Free will, or is it?

Hi Logic. Welcome to EvCFirstly God didn't give us free will. God gave Adam free will and Adam blew it. In injecting himself with sin he became a sinjunkie - just like a person who injects heroin becomes a heroinjunkie.Ever notice how you don't have to teach children to lie? That's mankind. We're the offspring of junkie displaying our ancestor-sown addiction as soon as our little legs can carry us. Naturally, all our thinking is filtered through sin-tinted spectacles too.Not that it alters things very much. We have a nature which is geared to sin vs. God acting upon us to counter that nature. Which is another way of achieving the same thing as us having an independant-of-God free will. God knows the outcome of our future "choices" because our future is present tense to him now. That is to say, the thinking is that God occupies our past, present and future...now. Free will in the face of God's omnipresence/science has been thrashed out at least a couple of times in the last few years. As the book of Ecclesiastes goes, there ain't nothing new under the sun Edited by iano, : No reason given.

We shouldn't really be using the example of what a husband might predict about his wife. It's God, free will and prophecy-that-must -surely-come-about.In order for a prophecy to surely come about, God must be able to predict all the thoughts and actions of all the people who live between the time of the giving of the prophecy and the time of it's fulfillment. A span of thousands of years, billions of people and trillions of thoughts and actions.If he cannot, someone could do something he hasn't predicted and set off a chain of events resulting in disturbance to the future prophecy outcome. But God couldn't issue prophecy if there was any possibility of it not coming to fruition. Otherwise he'd run the risk of being labelled a false prophet.To say that God can design a machine which is utterly predictable (like a robot) whilst ensuring it also has free choice (unlike a robot) is like saying that omnipotent God can create a weight too heavy for himself to lift and lift it.One might believe it to be the case. But the belief is not a rational belief.

I don't agree. I do agree Not so much damn as create the potential that a man damn himself. Knowing this God put in place a plan which created the potential for God to save man from damning himself.Balance. Finely balanced in fact. If he knows your going to hell it won't be because you were born a bastard. It was that you weren't born again. My last post to you dealt with this general issue. You say "when" and "yet. These are time-bound words. But if there is no "before" and "after" in eternity as we understand it, how would you go about framing this question so as to make it relevant to God's realm

It is probably more accurate to say that God provided Adam and Eve with a choice.Can we agree that a genuine free-willed choice requires the "chooser" having access to at least a pair of balanced options? If so, then God permitting the serpent into the garden (so that the serpent could spin his deceitful story) succeeds in providing Adam and Eve with the option entitled "Disobey God and access desirable consequences". We arrive thus at an alternative to the option entitled "Obey God and avoid accessing undesirable consequences".That the serpents story was deceitful is neither here nor there. What matters (from a choice perspective) is that as far as Adam and Eve were concerned, the consequences on offer were balanced in fashion. All that remained was that their free will be exercised.God could have indeed prevented the serpent from entering the garden. Then there would have been no choice. And things would have remained as they were. Adam and Eve and their offspring in some kind of proto-relationship with God where no choice was involved with their being in it.God found this undersirable and used the serpent to supply choice. And I don't think anyone would really argue with his wisdom. Few would admire the quality of a relationship which was never chosen for in some way shape or form.{AbE} I don't see how God providing man with a choice affects Gods omnipotence in any way. God is achieving a goal of his: arranging it so that created creatures can choose (in some way shape or form) whether to come into a God-sized relationship with God or not. What the choice is is not the issue - merely that God ensure we have one.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

To be deceived means that you believe a lie to be true. In order to believe that this lie was true, Eve had to reject what God had said would be the consequence of disobedience. To chose to reject what God had said. For that is what Eve did - she chooseThe deceit only enabled a choice to be made - it didn't make the choice for her.If the allure offered by disobedience was so powerful as to overwhelm the constraint placed on her by what God had said, then her choice wasn't free. If the allure offered by disobedience was too weak to contend with the constraint placed on her by what God had said then her choice wasn't a free one either. Free choice required that the choice be balanced so as to be attributed, finally, to her will. And her will alone.I'm not sure how Adam is any different to Eve in this respect. He was there with her and heard the deal too. She died and he died.

One thing tells me that he was.

quote:

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Genesis 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

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The rest of your post is fairly speculative and I'm wondering what is it about the above (seemingly plain language) that has you read something (I'm not quite sure what) into it.

Not in the sense of dropping down dead on the spot, granted. Perhaps it was this kind of death then:Ephesians 2:1 "And to you did he give life, when you were dead through your wrongdoing and sins"Perhaps Eve died the kind of death that comes through sinning. What with her having just sinned.

Not being bound by time, God can occupy a point in our future right now - whereas we're stuck here in the present (which he occupies also). If God's perfect knowledge comes out of being able to observe all points in the time-existance of an agent agent, then that aspect of perfect knowledge is not at all determining. It depends a bit on the manner of creation I suppose.... At the point of his creating a free agent he can know everything it will do because he occupies all points in it's being: it's past, present and future. It's freewill doesn't impact on his perfect knowledge.Creating robots is one way to ensure undisturbed perfect knowledge. All-points-in-time-occupancy w.r.t the temporal existance of a free agent is another.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

He didn't have to be. We could also speculate that the serpent did his dance and it was 2 years later before it "clicked" with her that the fruit was desirable for gaining wisdom. The text doesn't tell us that the serpents temptation and her realisation and chosing were sequentially-immediate events.A plain reading, without reading anything into it, gives the impression that the serpent tempted, she chose there and then and he was standing next to her at that time. We don't know that he didn't. We don't know that he did. The text doesn't tell us. We don't know who told Eve about consequences. Did God? Did God tell her something he didn't tell Adam. Did Adam mistakenly extend the prohibition in his own mind and convey that error to Eve so that there was no need to correct her on the day.I suggest a plain reading instead of all this specualtation. We don't know what the serpent knew precisely. All he need do is twist everything he is told about what God said. He could have been largely thinking on his...er...feet - not knowing the consequences of what he was engaged in. Would you offer up a talking serpent as an excuse for something you did However he came to eat the fruit willfully it was done. Your speculation about wanting to stick by his missus is but another motivation to the one offered by the serpent. Obey/disobey - that remains the only show in town Ingenious. Adams attempt to place the blame on God. Nothing much has changed in the meantime (see EvCforum.net) I'm not disagreeing with you. She chose. He chose. They died. We died. Hallelujah I'd largely agree except to say that we have no free will therefore cannot do anything in terms of choosing for this gift. God must be the one to place it in our hands for us. All we can do is chose to reject it.

So? The Bible talks of different kinds of deaths. Seeing as they didn't die the usual kind of death we can conclude that God was lying, mistaken or was talking about some other kind of death.Certainly their being kicked out of his presence aligns with the notion of spiritual deathWhen your not sure where the evidence leads it's best to ask where the evidence point.

Does a bear shit in the woods?

Not true. It can exist but be constrained to operate within set boundaries. The argument for your having free will reasons that free will is supplied you in order for you to make a decision regarding God. For/againstThere is no requirement that every act or thought of yours results from your own free will. For instance, God might decide to ensure you carry out a particular action by suspending your will on the matter for that moment and having his will done instead.All that matters is that you have sufficient free will to enable choice on the main matter to hand. If 10% of your life consisted of free willed actions and the rest influenced by God then free will you had - for that 10% of life.If deemed sufficient free-willed time w.r.t the matter of your choosing for/against God then sufficient it is

I appreciate what you are saying but the problems are, to my mind, insurmountable.Firstly, a person exercising their free will has contributed in no short measure to their salvation. My understanding is that the Bible excludes any and all notions of a person contributing in any way, shape or form to their salvation.The Bible also seems to preclude the idea of the lost having a free will in the first place. We are described as being enslaved, dead, blind. Not the kind of words one would typically ascribe to free-willed agents. I'm no Calvinist but can't help but agree that the T in TULIP strikes the nail on the head biblicallyThen we have this.. Perhaps, but only after one embraces the irrational.The reason people believe anything is due to their having a reason to believe it. For something as fantastic as Gods existance, the reason for/evidence of his existing would have to be pretty compelling BEFORE the person could be expected to believe.Asking a person to exercise their will unto belief - when the reason/evidence for God's existance is not at all compelling (from their perspective) is like asking them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps - a completely unreasonable and irrational request.The God I know is neitherEdited by iano, : change sub-title

I'm sorry tesla. I can't begin to understand what your trying to say.

Sorry Ichthus, I should have been clearer. We (Christians) are not enslaved to sin - we (the lost, whose perspective I was assuming) are.I haven't thought alot about the Christian and free will but suspect the situation to be that free-will is restored to us on regeneration.I'd agree that the fight is between satans lies and God's truths. And that we (Christians) can chose which ones to adhere to at any given moment.Edited by iano, : No reason given.