The Question of Free Will and Christianity

[ericoh2]

Under the Christian belief system total free will is not possible. Free will states that an individual has the ability to make a decision without being controlled or programmed in any way. First of all we have to identify what the term "self" or "individual" is referring to. For the most part in the Christian faith the indivual is thought to be a combination of the soul, genetics and enviromental influence. They believe the soul is given to you after conception by God and you receive your DNA layout from your parents. If this were true than these two factors are completly out of your hands and are decided by factors that you could not control. Even the experiences that you have are decided by these factors. If you were born 500 years ago you would probably be a completly different person simply because of your enviroment.
This means that in the traditional Christian faith there is no real purpose for existence. If you are "good" you were made to be "good", if your are not then you were not made to be. Either way their wouldn't be a point for existence. The only way true free will is possible is if you are one with the eternal. Simply a point of consciousness within the infinite ocean of existence.

I hope to get some good replies, have a great day.

 

[Ringer]

I do not believe in ultimate free will. I think the Bible teaches that we have relative free will in that we are free to make choices but those choices are not out of the sphere of God's control. I don't know if that's the best way to put it I picture it like a horse running around an enclosed field. The horse is free to roam around but only within certain parameters that have been established. Hope that makes sense.

 

[BruceDLimber]

Greetings!

From my POV free will is a given in ALL the great religions!

I would say that while created noble, what we do with ourselves--and make of ourselves--is largely under our own control, which is why our spiritual status is also our individual, personal responsibility.

And given that we start out as essentially a tabula rasa, it's the combination of initial parental & community training and--especially--our own endeavors at self-improvement that ultimately determines our circumstances!

The Baha'i scriptures put it this way:

"Man is the supreme talisman. Lack of a proper education hath, however, deprived him of that which he doth inherently possess. Through a word proceeding out of the mouth of God he was called into being; by one word more he was guided to recognize the Source of his education; by yet another word his station and destiny were safeguarded. The Great Being saith: Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom."

-- (Gleanings, CXXII, pp. 259-260)

Best regards,

Bruce

 

[sandandfoam]

It seems certain to me that decisions are made in the pre-conscious so there is no conscious free will.
However that is not how I experience my everyday life, illusory as it may be I experience free will.
The above sentences seem contradictory yet they are both 'true' to me.
How do you think they conflict with my Christianity again?

 

[Random]

Choice is essentially discrimination, predicated upon and conditioned by the state of awareness of the chooser. I am not a Christian, but if one can choose against the will of God as Satan did (allegedly) in the traditions, then freewill is affirmed.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

It seems certain to me that decisions are made in the pre-conscious so there is no conscious free will.

I wonder...maybe the relations in the conscious conditions the pre-conscious where the decisions are made. In other words, maybe our relationship with Totality determines our decisions rather than the conscious mind.

Just a random thought.

 

[logician]

If mankind has no free will, then there is no culpability(from a theistic viewpoint). Determinism says that nature follows exact laws, so that what will happen in the future is a necessary consequence of the state of the world at any given moment in the past. Plato denied free will, in that people would always choose a better (to them) over a worse action. Aristotle disagreed however, distingusihing reason from desire, saying that people may choose something that may be the more harmful option. I personally think we have a good deal of free will, because not all of our decision are rational or logical, and more importantly, our decisions cannot be predicted with certainty with any model on an individual basis.

 

[sandandfoam]

I wonder...maybe the relations in the conscious conditions the pre-conscious where the decisions are made. In other words, maybe our relationship with Totality determines our decisions rather than the conscious mind.

Just a random thought.

That's a great thought. More to wonder about !

 

[lmnmom]

Under the Christian belief system total free will is not possible. Free will states that an individual has the ability to make a decision without being controlled or programmed in any way. First of all we have to identify what the term "self" or "individual" is referring to. For the most part in the Christian faith the indivual is thought to be a combination of the soul, genetics and enviromental influence. They believe the soul is given to you after conception by God and you receive your DNA layout from your parents. If this were true than these two factors are completly out of your hands and are decided by factors that you could not control. Even the experiences that you have are decided by these factors. If you were born 500 years ago you would probably be a completly different person simply because of your enviroment.
This means that in the traditional Christian faith there is no real purpose for existence. If you are "good" you were made to be "good", if your are not then you were not made to be. Either way their wouldn't be a point for existence. The only way true free will is possible is if you are one with the eternal. Simply a point of consciousness within the infinite ocean of existence.

I hope to get some good replies, have a great day.

I guess the first problem is it depends on what you think free will is. I think free will is your ability to make decisions for yourself. No matter what, environment is going to influence what you do in life, as is what you were taught as a child. However, neither of these CONTROL your choices, you can still go against them, which is free will.

What I'm getting from your line of logic is that if someone's parent was a rapist, that means they will be a rapist. If their parents were violent, then they will be violent. Is it not the same concept that you are putting out here?

I guess a lot of what you're saying is very hypothetical too me. You would have to assume that the "good" soul, once it reached earth, continued to stay on the same path that it did before it was born. But that's when free will steps in, because you can't really prove that a "good" soul went bad or stayed good because we simply don't have that kind of information.

 

[ericoh2]

I guess the first problem is it depends on what you think free will is. I think free will is your ability to make decisions for yourself. No matter what, environment is going to influence what you do in life, as is what you were taught as a child. However, neither of these CONTROL your choices, you can still go against them, which is free will.

What I'm getting from your line of logic is that if someone's parent was a rapist, that means they will be a rapist. If their parents were violent, then they will be violent. Is it not the same concept that you are putting out here?

I guess a lot of what you're saying is very hypothetical too me. You would have to assume that the "good" soul, once it reached earth, continued to stay on the same path that it did before it was born. But that's when free will steps in, because you can't really prove that a "good" soul went bad or stayed good because we simply don't have that kind of information.

The Point that I was trying to get across has nothing to do with the actions of a person. My attempt here was to identify "who you are." If your name is Mike, just exactly who do you think Mike is? In Christianity Mike would be a being that consisted of his God given soul at birth, his genetics given to him at birth and the environmental factors that shaped him. When you analyze this scenario you realize in the Christian faith Mike, as a being, would consist of three factors that he had no control over. Yes you are correct that the actions that this individual take are of his own choosing but who is making these decisions? In Christianity the answer is a being that was programmed to make them. To them God gave this particular body, a particular soul, that existed in a particular environment none of which Mike had any control over.
My main message here is that there must be a defined being in order for free will to truly exist. Not a being that was made and programmed to be a certain way, that is not free will. Free will in its truest sens must ultimately come from an eternal existence.

 

[Sententia]

Under the Christian belief system total free will is not possible. Free will states that an individual has the ability to make a decision without being controlled or programmed in any way. First of all we have to identify what the term "self" or "individual" is referring to. For the most part in the Christian faith the indivual is thought to be a combination of the soul, genetics and enviromental influence. They believe the soul is given to you after conception by God and you receive your DNA layout from your parents. If this were true than these two factors are completly out of your hands and are decided by factors that you could not control. Even the experiences that you have are decided by these factors. If you were born 500 years ago you would probably be a completly different person simply because of your enviroment.
This means that in the traditional Christian faith there is no real purpose for existence. If you are "good" you were made to be "good", if your are not then you were not made to be. Either way their wouldn't be a point for existence. The only way true free will is possible is if you are one with the eternal. Simply a point of consciousness within the infinite ocean of existence.

I hope to get some good replies, have a great day.

I have personally been debating free will without mixxing chistianity or indoctrination in at all. All social behavior can be modeled as an emergent process, and the perception of free will external to causality is essentially a gift of ignorance. You percieve that everything your doing is because you are choosing to do it and hold the illusion that at any moment you could just change anything you wanted about yourself. Free will is an illusion and we are all essentially robots following predetermined code based on our current environment with our current upbringing code. Don't generalize too much, two brothers can be raised in the same household and go to the same schools yet have completely different experiences and radically different equipment.

Our brains are constructed of synapses that process our input signals and then trigger a reaction and work much like a modern computer. We have desires because those desires were imprinted from some external source. For example you may want to go to Chili's more often then other restaurants and would still believe you chose to go there while denying their monthly blitz ad campaign had anything to do with influencing you to go there.

Here's a quote from Spinoza on the subject:

“The mind is determined to this or that choice by a cause which is also determined by another cause, and this again by another, and so on ad infinitum,” Spinoza wrote. “This doctrine teaches us to hate no one, to despise no one, to mock no one, to be angry with no one, and to envy no one.”​

So you may not currently be able to predict what will happened at any given moment but I do not want to mistake programming and randomness for free will.

I am truly personally debating this with myself and when the mood strikes me I research it and take notes and try to come to some conclusions... but I am just debating it.

It is a very interesting subject. I know there are some transhumanists here so one of their trademarks if you take a person and switch one neuron with a machine that performs the same function and that person acted and reacted and even felt exactly the same is that person still human?

So take it farther, replace another and another until they are all replaced. Essentially you have a very, very complex machine but essentially it is a machine and it is running its code. To say it has free will one way or the other may just be a fundamental disconnect when it comes to explaining or understanding free will.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Essentially you have a very, very complex machine but essentially it is a machine and it is running its code.

Science has yet to figure out what consciousness is. Until it does, it's rather presumptious to make such a conclusion. But assuming it's right, the Chili's ads and the impressions it made are all predetermined. You post was predetermined. This response was inevitable. War is inevitable and opinions about it are meaningless. You are not you and I am not me: we are mechanisms. Nothing more.

 

[kai]

"free will" is just an excuse, "when you say to a religious person "oh my how can there be a god if things like this happens" they say its not gods doing we have "free will" its a kind of cure all answer to the death of millions from starvation, famine or war.
and jews and muslims dont have such "free" will they have Laws from their gods that make them not so free

 

[Sententia]

Science has yet to figure out what consciousness is. Until it does, it's rather presumptious to make such a conclusion. But assuming it's right, the Chili's ads and the impressions it made are all predetermined. You post was predetermined. This response was inevitable. War is inevitable and opinions about it are meaningless. You are not you and I am not me: we are mechanisms. Nothing more.

Not neccesarily. I don't think that was what Spinoza was driving at. All social behavior can be modeled as an emergent process. External influences can greatly change that process but still don't seem to qualify as proof of free will. I debate whether I have free will all the time. Put in X situation at X time in relation to how I feel and my past experiences and taking some type of action... is that action a free will or simply me following some predefined actions of which I could take no other and then seeing my actions as that of free will? So its not so much that everything is preordained or inevitable but something else.

 

[kai]

Not neccesarily. I don't think that was what Spinoza was driving at. All social behavior can be modeled as an emergent process. External influences can greatly change that process but still don't seem to qualify as proof of free will. I debate whether I have free will all the time. Put in X situation at X time in relation to how I feel and my past experiences and taking some type of action... is that action a free will or simply me following some predefined actions of which I could take no other and then seeing my actions as that of free will? So its not so much that everything is preordained or inevitable but something else.

do you ever think some of you guys make too much out of it,
does it really matter?

"put in x situation at X time in relation to how i feel etc etc etc,

i am not having a go i am just thinking its all bollocks!

 

[Muffled]

Under the Christian belief system total free will is not possible. Free will states that an individual has the ability to make a decision without being controlled or programmed in any way. First of all we have to identify what the term "self" or "individual" is referring to. For the most part in the Christian faith the indivual is thought to be a combination of the soul, genetics and enviromental influence. They believe the soul is given to you after conception by God and you receive your DNA layout from your parents. If this were true than these two factors are completly out of your hands and are decided by factors that you could not control. Even the experiences that you have are decided by these factors. If you were born 500 years ago you would probably be a completly different person simply because of your enviroment.
This means that in the traditional Christian faith there is no real purpose for existence. If you are "good" you were made to be "good", if your are not then you were not made to be. Either way their wouldn't be a point for existence. The only way true free will is possible is if you are one with the eternal. Simply a point of consciousness within the infinite ocean of existence.

I hope to get some good replies, have a great day.

In Christian thinking free will is making a decision against God's will ie sin. In the Christian belief system the believer makes Jesus Lord and His will is not to sin. However the possibility to sin is still there because the believer can take back control at any time.

There is no way that kind of free will could exist because it would have to exist outside of God's influence and nothing is outside of God's influence.

This does not fit my idea of a Christian view of self. My self is made in God's image and therefore is a spirit which can inhabit a body or not. The spirit is breathed into the body and it becomes a living soul. The self is within the soul but it is not the soul.

It depends on the definition of person. According to the first definition of a living soul you would be correct but according to the definition of an entity having personality you would not be right except for the fact that a person can grow in his understanding of things over time.

This conclusion doesn't follow from your premise. There can be at lest two purposes for my existence (carnal life): 1. What I feel I need to learn and accomplish; 2. What God intends for me to learn and accomplish.

The Apostle Paul does give some credence to this view but I take exception to it. It proposes that God acts against Himself and that is absurd.

This is definitely not a Christian view. We do agree that the way to be free from sin is to be in perfect harmony with God but that does remove the freedom to sin.
There is a great deal more to life than questions of right or wrong. I can choose to wear black shirts or white shirts and not have it be a question of right or wrong (although my wife sometimes might object to my color combinations).

 

[ericoh2]

In Christian thinking free will is making a decision against God's will ie sin. In the Christian belief system the believer makes Jesus Lord and His will is not to sin. However the possibility to sin is still there because the believer can take back control at any time.

There is no way that kind of free will could exist because it would have to exist outside of God's influence and nothing is outside of God's influence.

This does not fit my idea of a Christian view of self. My self is made in God's image and therefore is a spirit which can inhabit a body or not. The spirit is breathed into the body and it becomes a living soul. The self is within the soul but it is not the soul.

It depends on the definition of person. According to the first definition of a living soul you would be correct but according to the definition of an entity having personality you would not be right except for the fact that a person can grow in his understanding of things over time.

This conclusion doesn't follow from your premise. There can be at lest two purposes for my existence (carnal life): 1. What I feel I need to learn and accomplish; 2. What God intends for me to learn and accomplish.

The Apostle Paul does give some credence to this view but I take exception to it. It proposes that God acts against Himself and that is absurd.

This is definitely not a Christian view. We do agree that the way to be free from sin is to be in perfect harmony with God but that does remove the freedom to sin.
There is a great deal more to life than questions of right or wrong. I can choose to wear black shirts or white shirts and not have it be a question of right or wrong (although my wife sometimes might object to my color combinations).

The last quote that you addressed does not belong to any Christian view that I am aware of. I was simply stating that if you hold this belief then free will can be possible.
You probably didn't see this response that I gave to someone earlier. Here it is, Hopefully this will give you a better understanding to what I was trying to get at. Thanks for your response though.

The Point that I was trying to get across has nothing to do with the actions of a person. My attempt here was to identify "who you are." If your name is Mike, just exactly who do you think Mike is? In Christianity Mike would be a being that consisted of his God given soul at birth, his genetics given to him at birth and the environmental factors that shaped him. When you analyze this scenario you realize in the Christian faith Mike, as a being, would consist of three factors that he had no control over. Yes you are correct that the actions that this individual take are of his own choosing but who is making these decisions? In Christianity the answer is a being that was programmed to make them. To them God gave this particular body, a particular soul, that existed in a particular environment none of which Mike had any control over.
My main message here is that there must be a defined being in order for free will to truly exist. Not a being that was made and programmed to be a certain way, that is not free will. Free will in its truest sens must ultimately come from an eternal existence.

 

[ChristineES]

I believe in free will. If there wasn't any free will, in my opinion, everyone would believe in God.
I have a hard time believing that God would have some people saved and separate from others for no good reason. I believe that we unite or separate from God and that God gives us that choice.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

do you ever think some of you guys make too much out of it,
does it really matter?

Yes or no, depending on whether free will exists. If "no," then it doesn't matter because the idea and its fallout are mechanistic and inevitable. If the answer is "yes" and people are taught to believe the answer is "no," the repercussions could be catastrophic for society and civilization.

 

[logician]

"Free will" can be dictated by the environment to some extent, for example, how much "free will" does a prisoner have. A lot of his/her actions will be dictated. An interesting question is if you had your life to live over, but not with your current knowledge, i.e. starting from scratch again, how many of your decisions would be different the second time around? A tough question, I think.