LuftWaffle

 

 

For example:   Two of your children are drowning but are so far apart that you can only swim to one and resucue them.  You have to choose.   You have a will, but it is not free.  The situations surrounding you dictate a decision.  

 

This confuses will with ability. One only has the ability to save one, but one might will to save both. I think there is a different between will and ability.

 

 

No, if I am the father, my will is that I am not in that position. Or, my will is that I save both. But my will can't be done.   I don't want to make the decision.  But I have no choice.  I must decide.   My will is not 'free'.  It is locked into the situations I am given.  And the situations we are given are beyond us.

 

Quantrill

 

You're proving my point by when you say "My will can't be done". In other words there is your will, and then there is ability. Those are two separate things.

 

 

Your not paying attention.  I am not saying we have no 'will'.  We do.  But our will isn't 'free'. 

 

I am not saying we are not responsible for our decisions.  We are.  But our will isn't 'free'   Because we are beset by things which are beyond our control. 

 

How do you know God didnt put the kids out there in the example?    Perhaps it was a boating accident.    I guess God didn't see it coming. 

 

No,in your example Im not going to say that it wasn't you.  Im going to shoot you.

 

Your quote from Luftwaffle is fine, just take out the word 'free'.

 

Quantrill

There is either free will or some form of determinism. So, if you deny that the will is free, then you're left with determinism.

If man is unable to do the right thing then it's impossible for man to be guilty of anything. Any deterministic system of the will removes the responsibility from man and places it upon the agent doing the determining.

We see this in our legal systems everyday. If a harmful action is outside someone's control, then we call it an accident. For instance if someone drives a car and the tire burst and the car skids into a pedestrian hurting that person, then it's called an accident, because it couldn't have been avoided. If on the other hand the accident could have been avoided, then the driver is culpable.

How do you know God didnt put the kids out there in the example?    Perhaps it was a boating accident.    I guess God didn't see it coming. 

This seems to be another instance where it is assumed that God must determine all things for God to have foreknowledge.  Such an assumption seems to me to be baseless.

For example:   Two of your children are drowning but are so far apart that you can only swim to one and resucue them.  You have to choose.   You have a will, but it is not free.  The situations surrounding you dictate a decision.  

This confuses will with ability. One only has the ability to save one, but one might will to save both. I think there is a different between will and ability.

Doesn't choosing imply a set of things from which to choose?  And is not that set limited?

Yes, but those choices aren't necessarily achievable for the person to make a freewill choice, which is why I think the examples in your response to Godsmercyinus confused free will with ability. 

If you've ever failed at something then that would be an example of where you willed to do something without being able to do it, or would you disagree?

choose to get up, or choose to try to get up?

Choose to will to get up.

 

 

 

Here's my opinion on the matter: 

 

God doesn't limit our choices. At the end of the day, I could choose to read a book or play a video game. Nine times out of ten, I'd pick the video game. 

 

God may be omniscient and knows everything we'll do or don't do, but isn't it also true that God exists outside the universe, and doesn't follow the law of the universe he made? 

 

And since the universe's creation and Adam and Eve, we've been in the state of complete decay, sin, death, and temptation that is the way of death. But we can do anything we want regardless. 

 

There are lots of verses that imply all the above, but God doesn't limit our will to choose, because that would mean we wouldn't be able to choose him, and choose to seek and love him with all our Heart! 

"God doesn't limit our choices."

Vot der Dumboozle!

So you can choose to jump off the Empire State Building & fly?

You can choose to be the next Preservelt?

What leads you to suppose that we don't really have a rather limited set of choice on our menu?

 

I think you're confusing choice with ability.

 

Is not choice limited by ability? by what is on the menu of options?  Perhaps you are saying that once you have a menu of options, then you have free choice to choose options?

 

That's not what's meant by the word choice when one speaks in terms of freedom of will.

For the will to be free requires only that one be able to choose something or choose not-something(could have done otherwise), and those choices needn't require one to actually have the ability to realise those desires and neither do the options need to be unlimited.

Even a person who is physically unable to do anything from say, a severe paralysis, could for instance choose to think about walking, or think of something else. They could even choose to get up, though they wouldn't succeed.

Physically they can't walk but they're exercising some choice nonetheless. Ability and choice(in terms of the will) are two different things.

 

Here's my opinion on the matter: 

 

God doesn't limit our choices. At the end of the day, I could choose to read a book or play a video game. Nine times out of ten, I'd pick the video game. 

 

God may be omniscient and knows everything we'll do or don't do, but isn't it also true that God exists outside the universe, and doesn't follow the law of the universe he made? 

 

And since the universe's creation and Adam and Eve, we've been in the state of complete decay, sin, death, and temptation that is the way of death. But we can do anything we want regardless. 

 

There are lots of verses that imply all the above, but God doesn't limit our will to choose, because that would mean we wouldn't be able to choose him, and choose to seek and love him with all our Heart! 

"God doesn't limit our choices."

Vot der Dumboozle!

So you can choose to jump off the Empire State Building & fly?

You can choose to be the next Preservelt?

What leads you to suppose that we don't really have a rather limited set of choice on our menu?

 

I think you're confusing choice with ability.

Why God created anyone to exist besides himself is a major curiosity to me since it meant so much grief for himself...

I think that perhaps it's because, "'Tis better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all."

Great post. Just one thing I'd disagree with is that information is timeless because it's massless. Masslessness doesn't imply timelessness.

Time for instance is massless, but it would be weird to say that time is timeless.

Personally I don't think information is timeless though it's certainly immaterial (not part of matter/energy). Information seems to be bound to time in that a message starts existing at a certain point in time, when a transmission begins, and ceases existing when a transmission ends. While the information may convey a timeless idea, the information itself, seems to be bound to time.

If there is no free will, then God is not a Father, nor is He a Shepherd or a Husband or a King.

If there is no free will, then all life is a puppet show, and God is a Puppet Master pulling on a string.

Hi AlanLamb0986,

I have a controversial view on predestination- I believe it's exactly what it says on the tin. God elects a chosen few to be saved by Grace. Even Jesus said that we can't believe unless by the will of the Father. I think's that's pretty straightforward.
Jesus said He is the only way to the Father, but we can't get to Jesus unless the Father calls us. There's no other way of explaining this- God chooses man.

I'm not sure why you think this view is controversial. As an Arminian I can agree with what you're saying here. I believe God's prevenient grace, His drawing, enables us to come to him, so thus we cannot come to God unless the father draws us. I suppose the difference is that I believe that God draws all men unto Him, whereas those who espouse five point Calvinism believe that God only draws a certain few, but I'm not sure that the drawing of a certain few is actually what the "tin" says.
This view assumes a notion of total depravity that I can't really see in scripture. The very verse dealing with objects of wrath in Romans is a quote from Jeremiah where God laments the fact that people reject Him but that if they turn to Him he'll make them objects of glory. Surely it implies then that the "object of wrath" status isn't unconditional, but rather conditional. Why would God lament man's wickedness if God Himself not only decreed that they be wicked after Adam, but also could simply determine their obedience?
But again in John it says that people love the darkness but if they come to the light, they'll have everlasting life. Again the language is conditional. On the predestination view Jesus is rather deceptively
I don't see the dilemma. If God wishes all men to be saved and draws all men unto Him, then it's not possible to call on Jesus without having been called by the father. The great commission also seems to affirm this as it's really an instruction to go and disciple all men, not merely to go an disciple the elect.
The parable of the wedding also seems to show that all people are invited. In fact the very word "invitation" implies the freedom to choose. If predestination were true one would perhaps rather expect the parable of the wedding to read somewhat differently. 

The issue is predestination means that God chooses some not to be saved. So? If we are all deserving of the punishment, why do people get uncomfortable at the idea that God chooses some to be saved?

Precisely because punishment is only "deserved" where there is responsibility and for there to be responsibility there must be the opportunity to do otherwise. One cannot condemn a zebra for having stripes because the zebra isn't responsible for having stripes in the first place. Likewise God cannot condemn those who reject Him and disobey Him if He decreed and determined that disobedience and rejection.
The illustration doesn't work because handing out money has no moral weight. We're not talking about an amoral gift, but about justice, which has moral weight.

In short the reason your analogy fails is because there is no expectation that a stranger would give anybody money, but there is an expectation that a just God would give justice to all people.

I'm not offended, but I don't think that the predestination view makes sense of God's love or God's justice.

Hi Omegaman,

I'd like to respond to your post if I may.

God is omniscient, know all things, including the future.

So, even before creation, He knew all who would be saved, and all who would be lost.

If God were to speak those thoughts out, we would call that prophecy, and we know all prophecies of God, come true.

So, if God knew that Omegaman was going to acknowledge Jesus in 1979, then that is what was going to happen. Nothing that Omegaman could do of fail to do of his free will, can change what God foreknew. Of course, it can be argued that God knew that Omegaman would use his free will to choose God, but even if that is the case, it remains that Omegaman was predestined to choose, since God had foreseen it. Is that sort of free will really free will? My path was set long before I was born and able to choose anything.

There are some problems with how you're stating the issue here.
Firstly you say that there is nothing that you could do of your own free will to change the outcome that God foreknew. Well, that's not entirely true if human being's have freewill. God simply knows what you would freely choose and if you did something else freely then God would know the new thing that you would do.
So it isn't that there's nothing that you could do of your freewill to change the outcome, but rather that any free choice would be known beforehand.

Secondly, there's no reason to think that free will is only truly free if nobody knows the outcome. No definition of freewill requires that an external entity such as God, must be unaware of the outcome of our free choices otherwise our choices aren't really free.

Suppose a good chess player has studied his opponent carefully and knows what his opponent's next move will be. Does that mean that the opponent's move isn't free but somehow preterdemined? Ofcourse not.

Likewise there's no conflict between God knowing our choices and the freedom of those choices.

I do not really see what difference it makes, except to our flesh which desires to have an active part in our salvation

This is a standard Calvinist charge that those who disagree with the Calvinist interpretation of scripture have some spiritual flaw.

Whether God actually chose certain people in eternity (which I think the bible teaches) or only presented an opportunity for people to choose for themselves autonomously seems irrelevant since it seems obvious, based on God's foreknowledge, that we have a destiny that will be fulfilled. Seems like the mechanics of how it occurs are just intellectual semantics.

The difference is that in the first instance God is responsible for the destiny and in the second man is responsible for the destiny.
So in the former case, people are punished in hell for sins they couldn't avoid and for rejecting salvation that wasn't given to them anyway.
In the latter case, people are punished in hell for sins they knew they could have avoided, and for rejecting the gift of salvation that was offered to them.

No non-Calvinist believes that people "choose for themselves autonomously". Autonomy is way too strong a word because it implies that a person has no influence upon the will and nothing external preventing the free excercise of the will. I consider free will to simply mean the ability to make a choice within a framework of possibilities and within numerous influences such as God's drawing people unto him, satans influences and the weaknesses of our flesh tugging at us.
The basic necessity for freewill isn't autonomy, but merely just the option to do otherwise, whether with great difficulty or not.

If you are a naturalist/physicalist, you are going to face that challenge with or without evolution.

Sure, but evolution is really the only option, which is why naturalists will hold to evolution and continue to do so despite the many problems with the theory.

I wasn't a naturalist/physicalist. I asserted the existence of all kinds of abstract objects. I was a moral realist and thought there were moral properties (right, wrong, good and bad) which have objective existence. So, if I say 'murder is wrong' it's a truth claim which can be right or wrong in the objective sense. That is it in a nutshell.

Ok, so you believed that objective morals values were just a brute fact of the universe. There are some atheists who believe this, but it seems odd that the moral and the physical realms should intersect in an obscure species on an obscure planet in a very large universe, which seems otherwise oblivious to such things. Such an explanation, while freeing the atheist from the embarrassment of moral subjectivism, really doesn't really offer anything more than for instance saying "I don't know", or did you see it differently?

Alright, but there is nothing in the physical theory which would allow an atheist to found any ethical system. If they do, they are making a categorical error. You can't describe how nature works and then say that is how things *ought* to be. Descriptions don't give you moral imperatives.  Slugs may be 'better adapted' to some environments than people are, so what?

I agree that descriptions don't give you moral imperatives, but they can and do influence them. Our understanding of our origins definitely impacts our understanding of human value, and ethics. Would you say that believing that all men are created in God's image and has intrinsic value, has the same net effect as believing that mankind is simply the result of time and chance and that life itself has no objective purpose or value? 

Anyway, as an atheist I thought there were moral absolute standards. I can describe for you the details if you are interested.

It's not really important what you thought while you were an atheist, but what's important is whether your thoughts were consistent with your worldview.

It also depends on what you mean by moral absolute standards, I believe moral values and duties are objective but not necessarily absolute.

I am interested in how you were able to ground objective moral values and duties as an atheist, though, so go ahead.

wasn't there racism long before there was a Darwin?  Didn't Christians use the Bible to support racism and slavery long before Darwin came along?

The Bible doesn't support racism or slavery in the sense of what the OP refers to. The question isn't whether "Christians" could use the bible to support racism and slavery, but whether the Bible itself supports it. It doesn't which is precisely why slavery was ended by Christians such as Wilberforce and Luther King Jr.

A person could use a McDonalds burger wrapper as justification for some immoral act, that doesn't mean that McDonalds actually supports the act.

 'Well adapted' does not, and *should* have zero moral or ethical implications whatsoever. Those are founded elsewhere, such as, in our theological understandings.

 

According to whom? From a theistic point of view one could say this, but the point of the theory of evolution is to explain the world according to naturalism, without invoking a God. When God is left out of the equation what prevents one from attaching moral weight to something like evolutionary fitness or any other subjective criteria for that matter? In fact doesn't survival of the fittest imply that the highly adapted will prevail while the lesser adapted populations will shrink?

Christian groups brought up tradition as a reason why gay marriage shouldn't be allowed.

I've never heard a Christian group appeal to tradition in favour of keeping marriage between a man and a woman.

But tradition used to say a black man could not marry a white woman. Therefore that argument couldn't stand.

It's a bad analogy. Race and ethnicity cannot be changed, whereas homosexuality is a behaviour.

Secondly race or ethnicity has nothing to do with marriage. Gender, however has everything to do with marriage.

So the Christian says that marriage is for procreation.  But then you'd have to take away marriage licenses from people who can't have kids or 70 year old people who want to get married late in life.

Not true, because governments have always recognised that the natural union between a man and a woman is what produces the next generation, as a rule, as a group and by nature.

Homosexual unions as a rule, as a group and by nature do not produce the next generation.

There is no reason under united states law why a gay person can not be allow to be issued a marriage license solely because they are gay.

There is also no reason why marriage should be redefined to suite whatever people want it to mean.

This does not change the fact that Christians are to call a spade a spade and sin sin, but knowing that you will be in trouble with the law for "promoting hate" is a part of prophecy.  Jesus says you will be hated for my name sake.  I just wanted to show that you don't change the mind of a homosexual by changing the law.  You lift up Christ and let the Holy spirit do the changing of their mind.  That's all I wanted to get across. God bless.

I don't think laws are meant to change the minds of those who break it. The question isn't even about allowing gays to do what they want, they already have that freedom, the question is whether government ought to promote same sex unions by declaring that it is no different from a natural marriage.

 

 

Ok Alan, I get what you're saying and I agree with you in that morally it is wrong.  But again we are talking about in regards to the constitution.  The founders of this country were some pretty smart guys in that they knew what it was to have both the state and church have a union of power and dictate what a person should or should not do.  Hence the declaration of Independence(first part)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

 

Now the problem is that marriage became a state issued license and although Christians say marriage is a christian institution, you can't impose a religious activity on a person so we're back to square one.  What say you?

"Why should we try to influence the laws to promote our religious beliefs?" Because our belief in God should cause us to abide by the Law, but the Spirit should guide us to what is good and pleasing to the Lord. I must respect a homosexual couples right to marriage, but I don't, and should not agree to it. Jesus called us to follow the Law and be subject to the governments. I am subject, but I can still verbally disagree with strong disdain. 

You get that homosexuality is wrong, BUT we're talking about the Constitution? I hate to tell you Americans, but God doesn't care about the U.S Constitution. You speak of the Constitution as if it were divinely inspired. You can't say to God 'Homosexuality was legal in our nation.' God decides what is legal, what is wrong. You can't possibly defend that statement from a Christian perspective, only as an American. God doesn't care about your citizenship. The word 'God' doesn't appear in the Constitution. While governments exist under God, that doesn't mean they are for God. The U.S was not founded as a Christian nation.The 1706 Treaty with Tripoli says that 'the United States was not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.' Most of the Founding Fathers were deists, not Christian,

God isn't pro-America, pro-Britain etc. That's not what John 3:16 means. It means that God loves each individual that makes up the world. God doesn't care about a mass of people, He loves the individuals that make the collective. God won't judge man on whether He abides by man-made Laws.

You can't impose God's word on man, damn straight. But that still doesn't change the fact that when man wanders from God's word, it's called 'sin.' Whether the U.S allows that sin is utterly mute, God still hates that sin, and absolutely doesn't care about mankind's laws. He orders us to follow the law of the land, but He isn't bound by it.

 

 

 

Alan, Take a breather.....I'm not promoting that gay marriage is moral. I'm saying gays have the right according to the laws of the land. 

 

Answer me this.

 

Would it be right for a Christian group to petition their law makers to deny a person to get a license to practice medicine because they're gay?

How about a license to fly a plane?

How about a license to drive a car?

 

If not then why a marriage license?  Remember, the argument is not morality...it is as a human being, do they have a right to get a license issued by the state? If not then why not?

 

Sexual behaviour has nothing to do with medicine or flying a plane or driving a car. However it has everything to do with marriage.

I don't believe that marriage is simply a thing that one can define any way one chooses. Marriage is a description of the natural union between a man and a woman.

In terms of same sex marriage being the law of the land though immoral. All legislation is moral. You can't legislate anything but morality, so if homosexual behaviour is immoral then at the very least government shouldn't be promoting it by making no distinction between it and a natural marriage.

I agree with WillfromTexas that faith and science aren't really opposed to each other.

At the very least the subforum "Faith vs Science" should be renamed because it plays right into the atheist misrepresentation that these are in tension when in fact they're not.

I also think that Shiloh's idea is a good one. It would be better separating evolution issues, which I personally think has a bunch of pointless monologues (Pahu) from other science issues such as cosmology, teleology, information theory, the historical tradition of science in the Christian West etc. etc.

4. On to the evolution of this metamorphic trait. In the animal kingdom you have incomplete and complete metamorphosis. Caterpillars undergo complete metamorphosis, and it is believed to be derived from incomplete metamorphosis. Incomplete metamorphosis is seen in insects like crickets and cockroaches, where the young look similar to the adults but without certain adult features like wings. The young are called "nymphs" and go through a series of molts which turn the nymphs into adults. But before the nymphs were nymphs they were "pronymphs", depending on the species this pronymph stage is over before the egg hatches or the insect can remain in the stage for up to several days after hatching from its egg before molting into a true nymph. Pronymphs are soft-bodied, worm-like, and have non-fully developed nervous systems, all similar to caterpillars and other insects that undergo complete metamorphosis. It is thought that larva like caterpillars are virtually in a prolonged state of being a pronymph. The genes and hormones responsible for the incomplete and complete metamorphosis are similar, and you can see hormone similarities if you align the pronymph stage to the larva stage and the nymph stage to the pupa stage. The big evolutionary advantage to complete metamorphosis is that the young and adults require different resources (e.g. caterpillars eat leaves while butterflies eat nectar). This means that the young and old are not competing for the same resources which allows any given place to support more butterflies/caterpillars than it would otherwise, and the more of a species you can have the more likely it is that that species will survive. 

Hi D-9,

This is really fascinating. Although it seems unbelievable, I guess I can certain envision the evolution of an incomplete metamorphosing animal into a complete metamorphosing animal, especially if, as you say the genes are quite similar.

But how does mutation and natural selection explain the step of going from a non-metamorphosing animal to the incomplete metamorphosing animal?

I'm thinking that you'd need to add quite a bit of information to the animal's genome to do this. At the very least you'd need the information to not only specify what changes need to occur, but where they should occur, and also when.

It wouldn't make sense for an insect to develop antennae inside its belly, and it would make sense to have antennae before it has the software to interpret the signals coming from the antennae, etc.

Then I'm also wondering if biologists have identified a plausible lineage? Have they found fossilised precursors of metamorphosing animals?

The reason I'm asking this is because I wonder if it's at all possible to identify such precursors as the adult and the juvenile animals would have different characteristics, they're most likely to be classified as different families instead of being seen as a juvenile and adult versions of the same species, not so?

 

Hi D-9

Sorry to hijack this discussion but something has me puzzled regarding the two quotes in your signature.

According to Bertold Brecht science is noble because it prevents infinite error. At least it's implied and I'm sure you agree.

According to Degrasse Tyson we are stardust.

Why is it that stardust must avoid infinite error?

I have a glass of orange juice sitting on my desk right now, which is also stardust. Should it also avoid error? Is it even capable of error?

Hijack off.

I think it fitting to drink the juice!

 

I did. It was mmm mmm gooood!

The juice and I are now joined even more closely than before.

Hi D-9

Sorry to hijack this discussion but something has me puzzled regarding the two quotes in your signature.

According to Bertold Brecht science is noble because it prevents infinite error. At least it's implied and I'm sure you agree.

According to Degrasse Tyson we are stardust.

Why is it that stardust must avoid infinite error?

I have a glass of orange juice sitting on my desk right now, which is also stardust. Should it also avoid error? Is it even capable of error? 

Hijack off.

 

Hi D-9,

 

Dissent with modification?

Is that when the parents are successful businesspersons who wish for the child to take over their empire, but instead the child rebelliously decides to become a bassist in a stoner rock band?

 

Just pulling your leg

 

Wow, what a typo on my part. 

Curse spell check for not being grammar check also   

 

That's not the worst I've seen though. The other day I informed a customer that the project I was working on was completed his email reply read,

"Excrement! I can't wait to see it."

 

I like to pose a simple question to evolutionists that completely baffles them. I like them to tell me 5 things that they know about evolution that is true.  I never get a response.  Rather, an occasional person will point me to an article.  It's a great way to show evolutionists that they really aren't aware of the fact that they have no idea what they believe. 

 

1. Members of a population will have different characteristics

 

2. Characteristics are inherited from parent to offspring under the model of dissent with modification 

 

3. Populations tend to produce more offspring than the environment can support; competition 

 

4. Those with characteristics that give a higher probability to survive and reproduce have a higher probability to pass on their characteristics while those with unfavorable characteristics tend to die off and/or not leave behind offspring

 

5. Over generations a population's characteristics will change in relation to the environment 

 

Hi D-9,

Dissent with modification?

Is that when the parents are successful businesspersons who wish for the child to take over their empire, but instead the child rebelliously decides to become a bassist in a stoner rock band?

Just pulling your leg