Free Will Historically

historical and mythical examples

Isn't that about a LittleBoy? and a KillerWhale?...

Free will is the ability Cain had to decide between murdering his brother and not murdering his brother. (Gen 4, 6-8).

That seems a little too grim and specific. Can't FreeWill be put to good purposes? Is it, perhaps, the ability Cinderella had in going to the ball? Apart from these nursery rhymes we don't seem to have distinguished what it is about in general.

Bit bloodthirsty, that Biblical reference; how about the response to Don't Eat the Fruit! earlier?

That's the terrible reality about FreeWill: it's not really about philosophical generalities but about specific daily human situations. Choices between different actions leading to different results.

That's the FriedrichNietzsche UberMan? version of FreeWill.

Clearly 'freewill' has been exercised again this week. Someone decided to attack New York and exercised freewill in planning it. A group of folk 'chose' to join in, obey orders, or sign up for this. Hundreds of 'small' 'freewill' decisions were taken over what may have been a lengthy period of time to support the initial idea. The people involved chose to train for the action, travel to the US, live in the US. They chose to buy groceries at the local store. On the chosen day, freewill decisions were taken to go through with it all, to take the knives on board the planes, to decide not to 'see' their fellow passengers as people, possible friends. 'Freely' the terrorists decided to end their own lives with those of many thousands of others. Make no mistake, men (and maybe women too) have exercised 'freewill' here.

It is important to consider this. Before we 'blame' God for the tragedy in America. Men are responsible for this.

This understanding that some men are responsible for the murders of their fellows underlies the proper response that those responsible should be punished, even unto the taking of their lives. -- MartinNoutch

Better leave the taking of life to Him who is also able to give life.

I acknowledge that viewpoint

See also TowerOfSiloam and FearOfGod

God deserves some of the blame. We didn't invent gravity.

"Blaming" God for 9/11 implies a judgement that God made a wrong choice. God has a plan for humanity. He wants our love. We have free will in order to make love possible. The down-side of free will, though, is that we will choose to love ourselves more than we love God. Choosing to love anything more than God leads to all sorts of problems (see Genesis, Adam & Eve, sin, death, etc). Death is the result of our bad choices, not God's. 9/11 is just the latest example of this. God has woven all our lives together to work out His plans for His kingdom. He doesn't need to control our choices, He simply knew what they all would be before time began. How did 9/11 fit into those plans? We can't possibly know, in this life, but we've seen some wonderful things that have come out of it. God didn't make Mohammed Atta do his deeds, but you can know that He worked Atta's bad choices into the long-term goals for mankind. See my articles for related discussions: I Choose, therefore God is, Evil and Calvinism vs Free Will -- BrucePennington

Doesn't that imply God is changeable (i.e., he wants to change to be "happier" or "more satisfied" due to human decisions)? Moreover, isn't our present state ideal (in God's view)? If God knows a better state, why not just implement it? Also, isn't "before" time began impossible (or meaningless) by definition? We can't change the past, so we care about the present and future, but if time is an artifact of God, nothing is irrevocable - we wipe out the human race... doesn't matter... God resets the past so that it never happened!

You’ve asked a couple of really good questions! I’ll take them in reverse. At the risk of annoying the OffTopic-police :), when I mention time, I mean our time. StephenHawking teaches that time is a physical aspect of our universe. If a being is outside our universe, it is outside our time. It may very well be on a time-line of its own, but it is outside the one we’re on. Hawking ends his book, "Brief History of Time" talking about his GUT theory – Grand Unified Theory, which he thinks will tie all laws of physics together to the point of explaining even human behavior. But the interesting thing is, even this will not necessarily obviate FreeWill. Such a Physical Law could be so sophisticated that it designs in the ability to choose freely. Like each person’s thinking software has its own random number generator with individual bias. But I’m chasing rabbits. I agree with you that we "care about the present and future". It is all we have to do anything with. Concerning your questions about God being "changeable," the Bible never says that God doesn’t feel emotions. In fact it says that He does. The verses about God not changing are referring to His character – He is always just, always loving, always forgiving, etc. Those character traits never change. Is there a state of affairs that is more desirable than the present one, and if so, why didn’t He make things that way? Yes, there will come a time when those who chose Jesus, who become part of God’s family, will join Him in a perfectly re-created world. He made things this way to begin with, because it was the only way to give us the FreeWill to join Him in it. He didn’t want a bunch of computer-like automatons droning around heaven chanting “We love You, We love You!” -- BrucePennington

That doesn't make sense. You can't usefully suggest that any of us join God in the future unless our time and God's time both exist and are the same. Also, it doesn't make sense to suggest God is "outside" the universe yet aware of it. Finally, emotions form part of character, and are also time-dependent.

Your first two issues hinge upon the idea that the realm God exists in is comprehensible to us. That is a common error that mankind makes. It has lead to all sorts of heresies and false religions. I personally think it hilarious that anyone can think that a being capable of creating the entire universe by His spoken word, is in any way within our meager means of comprehension. So why would the realm that He exists in be any more understandable? Concerning time - a cute illustration I heard one day: Imagine an author of a book. He sits at his manuscript going over the lives in his book. He can flip back to the beginning and review the birth of the main character. He can flip to the end and fine tune his death. Well, one way to imagine God's ability to do many things - from hearing and answering every prayer, to knowing the future, to being involved with us individually - is to imagine Him as that author going over every detail of his manustript. His time is different from the time of the people in his book. He is "outside" the realm of the people in his book, yet intimately involved with every charater. As an illustration, it has its limits, but it helps me to try to picture the issues we are discussing. Concerning emotions, I am about to enter a study of the issue. It was brought up to me in another venue, and is a challenging point. I will definitely study it. Thanks for bringing it up! -- BrucePennington

While we remain recognizably "us", we can't be (fully) "joined to God". Conversely, if we do "join God", we must no longer be human. Even if we were then able to "meet" other former humans, we couldn't recognize them. Nor could we recognize God, so we couldn't distinguish him from any other "spirit".

I just re-read our correspondence and we've seemed to morph from "joining God" in heaven to being "joined to God." One is a Christian view, the second more an Eastern (Hinduism) view. Certainly, there is imagery in the Bible of the body of believers in toto being regarded as the Bride of Christ. God uses the image of the marriage of man to woman as a picture of Christ joined with His Bride, the church. It is a union that is supposed to make them "one" in some way. I would expect our "union" with Christ in heaven to be similar. While made "one" in marriage to Him, we still retain our own idividuality, as a man and woman do in the married relationship. This is completely different from the Hindu concept of our re-merging into God. -- BrucePennington

I was referring to what Christians call "the afterlife", so whether "join" or "joined" was used, "in heaven" was meant, and the distinction wasn't intended to be significant. Also, if our decision-making capacities derive from God, every decision, including "wrong" ones must be partly God's responsibility.

Ok, thanks. "Decision-making capacities" There is a difference between having the capacity to chose and having that choice dictated. -- BrucePennington