Only logged in members can reply and interact with the post.
Join SimilarWorlds for FREE 禄

I just don't get how we can have free will in a universe where God already knows what will happen because that means it was always going to happen. [Spirituality & Religion]

[quote]Your eyes saw me before I was put together. And all the days of my life were written in Your book before any of them came to be.
[/quote]
Psalms 139:16

If everything i'll ever do is written down before i'm even born, then how do i actually have free will rather than just the illusions that i am acting under free will along a path set before me?
FreeSpirit151-55, F
Yes you do, you're being disingenuous so you can stir the shit pot with Religious people.

馃ぃ
ViciDraco36-40, M
@FreeSpirit1 Florida, in the United States
FreeSpirit151-55, F
@ViciDraco Which laws are being passed that worry you? I thought you were going to say some Muslim run country with religious nuts running things
ViciDraco36-40, M
@FreeSpirit1 anti gay laws, laws that violate women's reproductive rights are the big ones today. They've already got special tax exemption for religion. Biblical law has stuff just as bad as Muslim law. Our society is just advanced enough to ignore them. But backsliding becomes a risk.
SharonF
You don't. If everything is predetermined, you have no power to change it. Luckily that quote comes from a book of myths and superstitions, it's all fiction, not to be taken seriously.
@Sharon

Yeah that's the problem i'm having. But free will is necessary to the foundation of the bible.
GodSpeed6361-69, M
Not necessarily. He is all knowing which means, He knows from the beginning to end what will happen if mankind fell and if mankind didn't fall. Since the latter didn't happen, God made a plan to save mankind through His Son, Jesus Christ, by His Holy Spirit. Anyone who chooses to receive God's good gift of salvation will be saved.
GodSpeed6361-69, M
@Sharon [quote] I'm telling you that. [/quote]

You'd be lying then, Sharon.
SharonF
@GodSpeed63 No, you're lying. Denying that fact when the evidence is clear for eveyone to see just makes you look stupid as well as being a liar. Anyone who doubts I'm telling the truth when I say there is no member of this site called "yahweh" can easily check for themselves.
GodSpeed6361-69, M
@Sharon [quote]No, you're lying.[/quote]

Whatever. 馃檮
Coralmist41-45, F
I feel the same way. Do we truly have free will. It's strange, I feel on one hand, we can SOMEWHAT choose things in life, but was it OUR choice???? say a person grows up very wealthy and can have their tuition all taken care of by parents at an Ivy League school. If they choose to go, that choice was there because of their foundation ALREADY, and their assets their parents had. Could I choose to go? No I have nothing compared to that. So if some one said to me, well you didn't choose a better path or a better this or that, it was not truly MY CHOOSING in life. You know what I mean? And then I wonder ARE our lives already determined? If so then there's surely no free will. One of my favorite author Byron Katie says, WE are not doing things, we are being done. (By source, universe) I liked that a lot.
@Coralmist

Yeah i guess it would be impossible to know whether you were acting with free will or just thinking you were even though you're essentially nothing more than an organism reacting to stimulus.
ViciDraco36-40, M
@Coralmist I am actually a determinist. I believe that we don't really have free will. We just don't have a high enough understanding of the inputs to predict the outcomes. But as biological machines we are still just reacting to our environments based on past stimuli. However, even the belief in free will is critical to how events deterministically play out.
@ViciDraco

I'm honestly not convinced one way or the other yet.
PrivateHellM
If you are truly interested, I can try to explain. But if all you (or others) want to do is argue and ridicule beliefs, I haven't got the time for that kind of nonsense.
@PrivateHell

But if i was always going to make that choice (because god couldn't be wrong about what i was going to choose) then was it really a choice? If the end is already known then what possibility is there to take a different choice?

I guess to me it's the foreknowledge of it that makes it seem like predetermination rather than a record of choices.
PrivateHellM
@Pikachu you are faced with option "A" or option "B". God knows you well enough to know that you will most likely choose "B", and He already knows that if you do "XYZ" will happen. But, if for some reason you choose option "A" then He knows that "ABC" will happen. Knowing all this doesn't mean you don't have a choice. It just means He already knows the outcome no matter what you decide.

I hope this helps. And thanks for remaining civil.
@PrivateHell

Thanks. I'm not sure that it convinces me but it is a notion to ponder.
I like this article. It sums up the conclusions I came to myself a while about about God not being able to have free will either.
http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/god_has_no_free_will.html
@canusernamebemyusername

Hmm that's a very interesting perspective on it. I hadn't thought about it that way.
SatyrServiceM
That you do not accept, the programming of the religious oppresors, is ultimately a better thiing

Mind what you say, thhey still burn witches by other means
Pseudonym26-30, M
I'd argue that a sufficiently complex universe, even if evolving through 'predetermined' states, is indistinguishable from a universe who's future states are not predetermined, assuming the future states are incalculable from within the closed system. In other words, it doesn't really matter.
@Pseudonym

Well i'd agree that you probably can't tell the difference and to many non-believers i can agree that it wouldn't make a difference.
But in the context of Christianity, free will is necessary because otherwise god is just a sadistic tyrant punishing creatures who never had any option to act other than they have.
Pseudonym26-30, M
@Pikachu In the context of Christianity, logic isn't required.
This message was deleted by its author.
This message was deleted by its author.
@SpiritualMan

Well thanks, i try.
I guess for me it's the foreknowledge of the events of your life which makes it difficult to separate it from predestination.
This message was deleted by its author.

 
Post Comment