What does “Free Will” mean?

I have to go for awhile, my arm is starting to swell up like a suck pig and it's hurting badly, gonna take some pain meds, ibuprophren fir swellling, and I'm packing some ice around righ now...

try tp get back later, migh not say much more for now though...

God Bless!

Neogaia777 said:

By the end of these movies as an outer example, in the first movie on it, it is all about man's free will and choice empowering them through Neo, but by the time the second starts, Morpheus even mentions that the reason why many of them were there or were supposedly free, was because of their shared affinity for rebelliousness or disobedience, ect, then there are characters like the Merovingian who talks all about "causality" (cause and effect, or supposed choice and consequence, ect) how they are all slaves to it, ect, no escaping it, ect, then by the end of the second movie after Neo's meeting with the Architect, ect (where maybe, or by the end of the movie it is revealed that only that one single choice, which was only one of two choices, made by Neo alone, and only right at that time with Architect, might have been the only true choice any of them ever made ever, throughout any of the entire three movies, by any of them... it is revealed that, by and at the end of the third that that might have been the one and only real true choice by anyone, but by the ending of the third movie of the series and the conclusion that was maybe never any of any or all of them, was any real true choice made anyone at all, Neo and Agent Smith, none of them maybe never, ever made any real true choice at all... and it is ultimately Neo's telling Agent Smith that (by or at the end of the final battle between them) that Neo beats Him (Agent Smith) at the end, by telling Agent Smith that he was right and was always right, then submits to Agent Smith and is how he (Neo) ultimately beats Smith, stops the attack on Zion and wins the biggest battle and war perhaps ever up to that point costing Neo (and Smith) their lives...along with many others, but then peace and a new and better world by that, by the end... And was it choice...? or was any of it really and real, true choice at all, truth is IDK..? if they ever truly figured it or that out for sure... maybe you should watch the series again...? And you tell me...?

God Bless

Click to expand...

They seemed to be needing a much higher intelligence would need to be involved to truly answer that, but there just wasn't one like that in it, so...

perhaps we are still left wondering, but it was a very good try though and still offers a great deal of insight (also tied into a great and highly entertaining action movie/story) on the subject (as well)...

GB!

Neogaia777 said:

I have to go for awhile, my arm is starting to swell up like a suck pig and it's hurting badly, gonna take some pain meds

Click to expand...

Hope the pain meds kick in quickly.

What is dumb about denying free will entirely for a person choosing God at some point in their life (Which I believe is under a special time of drawing by God) is that it puts the blame all on God for everything. Rick sins because God chooses Him to sin. Bob is saved and does righteousness because God made Him to be that way. Nobody is really responsible for anything. For what purpose would there be for a judgment if God was the One who put them in that place to begin with and they could not help it? That would be like having a judgment for wolves or other animals. It doesn't make any sense. Calvinism is an illogical theology that is enforced to meet the personalities of those who choose to believe in it. It cannot be found in the Bible. Only Romans 9 and 2-3 other verses taken out of context supports this kind of odd and forced belief that attacks the good character of the Lord our God. I think it is a bit of an understatement to say hundreds of verses in the Bible refute Calvinism. Take for example God's commandments. What in the world does a commandment serve if we are all forced to do what God wants us to do against our own free will? A commandment is useless in Calvinism theology. It is a deception. What about the Ninevites? God was going to bring wrath and destruction upon them and yet when they repented and forsaked their evil ways, God turned away from the Wrath He was going to bring upon them. God did not elect them for destruction. That right there should be a wake up call that Calvinism is not true. But will the Calvinist believe it? Only if they truly desire the truth on such a matter.

Free Will simply means that a lawyer is not charging for doing estate work.

Jason0047 said:

What is dumb about denying free will entirely for a person choosing God at some point in their life (Which I believe is under a special time of drawing by God) is that it puts the blame all on God for everything. Rick sins because God chooses Him to sin. Bob is saved and does righteousness because God made Him to be that way. Nobody is really responsible for anything. For what purpose would there be for a judgment if God was the One who put them in that place to begin with and they could not help it? That would be like having a judgment for wolves or other animals. It doesn't make any sense. Calvinism is an illogical theology that is enforced to meet the personalities of those who choose to believe in it. It cannot be found in the Bible. Only Romans 9 and 2-3 other verses taken out of context supports this kind of odd and forced belief that attacks the good character of the Lord our God. I think it is a bit of an understatement to say hundreds of verses in the Bible refute Calvinism. Take for example God's commandments. What in the world does a commandment serve if we are all forced to do what God wants us to do against our own free will? A commandment is useless in Calvinism theology. It is a deception. What about the Ninevites? God was going to bring wrath and destruction upon them and yet when they repented and forsaked their evil ways, God turned away from the Wrath He was going to bring upon them. God did not elect them for destruction. That right there should be a wake up call that Calvinism is not true. But will the Calvinist believe it? Only if they truly desire the truth on such a matter.

Click to expand...

Well apparently, God doesn't think it's so dumb.


Isa 10:4 Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
Isa 10:5 O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.
Isa 10:6 I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
Isa 10:7 Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.
Isa 10:8 For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings?
Isa 10:9 Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?
Isa 10:10 As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, and whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria;
Isa 10:11 Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?
Isa 10:12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks.
Isa 10:13 For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man:
Isa 10:14 And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.
Isa 10:15 Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.

More Than Material Minds




More Than Material Minds

As a Christian and a neuroscientist, I keep learning that to be human is to have a soul.

From Plough Quarterly No. 17: The Soul of Medicine (Summer 2018) Copyright © 2018 by Plough Publishing House. Reposted with permission.

I watched the CAT scan images appear on the screen, one by one. The baby’s head was mostly empty. There were only thin slivers of brain—a bit of brain tissue at the base of the skull, and a thin rim around the edges. The rest was water.

Her parents had feared this. We had seen it on the prenatal ultrasound; the CAT scan, hours after birth, was much more accurate. Katie looked like a normal newborn, but she had little chance at a normal life. She had a fraternal-twin sister in the incubator next to her. But Katie only had a third of the brain that her sister had. I explained all of this to her family, trying to keep alive a flicker of hope for their daughter.

I cared for Katie as she grew up. At every stage of Katie’s life so far, she has excelled. She sat and talked and walked earlier than her sister. She’s made the honor roll. She will soon graduate high school.

I’ve had other patients whose brains fell far short of their minds. Maria had only two-thirds of a brain. She needed a couple of operations to drain fluid, but she thrives. She just finished her master’s degree in English literature, and is a published musician. Jesse was born with a head shaped like a football and half-full of water – doctors told his mother to let him die at birth. She disobeyed. He is a normal happy middle-schooler, loves sports, and wears his hair long.

Some people with deficient brains are profoundly handicapped. But not all are. I’ve treated and cared for scores of kids who grow up with brains that are deficient but minds that thrive. How is this possible? Neuroscience, and Thomas Aquinas, point to the answer.

Is the Mind Mechanical?
As a medical student, I fell in love with the brain. It’s a daunting organ: an ensemble of cells and axons and nuclei and lobes tucked and folded in exotic shapes. I had to learn what it looks like when it’s sliced through by CAT scans, and then what it looks like when I slice through it. My fascination with neuroanatomy was metaphysical: this was where our thoughts and decisions came from, this was a roadmap of the human self, and I was learning to read it as I read a book. It was the truth about us, I thought.

But I was wrong. Katie made me face my misunderstanding. She was a whole person. The child in my office was not mapped in any meaningful way to the scan of her brain or the diagram in my neuroanatomy textbook. The roadmap got it wrong.

The Good Society
How does the mind relate to the brain? This question is central to my professional life. I thought I had it answered. Yet a century of research and 30 years of my own neurosurgical practice have challenged everything I thought I knew.

The view assumed by those who taught me is that the mind is wholly a product of the brain, which is itself understood as something like a machine. Francis Crick, a neuroscientist and the Nobel laureate who was the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, wrote that “a person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them.”

This mechanical philosophy is the result of two steps. It began with Rene Descartes, who argued that the mind and the brain were separate substances, immaterial and material. Somehow (how, neither Descartes nor anyone else can say) the mind is linked to the brain— it’s the ghost in the machine.

But as Francis Bacon’s approach to understanding the world gained ascendency during the scientific Enlightenment, it became fashionable to limit inquiry about the world to physical substances: to study the machine and ignore the ghost. Matter was tractable, and we studied it to obsession. The ghost was ignored, and then denied. This was what the logic of materialism demanded.

The materialist insists that we are slaves of our neurons, without genuine free will. Materialism comes in different flavors, each having passed into and then out of favor over the past century, as their insufficiency became apparent. Behaviorists asserted that the mind, if it exists at all, is irrelevant. All that matters is what is observable—input and output. Yet behaviorism is in eclipse, because it’s difficult to deny the relevance of the mind to neuroscience.

Identity theory, replacing behaviorism, held that the mind just is the brain. Thoughts and sensations are exactly the same thing as brain tissue and neurotransmitters, understood differently. The pain you feel in your finger is identical to the nerve impulses in your arm and in your brain. But, of course, that’s not really true. Pain hurts and nerve impulses are electrical and chemical. They’re not even similar. Identity theorists struggled with uncooperative reality for a generation, then gave up.

Computer functionalism came next: the brain is hardware and mind is software. But this too has problems. Nineteenth-century German philosopher Franz Brentano pointed out that the one thing that absolutely distinguishes thoughts from matter is that thoughts are always about something, and matter is never about anything. This aboutness is the hallmark of the mind. Every thought has a meaning. No material thing has meaning.

Computation is the mapping of an input to an output according to an algorithm, irrespective of meaning. Computation has no aboutness; it is the antithesis of thought.

Neuroscience and Metaphysics
Remarkably, neuroscience tells us three things about the mind: the mind is metaphysically simple, the intellect and will are immaterial, and free will is real.

In the middle of the twentieth century, neurosurgeons discovered that they could treat a certain kind of epilepsy by severing a large bundle of brain fibers, called the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Following these operations, each hemisphere worked independently. But what happened to the mind of a person with his or her brain split in half?

The neuroscientist Roger Sperry studied scores of split-brain patients. He found, surprisingly, that in ordinary life the patients showed little effect. Each patient was still one person. The intellect and will—the capacity to have abstract thought and to choose—remained unified. Only by meticulous testing could Sperry find any differences: their perceptions were altered by the surgery. Sensations—elicited by touch or vision—could be presented to one hemisphere of the brain, and not be experienced in the other hemisphere. Speech production is associated with the left hemisphere of the brain; patients could not name an object presented to the right hemisphere (via the left visual field). Yet they could point to the object with their left hand (which is controlled by the right hemisphere). The most remarkable result of Sperry’s Nobel Prize–winning work was that the person’s intellect and will—what we might call the soul—remained undivided.

The brain can be cut in half, but the intellect and will cannot. The intellect and will are metaphysically simple.

One of the neurosurgeons who pioneered the corpus callosotomy for epilepsy patients was Wilder Penfield, who worked in Montreal in the middle of the twentieth century. Penfield studied the brains and minds of epileptic patients in a remarkably direct way, in the course of treating them. He operated on people who were awake. The brain itself feels no pain, and local anesthetics numb the scalp and skull enough to permit painless brain surgery. Penfield asked them to do and think things while he was observing and temporarily stimulating or impairing regions of their brains. Two things astonished him.

First, he noticed something about seizures. He could cause seizures by stimulating the brain. A patient would jerk his arm, or feel tingling, or see flashes of light, or even have memories. But what he could never do was cause an intellectual seizure: the patient would never reason when his brain was stimulated. The patient never contemplated mercy or bemoaned injustice or calculated second derivatives in response to brain stimulation. If the brain wholly gives rise to the mind, why are there no intellectual seizures?

Second, Penfield noted that patients always knew that the movement or sensation elicited by brain stimulation was done to them, but not bythem. When Penfield stimulated the arm area of the brain, patients always said, “You made my arm move” and never said, “I moved my arm.” Patients always retained a correct awareness of agency. There was a part of the patient—the will—that Penfield could not reach with his electrode.

Penfield began his career as a materialist. He finished his career as an emphatic dualist. He insisted that there is an aspect of the self—the intellect and the will—that is not the brain, and that cannot be elicited by stimulation of the brain.

Some of the most fascinating research on consciousness was done by Penfield’s contemporary Benjamin Libet at the University of California, San Francisco. Libet asked: What happens in the brain when we think? How are electrical signals in the brain related to our thoughts? He was particularly interested in the timing of brain waves and thoughts. Did a brain wave happen at the same moment as the thought, or before, or after?

It was a difficult question to answer. It wasn’t hard to measure electrical changes in the brain: that could be done routinely by electrodes on the scalp, and Libet enlisted neurosurgeons to allow him to record signals deep in the brain while patients were awake. The challenge Libet faced was to accurately measure the time interval between the signals and the thoughts. But the signals last only a few milliseconds, and how can you time a thought with that kind of accuracy?

Libet began by choosing a very simple thought: the decision to press a button. He modified an oscilloscope so that a dot circled the screen once each second, and when the subject decided to push the button, he or she noted the location of the dot at the time of the decision. Libet measured the timing of the decision and the timing of the brain waves of many volunteers with accuracy in the tens of milliseconds. Consistently he found that the conscious decision to push the button was preceded by about half a second by a brain wave, which he called the readiness potential. Then a half-second later the subject became aware of his decision. It appeared at first that the subjects were not free; their brains made the decision to move and they followed it.

But Libet looked deeper. He asked his subjects to veto their decision immediately after they made it—to not push the button. Again, the readiness potential appeared a half-second before conscious awareness of the decision to push the button, but Libet found that the veto—he called it “free won’t”—had no brain wave corresponding to it.

The brain, then, has activity that corresponds to a pre-conscious urge to do something. But we are free to veto or accept this urge. The motives are material. The veto, and implicitly the acceptance, is an immaterial act of the will.

Libet noted the correspondence between his experiments and the traditional religious understanding of human beings. We are, he said, beset by a sea of inclinations, corresponding to material activity in our brains, which we have the free choice to reject or accept. It is hard not to read this in more familiar terms: we are tempted by sin, yet we are free to choose.

The approach to understanding the world and ourselves that was replaced by materialism was that of classical metaphysics. This tradition’s most notable investigator and teacher was Saint Thomas Aquinas. Following Aristotle, Aquinas wrote that the human soul has distinct kinds of abilities. Vegetative powers, shared by plants and animals, serve growth, nourishment, and metabolism. Sensitive powers, shared with animals, include perception, passions, and locomotion. The vegetative and sensitive powers are material abilities of the brain.

Yet human beings have two powers of the soul that are not material—intellect and will. These transcend matter. They are the means by which we reason, and by which we choose based on reason. We are composites of matter and spirit. We have spiritual souls.

The Future of Church Technology
Aquinas would not be surprised by the results of these researchers’ investigations.

What’s at Stake
Philosopher Roger Scruton has written that contemporary neuroscience is “a vast collection of answers with no memory of the questions.” Materialism has limited the kinds of questions that we’re allowed to ask, but neuroscience, pursued without a materialist bias, points towards the reality that we are chimeras: material beings with immaterial souls.

How would our lives or our society be different if we found that our mind was merely the product of our material brain and that our every decision was determined, with no free will?

The cornerstone of totalitarianism, according to Hannah Arendt, is the denial of free will. Under the visions of Communism and Nazism, we are mere instruments of historical forces, not individual free agents who can choose good or evil.

Without free will, we cannot be guilty in an individual sense. But we also cannot be innocent. Neither the Jews under Hitler nor Kulak farmers under Stalin were killed because they were individually at fault. Their guilt was assigned to them according to their type, and accordingly they were exterminated to hasten a natural process, whether the purification of the race or the dictatorship of the proletariat.

By contrast, the classical understanding of human nature is that we are free beings not subject to determinism. This understanding is the indispensable basis for human liberty and dignity. It is indispensable, too, for simply making sense of the world around us: among other things, for making sense of Katie.

I see her in my office each year. She is thriving: headstrong and bright. Her mother is exasperated, and, after seventeen years, still surprised. So am I.

There is much about the brain and the mind that I don’t understand. But neuroscience tells a consistent story. There is a part of Katie’s mind that is not her brain. She is more than that. She can reason and she can choose. There is a part of her that is immaterial—the part that Sperry couldn’t split, that Penfield couldn’t reach, and that Libet couldn’t find with his electrodes. There is a part of Katie that didn’t show up on those CAT scans when she was born.

Katie, like you and me, has a soul.




Michael Egnor, MD, is a neurosurgeon and professor of neurological surgery and pediatrics at Stony Brook University.

Radagast said:

No, if God foresees that I will eat scrambled eggs for breakfast next Friday, then it is fixed that I will eat scrambled eggs for breakfast next Friday -- I am unable to choose anything else. In other words, I do not have free will of the libertarian kind.

I still have compatibilist free will: I choose eggs because that's what I want to do.

Click to expand...

Hi.

To say that, because our actions are foreseen that this means they are "fixed" is unfair, because:

1) Assuming fixed outcomes assumes that we have no control over our actions, or are not responsible for our actions. Sure, you can say "fixed" all you want, but that is not the actual truth of the matter.

2) God foreseeing something does not in any way mean you are unable to choose anything else. You always had the choice, even if foreseen.

3) God's foreseeing is more complex than our simple minds as can be clearly observed by reading how God reacts in various situations to those who sin. For instance, God pleads with people to change their minds and to repent and He would bless them. Not everyone whom God pleads with to repent will do so, even though that is God's desire for them. Sure, God can foresee our actions and intent; yet, on the other hand, God attempts to influence thoughts and actions to alter our coarse. Sometimes this works and other times it doesn't. The "fixing" is not set in stone, even though God foresees.

martymonster said:

Well apparently, God doesn't think it's so dumb.


Isa 10:4 Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
Isa 10:5 O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.
Isa 10:6 I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
Isa 10:7 Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.
Isa 10:8 For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings?
Isa 10:9 Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?
Isa 10:10 As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, and whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria;
Isa 10:11 Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?
Isa 10:12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks.
Isa 10:13 For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man:
Isa 10:14 And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.
Isa 10:15 Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.

Click to expand...

Okay. God using evil nations for His greater plan for good does not mean that they don’t have free will and that they never had a chance or opportunity for salvation. Nowhere does it talk about salvation here and nowhere does it say that this nation was a mindless puppet of God. Assyria was acting in accordance to what they desired and God was using them for His own purposes. This does not mean God would not have preferred Assyria to repent. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Again, you are not addressing the problems of Calvinism. Why have commands if God just makes you to do He wants? Why is there a Judgement for men if God was the One who put them there in that situation? According to Calvinism: The wicked cannot help but to sin. So yeah. It’s pretty silly.

setst777 said:

To say that, because our actions are foreseen that this means they are "fixed" is unfair

Click to expand...

No, it's an obvious truth. You can't "change the future" to be different from what God foresees.

If God foresees the future, then the future is fixed.

setst777 said:

Assuming fixed outcomes assumes that we have no control over our actions, or are not responsible for our actions

Click to expand...

The fact that our actions are fixed does not mean that we are not responsible for them.

setst777 said:

God attempts to influence thoughts and actions to alter our coarse. Sometimes this works and other times it doesn't. The "fixing" is not set in stone, even though God foresees.

Click to expand...

Now you are denying God's foreknowledge as traditionally defined; you are an Open Theist.

This is a logically consistent position, but not imho a biblical one.

Wow, an awful lot has been said here and some may agree or disagree with my simple answer here.

The very first question portrays a fallacy that could be cause for contention.

bling said:

Does God have both the power and knowledge to create a being with the ability to make one truly autonomous free will choice and if not why not?

Click to expand...

Autonomous is a bad choice of description. Autonomous suggests the right to govern one's self. God never gave man that choice, it is, in fact, the center of sin and begins in the heart of Satan who rebelled against God. God reveals that it is in the heart of man but it is not his doing.

Wilful autonomy is described by the prophet Isaiah, "We have all strayed like sheep: each going their own way."

Such autonomy leads to anarchy. That mankind is capable of this is abundantly clear but it is not how God created him.

Perhaps the software programmer can give us a picture of this. The programmer creates a program for a particular purpose. A rival or nuisance inserts a virus and corrupts the program.

Satan, came with a virus, in the form of a serpent, and corrupted God's creation so that it no longer fulfilled his purpose.

Wilful autonomy is not the gift of God; it is sin.

The gospel of reconciliation encourages us to abandon this and recommit ourselves to God and his sovereign will for everything that pertains to life and godliness in fulfilling his purpose.

This is why I say "freewill" is a bad description. Man took that into his nature by his rebellion to God's command. You are not free to choose [man is already lost without Christ, he does not need to choose it], you are free to choose right. That is the choice God allows you.

My advice to you is, take it. The benefits far outweigh the losses.

Radagast said:

No, it's an obvious truth. You can't "change the future" to be different from what God foresees.



The fact that our actions are fixed does not mean that we are not responsible for them.



Now you are denying God's foreknowledge as traditionally defined; you are an Open Theist.

This is a logically consistent position, but not imho a biblical one.

Click to expand...

Who fixes those actions?

Llewelyn Stevenson said:

Wow, an awful lot has been said here and some may agree or disagree with my simple answer here.

The very first question portrays a fallacy that could be cause for contention.



Autonomous is a bad choice of description. Autonomous suggests the right to govern one's self. God never gave man that choice, it is, in fact, the center of sin and begins in the heart of Satan who rebelled against God. God reveals that it is in the heart of man but it is not his doing.

Wilful autonomy is described by the prophet Isaiah, "We have all strayed like sheep: each going their own way."

Such autonomy leads to anarchy. That mankind is capable of this is abundantly clear but it is not how God created him.

Perhaps the software programmer can give us a picture of this. The programmer creates a program for a particular purpose. A rival or nuisance inserts a virus and corrupts the program.

Satan, came with a virus, in the form of a serpent, and corrupted God's creation so that it no longer fulfilled his purpose.

Wilful autonomy is not the gift of God; it is sin.

The gospel of reconciliation encourages us to abandon this and recommit ourselves to God and his sovereign will for everything that pertains to life and godliness in fulfilling his purpose.

This is why I say "freewill" is a bad description. Man took that into his nature by his rebellion to God's command. You are not free to choose [man is already lost without Christ, he does not need to choose it], you are free to choose right. That is the choice God allows you.

My advice to you is, take it. The benefits far outweigh the losses.

Click to expand...

We have free will to choose God’s will or our own will (within the confines of God’s universe). God can use both good and evil for His greater plan for good, but the Lord still desires us to do what is good and right. The fact that a person can resist God’s will, means that we have free will. We may not have the free Will to shoot lasers out of our eyes or to turn invisible on our own power, but that does not mean we don’t have a free will choice in this life (at some point) to choose God.

Jason0047 said:

What is dumb about denying free will entirely for a person choosing God at some point in their life (Which I believe is under a special time of drawing by God) is that it puts the blame all on God for everything. Rick sins because God chooses Him to sin. Bob is saved and does righteousness because God made Him to be that way. Nobody is really responsible for anything. For what purpose would there be for a judgment if God was the One who put them in that place to begin with and they could not help it?

Click to expand...

Respectfully, I don't know exactly what you mean by denying free will entirely. The term free certainly can exist in degrees, but still you did not qualify any meaning by describing what it is partially free from or isn't entirely free from.

As far as judgment is concerned, I believe that you're not taking vanity into account. Suppose God made mankind out of dirt, but yet good according to the breath of God that made man in His image. Now what if mankind began to lose sight of the fact that he was made from the dirt and he began to think he was good according to his own prerogative? He gradually became vain and unthankful for the Spirit. Now suppose God wanted to prove that He is the goodness in mankind and that we are not wise or benevolent of our own free choice. Should God be blamed if He gave mankind over to the flesh and allowed us to become fools and abominations, even because we counted the goodness in us as our own prerogative taking His precious Spirit for granted?

And in accordance with that scenario, if we came to understand that we had become corrupt not because we freely chose to be, but because we had lost our light through vanity, then would we not then be obliged to forgive others who sin against us even because we know it is not by their "free will" that they had succumbed to the lusts of the flesh? The fall of Satan was brought about through vanity, and the first sin by Adam and Eve was for the sake of vanity. Cain was jealous of Abel because of vanity.

If you contemplate and understand what I am alluding to, then you also should understand why I do not believe free will is necessary for judgment to occur, but rather I believe God will judge me according to what measure I judge others.

Jason0047 said:

Okay. God using evil nations for His greater plan for good does not mean that they don’t have free will and that they never had a chance or opportunity for salvation. Nowhere does it talk about salvation here and nowhere does it say that this nation was a mindless puppet of God. Assyria was acting in accordance to what they desired and God was using them for His own purposes. This does not mean God would not have preferred Assyria to repent. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Again, you are not addressing the problems of Calvinism. Why have commands if God just makes you to do He wants? Why is there a Judgement for men if God was the One who put them there in that situation? According to Calvinism: The wicked cannot help but to sin. So yeah. It’s pretty silly.

Click to expand...

Actually, I'm not addressing the problems of Calvinism, because I'm not a Calvinist. Why would you assume that I am a Calvinist?

Anyway, you really missed the mark with that whole explanation there.
The language used in that passage, especially 10:15, is pretty much just telling you plainly, that you may as well be made of wood and can therefore, do nothing without God making it happen.

And how is this for another silly quote?


Amo 3:4 Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing?
Amo 3:5 Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him? shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all?
Amo 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?
Amo 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.

BTW, here is the word used for evil, in this passage.


H7451
רעה רע
ra‛ râ‛âh
rah, raw-aw'
From H7489; bad or (as noun) evil (naturally or morally). This includes the second (feminine) form; as adjective or noun: - adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, + displease (-ure), distress, evil ([-favouredness], man, thing), + exceedingly, X great, grief (-vous), harm, heavy, hurt (-ful), ill (favoured), + mark, mischief, (-vous), misery, naught (-ty), noisome, + not please, sad (-ly), sore, sorrow, trouble, vex, wicked (-ly, -ness, one), worse (-st) wretchedness, wrong. [Including feminine ra’ah; as adjective or noun.]

martymonster said:

Actually, I'm not addressing the problems of Calvinism, because I'm not a Calvinist. Why would you assume that I am a Calvinist?

Anyway, you really missed the mark with that whole explanation there.
The language used in that passage, especially 10:15, is pretty much just telling you plainly, that you may as well be made of wood and can therefore, do nothing without God making it happen.

And how is this for another silly quote?


Amo 3:4 Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing?
Amo 3:5 Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him? shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all?
Amo 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?
Amo 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.

BTW, here is the word used for evil, in this passage.


H7451
רעה רע
ra‛ râ‛âh
rah, raw-aw'
From H7489; bad or (as noun) evil (naturally or morally). This includes the second (feminine) form; as adjective or noun: - adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, + displease (-ure), distress, evil ([-favouredness], man, thing), + exceedingly, X great, grief (-vous), harm, heavy, hurt (-ful), ill (favoured), + mark, mischief, (-vous), misery, naught (-ty), noisome, + not please, sad (-ly), sore, sorrow, trouble, vex, wicked (-ly, -ness, one), worse (-st) wretchedness, wrong. [Including feminine ra’ah; as adjective or noun.]

Click to expand...

I said denying free will (i.e. Calvinism) was dumb and you disagreed. I also do not deny there are things in life beyond our control. That is not a denial of free Will or a free will choice to choose God at some point in our life.

Jason0047 said:

Who fixes those actions?

Click to expand...

Assuming that you believe in God's foreknowledge, then there is in heaven, so to speak, a videotape showing everything you are going to do in the future.

Your actions are fixed in the sense that they must happen as foreseen.

This means that the free will that you have must be compatibilist free will, not libertarian free will.

Of course, you can still believe in libertarian free will if you are an Open Theist and deny God's foreknowledge (as traditionally defined). But then you'd be so far outside of traditional Christian orthodoxy that there would be no point in communicating.

Does God have both the power and knowledge to create a being with the ability to make one truly autonomous free will choice and if not why not?
God has infinite power over all His Creation.

Would God’s foreknowledge and/or knowing everything keep a being from making a truly autonomous free will choice?
It isn't actually "foreknowledge" because God sees the fullness of space and time simultaneously and eternally. At this moment He is seeing the creation of the universe, its eventual destruction, and every event that occurs between the two. Therefore He has already seen us making every choice we have made or will make in our lives. Obviously someone simply observing our choices of free will doesn't make those choices any less free.

Would giving a being the ability to make a truly autonomous free will choice reduce or even eliminate God’s Sovereignty?
Of course not. If the General tells the lieutenant "Make your own decision", does that lessen the authority off the general in any way?

God can certainly keep any being from making a choice, so does allowing the being to make the choice mean God is not “controlling” or “over” the universe?
That is correct. God does not control us. If He did, we would never sin.

With enough environmental and biological information, it can be determent which ice-cream you will chose, so is that really a free will choice?
Nonsense.

If God created a being with the very limited autonomous free will ability to make just one choice, yet that being never came close to reaching the age to ever making that autonomous free will choice, would God still know the exact without a doubt selection the being would have made had if it lived long enough?
Nonsense.

Jason0047 said:

We have free will to choose God’s will or our own will (within the confines of God’s universe). God can use both good and evil for His greater plan for good, but the Lord still desires us to do what is good and right. The fact that a person can resist God’s will, means that we have free will. We may not have the free Will to shoot lasers out of our eyes or to turn invisible on our own power, but that does not mean we don’t have a free will choice in this life (at some point) to choose God.

Click to expand...

The problem with your definition of free will is that it ends in a contradiction of reasoning. For example you first claim that because a person can resist God's will it indicates a free will. Then you claim that at some point in our life we have a free will to choose God. So what happened to resisting God as proof of a free will when choosing God is also proof of a free will?

I believe the reason this is happening is because you are unknowingly conflating choice/option with choice/decision. In other words because an option exists and a choice must be made, then you assume that there must be a free will. One needs only a will to choose, not necessarily a free will. Therefore, in determinism I note that options also exist and choices are also made.

Suppose I said that, spiritually speaking, only an ignorant man would choose to resist God, while a knowledgeable man would choose God. In saying that, would I be correct or speaking falsehood? And if I am correct, then you should understand why I believe that the will is subject to knowledge and ignorance of God.

Will you then say a person can choose ignorance over knowledge? That would be an assertion which I doubt is viable because it still remains ignorant and I do not think most men are capable of choosing ignorance over knowledge, leaving such a free will existing only in those who could.

bling said:

How did Christ know exactly seemingly free will wrong choices Peter would make in a very short period of time.

Click to expand...

Perhaps in the same way that I can predict with perfect accuracy that certain plot points will happen every time you play through a video game.