Human Freewill the devil's greatest trick

[Whetstone]

Think of it like this... In the Garden of Eden, God said. "of all the trees you may eat of their fruit" except for this One Tree.
So, if they had no Free Will, then why did they do what God said not to do?
Did God make them eat it so that He could blame them = dishonestly,?
Did God cause them to eat it so that He could cause the fall of man,?.

I can't really gel with this example or the simple way you portray what was a much more complex situation.

With this entire thread in fact there is too much generalisation of free will and a complete deficit of definition of free will.

It's important in this particular debate, nay vital, that we distinguish what free will really is and means. I would contest that the only entity who does have free will is God himself. No-one else. Let's tease out the issues.

Consider #1:

You stand in a room before 2 buttons, one red and one green. Behind you a man has a gun to your head and says that if you do not press one of the 2 buttons in the next 10 seconds he will shoot you. He also says if you press the green button, he will also shoot you.

Do you believe you have free will in this situation?

In pure literal terms, yes, you have the choice, but it is a choice so brutally forced, so tied to a desperate outcome that in fact that kind of free will is utterly worthless. You can choose to do nothing and get shot. You can choose to press the green button and get shot or to press the red button and live another day.

This is NOT free will and we have to be extremely honest with ourselves and careful to define what free will actually is. If there is any level of coercion involved or any level of pre-conditioned bias involved then no, it is not free will.


Consider #2:

You place a young child in an empty room with nothing but a small table on which is a bowl containing sweets that the child likes.
You tell the child, you must stay here until I let you out and you must not eat the sweets.

Does the child have free will in this situation?

I would argue not for various reasons. For one the environment the child has been placed in is totally divisive. A construct in which the only thing of real interest and focus is the one thing the child must not touch. It's a set up from the get go. On top of this there is the very very well established psychological technique involved which is that the mere act of telling someone NOT to do something, draws special attention to that one thing and results inevitably in a person doing that thing. Put a child in a room with 1000 buttons on the wall all differently adorned with pictures of animals and they will have some passing interest in buttons on a random basis, but tell the child not to touch the button with a picture of a giraffe and eventually you can be sure they will touch it, simply because you've drawn so much attention to that one button amongst 1000. There's probably a scientific name for that psychological technique but I'm not a psychologist so don't know it.

And so to deal with your example of the Garden Of Eden and the wider reality of the life and universe we find ourselves in.

In the Garden Of Eden the psychological technique is in play. God is purposely drawing special attention to the tree thereby making Adam and Eve curious about it and in significant strength over all the other trees. That is somewhat divisive. It's not really free will as a result imo.

We should bear in mind that were this tree so deadly dangerous to Adam and Eve and to the creation itself then God could have very simply moved that tree somewhere that Adam and Eve would never see it or know about it and thus they could never have gone astray. We should also realise that if God merely wanted to test their loyalty he could have just elected to tell them not to eat of say the pear tree, knowing that if they failed and ate of that tree, there would be no calamitous universal outfall.

Therefore God, in this story, is setting Adam and Eve up for the fall using the psychological technique and at the same time is ensuring the fall will be catastrophic by using the Tree Of Life as the focus of the exercise.

Thus as far as the story is concerned I assert that Adam and Eve did not have free will.

Equally, as humans, we are born into a world where we are doomed from the outset through no fault of our own. Even if we did absolutely nothing from birth onward we would be deemed sinners and full of sin and thereby be damned to die and go to Hell according to the stories. This therefore is the scenario of the 2 buttons and the man with the gun to your head. That is not free will, it is forced coercion, Hobson's Choice.

All of the above should be enough for a reasoned mind to recognise that the story of Adam and Eve, like so much of Genesis and other books of the OT, is allegorical in nature and not a literal account. To understand that text one must understand what the Tree Of Life is and how to read the allegorical language. But I digress.

In the end I favour the argument that we don't have any kind of real free will. That is because many of our life choices come with a man with a gun to our head. Can I kill another human in order to progress my standing in life? Yes I can, but if I do, the man with the gun to my head shoots me (i.e. I go to Hell). Can I choose to live 1000 years? No because the means to do that, whilst existing, is denied me. So no I don't have that free will. My life is one where I am placed in a construct (world) that is tightly controlled, full of rules and regulations and limitations that I may not change without terminal consequences. I am on a tiny tiny spec of a planet amidst a vast infinite universe. Do I have the free will to leave the planet and explore the rest of the universe? No. The limitation of gravity ensures it's really hard for me to reach space and the conditions of space are dire enough that humans can't survive there very easily. So again another example of not having free will.

God on the other hand, no limits, total free will. If he wants to kill someone or indeed entire tribes or countries or all living things on Earth, no problem, he merely wills it and it happens and he doesn't have to go to any Hell for those actions. If he wants to visit any point in the entire universe he merely wills it and it happens. THAT and only that is true free will.

Humans do not have free will. We are imprisoned in a tightly controlled construct, an extremely unfair, unjust and rather hopeless one, and we have little choice but to like it or lump it. Even if we decide we don't like that "game" and don't accept its parameters and decide to simply exit that game by killing ourselves, we again go to Hell for taking that choice. That is NOT free will. It is forced coercion.

So are all our actions predestined? In a way yes I think so. Because the laws of physics and chemistry and everything else exert their impact on everything and do so consistently. There are an infinite number of forces acting constantly, so many that the human mind simply can not comprehend them. Even the very simple roll of a die involves gazillions of factors. Gravity, the force it was thrown with, the direction, air pressure, air resistance, temperature, the speed of rotation of the Earth, the speed of the Earth moving around the sun, the speed of the solar system moving around Galactic Central Point, the oils and moisture of the hand that threw the die and so so much more. Yet we know that if we set up the environment in that exact same way, every tiny miniscule factor, then the die will roll the same every time.

The fact that I find myself typing this long-winded spiel here is itself the result of numerous forces of the universe that have culminated in this very action. My mind is not capable of understanding all those forces, but me typing this was as inevitable as is the end of the universe itself.

What seems to us to be an incredibly massive, infinite whirling mass of universal chaos is simply the equivalent of a mega computer program in which everything that exists is controlled by separate computer programmes and thus the outcomes are all completely predictable. The programmer obviously knows everything, the past, present and the future.

 

[Renniks]

I can't really gel with this example or the simple way you portray what was a much more complex situation.

With this entire thread in fact there is too much generalisation of free will and a complete deficit of definition of free will.

It's important in this particular debate, nay vital, that we distinguish what free will really is and means. I would contest that the only entity who does have free will is God himself. No-one else. Let's tease out the issues.

Consider #1:

You stand in a room before 2 buttons, one red and one green. Behind you a man has a gun to your head and says that if you do not press one of the 2 buttons in the next 10 seconds he will shoot you. He also says if you press the green button, he will also shoot you.

Do you believe you have free will in this situation?

In pure literal terms, yes, you have the choice, but it is a choice so brutally forced, so tied to a desperate outcome that in fact that kind of free will is utterly worthless. You can choose to do nothing and get shot. You can choose to press the green button and get shot or to press the red button and live another day.

This is NOT free will and we have to be extremely honest with ourselves and careful to define what free will actually is. If there is any level of coercion involved or any level of pre-conditioned bias involved then no, it is not free will.


Consider #2:

You place a young child in an empty room with nothing but a small table on which is a bowl containing sweets that the child likes.
You tell the child, you must stay here until I let you out and you must not eat the sweets.

Does the child have free will in this situation?

I would argue not for various reasons. For one the environment the child has been placed in is totally divisive. A construct in which the only thing of real interest and focus is the one thing the child must not touch. It's a set up from the get go. On top of this there is the very very well established psychological technique involved which is that the mere act of telling someone NOT to do something, draws special attention to that one thing and results inevitably in a person doing that thing. Put a child in a room with 1000 buttons on the wall all differently adorned with pictures of animals and they will have some passing interest in buttons on a random basis, but tell the child not to touch the button with a picture of a giraffe and eventually you can be sure they will touch it, simply because you've drawn so much attention to that one button amongst 1000. There's probably a scientific name for that psychological technique but I'm not a psychologist so don't know it.

And so to deal with your example of the Garden Of Eden and the wider reality of the life and universe we find ourselves in.

In the Garden Of Eden the psychological technique is in play. God is purposely drawing special attention to the tree thereby making Adam and Eve curious about it and in significant strength over all the other trees. That is somewhat divisive. It's not really free will as a result imo.

We should bear in mind that were this tree so deadly dangerous to Adam and Eve and to the creation itself then God could have very simply moved that tree somewhere that Adam and Eve would never see it or know about it and thus they could never have gone astray. We should also realise that if God merely wanted to test their loyalty he could have just elected to tell them not to eat of say the pear tree, knowing that if they failed and ate of that tree, there would be no calamitous universal outfall.

Therefore God, in this story, is setting Adam and Eve up for the fall using the psychological technique and at the same time is ensuring the fall will be catastrophic by using the Tree Of Life as the focus of the exercise.

Thus as far as the story is concerned I assert that Adam and Eve did not have free will.

Equally, as humans, we are born into a world where we are doomed from the outset through no fault of our own. Even if we did absolutely nothing from birth onward we would be deemed sinners and full of sin and thereby be damned to die and go to Hell according to the stories. This therefore is the scenario of the 2 buttons and the man with the gun to your head. That is not free will, it is forced coercion, Hobson's Choice.

All of the above should be enough for a reasoned mind to recognise that the story of Adam and Eve, like so much of Genesis and other books of the OT, is allegorical in nature and not a literal account. To understand that text one must understand what the Tree Of Life is and how to read the allegorical language. But I digress.

In the end I favour the argument that we don't have any kind of real free will. That is because many of our life choices come with a man with a gun to our head. Can I kill another human in order to progress my standing in life? Yes I can, but if I do, the man with the gun to my head shoots me (i.e. I go to Hell). Can I choose to live 1000 years? No because the means to do that, whilst existing, is denied me. So no I don't have that free will. My life is one where I am placed in a construct (world) that is tightly controlled, full of rules and regulations and limitations that I may not change without terminal consequences. I am on a tiny tiny spec of a planet amidst a vast infinite universe. Do I have the free will to leave the planet and explore the rest of the universe? No. The limitation of gravity ensures it's really hard for me to reach space and the conditions of space are dire enough that humans can't survive there very easily. So again another example of not having free will.

God on the other hand, no limits, total free will. If he wants to kill someone or indeed entire tribes or countries or all living things on Earth, no problem, he merely wills it and it happens and he doesn't have to go to any Hell for those actions. If he wants to visit any point in the entire universe he merely wills it and it happens. THAT and only that is true free will.

Humans do not have free will. We are imprisoned in a tightly controlled construct, an extremely unfair, unjust and rather hopeless one, and we have little choice but to like it or lump it. Even if we decide we don't like that "game" and don't accept its parameters and decide to simply exit that game by killing ourselves, we again go to Hell for taking that choice. That is NOT free will. It is forced coercion.

So are all our actions predestined? In a way yes I think so. Because the laws of physics and chemistry and everything else exert their impact on everything and do so consistently. There are an infinite number of forces acting constantly, so many that the human mind simply can not comprehend them. Even the very simple roll of a die involves gazillions of factors. Gravity, the force it was thrown with, the direction, air pressure, air resistance, temperature, the speed of rotation of the Earth, the speed of the Earth moving around the sun, the speed of the solar system moving around Galactic Central Point, the oils and moisture of the hand that threw the die and so so much more. Yet we know that if we set up the environment in that exact same way, every tiny miniscule factor, then the die will roll the same every time.

The fact that I find myself typing this long-winded spiel here is itself the result of numerous forces of the universe that have culminated in this very action. My mind is not capable of understanding all those forces, but me typing this was as inevitable as is the end of the universe itself.

What seems to us to be an incredibly massive, infinite whirling mass of universal chaos is simply the equivalent of a mega computer program in which everything that exists is controlled by separate computer programmes and thus the outcomes are all completely predictable. The programmer obviously knows everything, the past, present and the future.

Congratulations... you sound just like an atheist

 

[Whetstone]

Two points

1. You didn't need to quote my entire post just to say that one statement

2. Realising that the Adam and Eve story is allegorical and interpreting the Bible differently to you, does not make me an atheist

 

[Billy Evmur]

Yes, absolutely..
However, the born again part of us, is not our freewill, its our SPIRIT.
Our Freewill allowed us the choice to respond to the Gift of God who is Jesus The Savior.
"faith comes by Hearing", and freewill makes the choice to BELIEVE "the Gospel"

Do you find such statements in the bible?
Imagine Paul or any of the apostles saying
"thanks be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whom we have chosen of our own freewill"

Besides all that Jesus said "you have not chosen Me but I have chosen you ..." so why continue to say that we chose Him.
We are born again "not by the will of man nor by the will of the flesh but by the will of God ..." so why continue to say it was our will?

 

[Billy Evmur]

"freewill" is not a wisdom, and its not a virtue.
Its an ability that God possess, that He imparted into humans when we were made as Genesis states : "in Our Image".

Its one of those divine qualities that we are given that is connected to our conscience.

We do not have the image of God since the fall, Adam had freewill we do not we are born in bondage to sin and death.

 

[Billy Evmur]

God does not want subjects who are forced to love Him or else, But want us to choose to follow him. He gave us the free gift of salvation, Nothing owed in return and nothing earned, We choose what to do with that gift, to love him and obey Him, or to neglect that gift with complacency and worldly living. God is sovereign, and he has predestined all, and knows all, But he wants us to discover this ourselves, and choose Him over the things of this world. This is the difference between a person of faith and a saint, The latter has made the choice to serve him in all things.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:1-2)

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. (Luke 9:24)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:16-18)

If You are given a gift, say you and your wife are given a gift of money at your wedding, the gift is yours, what you do with that money is up to you. You can spend it on Lottery tickets, or invest it, Buy things you need, throw a big party, buy a boat.... You have free will what to do with that gift. Some decisions are fruitful, others are not fruitful. It is the same thing with the grace of God, do we just do nothing with this gift, or worse do we do something evil with this gift, or do we do the right thing and have the grace of God Grow in our lives and those around us.

True virtue is having the choice to do good and evil with no repurcussions and choosing to do Good, God enables this with His free gift of salvation to whosoever believes in the Son. We choose to believe, and we choose to serve freely, these are the righteous deeds of the saints.

Romans 12.1-2 is written to christians as christians having been set free and empowered by the Holy Spirit we are able to present our very selves to God a living sacrifice. This was impossible for us to do before we were saved and set free.

while we were yet dead in trespasses and sins God made us alive together with Christ and made us to sit with Him in heavenly places [by grace you have been saved]

You are saying you had the virtue to make this choice the bible says there is no good thing dwelling in us that is in our flesh, and Jesus said you did not choose Him but He chose you, why argue with Him?

We were says Paul chosen in Christ before the world began so how can it have been our choice.

God does not force us to love Him or to obey Him, we don't have the ability to do either everything comes as a gift.

 

[Billy Evmur]

So Billy....do you believe you have freewill or not???

I did not have freewill until Jesus set me free, to say you have freewill is to say you already are free.

Free from the bondage to sin and free from the bondage to death. Jesus will set YOU free in an instant if you will believe on Him.

 

[Stumpmaster]

Let's tease out the issues.

Hi Whetstone. None of your examples do justice to the dimension of freewill which God has predetermined His human Creation to function with. Sure there are determining factors in everyone's existence, the foremost being that none of us had any choice in the fact of our conception and physical birth. Also we had no choice in our genetically inherited characteristics, and as the Bible teaches, we had no choice in the happenstance of having a sinful nature.

But we do have the God-given capacity to make choices that no-one other than ourselves is responsible for.

Our having a sinful nature is a hereditary condition which is the consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve, who did not have a sinful nature, but whose wilfull disobedience to God earned them one.

To say that Adam and Eve had no choice but to sin is to make God the author of sin, which the Bible says He most certainly isn't.

Jas 1:12-15 Blessed is the man that endures temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to them that love him. (13) Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts he any man: (14) But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. (15) Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.

 

[Billy Evmur]

Who do you think is to blame for the Fall?

The devil tricked A&E into believing they could disobey God with impunity, that is to say that they had freewill.

 

[Enoch111]

You are saying you had the virtue to make this choice the bible says there is no good thing dwelling in us that is in our flesh, and Jesus said you did not choose Him but He chose you, why argue with Him?

While there is no good thing dwelling in us, the grace of God offers the gift of eternal life freely to the ones who believe the Gospel. So the issue is not any virtue in any sinner but the virtues of God and Christ. And all sinners can respond to the Gospel.

As to that quote about Christ choosing His apostles, it is applicable to them in context. He chose each one for specifically for his apostleship. That verse is not about choosing for salvation, since God chooses none for either salvation or damnation. That is a damnable doctrine.

 

[Billy Evmur]

What is funny, is that you think people do not know about you....

View attachment 13284

I am not Calvinist and I do not believe God predestined anybody to hell so you don't know me at all.

 

[Billy Evmur]

While there is no good thing dwelling in us, the grace of God offers the gift of eternal life freely to the ones who believe the Gospel. So the issue is not any virtue in any sinner but the virtues of God and Christ. And all sinners can respond to the Gospel.

As to that quote about Christ choosing His apostles, it is applicable to them in context. He chose each one for specifically for his apostleship. That verse is not about choosing for salvation, since God chooses none for either salvation or damnation. That is a damnable doctrine.

John 15 is written for us

The ability to believe comes with God's word and is imparted to us.

 

[Grailhunter]

I am not Calvinist and I do not believe God predestined anybody to hell so you don't know me at all.

So there is only a saved side to your belief of predestination?
You believe God only predestines people to heaven? That is great! Sign me up...

 

[Billy Evmur]

John 15 is written for us

The ability to believe comes with God's word and is imparted to us.

While there is no good thing dwelling in us, the grace of God offers the gift of eternal life freely to the ones who believe the Gospel. So the issue is not any virtue in any sinner but the virtues of God and Christ. And all sinners can respond to the Gospel.

As to that quote about Christ choosing His apostles, it is applicable to them in context. He chose each one for specifically for his apostleship. That verse is not about choosing for salvation, since God chooses none for either salvation or damnation. That is a damnable doctrine.

To choose, to elect. We are a chosen people, the elect.

Chosen for what?

We are Paul explains in Romans 8.29-30
those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
And those whom He predestined He also called and those whom He called He also justified and whom He justified He also glorified.

In Ephesians Paul says we were chosen in Christ before the world began to be a people for the praise of His glorious grace.

So predestination is not unto salvation per se but unto being conformed to the image of God's Son.

Do you long to be like Jesus? GOOD NEWS God has chosen you for that
Do you long to praise God's grace and mercy GOOD NEWS God has chosen you for that.

It does not exclude anybody from being saved.

 

[Billy Evmur]

So there is only a saved side to your belief of predestination?
You believe God only predestines people to heaven? That is great! Sign me up...

Predestiny and election is to be conformed to the image of God's Son not unto salvation per se.

To be a peculiar people, the church, a city set upon a hill, what? to damn people? no, no, that those who are needy and lost may find help and shelter and salvation ... that's what predestiny and election is for.

 

[Grailhunter]

Predestiny and election is to be conformed to the image of God's Son not unto salvation per se.

To be a peculiar people, the church, a city set upon a hill, what? to damn people? no, no, that those who are needy and lost may find help and shelter and salvation ... that's what predestiny and election is for.

Do you need a circle for that talk...
The intent to deceive is shown in this type of talk.
You are not fooling nobody.

 

[Stumpmaster]

The devil tricked A&E into believing they could disobey God with impunity, that is to say that they had freewill.

So why do you think Eve believed the devil's contradiction of God's instruction?

I have come across the falsehood that God predetermined Eve to believe the lie of the serpent and then to persuade Adam to partake of the forbidden fruit.

Some things are damnable heresies, and the notion that God caused Eve, and then Adam, to believe they could partake of the forbidden fruit without incurring the penalty God had warned of, is one such damnable heresy.

 

[Whetstone]

But we do have the God-given capacity to make choices that no-one other than ourselves is responsible for.

I disagree. Not least because those "choices" are merely artificial constructs in your mind. Those choices are totally framed and thus controlled by a wide range of factors that you have no control of. By your gender, by your childhood programming and conditioning, by your life experiences up to that point, by the very limited amount of information your brain has received and processed up to that point. If external forces can control all those impacting forces then the "choice" is not a choice at all but a highly predictable inevitability. Place a man in a desolate place with little food and it is inevitable that he will look to plant and grow his own food to survive, to seek out a source of water. It's not "choice", it's inevitability framed by external forces. As simple as my examples were in my previous post you have nevertheless been unable to refute the simple truths they convey.

Our having a sinful nature is a hereditary condition which is the consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve, who did not have a sinful nature, but whose wilfull disobedience to God earned them one.

What you are saying in the above statement, is that disobedience to God is not a sin. You're saying that sin only arose AFTER disobedience occurred. I invite you to rethink that statement.

To say that Adam and Eve had no choice but to sin is to make God the author of sin, which the Bible says He most certainly isn't.

If God was the author of the construct in which Adam and Eve were placed, confined, imprisoned and if God were the author of the placing of the important Tree Of Life within the reach of Adam and Eve and if God were the author of instilling in Adam and Eve the curiosity of that tree by drawing particular attention to it, and if God were the author of the circumstances in which the snake were able to enter the Garden in the first place and then to be able to talk to Adam and Eve, then yes, ultimately God pretty much set up the entire construct that led to the inevitability that Adam and Eve would eat of the Tree. If you believe God to be all-powerful then there is no running away from these plain facts.

But as I have said, all this "intellectual" difficulty and conundrum occurs because you are trying to make literal sense of a story which is just allegorical. Adam and Eve represent the Male and Female principles, the Tree of Life is not a physical tree.


Genesis 3:22
"And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever"

Out of interest, if you are taking the above literally who do you believe the "us" is there? Do you think it's different Gods ? Do you think God talks to himself and refers to himself as us because of his nature?

 

[Whetstone]

The devil tricked A&E into believing they could disobey God with impunity, that is to say that they had freewill.

No, it's to say the complete opposite. Where ever there is trickery or deceit or obfuscation there is wilful coercion. That is NOT free will at all.

Free will can only ever occur if:

1. A person has ALL the appropriate information about the choices or options before them

2. A person has ALL the appropriate information about the impacts and consequences of each option/choice

3. A person is not pushed, coerced, forced, tricked or otherwise directed to one choice over another

Only one entity meets those criteria. God. He is the only one with free will.

 

[Episkopos]

He did not give Big Chief Sitting Bull the same choice.

You have to explain what virtue, what good thing there is dwelling in you. that is dwelling in your flesh, that enabled you to make the good choice where as others who have as much opportunity and hear the same gospel do not choose. Are you better than they are? is that why you chose to recieve Christ?

The common perception among unbelievers is that christians think they are better than others.

People tend to go to extremes. The truth is in establishing a proper balance between what has led the hasty into the opposing extremes.

We indeed have a free choice, but only within the parameters of our present calling. We can choose to follow Christ in our own strength, but that is not to be compared to having a holy unction. For that, we must be chosen by God.
In the end we must both choose and be chosen.

Can we not resist the Holy Spirit? Of course the extremist will say that grace is always irresistible. And that may be the case at the first calling.

The calling of God is sure, But our attaining to the full stature of Christ is as much dependent on our choices as it is to the availability of grace. God's ways consist of He retaining the initiative, where the high calling in Christ is concerned. But the school of Christ doesn't hand over free diplomas.

We must still work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, and that is after we have received grace from the Lord.