Prayer....

[zephcom]

I'm not sure you could ever infer a cause outside of the universe, given that much of what occurs on the quantum level has completely unknown causes anyway. We don't know if quantum events are deterministic or not, so even if a being was influencing things at this level from outside the universe you wouldn't be able to tell.



I've heard people say this before but never really understood why they think it. I don't see how knowing the future and free will are incompatible. Just because you know someone's choice doesn't mean they weren't free in choosing it. Imagine I record a football game and watch it later but already know the score. I know what will happen but doesn't mean the players weren't free in choosing what to do when they played.

What destroys free will to me is if humans are just material beings. Is that your view or do you think we have an immaterial component, or "soul"?

I don't know that anyone would ever be able to positively identify anything outside the universe but if that -anything- was making changes such as a form of communication within the universe, those changes should be identifiable. If your physical mind is being communicated with, that communication would have to discoverable since your mind received it.

Knowing the future in general terms doesn't necessarily negate free will. For instance, science 'knows' the planet's temperature will continue to rise for a hundred years or more. They know that because they can analyse the effects of human life on the planet's history and project that into the future.

Knowing that, however, does not affect individual free will since that future is based on the behaviors of the people as a group and not individuals. When one knows the future in such detail that they can, with 100 percent accuracy, detail the actions of an individual, then free will vanishes.

It is the '100 percent accuracy' which destroys the illusion of free will. And, by our definition of God, His knowledge of the future would HAVE to accurate 100 percent of the time. He IS after, perfect.

If one is going to accept that 'prophecy' is accurate because it come from God, then one HAS to also accept that the future is as permanent as your taped football game. That means that every actor in that future, HAS to be born so ALL of his ancestors also HAD to be born. None of them had the free will to avoid any of those births or else human beings have the power to make God wrong.

And, if human beings have the ability to make God wrong, we have just dethroned God as an all knowing being.

Even if each of us BELIEVE we have options and are freely choosing, the reality is that we can never select any option other than the one God already knows we will take because taking any other option makes God wrong, then we don't have free will.

We only have the illusion of free will.

 

[zephcom]

What destroys free will to me is if humans are just material beings. Is that your view or do you think we have an immaterial component, or "soul"?

I see I didn't answer this question in my other post. Maybe it is better to make this a separate post anyway.

Yeah, I do think there is something beyond the material body. I think that who we truly are, as opposed to who we believe we are, is the spirit being which occupies the material body like a spaceman occupies a spacesuit. The spacesuit allows humans to explore places that we could otherwise not experience. Such is the case for the spirit being which would be unable to experience the physical realm without a physical realm 'body'.

But to anticipate a follow-up question, I also think that spirit being is a part of the known universe. It would have to be for it to occupy a physical realm body.