Indeterminism VS Omnipotence

“If this being (god or a godlike concept or figure) is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgement on Himself.How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to him?”

-Albert Einstein​

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_____________optional reading_______________​

For example, you make a decision to kill someone. Someone says you are held accountable to God because you decided to do so of your own volition. Well one must then ask what comprises your own volition? The fact that your mind is acting in such a particular way is not a result of your own making but of what you are subject to. If your action is determined by what you are subject to, then that leads to the question what caused such determining factors? As you travel back through the succession of causes you ultimately arrive at the First Efficient Cause (God) again. You can say that you can resist these temptations to do wrong. Then one must ask again what causes you to want to resist these temptations? When you arrive at that cause, move back through the succession of causes and you still arrive at the First Efficient Cause.

This had lead many to conclude, in consideration of the tenets of popular theology, that “free will” does not exist, or at the very least, it is misnomer. It would be probably be more accurate to call “free will” something like “consequential will” or “subjected will”. Hopefully you get the point that in order to truly have “free will” you must be the cause of yourself.

This is what Einstein and many other skeptics truly mean when they criticize free will. A being that is omnipotent and omniscient knows exactly how every product of his creation will react with each other, before they even react with each other. With this knowledge how can the creator blame the creation for not meeting up to the standards of the creator? If the creation (i.e human beings) transgresses law established by the creator, it is due to the weakness that was instilled in the creation by the creator. Adam and Eve would not be weak enough to succumb to the temptation of the serpent unless they were created weak. A car will not break down in a month unless it was designed to. Who do you blame, the car or the car designer? Who do you blame, the creator or the creation? Theologians never try to address free will from the aspect of causation because they know it is a no win situation.


Many theologians say that if God did exercise control over every one of our actions that it would be the equivalent of slavery. This is a poor argument. In order for us to recognize that we are enslaved we have to recognize something relative to us that is more free. Pre-Civil war slaves knew that they were slaves because they knew there were people who had more freedom relative to them (slave owners). God being omnipotent could create a world were we are incognizant that he is more free than us. As a result we would be in a constant state of bliss (heaven on earth). It is pointless for you to say that he lets us exercise our will in order that we may learn from our mistakes. One must ask if God is omnipotent why can’t he create us to perfection without us going through these struggles. The only reason why your father or my father tells us to go to school and struggle through our mistakes is because they do not have the power to instill within us the capacity to function properly, using their own power. Does your father make you beg for food when he can give it to you? He makes you go to school so that you can provide for yourself in the future because he knows that he will not always be there for you. Yet your “Holy Father” is eternal, so such logic would not apply. There is no need for you to struggle to learn anything, unless it is God’s intent for you to exist without him. Of course this is quite contrary the Judæo-Christian perspective.

In conclusion, the concept of free will has no justification. For it is quite contrary to the view of God being the ultimate creator of all things. Furthermore any attempt at justifying the concept of “free will” only serves to illustrate one of the biggest contradictions of the Judæo-Christian faith, thereby undermining it.​

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the full argument....wich has its ups and downs 8/​

http://www.americanatheist.org/supplement/freewill.html​

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(i googled that btw....)​

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this is only one of two arguments iv read.....but well take it one at a time​

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what do you guys think.....​

 

Heeh2- PLEASE MAN CAN you give me alink to more quotes of wise and famous-wise men like these, no matter if its 19th ot B.C time. please. when i read something like this i wanna cry, how stupid others are.... and how smart some ...

 

btw really nice post man, if you spread it into other forums it will only benefit, Respect to you from me.

 

i cant tell if thats sarcasm or wat lol

 

also it kind of bothers me too when a christian tries to use logic to prove the existance of god when that concept itself is highly unlogical

 

any any other religion too....i just said christian because i live in christian america ya know....cant escape it here

eek tripple post

 

It's not a conclusive argument against the existence of free will... If all will is ultimately God's will then there is no distinction between man's will and God's. God's will is free and therefore so is man's.

 

precisely why i question the need for infallability for there to be something big, freindly and nontangable.

=^^=
.../\...

 

this argument would mean god is directly and or inderectly responsible for work that beleivers thought was the devils.....

correct?

 

heeh2 - how can sarcasm be born over those WORDS by such a GREAT man....
and even if u apply logic, math, chemistry, psysics yo ustill wont find a normal answer to gods question... its imposible because it is not true... logic can disprove existance but not prove it...

 

Yeah... So it's good for arguing against certain beliefs of certain sects of Christianity, but the website claims...

And that's not true. At best, yeah, you can argue that God must be responsible for things human beings consider 'evil'.

 

does anything.....

8/

 

or even remotely need to?

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what i don't get is why anyone seems to think big, friendly and nontangable HAS to be the center of or have created all things (or even anythiing) in order for there to be such a thing and (for it) to exist.

if there is no such thing as free will, then doesn't that make all of existence just 'god' playing with itself?

=^^=
.../\...

 

interesting....

 

Perhaps you should read Ted Honderich's work on "free will and determinism", Honderich was, or is, probably the leading thinker of the age in the philsophy of determinism and free-will.
He was the head of philosophy at University College London, I dont know if he still is.

 

This very question has kept bugging me for years. It's the reason i started questioning theism.


I've never quite understood how you could have both free-will and the omnis...

An omni god would not be subject to the laws of space/time.
He knows every action/thought/decision/effect, before/after/during, so how can he judge me for actions he knew i was going to make before i knew i was going to make them, before i was even conceived.

If i go to hell when i die, doesnt that mean that god knew i was going to go to hell before he created me, because to him there is no "before" or "after", to god there is only present, no past or future, everything happens at once right now.

To god, i'm being concieved, getting married, dying, and burning in hell all at the same time, right?

How can i be judged?

And if god is "the first cause", then how could i be "seperated" from him, how could anything. He's all there is and we are extensions of his will.

There is no such thing as being seperate from god, there is only god, nothing else....

if somebody could answer this reasonably that would be awesome.

And no throwing out names and books, i want to converse with someoone who can explain it.

 

Shane,

Good questions but I don't know if you should let them cause you to doubt theism.

Men do have choice. That doesn't mean we can do whatever we want and have total control of everything, freedom without limits. We're not God. The Bible does say that we can choose to accept God or reject Him, do things our own way or submit to His will.

God can see the future but this does not mean it is fatalistically determined. Just as we can look back at history without determining it, God can look both back and foward to the future. This doesn't take away our choice and mean that our futures are fatalistically determined.

God will sustain us in the choice we make of whether we want to have a relationship with Him, our Creator, or whether we want to have nothing to do with Him, whether we want to be our own god, doing things our own way. Those who are found guilty before God will be subject to His wrath everlasting. He will punish all wrongs justly, everyone according to his deeds.

 

JLP

Can u please take ur bible to the christianity forum?
This forum is AGNOSTICISM AND ATHIESM.
THUS
It has nothing to do specifically with your sect of the world monothiesm
called christianity.

ALL religions are held by agnostics as creations of men.
U will gain no converts here.

As is said..by a very wise human..'beware the man of one book'

Occam

 

thats exactly what it makes it....

how about applying some logic to your arguments instead of throwing the bible at them....

yes....it does....and if it doesnt....then he cannot see the future....whats so hard to understand about that....

if this god-like figure KNOWS what you are going to do the rest of your life....and you do something else....then aparently he didnt KNOW....and scince he does know, their is no alternative to what you are going to choose or do....

the alternative was always an illusion....and the fact is, you never could have picked it or performed it

 

A purely deterministic universe.
One without probability of paths through choice.
One where all paths are determined by a starting condition.
Is a psychosis.

Two identical starting postions, after 14 billion years and involving
self aware beings
WILL NOT result in the same outcome.

ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL big bangs WILL not both result in
mary beth kranz dropping keys to car on footpath at 2:23:28 pm
27th nov 2005 in BOTH.

To say they will is a function of our ability to look back and
philosophise that 'it happened that way therefore it could happen
no other way' and thus at any theorised future point 'x' the same
can be said.
False
It's ' it happened that way because that was the path taken'
[of many.]
Here of course we talk of human action, not gross physical mater.

Its not 'thats how the world is'
The world 'is what we make it'

Occam