought what ever they decide, we will not stop them.

Suppose too, that we are omniscient and could see that by letting them make decisions for themselves, they can choose either evil or goodness. But, we can also see that in the future they will choose to create havoc. Does that mean that they chose to create havoc because we programmed into them to choose create havoc? Nothing could be more absurd based on what we have said about giving them free choice.

So that’s three characteristics (Creatior, Omnipotence, Omniscience) taken cared of and we still retain free will.

Now to the third point.
Intervention. This is not so much a characteristic but a - shall we say - possibility that proceeds from omnipotence. We can intervene if we so wish because we are omnipotent.

Here’s something you completely missed - **Could does not mean Would. **We certainly could intervene but it does not mean that we would. We can if we chose to, but we can choose not to. There is nothing in “Intervention” (which you mis-labelled as a characteristics) that says that just because God can intervene it means that He has and is forced to intervene and that He does intervene.

God does intervene with world but it does not mean that He intervenes with human will.

Here is an example of intervention. I freely chose to smash the vase by dropping it on the floor. Someone intervened in the smashing of the vase not by stopping me (interfering with my will) but by quickly catching the vase.

So there you are. All 4 “characteristics” taken cared of and yes, we still retain free will.

So again David’s incisive comment to you proves true – you are equating knowledge with causation.

 

[LSK]

I think we are missing something else in this discussion:

We know that hell exists because Jesus told us that could be our possible eternal home if we were to die in a state of mortal sin.

However, unlike heaven, we have never - as a Church - compiled a list of human beings who are in hell.

For all we know, because of God’s infinite mercy and the possible repentance of those in the process of dying, hell is full only of those beings’ whose choice to do evil was permanent - the fallen angels.

So…maybe God created you knowing you would NOT spend eternity in hell…just a heckuva long time in Purgatory.

 

[Candide_West]

It does not mean that at all. What it means is that nothing can happen which He did not ALLOW to happen. There’s a big difference between intend and allow.

Ok, we seem to be struggling to communicate clearly here. How about I present again, as clearly as I can my case and you identify as specifically as you can what failings or errors you can identify. Ok?

For the purposes of brevity I will write this as though God exists and has the specified characteristics although obviously I do not believe this to be the case.*

1. Whether and individual goes to heaven or hell is dependent on the things they do and decisions they make in their life.
2. What a person does in their life and the decisions they make is dependent on two things - who that person is and the situations they experience. In other words, the internal and external.
3. God determines who an individual is as he creates their “soul”. He therefore defines the internal element.

Arguments of diminished responsibility due to an individual being a combination of a soul and biology do not work as (being omniscient) God must know how an individual will be affected by any given combination of biology and soul.*

Unless of course the “soul” has little or nothing to do with who a person is (in which case he could not really be said to have anything significant to do with creating an individual) or God has no choice in how he creates each soul (in which case he is not omnipotent).

1. God determines what situations an individual will experience during their life. This is because…

God is at the beginning of every line of causality. This is because he created everything that exists. As he is omnipotent he could have created any part of the universe in any way. As he is omniscient he knew how each an every variation in what he could have created would cause variation throughout all time.

As he is also interventionist he changes things in the universe periodically. Through extended chains of causality resulting from each and every available intervention God would therefore necessarily fine tune the events which unfold in each individuals life.

Arguments of diminished responsibility on the basis of the extended chain of causality do not apply since God is omniscient and therefore the entire chain of causality must necessarily be visible to him. Both from every available fine tuning in creation and every available fine tuning in interventions.

Thus God is responsible for the situations in which and individual finds themselves. Thus God is responsible for the external factors too.

1. Thus a God with the identified characteristics is responsible for every situation which an individual encounters during their life and how that individual will respond to that situation.

Thus each and every event which occurs in the universe as well as each and every decision made by each and every person is the result of an action by God. Since God is aware of every consequence of his every action he must bear ultimate responsibility for every consequence of his every action, or to put it another way - everything that happens. The individual people who experience the things he caused to happen are therefore not responsible for it, God is.

1. Therefore free will is an illusion since all decisions of any significance are made by God in advance by determining the factors specified in 2. Thus it is in fact God who determines in advance of any “choices” made by an individual including whether that individual will become a mass murderer or a saint and accordingly whether they will go to heaven or hell.

Thoughts?

 

[benedictus2]

I have already made my case and to date nobody has provided a convincing response to it. Indeed you don’t even appear to be trying to but instead retreating into silliness in this post.*

As explained in my previous post, you perceive this as siliness because you are unable to see the error in your way of thinking.

You should have thought long and hard before you replied to DavidV’s post.

No, again as I gave explained. There are FOUR characteristics which if God possesses all of them then free will is an illusion.

Again, only because you fail to see how illogical your line of thinking is. You keep piling up non-sequiturs.

If God was just omnipotent and omniscient but didn’t create us and didn’t intervene in the universe in any way then we have full free will, since effectively God in that case would have nothing to do with us or our behaviour. He would simply be a super powerful external observer.

No, because you misinterpret intervention with intervening with our free will.

I think that you think like this: For God to create some good He must intervene with the choices we make so that we make only good choices.

You are unable to conceive that God can make something good even out of the evil choices we make.

God intervenes in the universe alright, but he does not meddle with our free will because that was His choice - to give us free will

Now this is where you have descended into silliness. Obviously, as I have already explained, I believe I have free will, because I do not believe any Gods exist. Let alone one with the four characteristics specified. IF I believed that the catholic God existed then I would have to concede that my free will is an illusion.

No I have not descended into silliness but you, have gotten yourself even more deeply mired in illogicality.

Just because you do not believe there is a God does not mean that there isn’t one, therefore it does not mean that your free will derives from the non-existence of God.

To make that clearer for you :
Person A (to Person B who happens to be limping): You’re limping because the tooth fairy waved her magic wand on you.

Person B: You are such a silly woman. I am limping because I don’t believe in the tooth fairy.

Again outright silliness. I am beginning to suspect that you are not seeking understanding in this conversation.*

I have understanding of this conversation but it seems you haven’t. If you had taken time to ponder DavidV’s response you would have better understanding. Also, you need to analyze your own post so you will know where its flaws are.

More silliness. As above (unsurprisingly) *I do not blame an entity which I don’t think exists for my actions. That would be rather absurd.

On that one, I think you are right and your response quite rational.

 

[benedictus2]

Ok, we seem to be struggling to communicate clearly here. How about I present again, as clearly as I can my case and you identify as specifically as you can what failings or errors you can identify. Ok?

For the purposes of brevity I will write this as though God exists and has the specified characteristics although obviously I do not believe this to be the case.*

1. Whether and individual goes to heaven or hell is dependent on the things they do and decisions they make in their life.
2. What a person does in their life and the decisions they make is dependent on two things - who that person is and the situations they experience. In other words, the internal and external.
3. God determines who an individual is as he creates their “soul”. He therefore defines the internal element.

I thought I reply to this before reading further on because you seem to have a strange view of what creating the soul means.

The individual is not “set” or “determined” when the soul is created.

When the soul is created, it is given free will and this free will helps shapes the soul. That is why we have terms like “growth” and 'spiritual growth".

As the soul says yes to God, it becomes more conformed to God such it becomes easier to give further yeses. As the soul says no to God, it becomes harder to say yes to God. The soul therefore grows either away or closer to God.

There is also the action of grace but that will complicated this discussion.​

N.B. I have read further on (of your post) but because of the flaw on this third one, the other following points do not apply.

This third point is crucial to your understanding of the rest.

 

[Candide_West]

No you have not made your case. It is because you can’t even see the flaw in your thinking that you think you have done so.
…

I’ll leave responding to these until you’ve seen my most recent attempt to clarify for you. Hopefully that will make it apparent to you that I haven’t made the knowledge = cause error which you keep referring to. As I said if you think I have made errors please identify what and where.

Thanks

 

[Big_Dummy]

you have the choice not to spend eternity in hell by repenting and following Jesus.

 

[benedictus2]

I’ll leave responding to these until you’ve seen my most recent attempt to clarify for you. Hopefully that will make it apparent to you that I haven’t made the knowledge = cause error which you keep referring to. As I said if you think I have made errors please identify what and where.

Thanks

I have read it and have done a partial reply. Refer my post 196.

By the way, I commented on point 3 but my comment applies to part of point 2 as well.

Since your last paragraph says that everything hinges on point 2, then my post 196 basically addressed your entire post.

 

[Candide_West]

I thought I reply to this before reading further on because you seem to have a strange view of what creating the soul means.

The individual is not “set” or “determined” when the soul is created.

When the soul is created, it is given free will and this free will helps shapes the soul. *That is why we have terms like “growth” and 'spiritual growth".

As the soul says yes to God, it becomes more conformed to God such it becomes easier to give further yeses. *As the soul says no to God, it becomes harder to say yes to God. The soul therefore grows either away or closer to God.

There is also the action of grace but that will complicated this discussion.​

N.B. I have read further on (of your post) but because of the flaw on this third one, the other following points do not apply.

This third point is crucial to your understanding of the rest.*

Excellent, progress. I’ll reply to this post and ignore your others if you don’t mind since this seems to represent the high water mark in progress in this conversation to date (and in truth this conversation is taking much more time than I originally expected to make such a simple point).

Essentially you have said that the soul is not fixed at the point at which God creates it. Ok, that seems logical, however I do not think it makes any difference unless you are saying that the souls which come from God are all carbon copies of each other. Because if God has the ability to adjust to any extent the nature of an individuals soul then that is the extent to which he has direct control over the internal aspects covered in my point 3. Since he knows the full consequences of any variation in how a soul is made he must have responsibility for those consequences.

As for the change in the soul over time (the yeses and no’s) where / when do these occur? If these are while the person is alive then it would seem that you have simply adjusted the weighting between point 3. and point 4. to make God being the start of every line of causation as more important than I had realised.

If the souls he gives people are entirely carbon copies of each other. Then that means that point 3. effective disappears and point 4. is in itself the entire reason that God is responsible for everything.*

This is because it would mean that instead of entering the world with an element of pre-existing soul we would be coming in as effectively a blank slate or at least as the same as everyone else. And it is only the experiences we have on earth which differentiates our souls.*

Now since we covered in 4. That God is the start of every line of causation then that means he determined how each individuals soul would shape through their life by having determined every event they would experience.*

Seems to lead to the exact same conclusion.*