Freewill, Determinism and Bringing the Rain

[Jeremy_Christian]

@Guy_Coe

Nobody is being “fooled.” I disagree with his characterization of “free will” as being the same as “the knowledge of good and evil.”

You’re right. I thought about it after I said it. The hang up is that Adam first had to have free will to eat the fruit. The knowledge was only gained after eating the fruit.

So it’s not one and the same. The knowledge of good and evil came after “their eyes were opened”. The act of eating the fruit was an “unnatural” act in that they behaved contrary to the law of God’s word/will. This severed their connection to nature/God, making them aware of their individual selves apart from the natural world around them and they realized they were naked because they realized their selves in relation to the natural world around them.

[Jeremy_Christian]

@gbrooks9

You want to make Genesis 1 humans into un-free automatons… you have no grounds for such a thing.

I do have grounds. My grounds is Genesis. This is what it says.

Gen1 humans were commanded to ‘be fruitful/multiply’ and to ‘fill/subdue the earth’. At the end God includes all He created, including these humans, in saying it’s “good”.

Then, in contrast to that, Adam is given one command and breaks it. This story is illustrating in a very direct way what is different about Adam. Gen 1 humans could never have done this.

In Gen4, when Cain voices his concern for being harmed by whoever he may encounter, God assured him he would not and marked him. The only way God could ensure him is if they didn’t have free will. They would not go rogue.

This story illustrates exactly what we see in history. Homo sapiens really did what the Gen1 humans were commanded. They populated and subdued the earth while remaining egalitarian, non-violent, and living in harmony with the natural world around them.

This changed with the introduction of Adam. All throughout the remainder of the story, from Adam on, God kept having to get involved. He interacts with humanity consistently, unlike He ever had to do before in tens of thousands of years of human history, because now free will exists where before it did not.

This is the shift we see in human history. Humans became male-dominant, as it says would happen after the fall, they become violent, as it says in Gen6, and they began building things that prompted God to say “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”. This is the same point when they began building cities and towers and everything else they could “imagine”. This shift in humanity happened 6000 years ago. Relatively recently. And right when Genesis says it did.

In the story being told, human behavior becomes God’s central concern from that point forward. Gen1 humans existed for tens of thousands of years and didn’t require all of this maintenance. He just created them, gave them their orders, and set them on their way.

If Gen1 humans were like Adam, could they have achieved what was commanded of them? Commands that took many generations to carry out? Would they have been called “good”?

[Jeremy_Christian]

@nwrickert

I’m not adding @Jeremy_Christian – at least not yet.

Thank you, Neil. I’ll try not to get myself listed… again.

[Jeremy_Christian]

@jongarvey

One reason that you have misinterpreted the text…

So my interpretation, which is directly taking what it says, is misinterpreted because I didn’t add enough speculation that isn’t there? Your interpretation is correct with all this extra conjecture that it doesn’t actually say? The correct interpretation is that God orchestrated this whole thing for Abraham’s benefit which essentially misled Abraham? To build a relationship with him?

Are you sure about that?

[Jeremy_Christian]

@gbrooks9

You, too, are now joining @Robert_Byers on my “Do Not Disturb” list. @greg has been there first, but when it was just him, i didnt know what to call the category!

You’ll be back.

[jongarvey]

@Jeremy_Christian

So my interpretation, which is directly taking what it says, is misinterpreted because I didn’t add enough speculation that isn’t there?

An alternative is that others may just have studied the text more than you have.

OK, your explanatory task is to say why God didn’t know how a man he knew intimately would choose when asked to sacrifice his son, when just 7 chapters earlier, in the same account, God tells the same man to be certain that his as yet unborn descendants, 3 generations later, would choose freely to go to a strange land for a definite period of 400 years, that period being the time it would take for the freely chosen sins of as yet unborn Amorites equally certainly to come to a head.

For bonus points you can say why God told a barefaced lie later in Scripture when he says, “I declare the end from the beginning”, in realtion to the future free choice of Nebuchadnezzar to invade Judah.

[Jeremy_Christian]

@jongarvey

An alternative is that others may just have studied the text more than you have.

OK, your explanatory task is to say why God didn’t know how a man he knew intimately would choose when asked to sacrifice his son, when just 7 chapters earlier, in the same account, God tells the same man to be certain that his as yet unborn descendants, 3 generations later, would choose freely to go to a strange land for a definite period of 400 years, that period being the time it would take for the freely chosen sins of as yet unborn Amorites equally certainly to come to a head.

For bonus points you can say why God told a barefaced lie later in Scripture when he says, “I declare the end from the beginning”, in realtion to the future free choice of Nebuchadnezzar to invade Judah.

Right on, time to get some bonus points! What do bonus points get me?

Okay, maybe this analogy will help. Think of time from God’s perspective, not as we think of time, but as if God has the entirety of existence on blu ray.

God can skip ahead and see what people will do in future chapters. But, in the case of Abraham, if the scene wasn’t included that showed Abraham in this situation having to make a choice, then there’d be no future chapter to skip to to see what would happen. If it’s not on the blu-ray, God doesn’t know what would happen.

So, God had to create the situation to find out.

What do I win?

[jongarvey]

@Jeremy_Christian

What do I win?

God’s half-cocked Blu-ray, when he trades it in for omniscience.

[Jeremy_Christian]

@jongarvey

God’s half-cocked Blu-ray, when he trades it in for omniscience.

Omniscience is knowing everything. If something doesn’t exist, there’s nothing to know. It has to exist to be known. The blu ray IS omniscience. If it’s not on the blu ray, there’s nothing to know, and God still knows all that is knowable.

[jongarvey]

And who decides that the free choices of Genesis 15 are on the Blu-ray centuries in advance, and the choice in chapter 22 doesn’t exist till it happens?

At least most of the Open Theists I know are consistent in their belief that the future doesn’t exist. Your God is too small.

[Jeremy_Christian]

@jongarvey

And who decides that the free choices of Genesis 15 are on the Blu-ray centuries in advance, and the choice in chapter 22 doesn’t exist till it happens?

At least most of the Open Theists I know are consistent in their belief that the future doesn’t exist. Your God is too small.

Here’s the problem … “the choice in chapter 22 doesn’t exist till it happens?”

It’s not that the choice didn’t exist until it happened. It’s that the choice didn’t exist at all. Time is irrelevant. There’s only what exists and what doesn’t. If the choice doesn’t exist, it can’t be known.

[gbrooks9 (GeorgeB)]

@Jeremy_Christian

It’s not that the choice didn’t exist until it happened. It’s that the choice didn’t exist at all. Time is irrelevant. There’s only what exists and what doesn’t. If the choice doesn’t exist, it can’t be known

@Jeremy_Christian,

Are you making this stuff up as you go along?

Human choice cant be known?
That is completely contrary to the Bible.

[Jeremy_Christian]

@gbrooks9

@Jeremy_Christian,

Are you making this stuff up as you go along?

Human choice cant be known?
That is completely contrary to the Bible.

Is it contrary? Show me.

Because both the flood and the scattering at Babel are described as God reacting/responding to His observations of human behavior. These are not the actions/responses of a God who saw this coming. This describes a God reacting based on His observations.

Or, consider Job. Satan was looking to show God how Job would respond in specific conditions. There’s a debate here about how he would behave. These things had to actually be done to find out.

[vjtorley (Vincent Torley)]

@gbrooks9 and @Jeremy_Christian,

You’ve both got a point. On the one hand, it’s perfectly correct to say (as the Bible) that God’s knowledge of our choices is based on His observations of us, and that it is reactive. On the other hand, I would add that God observes human choices from a timeless vantage point. Thus God does not have to wait in order to be informed. But He does have to watch.

[Jeremy_Christian]

Free will if often underappreciated in the context of the story being told. It’s a magnificent gift. And wielding it is a significant responsibility. It makes each of us creators. We create and add to God’s universe things that are not “of God”.

It’s simultaneously all the best and worst of humanity.