itchy
Active member
no, I see your point perfectly...how can I have free will if I didn't even have the choice to be born in the first place...its a good arguement, that I don't know the answer to just yet...but it seemed to me to be a bit of a "glass half full/ glass half empty" situation...I'm glad to be born...and how I got here isn't important to me, I'm here now so I may aswell make the most of it...that kinda thing...also, there are lots of things in life that we don't get to choose...our names for example, or the weather, but I think it's our reactions to these things that is important...I doubt this answer will satisfy you, and to be honest I'm not totally satisfied myself, so I'll keep thinking.lawyerguy said:but that's not the point. The point was free will. God did not give you the choice to be brought into this world. God did not give you the choice to decide whether or not you wanted to be a part of the sin salvation dichotomy. It maybe that you would've chosen to take part in this game anyways, had you been given that choice, but other people might not have. ANd that choice was denied to them.
this may sound mean but I feel I should ask, is this kind of thing really the reason why you don't believe in God, or do you think there's a deeper reason why you're holding back? sorry if that sounds arsy but I had to ask!
and also, cLavian and you are both right about me bringing my personal experiences into things...it wasn't my intention to try to use my experiences as evidence of what I believe...my point I was trying to make is that my decision to follow God was not based on blind faith. I weigh up all my experiences in my life and try to come to the most logical conclusion that I can. I'm just looking for the truth, just like you.
No, I don't quite agree with this. Imagine if you could see into the future...you see a person on a bike taking a journey...they take 2 lefts and a right, lets say...from the point of view of the person on the bike, he's cycling along, then when he takes his 2 lefts and right, at those moments he was free to do so...i.e. if he had decided to take 3 rights and a left, that's what you would've seen when you looked into the future...but whatever the biker decided to do, he was free to do so at the moment of doing so!...only you can see into the future to see what he does.....the next question is, with that knowledge, it'd be possible for you to distract the biker someway to change his decisions, and thus totally bodge up the whole time/ destiny thing....but I guess, because God's the only one who can see the future, and he's a god of love, he will not bodge things up. Yes he can see the future, but I still think we're free.lawyerguy said:well, yes. Yes it does mean we don't have free will. If God can see what you will do before you do it, then it is impossible that you can do other than what God forsaw that you would do. Or else you would be admitting that God cannot tell the future. He wouldn't be omnipotent. And if it is impossible that you can do other than what God forsaw that you would do, youre destiney is already set.
hmm..yea, no I still don't see it quite like that. I believe the analogy of God as light and darkness as the absence of God is correct. God didn't create evil, and I don't think it's God who sends us to hell, we send ourselves. But I do believe God is just and we will get punished for the bad we've done and rewarded for the good. But punishment is not nessaserilly a bad thing, it teaches us so that we learn and grow and become mature [that's what you were trying to get at wasn't it, Zipper?]lawyerguy said:The reason why I compared God to a person with a gun pointing to your head is because God (at least of chrisitianity, islam, and judaism) chooses eternal damnation as a form oof punishment for sin. You can't get around that.