Did god give us free will?
I can't will myself to fly through the cosmos at a trillion times the speed of light exploring other galaxies. I can't teleport to heaven and have a conversation with god. I can't even teleport to Tel Aviv. Surely god could do all of these things with no effort and he created us in his image. So why did he limit us so severely?
Why can't I will my hair to stop growing so I don't have to spend 40 bucks on a haircut every month?
Why can't I will my hearing to disable when a song I don't like is playing? Better yet, why can't I will it so that song is now my favorite song of all time and enjoy it?
Why can't I will myself to think 10x faster than I currently do? Why not 1000x or a googolx?
Or any number of countless things that I can't will to happen.
People use free will to explain bad things that happen to others. A man was killed because another man used his free will to do evil. But when a man has a heart attack and dies, nobody says he didn't use his free will to correct his heart problem and continue living.
God could alter the system right now so that those who would choose to do harm would instead immediately die from a heart attack. But he refuses to do this. Why? He allows the power of one's will to supersede the power of another's will.
It seems to me like what we have is, at best, incredibly limited will. The most egregious limitation though, if god exists, is that he didn't even give us the will to choose whether or not to be a part of his silly game.
You guy's are all messed up. We have complete free will. God wrote his law "in our hearts". That's your conscience of discerning right and wrong. When we sin we are rejecting grace from God and destroying our own souls. The more you sin, the more you turn your back on God and are then subjected to influence by other principalities (demons). Christians live a life of constant spiritual warfare. People that rape and murder have willfully ignored their conscience and turned their back on God. Evil
The father and the son are one. Even more, the son is in every human being and every human being is in the son.
As a result, you cannot disentangle the will of humanity from the will of God.
So you are right to hold humanity accountable for our actions, but you are mistaken to not hold God accountable. After all, who created these wills?
God is sovereign over all creation.
The father and the son are one. Even more, the son is in every human being and every human being is in the son.
As a result, you cannot disentangle the will of humanity from the will of God.
So you are right to hold humanity accountable for our actions, but you are mistaken to not hold God accountable. After all, who created these wills?
God is sovereign over all creation.
And the evidence for all this is it's one of the religions and you believe it and you are running your mouth about it. Nothing else.
God is not accountable to anyone/anything. You are not a Christian to say such a thing. It's blasphemy. You sound like a Calvinist piety signaling about "sovereignty" when you don't understand it. Yes, He's sovereign and we have complete free will at the same time. God works synergistically with us for our betterment and salvation but when we go against His will it's 100% our choice.
God is not accountable to anyone/anything. You are not a Christian to say such a thing. It's blasphemy. You sound like a Calvinist piety signaling about "sovereignty" when you don't understand it. Yes, He's sovereign and we have complete free will at the same time. God works synergistically with us for our betterment and salvation but when we go against His will it's 100% our choice.
Do you have a soul? Do you identify as God’s son?
Just because we don't have the power to have control over the uncontrollable doesn't mean we don't have free will. Humans have free will over everything we're capable of putting effort towards changing, and even if we don't get the desired outcome, we still have a will to try and change. It's a distinctly human attribute.
When you are living in the secular, then free will is true for you.
Still, if you are living in the Christian story, then you have no will free from God. You only have a choice between God’s higher and lower will. This is a non-negotiable truth of Christianity.
Like Jesus said, the son can only do what he sees the father do. If the son is a sinner, then the father is a sinner. Christians who identify with Christ are all sons through him.
That doesn’t negate the truth that God is perfect, pure, sinless, and innocent.
Christians are expected to hold all these truths and live in the seeming contradiction.
You don't become a deterministic robot when you convert to Christianity. Anyone can fall away from the faith. What Christian worldview/denomination do you adhere to?
It doesn’t need to be a sticking point right now, but not accepting the truths I’ve mentioned will cause someone to stay stuck later.
Anyone can fall away from the faith. What Christian worldview/denomination do you adhere to?
Faith goes beyond Christian group identity. We are to follow the Son of Man who defected from the group in order to prepare the way to the promised land. Did he not?
I too am preparing the way and I know the challenges ahead.
Faith goes beyond Christian group identity. We are to follow the Son of Man who defected from the group in order to prepare the way to the promised land. Did he not?
I too am preparing the way and I know the challenges ahead.
So you refuse to say what belief you adhere to? You're just saying words that really don't mean anything without a coherent dogma to fall back upon. You aren't a Christian if you don't ATTEND church...of some sort (I of course believe the Orthodox Church is the true apostolic church).
So WHAT CHURCH DO YOU ATTEND?
So you refuse to say what belief you adhere to? You're just saying words that really don't mean anything without a coherent dogma to fall back upon. You aren't a Christian if you don't ATTEND church...of some sort (I of course believe the Orthodox Church is the true apostolic church).
So WHAT CHURCH DO YOU ATTEND?
A primary reason for regular church attendance is to simulate the future kingdom of heaven on earth so each member can form an enduring, personal bond with it. God is with man inside the church and Christians become one body.
Still, this union is a preview. It’s not the real. The purpose of the rehearsal is to serve the real.
For the person who desires the real, all the dogma that obstructs the pursuit of the real in defense of the counterfeit - this is from the enemy.
A primary reason for regular church attendance is to simulate the future kingdom of heaven on earth so each member can form an enduring, personal bond with it. God is with man inside the church and Christians become one body.
Still, this union is a preview. It’s not the real. The purpose of the rehearsal is to serve the real.
For the person who desires the real, all the dogma that obstructs the pursuit of the real in defense of the counterfeit - this is from the enemy.
So you're obviously too embarrassed to answer. You sound like any other of the hundreds of protestant and gnostic cults who make up their own form of Christianity that suits them.
To say the earthly church is "just a preview. It's not real." is insanely heretical. You sir ARE NOT A CHRISTIAN. YOU ARE GNOSTIC.
So you're obviously too embarrassed to answer. You sound like any other of the hundreds of protestant and gnostic cults who make up their own form of Christianity that suits them.
To say the earthly church is "just a preview. It's not real." is insanely heretical. You sir ARE NOT A CHRISTIAN. YOU ARE GNOSTIC.
Christ commands his followers to heal the sick. Over 1,000 children died of cancer in the US last year. That’s on you.
There is no evidence that free will exists. Everything, from the movement of stars to animal behavior - and we are animals - is determined by cause and effect. I dare anyone to prove that free will exists.
There is no evidence that free will exists. Everything, from the movement of stars to animal behavior - and we are animals - is determined by cause and effect. I dare anyone to prove that free will exists.
Well, at the very least, to say that “free will obviously exists” as some do is begging the question. The perception of free will obviously exists. We believe we have free will because it seems to us in our thought processes that we do. Perhaps we do, but as you say, there is no actual evidence that our thought processes are free and that perhaps we are destined to just THINK we have free will when reality is otherwise.
It’s an interesting philosophical debate that has gone on for centuries for a reason — it doesn’t have an easy and obvious answer when you dig deep into the subject.
As you progress, you realize you have core values which you desire more than freedom.
With that said, as is true with other core values, if you offer up freedom as a sacrifice, it will be returned to you later in the story.
You become a co-author and are trusted with many of the details of the story. Like how Adam is trusted to name the animals.
If you clench the illusion of freedom, then, as you age, you will gradually become enslaved to death.
There is no evidence that free will exists. Everything, from the movement of stars to animal behavior - and we are animals - is determined by cause and effect. I dare anyone to prove that free will exists.
Today I chose a green coffee cup over my white one simply because I like the shape of it better. Boom, free will. You can't be serious.
There is no evidence that free will exists. Everything, from the movement of stars to animal behavior - and we are animals - is determined by cause and effect. I dare anyone to prove that free will exists.
If I SA'd and murdered your mother would you just shrug your shoulders and say "oh well, he didn't have free will"? Given your position, you would have no moral right to be angry with me.