Free will, or is it?

I beg to differ. So does James (James 2:14, 17-18, 20-22, 24-26): From my interpretation, if works are required to make your faith perfect, and if works can justify you, you can, through your works, contribute in some "way, shape or form" to your own salvation. If the Book of Mormon were permissible as scriptural proof, I would provide even clearer references, but this one suffices.I'm not sure my views here will be appreciated much, because I am an evolutionist and a Mormon, but I will provide them anyway. My religion does not believe in a manipulative God: we believe that, by and large, God awaits our choice to request His aid before rendering it. However, He is seen as supporting us in times when we are attempting to do His will, but are falling short (which is, believe it or not, quite common).Thus, we believe in total and absolute (and inate) free will of mankind. If we choose to do what God wants us to do, He will support us and improve upon our efforts. When not following God, or in making choices that do not directly involve our salvation (such as choosing a career, or choosing what color of tie to wear to church), we are on our own.This is pure free will, with a little boost when we need it.We believe that, like man, God is also bound by laws (albeit different laws), and that (as in Bruce Almighty) God cannot meddle with an individual's free will. We believe that Satan was cast out of Heaven because he wanted to take our free will in a vain attempt to save us all from ourselves, when he knew that this was physically impossible.Thus, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sees free will as the most important attribute of the human race (though it does not comment on the possibility that other creatures do or do not have this same attribute). Also, giving our free will ("agency" is the term we like) to God (by choosing to serve Him) is the only true gift that we can give Him, because it is the only gift that He can't take away from us on His own.

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Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

This is a little confusing for me, because it is the exact opposite of part of what you wrote in post #104 (which was one impetus for my post in the first place): The two statements in the above quote are also contradictory to one another, thus contributing even more to my confusion. You seem to believe that we can contribute to our salvation, and you say you do (and that most other world religions also belive that), yet you also state that the Bible clearly denies this possibility (which I disagree with anyway). I am not a theistic evolutionist. And, the word "accidental" is a vast misconception. There are tons of threads in the science forums that deal with this exact topic, so I won't discuss it further here. Let's dissect this, then. If I choose to turn right, I made the choice myself (at least, I seem to have, and I can't come up with any reason to believe that I didn't). However, it is possible that I only chose to go right because it was the will of God working through me. If this is the case, God has caused me to do something without making me aware that it was He, and not me, that made the choice. That, I believe, is the epitome of manipulativeness. That is what my religion (and my personal view) objects to.You are, however, correct in saying that I can't actually demonstrate the truth of the matter. However, there are only three possible interpretations of the scenario that I see:1. I made the choice myself
2. God made me do it without letting me in on His involvement (i.e., He manipulated me)
3. I am too stupid to recognize the evidence that He was actually working through me.From my interactions with religious people, interpretation #3 seems to be the most commonly accepted view. If that is the case, I would request that people intelligent enough to recognize the evidence point it out to me. Here are my thought processes on the matter:I do not see any reason why God wanted me to go right instead of left. Nothing major seemed to have occurred in my life as a direct result of my turning right instead of left. Furthermore, the decisions I ultimately make seem to be leading me in very random directions (some of which are dead-ends, and some of which contradict the directions in which previous decisions were leading me), which I wouldn't expect if my every action was being guided by the unseen hand of God.The only refutation of this would be that it's impossible for me to see how all the seeming randomness that occurs in my life ties into the overall plan of God (which is the logic that I use in refuting the teleological view of evolution). If that be the case, though, there is no reason to believe anything that happens in my life is actually 'directed' in any way, because, even the direction of God manifests itself as randomness.My conclusion in this matter would then be that God's will is random.This ties back into the "bootstraps" stuff you mentioned in post #104: From what I see, if God's will manifests as complete randomness (as it seems to from my perspective), there is no compelling evidence that He is involved in the decisions I make. Therefore, if He is involved, He is deliberately hiding it from me (or at least not making it obvious to me, which violates your principles for compelling evidence as stated in the above quote), which is, by definition, manipulative. For that reason, I prefer to believe in a more laissez-faire God, who allows me to act on my own. Then, we'll have to agree to disagree here. I can't back this up with anything that you would accept as authoritative, so I'll have to accept your view as equally valid.One thing that I forgot to mention in my last post was that Mormons also do not believe in the Calvinistic "TULIP". In fact, I think we disagree almost completely with every one of the five points. Particularly, with the first; our second article of faith states: "We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression." Therefore, we are not automatically corrupted and sinful at birth, but only become so through our own actions (which is impossible to rationalize with the idea that our actions are just manifestations of the will of God).

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Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

I never thought I would ever say anything even remotely like this, but, I'll grit my teeth and say it anyway:I agree with tesla.That took a lot of will power. I think the point he's trying to make is that, we're all dead-in-our-sins because of the Fall of Adam (This is not the part I agree with, because it's a contradiction to one of the basic tenets of my religion; but, it seems to be something you (iano) agree with). He further asserts that we have the option of choosing to be saved, by belief in Christ (This is the part I agree with, and you seem to agree, too). Because believing is an option, not believing is also an option. Therefore, if you don't believe (and are therefore dead-in-your-sins), it is because you didn't choose to.Look! I'm translating Teslanese! I must be getting smarter!I don't agree completely with this, though. I was a missionary in Taiwan for two years a while back. Most of the people I met there were obviously Buddists/Taoists/Confucianists who hadn't really been presented with the choice of following Christ (because Christianity is very small in Taiwan, limiting its exposure). I would argue that these people did not choose to be in their state of Christ-lessness, so unbelief is not necessarily tied to choice.As a side note, my religion addresses this sort of problem, too: we perform necessary ordinances by proxy for people who weren't given the option of being Mormons during their life on earth. This doesn't necessarily save them, though, because we believe they still have the freedom to reject the ordinances (agency is an eternal principle, in our view).

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Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

Okay, I understand that now. This is fairly similar to what I believe.What I see in your posts is the belief in duality akin to Freud's division of the subconscious. Your division, however, seems to maintain that the man's will is on the one side, and God's will is on the other. Whether the outcome of a decision leads to sin or goodness depends on which side wins out. Therefore, man's ability to choose is limited to his ability to resist God's will.I can only say that I do not accept this view. I would like to review your last few posts to show why: Contrast that bolded region with the bolded region here(post #104): If the man perceives that he has made the choice himself, whatever evidence provided him by God for divine intervention was not compelling, because you stipulated the the evidence must be compelling from the man's perspective. Therefore, asking the man to believe that God was involved would be unreasonable and irrational, which you have asserted that God is not (and I agree with that).Here are all possible interpretations I can think of:1. The man did indeed make the choice himself.2. The man made the choice based on God's promptings (which does not mean that God made the choice).3. God made the choice and expected the man to believe despite the lack of compelling evidence (which would make God unreasonable).4. God made the choice, and provided evidence that proved to be insufficiently compelling for the man (which means God is either imcompetent, irrational or manipulative).When I initially used the word "manipulative," I hadn't entirely intended it to mean He was using us for His ends. I also meant it in the sense that he does not directly involve Himself in our affairs at every turn. Certainly, He is there for us to call on as a guide, but He is not actively bending us or our situations to His will (this is not necessarily a common viewpoint held by all Mormons, though).The common Mormon viewpoint does, however, cite the purpose of life as becoming like God. Life is therefore our time to learn what we need to prepare us for responsibilities in the Kingdom of Heaven. We see God, then, as our parent and teacher. If a father were to hold his son's hands everytime he tried to walk, the boy would never learn to balance himself. Therefore, wise parents let go and make their infant children walk on their own. This doesn't mean the parent wouldn't catch their child when he fell, though.Without our ability to make choices and to learn from them, I don't see any point for us to be here. If my will is always to do evil, then I see no reason why God should even permit me to exist. The only thing that makes sense to me is that there is capacity for change, so that the will of man is not restricted to only choosing sin, but can also choose to follow the Lord.By the way, I enjoy debating with you: you take criticism well, and you're patient with my disagreements. Thank you.

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Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

Iano, after reading your posts, I get the impression that we actually have the same (or very similar belief systems), but that we choose to look at it from two very different perspectives.Case in point: This is actually very different from what Mormons believe. We believe that there was life before this life, and it was, in that life--when we existed with God as spirits--that we were born the children of God. I don't honestly know what this means from a "scientific" perspectie (although opinions abound), but were created as spirits before we came to Earth. (This is also why we believe the first two chapters of Genesis talk about the Creation differently--one of them was the spiritual creation, and the other was the physical creation).However, even though what you've said is technically incompatible with Mormon doctrine, it parallels our beliefs in faith and baptism. Everyone is a child of God, but not everyone gets to blessings of being a child of God. This is derived partly from the parable of the ten virgins: all were invited to the wedding, but five were unrighteous, and thus, in a sense, disowned by God.The only major difference between our belief systems is buried somewhere in here: Our Church maintains that "free will" (or "free agency," or "freedom of choice," or whatever you want to call it) is one of our eternal, essential characteristics, and cannot be taken from us, even by God.We also hold that an inevitable consequence of our agency is that we are not born depraved, but are born innocent. I guess, a translation of our second article of faith would be, "We believe that man will become depraved because of his own sins, and not because of Adam's transgression." References to "being lost" or "in a sinful state" in our religion are taken to mean "separated physically from God" (a state which we refer to as "spiritual death").However, reading your posts, I see that the conclusions you have come to from your differing viewpoint are almost indistinguishable from mine. Therefore, for all practical purposes, we essentially agree as to how our religion should be applied to our lives.One other point here: Freud hypothesized a splitting of the human subconscious into three parts: ego, superego, and id. The ego is the part of the mind that always seeks to satisfy its selfish desires. The superego is the part of the mind that commits us to our duties (or, to do what's right, if you want to take the analogy that far (Freud didn't)). The id is the part of the mind that always wants to be naughty.Although I don't agree with Freud's views on this matter (or, really, his views on anything else, for that matter), I see some correlations with what you're saying and with what I believe. Like Freud, I'm only basing this on observations of my own behavior, so the conclusions I come to are inherently invalid.The ego is akin to my own will. Many thing I want are not necessarily correlated with my desire to do evil or to do good, but are things I want for myself. For instance, I want to by an entomologist. I want to write a novel. I want to raise chickens.The superego is akin to the Holy Ghost. This is the Lord working to remind me of my responsibilities to Him, to the Church and to my family. It's my conscience: I feel guilty when I don't follow it.The id is akin to the influence of the devil. I think it is Satan who drives me to want to sin, and I have to struggle to resist him (with the help of the Lord), just as I often struggle with God to get to do what I want instead of fulfilling my responsibilities.Naturally, the correlation is imperfect, and Freud didn't equate his three divisions with "good" and "bad". But, there is a tiny thread of analogy there.This is where our viewpoints differ. I don't believe that my innate will is to do evil and commit sin. But, I do believe that my innate will is not always the same as God's will.

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Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

This is, indeed, very likely. My intention with that remark was to indicate that both of our belief systems lead us toward following the word of the Lord, and that we are therefore, essentially, on the same side. Most people know how it's written in Genesis 1. Here's a few sections from the account in Genesis 2 (forgive the rampant a's and b's and c's: I cut and pasted this from the bible on lds.org, and those represent footnotes):

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7 And the Lord God aformed bman of the cdust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the dbreath of life; and eman became a living fsoul.
8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in aEden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the asight, and good for food;
.........
18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be aalone; I will make him ban help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto aAdam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the bname thereof.

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The order provided here is humans, plants, then animals. In the first chapter, it was plants, animals, then humans. Any attempt to explain this discrepancy would only be a matter of interpretation. Earlier in this chapter, it says this:

quote:

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4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,
5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

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This stuff is off-topic, so I won't discuss it further, except to draw attention to the two bolded segments, which I think lend some credence to the Mormon perspective.Back on-topic now: Here is the Mormon view on the Bible (Article of Faith #8):

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8 We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

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We believe that the Bible was written by men. Inspired men, they were, but, like all men, they were subject to weaknesses. They made mistakes. Noah said the flood covered the whole earth, because, from where he sat on the ark, he only saw water, when the fact was that the land was just too far away for him to see (this is not an actual Mormon doctrine, but it is an example of the kind of error we would expect in the Bible). Even more telling: the Bible was translated many times, from Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek to Latin, to German, than to English. Our church holds that many errors were made in this process, and I believe this is upheld in comparative studies (though I can't back this up, because I don't speak German, Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic).Many Mormons hold that the Bible was deliberately corrupted by "evil and conspiring men" at some point (or many points) in its editorial history, but I don't know enough about the subject to verify whether this is an actual doctrine of the Church, or the expressed opinion of a Church leader (we sometimes have difficulty among our own ranks defining what constitutes doctrine and what constitutes authoritative opinion, which I sure you can relate to).On another topic, now. You'll have to forgive me some of my ignorance concerning many other religions' viewpoints. This is one that I didn't catch from your posts before:This was from an earlier post, and I was familiar with this concept, but this next step is the one that caught me by surprise: I hadn't equated these two concepts before. Am I to understand from this that, after being born again, you can make the change from a purely sinful will to a will that can also choose good? But, until then, the only choices we can make are sin.I read this next quote earlier, and thought it sounded a lot more like Buddhist Nirvana (being subsumed into oneness with God/the Universe) than restoration of free will: But, now I understand what you're saying. This is good: now I know where my Mormon background has led me to think wrongly of other Christians. I will no longer argue against strawman hypotheses of salvation with no cost.I will still disagree with you, though. As examples, I take a few posts from ChristianJuggalo's thread about purposes for the universe. These show that people who have not accepted Christ in their lives can surely make good choices. Rahvin, in particular, on that thread, has been admirably patient and good-natured in the face of all the insults there: see, in particular, Rahvin's posts
here and here. I have a lot of respect for this sort of person.Seeing atheists behave in this manner will always be a good reason for me to believe that accepting Christ is not a pre-requisite for doing good. This indicates to me that humans innately have the ability to make good choices, whether or not such good choices would be seen as filthy rags. From this, I conclude that it is our responsibility to make good choices, for which we will be granted salvation.This may be a good time to state our beliefs concerning the Atonement. Christ has suffered for all of us, and his Atonement is unconditionally objective. However, His Atonement is a gift that is being offered to us unconditionally, but it still relies on us to open the door and receive it. Therefore, our works do not save us, as such, but His Grace saves us. Our works merely allow us to access His Grace.Personally, if God felt Rahvin's behavior on that thread amounted only to filthy rags (or, that such behavior was any less noble than such behavior from a born-again Christian), I would submit that He is more self-important than righteous. And, I cannot abide such a thought about God. Thus, I can't accept the view that good choices, such as Rahvin made, are only filthy rags to God.But, until I get there and God tells me it's right, I can only fall back on this argument from incredulity (or faith, since we're talking about religious stuff here) as I have presented it. I hope, when the time comes, that I'll have the humility and the wisdom to accept the truth, whatever it turns out to be.Edited by Bluejay, : Added Hyperlinks

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Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)