quantum Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 A Christian website claims that the universe and everything in it is predetermined including the flight paths of sparrow, YET we still have free will. it claims that both views are correct so even though God dictates EVERYTHING in advance, we are still responsible for our moral actions. and the thinking behind a predetermine universe and human free will being in harmony is...... "It's a mystery", but praise Jesus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nontheistpilgrim Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 It's not a mystery: it's in the Bible, the inspired word of god. End of story. Actually it never bothered me much because I simply accepted the 'mystery'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wertbag Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 I've heard it said as "God knows what you will choose to do, but its your freewill to do it". So the idea that its not predetermined from a control standpoint, but just from a knowledge standpoint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator TheRedneckProfessor Posted March 13, 2022 Super Moderator Share Posted March 13, 2022 There are several threads in The Lion's Den that cover the free will versus predestination debate. Apologists generally fail to offer any convincing counter arguments. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Joshpantera Posted March 14, 2022 Moderator Share Posted March 14, 2022 10 hours ago, quantum said: A Christian website claims that the universe and everything in it is predetermined including the flight paths of sparrow, YET we still have free will. it claims that both views are correct so even though God dictates EVERYTHING in advance, we are still responsible for our moral actions. and the thinking behind a predetermine universe and human free will being in harmony is...... "It's a mystery", but praise Jesus That's known as cognitive dissonance. It's not very mysterious at all unless you're the one in question suffering the CD. In which case christians at a website clearly are. We've had countless debates about this topic that merely reveal that someone suffering CD cannot for the life of them see what's plainly clear. A god that knows all outcomes, knows ALL outcomes. Bar none. Bar no possible choice that's within the scope of being made. Someone can't dodge and weave, drop or jump, turn this way or that - without an all-knowing god knowing exactly which of up to an infinite choices of moves, WILL be the move that's made. Anything less would mean "not all-knowing." Knowing some things but not others. A god who is not omniscient. This is why some christians believe in predeterminism. And then try and jockey around contradictive ideas about free will too. If you don't employ logic and reason, then you can pretend that any contradiction makes perfect sense. And that's what they do. They read right over the contradictions that begin in the 1st chapter of Genesis and then blinder every contradiction thereafter. All anyone can do in return is to bring to light and make clear what the christian's are doing. And demonstrate how it contradicts itself. Maybe it will sink in someday. Or maybe it could be of benefit to someone else reading along who notices something they haven't noticed before. Brought to the surface via the act of debate. Whatever the case, we debate away and run the demonstrations for the sake of whoever can benefit from seeing the back and forth. And making their own decisions about who they think is right or wrong in the exchanges. Welcome aboard! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quantum Posted March 14, 2022 Author Share Posted March 14, 2022 10 hours ago, Joshpantera said: That's known as cognitive dissonance. It's not very mysterious at all unless you're the one in question suffering the CD. In which case christians at a website clearly are. We've had countless debates about this topic that merely reveal that someone suffering CD cannot for the life of them see what's plainly clear. A god that knows all outcomes, knows ALL outcomes. Bar none. Bar no possible choice that's within the scope of being made. Someone can't dodge and weave, drop or jump, turn this way or that - without an all-knowing god knowing exactly which of up to an infinite choices of moves, WILL be the move that's made. Anything less would mean "not all-knowing." Knowing some things but not others. A god who is not omniscient. This is why some christians believe in predeterminism. And then try and jockey around contradictive ideas about free will too. If you don't employ logic and reason, then you can pretend that any contradiction makes perfect sense. And that's what they do. They read right over the contradictions that begin in the 1st chapter of Genesis and then blinder every contradiction thereafter. All anyone can do in return is to bring to light and make clear what the christian's are doing. And demonstrate how it contradicts itself. Maybe it will sink in someday. Or maybe it could be of benefit to someone else reading along who notices something they haven't noticed before. Brought to the surface via the act of debate. Whatever the case, we debate away and run the demonstrations for the sake of whoever can benefit from seeing the back and forth. And making their own decisions about who they think is right or wrong in the exchanges. Welcome aboard! Great answer, thank you. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
◊ Weezer ◊ Posted March 15, 2022 Share Posted March 15, 2022 I understand that being schizophrenic helps to understand predeterminism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted March 18, 2022 Share Posted March 18, 2022 On 3/13/2022 at 12:47 PM, Wertbag said: I've heard it said as "God knows what you will choose to do, but its your freewill to do it". So the idea that its not predetermined from a control standpoint, but just from a knowledge standpoint. Right, it's foreknowledge. The idea is something like this. Imagine that there's a play, movie or book of some sort. I say some sort because we need to understand that this is not a scripted sort of thing. It's not written ahead of time. It's like an unscripted reality live stream but we'll just say it's a movie for simplicity. So you watch the movie as everyone in the movie is making doing all their various things as they please. At all points in the movie you initially don't know what is to happen until the characters actually make it happen but, since you are outside of the movie itself, you then know these things when the characters do not when, if, you choose to revisit that point in their timeline giving you foreknowledge of those events. This is sort of a time travel paradox. In some versions the person needs to go through the events once before they can actually go through the loop and do anything since the events they wish to change in their own past can't happen until they actually live them at least once. This would mean you can't know what happens to the characters until you watch the movie at least once. It means god can't be all-knowing, using foreknowledge, until we do everything at least once. I suppose there is no actual requirement that god be all-knowing forever and always but it's still necessary for things to play out once for this to work as it should which means god was, at some point, as ignorant as everyone else and only later acquired knowledge after the fact. Perhaps after the utter and complete failure of the universe and downfall of his entire kingdom in the last frame of the "movie." A little "time travel" to make changes until that didn't happen was needed. It sort of causes a problem once god decides to go back and intervene at any point because that changes the "movie" that played out and all future events are now unknown again until things play out and become known once again. Even changing things once alters the outcome. Changing things with the intent to get your desired outcome moves things towards a predetermined world even if you just let everyone ad lib over and over until they wind up where you want. This is sort of where xians want to land. The big picture is predetermined, so they can take solace in the ultimate outcome, but the rest lies with us so we can be punished for our actions. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walterpthefirst Posted March 19, 2022 Share Posted March 19, 2022 Hello Quantum. Sorry to be little late for the party, but I think that this thread from 2017 will be of interest to you. https://www.ex-christian.net/topic/76389-free-will-determinism-forgiveness-and-love/#comment-1140704 Thank you. Walter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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