[ATLian]

As we discuss the whole notion of man having free will, here's something else to consider: Does god himself have free will?

There's a school of thought that posits that god cannot have free will! I had pasted this a long time back... So if you read the below and you conclude that god indeed has no free will, then why would you think that man has free will?



1. AN OMNISCIENT (ALL-KNOWING) BEING DOES NOT HAVE FREE WILL

If you are all-knowing, you know your future actions, what choices you will make, and you cannot change them otherwise your knowledge would be wrong, and you wouldn't be all-knowing. An omniscient being has no free will to choose actions; all its actions are predetermined.

If you knew a decision you are going to make in the future... what would it mean? You would have no free will to change that choice. No option, no choices... based on the fact that you know its going to happen, it is predestined and no amount of strong will can change it. The further in the future the predicted choice is, the less free will you have to change it! Well imagine if for infinity you'd always known exactly what choices you were going to make, and that you could never be wrong. You would never have had any free will in any choice, ever!

In effect God is an observer. An omniscient being has no free will - its entire future is set out and it has no choice but to follow its predestined path.


2. A PERFECT GOD HAS NO FREE WILL

Out of the possible options in a situation God always makes the best choice because it is perfectly benevolent. It cannot do something that is less moral or "good" than something else, because that would not be perfectly good, but merely second-best good. In every situation, God only has one choice: The most moral/good one. God does not have free will. It can make no choices, there are no possibilities for an omniscient-benevolent God to choose from. In order to give God its free will, we would have to take away its omniscience - its all-knowing nature - or take away its benevolence.

When people say that God has free will, they must also mean that God is imperfect. If God is not perfect then it becomes possible for God to choose a less-than-perfect action. If God is not imperfect, then, it is impossible for god to perform imperfect actions. Therefore God has no free will.


3. A MORAL GOD HAS NO FREE WILL

God, as the ultimate creator, created goodness. God is also said to be a perfectly good benevolent God. This means that God fulfils every possibility of the goodness it has created. It is the be-all and end-all of goodness, perfectly good and unerringly good. If God was not 100 percent perfectly moral, God would not be perfect. This results in a complete lack of free will for God.

God knows the nuances and complexities of every situation. God knows which actions are optimal, it knows which actions are perfectly good. Only God, I would guess, is capable of performing actions that are perfectly good. And it does so unerringly, constantly, because it itself is perfectly good and never errs. It is all-knowing and perfectly good. But, the problem is for free will, in any situation, of all the possible things God could do, God does the perfectly morally right one. It never chooses an inferior course of action because it is perfect. If it acted imperfectly, it would not be perfect.

So, in any situation, a perfectly moral God has no choice: It must carry out what action is most good. God, in creating goodness, and being perfectly good, is completely limited to only a set, predetermined series of actions. In any situation, at any point in time or out of time, God has no free will: It must robotically and automatically carry out the precise action that is perfectly good

[reggie_woic]

Whatever HE does is what WE consider good and perfect...perfection is the tag on His actions

I say that everything that is good and perfect to us now, was (and is) God's exercise of His "free will".
(i'll take my nobel prize now)

God doesn't do what is perfect; what he does IS perfect...he preceeds "perfection"...
he does not follow perfection....he determines what is perfection.

================================================== ========
so ATLian, you do not believe in supernatural forces...what DO you believe in?
(please, please, please don't tell me you sense a kinship fellow primates)

[Kigan]

Njack

- I see you have been given a reason for Aetheism by ATlian:
[b]
[Good luck in getting an answer to this. This was one of the questions that started my ascent into atheism way back in high school. This, and the question of evil."

Well, you might want to compare that with what Isaac Newton, in his old age and after many 'empirical evidences' concluded.

'Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors.[3]
Isaac Newton: Inventor, Scientist and Teacher, Mott Media, ISBN 0-91513406-3,

I know its hard to choose - Atlian representing all enlightened mashadites vs Isaac Newton but then again, we have a free will... or don't we?

One more of Isaac Newtons comment as a parting thought today? why not.

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. … This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called “Lord God” παντοκρατωρ [pantokratòr], or “Universal Ruler”. … The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect."

Newton’s Philosophy of Nature: Selections from his writings, p. 42, ed. H.S. Thayer, Hafner Library of Classics, NY, 1953.


"I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily."
Isaac newton, {John H. Tiner. Isaac Newton: Inventor, Scientist and Teacher }


Maybe mashadites need to consider your 'empirical evidence'which by the way philosophers inmashada require and ironically never seem to give in support of their theories.

By the way Njack you should read more about Isaac Newton and his commentary on the books of Daniel and revelation - seems to believe in foreknowledge.

[njack mbaowa]

kigan,

It seems you were one step ahead of me. I have often wondered if Atlian was to meet an intellectually superior person (say like a Einstein or such) that believed in God if he would change his mind. I had no clue about Isaac Newton.

my belief in God is not about to change any time soon. I don't know why(or how) God not having a free will is relevant. from our view point as humans, it is God that will judge us not we that will Judge him.

As Reggie put it God preceeds perfection.





.

[Songa Songa]

ATLian argument about Things Fall Apart is weak. Things fall apart is a work of fiction and that is not in despute.
The bible on the other hand is a volume. It covers thousands of characters in different places and times, verifiable through history. It is biographical with the cental theme of God and dealings with the human race.

[ATLian]

Originally Posted by Songa Songa

ATLian argument about Things Fall Apart is weak. Things fall apart is a work of fiction and that is not in despute.
The bible on the other hand is a volume. It covers thousands of characters in different places and times, verifiable through history. It is biographical with the cental theme of God and dealings with the human race.

Songa,

you missed my entire argument. My point is that it is possible to discuss things you don't believe in!

BTW, there are many people, me included, who believe that the Bible is but another collection of myths, just like those stories on Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods. It is very possible to mingle a great fictional story with a real event that happened. If you read Frederick Forsyth, many times you are left wondering what was fiction and what was real in his books, because of the way he plays real events and people into his fictional story.

Also, there are tons of things in the Bible that are just not historically verifiable, including the number one event - the flood. Plus the Bible copies a lot of stuff from older religions. There are very many things attributed to god that appear in other stories but attributed to their gods...

[ATLian]

kigan,

It seems you were one step ahead of me. I have often wondered if Atlian was to meet an intellectually superior person (say like a Einstein or such) that believed in God if he would change his mind. I had no clue about Isaac Newton.

Njaack,

I would definitely listen to what he has to say, especially if he had the evidence to back it up. I read a heck of a lot on what those geniuses did and wrote. Do you know that most of them did not believe in god, and many of the ones that did believed only because not believing would result in you ending up on a stake being burnt alive for heresy? Do you know that an overwhelming majority of the scientist if the National Academy of Sciences do not believe in any god(s).

What about you, if you met an intellectually superior person like Einstein (who BTW did not believe in god, contrary to popular beleifs) who did not believe in god, would it change your mind?



I don't know why(or how) God not having a free will is relevant.

It's just an observation. If god has no free will, it has to make you wonder why a mere mortal man would have free will, ama!



As Reggie put it God preceeds perfection.

No offense to Reggie but those are what I call empty rhetoric apologetic Christian rantings. What the heck does that mean? How can anything exceed perfection. Perfection is a state of absoluteness, and even the Bible does say that god is perfect. How then do you exceed that? And doesn't that then mean that the Bible is wrong by saying that god is perfect?

[ATLian]

Kigan,

you questioned me on 2 things (to prove what I wrote about god, and how I can describe a god I don't believe in) and I did. I see that you have totally ignored that and gone to another direction. I'm still curious, do you not agree with what I wrote - or are you like Songa (you agree that god is a genocidal tyrant but put the disclaimer that he has the right to be one because he is god?)

Anyway, back to Newton. Like I told Njaack, I read a heck of a lot on these scientists and the work they did. I advise those who are interested in this sort of crazy scientific stuff to get "A brief Illustrated History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking coz he breaks their theories into simple laymans terms and also he discusses many of the great scientists. That said, I view Newton with major respect. Many argue that he is the greatest polymath (a polymath is a person who is a genius in many academic fields) ever, because of his writings on math, physics, astronomy, religion, finance, etc. I view him as being ahead of most scientists like akina Eisntein, Stephen Hawking, etc, coz while they are almost only known as theoretical physicists with major major ground-breaking theories on time and gravity and light, they aren't exactly polymaths like Newton, or da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin, were. So you won't get any criticism about Newtons' genius from me.

Anyway, for the first quote - Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors - you have to relaize that a proclamation of atheism in those days was signing your death warrant. If Newton wrote that statement today, he would be flat-out wrong. That's because today atheism is not a capital offense, and a humongous majority of "professors" and scientists have come out as atheists!

As for This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being, again that would be wrong. I don't know much about this, but the Chaos Theory, developed after Newton died, has shown that total order, from tiny molecules to humongous galaxies, can be derived from absolute chaos. In other words, it dismisses the idea that only a god can create the galaxies and universes and everything in them.

As for your final quote, I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, I don't know if you knew this but Newton wrote more about religion and god than he did all other subjects combined! He was obviously a theist of the very dogmatic type. In fact he was an ordained priest! And that's where he gets a ton of criticism today because it really screwed up a lot of the work he could have done. e.g. trying to look for a god equation or disputing things he found only because they did not agree with his thought on godliness.

You should read a lot more about Newton coz in as much as he was a genius, he was also a totally screwed up person. He was totally antisocial, obnoxious, died a virgin, was rumored to be gay, was cruel, vindictive, short-tempered, etc, he tried to kill his folks, blah blah blah. In a nutshell, Newton was a total absolute assh*le, and definitely not the kind of guy a devout Christian should be referencing when it comes to Christianity!

Finally - I know its hard to choose - Atlian representing all enlightened mashadites vs Isaac Newton - I don't represent any Mashadites, I just write things from how I perceive them as an atheist. Secondly, I can also write the same thing about you - Kigan representing all believers vs (insert the name here of any scientist who was a genius and an atheist). Does it mean that you will change what you believe in? Does the fact that a genius like Newton 100% believed in a god bila any tangible evidence to back him up mean that I also should. Here was a man who devised the laws of gravity from nothing, and yet all his life despite trying hard could never come up with any evidence for a god! That, BTW, was his biggest failure as a scientist!

My 2 cents

[Songa Songa]

Originally Posted by ATLian

Songa,

you missed my entire argument. My point is that it is possible to discuss things you don't believe in!

BTW, there are many people, me included, who believe that the Bible is but another collection of myths, just like those stories on Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods. It is very possible to mingle a great fictional story with a real event that happened. If you read Frederick Forsyth, many times you are left wondering what was fiction and what was real in his books, because of the way he plays real events and people into his fictional story.

Also, there are tons of things in the Bible that are just not historically verifiable, including the number one event - the flood. Plus the Bible copies a lot of stuff from older religions. There are very many things attributed to god that appear in other stories but attributed to their gods...

Majority of people have no difficulty delineating works of fiction from other works. In fact if you walk to your local library, you will not find the bible filed under fiction or with other collection of mythology. I would say that your scholarship is disingenuous if you can be mistified by the real and sureal in Frederick Forsyth writings and having read the bible consider its entirety a collection of myths.

[Songa Songa]

Originally Posted by ATLian

Songa,

you missed my entire argument. My point is that it is possible to discuss things you don't believe in!

BTW, there are many people, me included, who believe that the Bible is but another collection of myths, just like those stories on Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods. It is very possible to mingle a great fictional story with a real event that happened. If you read Frederick Forsyth, many times you are left wondering what was fiction and what was real in his books, because of the way he plays real events and people into his fictional story.

Also, there are tons of things in the Bible that are just not historically verifiable, including the number one event - the flood. Plus the Bible copies a lot of stuff from older religions. There are very many things attributed to god that appear in other stories but attributed to their gods...

Majority of people have no difficulty delineating works of fiction from other works. In fact if you walk to your local library, you will not find the bible filed under fiction or with other collection of mythology. I would say that your scholarship is disingenuous if you can be mistified by the real and sureal in Frederick Forsyth writings and having read the bible consider its entirety a collection of myths.