Maybe you aren't fooling yourself. Maybe free will is an illusion.
It's easy to say that "you" are the one who makes the decisions, but then who are "you"? The soul? The brain? Experiences and memories? Some combination thereof?
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Why would I assume I am fooling myself when I observe myself make a choice?
My decisions may be wrong, but I make them. It is not my experiences that makes them and I can and have made decisions that my experiences would make the other way or differently.
Maybe you aren't fooling yourself. Maybe free will is an illusion.
It's easy to say that "you" are the one who makes the decisions, but then who are "you"? The soul? The brain? Experiences and memories? Some combination thereof?
lets keep it simple. there's no logical reason to believe God is controlling our every action without us knowing it.
humans are spirit, soul, body. Pretty straightforwardagain... to say that mankind's freewill is just an illusion is all guesswork and there's no support for really any of it.
You should read my earlier comments.You could also consider the fact that the human brain is a complex network of neurons, which are composed of various biochemicals. Our "minds" could just be the emergent result of all the chemical reations that occur within the brain. If this is the case, we wouldn't really be making choices or have free will, because "making choices" is just chemicals reacting with other chemicals in neurons that affect other neurons.
as i said earlier. Being all-knowing and being all-planning are not dependent on each-other. We can know without a doubt how our day is going to go.... and still have it not meet our expectations. Just because God is all knowing doesn't mean he ordained absolutely everything. It's quite simple if you really think about it.Even if you ignore the scientific objections, you are still faced with a dilemma: is there no free will or is God not all-knowing? If you assume that God already knows all of our future choices with absolute certainty, then logically we can't make any other choices.
that's non-sense because there's clearly a third option. God is all knowing but he allows us to make choices. This is not a contradiction because you can know what your son is gonna do and still let him do it. God knew Adam and Eve would eat from the tree and the result of it all. Yet... this hardly means he controlled our destinies. He simply knew what was gonna happen. Why didn't God stop Adam and Eve than? He wanted to show that he had trust. Afterall.... This is AFTER God tells Adam "let them rule over all the fish in the sea and all the birds in the air". Put simply? Adam is king.... Adam is the ruler as of now and the earth belongs to him. To have God step in would be like telling your son "I trust you to take care of things while I'm gone" and than walk in on him and say "I know what you were gonna do! Stop that!". When God told Adam and Eve to rule... he put them in charge and trusted them.If God knew with absolute certainty that Adam and Eve would eat the fruit, it would have been logically impossible for them to not eat it.
That hardly sounds like "free will" to me.
The alternative is that God is not all-knowing
Dear Armistead. I enjoyed reading your interpretation of the fall of man, and some of your replies made me smile. I too, have thought and meditated similar, but may I point out one or differences? ( humbly and with love of course) God made us in His image, perfect in perfect love. God was always there, but Evil too. God always knew that the Evil one would try to tempt Adam and Eve into disobedience and disloyalty to Him, our Creator and God. We were banned to Earth to learn to love, love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind, as well to love each other, as we love ourselves, to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We all know what happened, instead of repenting we moved farther and farther away from God, who is all Love and wants us back again, but being well able to say NO to all temptation the world offers. In time Jesus came, lived amongst us for 33 years, showed us God really, and paid the price which God`s Holy Law demanded. Jesus reconciled us to God and is waiting to lead us back to God, and guide us all the way. Our price to pay is not easy, but can be achieved with the guidance of our Saviour. LOVE God, as he deserves to be loved, and learn to live in love and harmony together. We have the Lord`s Love, Joy and Peace, we must share it now. I say this with love and assurance, Armistead, and send greetings. Emmy, sister in Christ.
I think there's a difference between knowing and ordaining though. for example, lets say someone is taking you out on a date. You really wanna go out to eat at a very fancy restaurant. However... you already know how the night's gonna go. Your gonna sit down at a pizza parlor because that's what your date wants to do. Now... you know what is going to happen right? But it's clearly not what you desired. You can know the future and still have that future not meet your original desires. That's the problem with sharing your life with others. When you share your life with others things will happen that will not meet your expectations because there are other people with other desires of their own. the only way to have a perfect plan is to live alone and not even have a dog. Of course... no one wants to live alone. All this is the same with God. He choose to create because he wanted companionship and out of his mercy he is willing to let us turn and twist the story of life to a certain extant.
your only pointing out what is seen in the human mind. Yes... the brain is composed of chemicals. however.... how do you know there's not more to it? If you disect a dead human brain your might see this... but what happens when the brain inside a man is still livng? Yes... you'll notice the chemicals at work... but is that all there really is to it? I don't think we can say with confedence that thats the case.... because we are only examining what is seen.
This doesn't make sense. If we know without a doubt, it has to meet our expectations. If it doesn't, then we didn't know without a doubt..as i said earlier. Being all-knowing and being all-planning are not dependent on each-other. We can know without a doubt how our day is going to go.... and still have it not meet our expectations.
If that's the case, then there are things beyond His controlJust because God is all knowing doesn't mean he ordained absolutely everything. It's quite simple if you really think about it.
that's non-sense because there's clearly a third option. God is all knowing but he allows us to make choices. This is not a contradiction because you can know what your son is gonna do and still let him do it. God knew Adam and Eve would eat from the tree and the result of it all. Yet... this hardly means he controlled our destinies. He simply knew what was gonna happen. Why didn't God stop Adam and Eve than? He wanted to show that he had trust. Afterall.... This is AFTER God tells Adam "let them rule over all the fish in the sea and all the birds in the air". Put simply? Adam is king.... Adam is the ruler as of now and the earth belongs to him. To have God step in would be like telling your son "I trust you to take care of things while I'm gone" and than walk in on him and say "I know what you were gonna do! Stop that!". When God told Adam and Eve to rule... he put them in charge and trusted them.
it's simple:
1. God knows
2. Humans make bad choices
3. God lets it happen because he wants to give us that freedom.
it's hard to understand but I think if you think in very simple terms you'll began to understand it.
My argument was not about what God desires, but what God knows.You may know how your day is gonna go... but does that mean that's what you originally desired?? By no means!
I'm not saying that you can reduce the mind to just biology (at least not yet). However, you should keep in mind that Phineas Gage, people with lobotomies, those exposed to mercury, people with brain damange and others have experienced biological changes that observably changed they way they acted. If there is a soul that makes decisions, it is observably overpowered by biology.
nope! Our expectations of what is gonna happen has alot to do with what we desire... our knowledge we have no control over. we may know it... but we have no control over it. I may sound like I'm downsizing God's sovernty... but consider this. If we have no free will why is God calling out to us in the prophetic books? I thought he could control us? Apparently he can't.This doesn't make sense. If we know without a doubt, it has to meet our expectations. If it doesn't, then we didn't know without a doubt..
not so much out of his control as much as stuff he refuses to control. He gave humanity a real life and gave it as a gift. God is no indian giver. If life is 100% gift than it's US who chooses how to use that gift.If that's the case, then there are things beyond His control
I think your thinking to deep about this. God knew Adam and Eve would eat the fruit because they choose to eat it. It had nothing to do with God's eternal insight. It was pure choice in it's smallest form. If God would've stopped them than yes... God would've known that he would've stopped them... but that still doesn't eliminate Adam and Eve's free will. It drives it further because in this sense God has to intervene. If God has to intervene on his own sovernty than God is 2 faced.My argument was not that God doesn't allow us to make choices, but that logic doesn't.
By your logic, Adam and Eve still didn't have free will because it was impossible for them to not eat the fruit. If God knew (with absolute certainty) that Adam and Eve would eat the fruit, He could not have stopped them from doing so. If He did stop them, He would have refuted His own all-knowingness. Also, if Adam and Eve could have chosen to not eat the fruit, then God's all-knowingness would have been refuted.
I guess the quistion here is can free choice and eternal insight co-exist together? I don't see why they can't.it's simple:
Rule 1: God knows the future with absolute certainty.
Rule 2: Humans must make decisions that are in concordance with Rule 1. Humans do not have the free will to decide otherwise because that would violate Rule 1.
The only way that people would be able to make their own decisions would be if Rule 1 was false.
yes... but you can also know the apple will be caught by someone... but you could at the same time desire the apple NOT to be caught. Think of it as 2 realities. World one is what God originally intended, world 2 is what is actually reality. God knows both worlds, but world 2 is shaped by man's own free will while world 1 is shaped by God's design.If I see an apple falling from a tree, I can predict that it will hit the ground. However, someone could still catch the apple, thus proving my prediction to be false. By contrast, the certain knowledge of the future that God has can never be false by its nature.
I don't believe we can change the future, but I do believe our future was built by us.
I can observe that I can chose to be loving or not loving. Can you not observe the same thing?
Why would I assume I am fooling myself when I observe myself make a choice?
Maybe you aren't fooling yourself. Maybe free will is an illusion.
It's easy to say that "you" are the one who makes the decisions, but then who are "you"? The soul? The brain? Experiences and memories? Some combination thereof?
lets keep it simple. there's no logical reason to believe God is controlling our every action without us knowing it.
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