Question:
question about free will and religion?
SHELLTOE stand like a man
2010-02-02 13:49:59 UTC
ok yesterday i asked about free will and religion and most if not all the answers where telling me i had the free will to choose god. that is not at all what i was asking. so in this question please do not tell me i have the free will to choose god.

what im asking is in your religion how does free will work or is there free will? do you make your own decisions or are those decisions made for you? is free will only an illusion?

i hope you all understand what im saying and once again please do not tell me to use my free will to find Jesus and to obey God.
26 answers:
Psychiatric Help 5¢
2010-02-02 14:03:35 UTC
Choices typically feel like freedom. For most of us, it's case closed as soon as we say that. But from a neurolocigal standpoint, it's not so simple.



Sheer complexity in the brain means most of our mental workings are necessarily hidden from our conscious selves; like the iceberg, most of us is below the surface. When, confronted with a situation, we make we call a "choice," we do so because it seems to have come from nowhere; nobody forced us. Yet the states of the brain consist of chemical and electrical reactions.



To claim that we are somehow controlling those chemical and electrical reactions -- the mechanism of the brain -- means we have to have something else going on, and all that glorious biochemical mechanism is, well, irrelevant somehow.



That's not a problem for a traditional Christian, who just says, well, the spirit does the deciding, and the spirit is immaterial. But then, what are brains for, and why would construct them in such a way that chemical changes can be introduced that obviously not only our emotions, but our decisions?



What I'm arguing here is that just as we are products of nature, thought is a natural process, subject to natural law. We think we have free will because of complexity (if we can't clearly see the chain of causation, it's tempting to claim there isn't one) and because of the early indoctrination most of us have to dualistic thinking, both inside and outside religion.



Arguing that neural states are too complex and chaotic to predict does nothing to establish freedom, not in the sense of a true unconstrained agent that controls itself independent of those neural states. Freedom is a much more ambitious claim than unpredictability.
Just some guy, ya know?
2010-02-02 14:09:20 UTC
Good question. Let's take Christianity as an example, although any of the 3 great monotheistic religions would do.



God is Omniscient (all knowing), Omnipotent (all powerful) and Omni-benevolent (all good) and he created the Universe. Any Christian would agree with this definition of God.



Here's the thing: If God is all knowing then do we have free will? Either God created you, but before creating you knew everything you were going to do, or God chose what you would do. Free will actually doesn't make a scrap of difference if God is all knowing.



Example: If you're walking down the street and you come to a junction which path will you take? If God KNOWS you'll go left, then can you CHOOSE to go right? If you can, then God isn't all-knowing (and therefore fails in our definition of God), but if you choose left (as God already knew you would) then did you really have the choice in the first place? And even if you did, does it really count as free will when God knew you'd do it anyway.



I think this suggests that if there is an all knowing God, then either you have no free will, or your free will is trampled all over by God's all knowing. But here's the real problem: Since either way an all knowing God knows you have no real choice in the matter, how can he punish you for you sins? If God creates you in such a way that you'll murder someone and then sends you to Hell for murdering that person, is God good? Obviously not, and hence God fails in our definition of God.



Bigger still, does God have free will? If he's all knowing then he'll also know about everything HE will do. With that knowledge in mind, can God change HIS mind? Clearly not, since he'd already know that the knowledge of everything he'll do includes him knowing whether or not he'll change his mind. God therefore cannot be omniscient AND omnipotent and fails in our definition of God.



Free will is TOTALLY incompatible with religion like Judaism, Christianity or Islam, and any other religion that follows the definition of God given above.
bonniethon (puirt a buel)
2010-02-02 14:03:54 UTC
If you think there is a God and you strip this down to plain logic, then there are only 2 possible options:



1) We have free will, in which case God is not omnipotent.



or



2) God is omnipotent, in which case we do not have free will.



If God is all seeing, all knowing and all powerful, then free will is NOT possible because not only would God know what we were going to do before we did it, he would have created every possible path we could take and every possible outcome.

The only possible way we could have free will under a God is if said God is not all seeing and all knowing - in other words, fallible.



Honestly, I feel "but we have free will" is thrown about far too much by theists to excuse the existence of evil on earth rather than face the fact that God may well not be real or that if he/she/it is that it might not be very nice after all.



Free will is impossible under and omniscient being, no matter how much people try to convince themselves otherwise.
The_Doc_Man
2010-02-02 14:03:23 UTC
The atheist viewpoint is more complex.



There are several ways to characterize religions, even among Christianity. There are the free-will believers and the pre-destination believers. The Bible doesn't help because some passages suggest free will, others suggest predestination.



Religiously, free will means the ability to choose between right and wrong regardless of how you were taught. If God doesn't exist, then I would say that religious predestination is pretty much a dead issue.



Biologically, there are those who say we are the sum of our neural network in our brains, and that we really don't have free will. That is, we know how the reactions work, so if we knew the exact state of your neural net, we would know your choices on any given issue.



To me, the trick is that we CAN'T know the state of your neural network that accurately, mostly due to that aspect of Chaos Theory relating to Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions (SDIC). We are a balancing act of various pressures, some stronger and some weaker. As we go through life each day, one or more of those pressures may change strengths.



My belief is that while in a very exacting sense we might not have free will, no one living today can know a person so well as to be able to reliably predict their actions at every turn. Therefore, IN EFFECT we have free will even though there are those who believe otherwise.



Therefore, on both fronts - biology and religion/atheism, I suggest that we have free will in one form or another.
RAWR
2010-02-02 14:06:18 UTC
In Christianity, you have the free will to choose God but it doesn't end there, you make your own decisions and even though God already knows whats going to happen, he hopes that you will choose the right thing.....I don't think that free will is only an illusion, you make your decisions and cannot blame someone else or God for those decisions that you make. God does have a plan for you but he doesn't just tell you what to do or order you around. I hope that helps a little bit more.
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2016-12-09 02:27:32 UTC
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anonymous
2010-02-02 14:10:10 UTC
Free will is not.



I do NOT have the free will to be thirty once again or even six foot two and 180 pounds.

I do NOT have the free will to have been born as the Sun King in 1638 or to have invented the telephone or to have had Natalie Wood even just once.



Free will is a furphy dreamed up by godsters who lacked the intellect to discern the fact that there are very few things in life that we can actually choose.



We can't choose our parents, intellectual quotient, status in society, our teachers.



Most of the things we 'can' choose are little more refined than Pavlov's dogs’ responses to his bells.



AND I'll bet the starving-dying little black kid in Darfur KNOWS free-will is a crock.

~
David G
2010-02-02 13:58:40 UTC
Yes you have free will, yes you can make your own decisions.

As far a free will and religion goes, well you have the choice to believe or not. God wants that to make that choice on our own, we still have the free will.
anonymous
2010-02-02 14:03:26 UTC
We are given choices in life. These choices come from religion and the world. We are to choose life. Jesus said He is the way, the truth and the life. So how do you discover what is the right way to use your free will? Point: here's an example for you. You are dating someone and you are tempted to lust over him/her. You are tempted to choose to lust, or to choose NOT to lust, as we know it is a serious sin. You must use your free will here. do you engage in sex or do you refrain from it? the choice is yours. How do you know there are consequences for choosing the "wrong" thing? By engaging your mind in finding what is truth and what is false. What is right and what is wrong. choosing wrong we encounter accountability for sinning in the sight of God. We then have another free will choice. Do we repent or do we continue on in living in sin? There again there is consequences for our choices. Repentance brings the life of Christ back into our soul, whereas living in sin brings death, in that if we should die in this state of soul, we have lost heaven for all eternity and we will end up in hell. No one wants to suffer for all eternity. So the christian will choose was is right. But did Jesus believe that this will always be the case?(that we choose rightly?) NO, so he gave us the sacrament of reconciliation, that we could confess our sins and receive absolution, (he told the apostles who's sins you shall forgive, they ARE forgiven) This knowledge comes from the study of religion, in particular the catholic religion. God Bless!!
anonymous
2010-02-02 14:16:44 UTC
Freewill, in the Christian world, is a frivolous apology for God’s obvious lack of omniscience and benevolence. Freewill is an excuse used to justify God’s contradictions.
By Faith
2010-02-02 14:03:33 UTC
God knowing what we are going to do does not mean that we can't do something else. It means that God simply knows what we have chosen to do ahead of time. Our freedom is not restricted by God's foreknowledge; our freedom is simply realized ahead of time by God. There is no logical reason to claim that if God knows what choices we are going to make that it means we are not free. It still means that the free choices we will make are free -- they are just known ahead of time by God. If we choose something different, then that choice will have been eternally known by God. Furthermore, this knowledge by God does not alter our nature in that it does not change what we are -- free to make choices. God's knowledge is necessarily complete and exhaustive because that is His nature, to know all things. In fact, since He has eternally known what all our free choices will be, He has ordained history to come to the conclusion that He wishes including and incorporating our choices into His divine plan: “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur," (Acts 4:27-28). Why? Because God always knows all things: "...God is greater than our heart, and knows all things," (1 John 3:20).
Muddy9069
2010-02-02 13:55:26 UTC
Free will: The will to make a choice without coercion...



If I hold a gun to your head and tell you to give me your money or I will kill you... You have a choice to do either...but not the FREE WILL as I have taken that from you...



GOD gives you a choice... Believe in me and follow me and go to heaven... or don't and go to hell and burn in fire for eternity..



Once again... you have a choice...but not FREE WILL...
TuTu Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
2010-02-02 14:08:09 UTC
“Free will” or “Do what thou wilt” were taught by Aleister Crowley, Alice Bailey

and Madam Blavastsky- they followed the teachings of Osiris-Isis-Horus



Learn about these people and you’ll see which God they worship and about the true meaning of "free will" - Its not good.
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2010-02-02 13:52:08 UTC
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joe714
2010-02-02 13:55:46 UTC
a Buddhist teacher said

whether you believe you have free will or not

act as tho you have free will until you know(experientially) otherwise
anonymous
2010-02-02 13:53:34 UTC
Free will is only an illusion?
anonymous
2010-02-02 13:55:15 UTC
I think I understand what you are saying. There is no free will when it comes to being a true born again christian. The bible teaches that only the Lord jesus can give mankind salvation. Nothing we can do can get us saved. Nothing!!! It is only God' s mercy.
M. D.
2010-02-02 13:59:15 UTC
Free will is your ability to choose whatever it is you want to do,say and think. You are also free to impose you will on others. an example of this is when you choose to hit someone in the arm after seeing a Volkswagen beetle. I would suggest watching this http://www.leestrobel.com/videoserver/video.php?clip=strobelT1001
BOGGLESMYMIND
2010-02-02 14:01:45 UTC
FREE WILL MEANS GOD ALLOWS US TO LIVE HOW WE WANT TO.



GODS WILL IS THAT ALL SHOULD REPENT , LOVE HIM ,,AND LIVE FOR HIM SO THAT NO ONE WOULD BE LOST IN ETERNITY ,,, GOD LOVES US ENOUGH TO GIVE FREE WILL ,,



NOW WHEN WE CHOOSE TO GIVE OUR LIFE TO GOD ,, THEN HE EXPECTS OBEDIENCE ,,,



IF NOT THEN ,, THE CONSEQUENCES ARE THE SAME FOR THE NON BELIEVER !!!



IS THIS ANY HELP ,, TO WHAT YOU WERE SEEKING ?
gunsrfunmg
2010-02-02 13:53:59 UTC
In the words of St Paul, anything is permissible but not beneficial. You have the free will in Christianity to do anything, but it is not always the will of God.
John67
2010-02-02 13:58:35 UTC
I feel like I'm able to make my own choices and noone is making them for me. Don't you?
anonymous
2010-02-02 13:57:04 UTC
free will is choice which makes us feel powerful that we have some controle in our life.

We believe in power or our choice , which is correct sometimes. but that will will slowly unite with will of god and It is Called interdependence.

first yo depend on god , then you learn how to be independent then you make interdependent relationship . In interdependent relationship you will not care whose will it is..

So do we have free will and how
Gypsy
2010-02-02 13:54:20 UTC
you choose what you want...thats it..like you choose what to eat in the morning..you can be whatever you want..do bad do good..free moral agent in the world..your accountable for your actions..
jasper
2010-02-02 14:01:38 UTC
You should report crissy. She put the same thing on my question and shouldn't get away with it.
Meet Ram-knee, Corp. Pimp-Hoar
2010-02-02 14:15:03 UTC
You must be 'gifted' free will as a christ stain.





Ironic isn't it?
я℮ḋ αтℏ℮їṧṫ
2010-02-02 13:54:05 UTC
IMHO, the notion of free will seems dubious...at best.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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