This is why I don’t associate it with God’s image. God defines what “good” even is. Whatever is “of God” is “good”. It’s His universe, He’s the standard. So while free will may be pleasing to God in that it gives our following of Him meaning that we choose Him, I do not see this capability as being included in the “image of God” package.
Maybe, but God did give us a bit of a cheat sheet. Humans are, after all, biologically compassionate animals.
Yes, exactly, biologically. In us are the behaviors evolved over millions of years of consistency with God’s will. Harmony with the natural world.
But starting about 6000 years ago we humans began to diverge from that behavioral pattern. We became way more concerned about ourselves. Personal possession. Conquering all the land around us and claiming it for ourselves. Inflicting our will on the world around us and all those who inhabit it.
Too few people can agree on the TRUE meaning. The scenario seeks to find a TRUER meaning… that allows for Christians to share the meaning of redemption… while avoiding the complete dismissal of the sciences.
For example, your pursuit of Free Will is too specific to afford much middle ground.
Not sure what interest there is in middle ground. Something is either true or it isn’t, despite how some may take it or how much it may or may not remain consistent with current ideologies/institutions. In my mind it’s as simple as, get the interpretation right first, then sort the rest of it.
I know I’m getting a lot of push back on the free will concept. It’s expected. What I didn’t expect was for this group to have such an uncertain concept of free will. There seems to be a lot of confusion around it.
Admittedly, “free will” is a loaded label. Combine with that the pretty significant re-interpretations of the text that this suggests and you get a certain level of push back. At least here the first hurdle of an “Adam’s not the first human” re-interpretation is crossed.
By “middle ground” I mean turf that is not so ultra-specific that multiple denominations can embrace the generalities… and add their own specifics if so moved.
For example… Jesus only had one hair color. If i design a scenario that REQUIRES him to be a red-headed pharisee… even if i had PROOF of it, it would be less embraced than if i left his hair color unspecified.
Your Free Will is another version of the same.
This is exactly my point. Why does it matter the demographics as far as which denominations this or that interpretation alienates or conforms to? There’s only one truth. They’re not all going to be right. In fact, most all of them, being based on flawed interpretations made throughout the centuries with little information, are going to be off.
It’s fallacy in my opinion for this consideration to be at any point considered. Figure out the correct reading first, then sort out all the rest of it. Not the other way around.
We are trying to revive SCIENCE amongst the Creationists… we are not trying to prove anything more specific than what it takes to restore Science.
Free Will is not “a help” in this regard. It divides more than it unites.
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I’d argue it divides because so many’s views are marred by inaccurate and dated views. One of traditional religions main weak points is it’s unwillingness to adjust in light of new knowledge.
As it’s been made clear to me, I should be prepared to be wrong. I am. Every discussion I hope to be shown wrong because this means I’m learning something I didn’t know before. This is the gold I mine for.
But I have good reason to insist this free will angle really be considered before dismissing. This version I’m putting forward, including the free will aspects of it, is very much aligned with science and encourages knowing and embracing it.
Science is the study of God’s creation. It can tell us just as much, if not more, than the bible can about God. Nature is an essential text to know.
So you are trying to correct all the erroneous biblical-centered views ?
That is certainly more ambitious than any thing @swamidass is attempting!
I am trying to reevaluate a text that remains at the center of much of the divide in humanity in the light of newly learned knowledge. This goes beyond teaching evolution in school or worrying about what each of the 45 different denominations believe. There’s a responsibility at the center of this that isn’t preoccupied by demographics or projected level of acceptance.
There’s no desire beyond simply finding what’s true. And using all the means at our disposal to do so. Any consideration beyond that only complicates things. We’re not looking for what anyone prefers to be true, only what actually is.
And your approach seems completely tone-deaf to the issues involved with creationism.
You seem much more interested in fighting the battle of Free Will that engages a few denominations … than in the issue of Creationism, which engages an almost completely different configuration of denominations.
Maybe you could create your own blog on Free Will? And we’ll visit you there and discuss Creationism?
You’re free to visit. The link is on the window that comes up when you click my avatar. Been ongoing discussions on the topic for going on nine years now.
My interest goes in no specific direction. The free will part of it, in my opinion, simply can’t be overlooked once you ground these texts in history. The only guiding factor is where the evidence takes me. Nobody is doing anybody any favors trying to control the destination.
If you are going to postulate an interpretation that considers Adam was created in an already populated world, then it’s inevitable you’ll have to address the impact of these events on that population.
No, because if you have to be forced to do good, it’s not natural to you. To have the choice to obey nature, or not, is a good in itself - but to be created without that option is fine for all the animals for which that is true. So you’ve presented a false dichotomy.
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Why is free will required for an argument to be an argument? If the antecedent causes involve logic and reason, why can’t they produce a real argument? I see nothing to prevent it. Of course there could be an elaborate design to produce hallucinations of argument but,
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How does free will prevent hallucinations of argument? Free will has no obvious correlation to truth.
It seems to me that with or without free will, we have no reason to believe that logic and reason are illusory, though it’s certainly conceivable that they could be in either case. Now under the non-free-will case, reasoning is a successful survival strategy honed by natural selection; it may be su under the free-will case too, depending on your theology. Then again, if you think it’s a direct gift from God, how even in that case can you know it works the way you think? You may trust God’s intentions, but how can you know that trust is valid unless you have prior assurance that your thought processes are valid? Sorry, but in all cases trust in your reasoning abilities must be prior to any claims or arguments, regardless of how you think those abilities work or where they come from. Neither the pro-free-will nor the anti-free-will case benefits at all from your argument, which is equally valid or invalid for each.
And it seems to me that with or without a reliable reason, we have no reason to believe that free will is illusory. In fact, it is more or less essential to human life that we regard our reason as broadly rational (allowing that we make errors) and that our free choices are real choices (though not without antecedent influences).
That is, indeed, true, under theism or naturalism - though the assumptions required under naturalism that they are so seem to me shakier than those under theism. A rational God who makes free choices is reasonably likely to devolve such things to others. An irrational and non-voluntary nature is far less likely to evolve them de novo, and they are less likely to correspond to truth, rather than expediency, too.
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Why would you think that free will is required either for rationality or for choice? It seems to me in fact that libertarian free will would result in less rationality; it seems synonymous with “whim”.
Why? And does God actually make choices? Wouldn’t that require him to live within time? Anyway, how can you trust your assumptions about God, since your ability to correctly make such assumptions depends on those assumptions being true?
This seems like the primitive notion that a cause must resemble its effects, which is certainly not true. Sorry, but there is still no better reason to expect free will arising from God than from nature, and no particular reason to expect free will to be essential for rationality or choice.
I answered that way back. There are kinds and degrees of freedom. My political and social liberty is real, but does not enable me to levitate or be a goat. So no competent treatment of “free will” makes that freedom to mean "causelessness. All that is entailed, though, is that it not be determined by antecedent efficient material causes. That in itself is a large enough metaphysical claim, but it is nothing to do with randomness - but with a third kind of cause beyond deterministic efficient causes and ontological randomness… and a cause, remember, that we are aware of putting into effect every moment of our lives.
I think you need do define “resemblance”, on what criteria the notion is “primitive,” and prove that it is not true. As it stands it’s just a series of unsubstantiated assertions.
I have already confirmed that it is likely that reason is reliable - my point here was about the epistemological basis for that belief. In that context, it would be equally true for me to counter: “How can you trust your assumptions about [evolution’s ability to produce reason], since your ability correctly to make such assumptions depends on those assumptions being true.”
Does God make choices? Yes, but in eternity, making their contingency only analogical to our choices, which invariably relate to temporal events. But that is a distinction that has been discussed and justified philosophically for centuries. You may not agree with its coherence, but the philosophically respectable claim that there is a God in eternity who can, nevertheless, interact in time is never going to go away - or at least, you’ll have to forge a new career in philosophy to make it go away.
Dennett explained the quandry best: to escape the determinism of neural and biological activity of the brain… one wouLd have to act IRRATIONALLY!
But the flip side, rarely grasped, is that such a universe would have no need for awareness.
Awareness is the benchmark for the existence of free will.
Nothing in that was clear to me. What quandary? What do you mean by “such a universe”? What makes you think a universe of any sort would have a need for awareness? What makes you think that awareness requires free will?
Hey, is this compatibilist or libertarian free will you’re talking about? Makes a big difference.