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[proteinjello]

i had a dream, but i cant remember what it was about. i do know it wasnt about model UN at all, because i remember being surprised that it wasnt when i woke up. have a nice day ahead of me. this weekend has no strings attached, no projects due at the end. i have a test and a quiz to make up when i get back, but thats not all that bad.

Comments

[anonymous]

that's a great point with the rainbow there

http://www.guitar.com/Discuss/readmsg.asp?showdates=&messageID=4012958

[andrough]

So, we are taught the Christian God is omniscient, omnipotent and creator, yet many argue the human race has free will...

How is that?

Well

[andrough]

Theoretically speaking, just because one has the ability to control, this does not automatically mean the control is exercised. The idea is that God wants us to have free will and so therefor we have it.

-Jace

Re: Well

[proteinjello]

umm. i think what andrew is saying (feel free to correct me if its not what you meant, andrew. i dont mean to speak for you.), and its something ive argued before, is that if god already knows how every person's life will turn out, then we esentially have no free will, since our actions have already been determined. so its nearly impossible to reconcile omniscience and free will. i think we could only have the appearance of free will--it seems like we make our own choices but in reality they have already been chosen. its fate, essentially, we are just following the path that has been chosen. the way i see it, god is either onimscient and knows exactly how things will end, or he is not, and we do have free will. in this case god may only see possible futures, futures that are affected by our choices made out of our own free will. but then he would have to guide us to the one perfect future, and then we lose the free will, because he would still be excercising power over us. mrm.

Re: Well

[andrough]

"so its nearly impossible to reconcile omniscience and free will. "

i've made this same point many times. i likened it last time to someone throwing a baseball at a window: just because you don't control the ball all the way until it hits the window doesn't mean you're not responsible for breaking it.

[anonymous]

Right. I know that objects tend to fall toward earth, and I know that an object I drop will fall to the ground. This doesn't mean that I'm making it fall to the ground. It's gravity. And I know that if water rises to a certain temperature, then it will boil, but that doesn't mean I'm making it boil. Also, I can predict the actions (or reactions, rather) of people that I know, but this doesn't mean that I am controlling those actions. Basically, knowledge of future events and control of them are not necessarily correlated at all.
Kelly

[proteinjello]

umm. think about it. in the two examples you described--neither the dropped object nor the water have any free will, because they are obeying laws. so if a happens, then you get the reaction b. you know it. so there isnt a choice, really. besides, if you say god created us, then he made our personalities, that which controls our descisons. so he has creative control, so to speak. we have to act according to the way we've been made. you dig?

[anonymous]

I don't know. I figure that God created DNA and initiated the whole reproduction process, and it's just been going on for a long time. I don't understand why you think that we wouldn't have free will just because we were created by God. Yes, there was a fundamental flaw in those examples. I retract those. haha. But, in Biblical terms, it's obvious that we have freewill if you think about Jesus. He was sent with a message that you can either receive or not receive. It's your call. Otherwise he would just force us to all go along with it. Just because God knows what's going to happen, doesn't mean he decided it. Think about the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-five. They could see the past, present, and future. They knew when everyone was going to die, and how. But that doesn't mean that they decided those things. I've decided to type this message. That's my decision. All God would know is that I was going to make that decision. It's still me exercising my free will, though. Ach, I'm no good at this.

[anonymous]

i understand that knowing something is going to happen and causing it to happen are not the same thing, but you're forgetting that god created the universe. this had to have been a concious, act, no?

in your analogy, this is like dropping the object that is falling. in mine, it's like throwing the baseball.

the point is that when you throw the baseball, you know that since you gave it momentum and direction, it is going to travel until it breaks the window. you're trying to say that since you weren't touching the ball when it hit the glass, you didn't break the window.

you're forgetting about the fact that he is the cause of everything, too.

[anonymous]

Well, I don't think the creation of the universe was necessarily a conscious act, leastways not in the way that we understand consciouness. Here's a better example: Let's say the inventor of the game baseball knew every game that would be played in baseball in advance. Does that mean that he controlled those games? Or did the players have free will?

[proteinjello]

and he knew the outcomes of the game? if so, then the player's free will wouldnt make a difference, would it? i mean, whatever they did they couldnt affect the outcome. even if they tried to throw the game that action would have been decided already. thats all im saying, really. that we have free will as far as our lives, but the big picture has already been painted, so to speak. the end is determined, so whatever we do has no effect on it. we could give up and stop doing anything or we could try as hard as we could to change things and neither would have an effect. you see? so god doesnt dictate every movement that we make, thats not what im saying. god doesnt control our actions per se. he isnt guiding us at every moment. however, because of the fact that the end has been decided our actions are essentially meaningless exceot in the small world of our own life. we cant affect the end, but we can still do the best we can to be good or happy while we're here.