for religious folk: do you believe in divine intervention?

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Originally Posted by Hax

Rhyfelwyr, if a predestined fates exist, what's the point of free will?

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I don't care for free will. Does not having free will make you a puppet? No.

To go with the earlier example with the woman loving her husband... she did not have a choice to do otherwise, not as many people imagine 'choice' as being. There were countless factors working inside her head which led to her loving her husband. She was never not going to love her husband, it was inevitable.

We aren't God's puppets, but we are not our own master either, we cannot act against our natures. That woman loved her husband because it was her nature to do so, there's no random element of choice.

That's why I say we have a 'will', but not a 'free will'.

I'm an atheist, so I obviously don't believe in divine intervention.

To jews and christians: why are there countless of examples of divine intervention in the Torah/Bible, and why don't they happen today (or at least on the same scale)
Going by the Bible, in Amsterdam or Las Vegas the weather should be fire and brimstone every day of the week. If you're a really conservative jew you could even make a case for Tel Aviv.

Edit: just remembered the part about there supposedly not being any righteous people in Sodom or Gomorrah. Well, the point still stands.

I don't like the idea of fate since it seems like you could blame too many things on fate, and remain guiltless. You could say that it was fate that drove you to murder your wife, but then again realistically you have the choice not too.

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Originally Posted by Wakizashi

I don't like the idea of fate since it seems like you could blame too many things on fate, and remain guiltless. You could say that it was fate that drove you to murder your wife, but then again realistically you have the choice not too.

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There's a bigger issue. If God is good, and yet directs all our actions, ordaining both our joy and our suffering; why does He give us even the impression of Free Will?

How can a Good God lie to his creation?

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Originally Posted by Wakizashi

I don't like the idea of fate since it seems like you could blame too many things on fate, and remain guiltless. You could say that it was fate that drove you to murder your wife, but then again realistically you have the choice not too.

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Good conservatives who hate liberals and socialists who blame society for their own misbehaviour should also steer clear of any religious beliefs that depend on outside factors to explain their fortunes and misfortunes. Free will, and practical capacity to enact it, is the greatest factor in any individual's actions.

Is there free will in the first place? Schopenhauer pops into my mind with: "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills".

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Originally Posted by Fixiwee

Is there free will in the first place? Schopenhauer pops into my mind with: "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills".

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Exactly. You are what you are, you act as your nature leads you to. In every single decision we take, the outcome is not up to chance, or some free will choice. We will always make the decisions we do, simply because by a combination of our brianpower/experience/ideas/etc we will always take a certain route in any given situation. There's no random element, no freedom to do otherwise.

I still don't see why this makes us puppets, we have a will and that makes us individuals.

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Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

Exactly. You are what you are, you act as your nature leads you to. In every single decision we take, the outcome is not up to chance, or some free will choice. We will always make the decisions we do, simply because by a combination of our brianpower/experience/ideas/etc we will always take a certain route in any given situation. There's no random element, no freedom to do otherwise.

I still don't see why this makes us puppets, we have a will and that makes us individuals.

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We may agree on the quote, but I think we see different things in it.
Way I understand the christian religion is that it is based on free will. God gives you free will and you have to do good acts and deeds, if you do it right you come to heaven.
The quote implies that that there is no free will at all, the moment you choose to do something it is already predeterminiert by your will and you as a thinking person have no acces to that. Best example; you listen to a song on the radio and you have an opinion on it. But you cannot choose wheter you like it or not. Thus no free will.
So I'm curious, how can religion work if there is no free will? If you have no free will, then by my definition you are a puppet to you own subconscious?

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Originally Posted by Fixiwee

We may agree on the quote, but I think we see different things in it.
Way I understand the christian religion is that it is based on free will. God gives you free will and you have to do good acts and deeds, if you do it right you come to heaven.
The quote implies that that there is no free will at all, the moment you choose to do something it is already predeterminiert by your will and you as a thinking person have no acces to that. Best example; you listen to a song on the radio and you have an opinion on it. But you cannot choose wheter you like it or not. Thus no free will.
So I'm curious, how can religion work if there is no free will? If you have no free will, then by my definition you are a puppet to you own subconscious?

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Some schools of Christian thought believe in free will. Others, such as the one I believe in, do not. Christianity works fine without free will. The whole doctrine of predestination has caused some confusion as it has developed. While you probably often hear me talking about Calvinism, in reality what I believe goes beyond Calvin's ideas.

Predestination refers to Calvin's doctrine of 'unconditional election', that God has chosen those who He is going to save before even Adam was created. The need for an unconditional elections stems from Calvin's other doctrine of total depravity, the idea that no man would will to turn to God by their free will.

Free will, or the lack of it, as we have been discussing it here does not relate directly to this idea of predestination above. Predestination to salvation was caused by a direct intervention of God into people's lives, acting against people's will for their own good. However, Calvin believed in free will on almost every other matter, including the day to day things.

The controversy in this thread is between those who believe we have free will, and those who believe that everything has been foreseen and therefore predetermined, not just our salvation. Such a controvery did not emerge until after Calvin's time, when Arminius formed a doctrine based around free will; and in turn Calvinism developed in Britain into a much more deterministic doctrine than that Calvin formed, expanded upon by Puritan theologians such as John Owen and Richard Baxter (the latter being unique in that he didn't believe in limited atonoment, some have argued Calvin didn't either, although that's a whole other debate).

Now, I don't think that the Puritan notion of determinism makes us puppets, because to be a puppet you need to have someone pulling the strings. Though every decision we make is predetermined, it is in complete accordance with what we would will to do, and indeed happens that way because God knew of our natures when He envisaged all future events through His foreknowledge.

When you act, you act that way because it is your nature to do so. You can't do otherwise, but then why would you want to go against your own nature? Free will is about being able to fight against your own nature, which in a way would be removing your freedom because it removes your ability to act as yourself for the sake of a random element of chance. I don't know why it has such an appeal for so many people.

I dont believe in divine intervention. After we got free will. We have been on our on. Thats the prize of freedom.

We have a saying hereabouts, quite quaint, but popular,

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Not a leaf can move without His will.

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Personally speaking, on the more rational side I've always found the concept of a superior power and divine intervention to be a products of man's less-rational reasoning, to explain the world, and have someone to attribute unexplainable happenings to.
On the spiritual side, I myself feel that there is someone out there who watches over us all and actually does have a hand in every single occurrence down to the movement of a leaf.
So it's more like, whichever view feels convenient at that moment. :juggle2: