Mopac

If we truly have free will, how come by my will I can't jump to the moon and jump back? How come I can't breathe under water or walk through walls?

The only free will is God's will.

You got two rocks. One rock and one rock. One plus one equals two right?

But wait, closer examination reveals that this rock is not the same as the other rock... so if these two rocks are different, doesn't that mean that one rock doesn't equal one rock? If one rock doesn't equal another rock, how can one plus one equal two?

MATH IS A LIE!

Just kidding. We deal with representations of reality rather than reality itself. That is the lesson.

Differentiate? That sounds like discrimination.

Hate speech.

Bwahaha

"Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them."

That is King James, but I will quote 2 other translations of the same passage that make it clearer

"Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"

"You saw me before I was born.

What are you interested in?

I think it's unfortunate that anyone who believes in God's absolute sovereignty and omnipotence gets accused of being a calvinist as if he was the one who came up with any of this, and it isn't something that can be concluded by reading the scriptures. In fact, I know that this argument predates Calvin by a great deal because I am more familiar with earlier theologians than I am with later ones. I can't say that I really know Calvin, only what people say about him. 

But I do know what scripture says, and I think scripture makes it very clear that God doesn't simply know everything that is going on. God knows everything, including what will be in 10, 30, 100, 1,0000, etc. Years.

Wasn't it God who hardened the heart of pharaoh?

"Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all."

Maybe I was religious when I was born. I could have been into momism.

So you can't say you are religious?

As I said, what I believe with strong conviction is The Supreme and Ultimate Reality. The Truth. 

That is what I accept to be God, and that makes me a monotheist.

 

That would be stretch.

Maybe, I don't know. 

You are not capable of understanding what I'm saying, because for one, you think you already have knowledge, and for two you don't have enough charity to honestly consider what I'm saying.

So until you adopt a more teachable attitude, I will not be able to help you through your superstitions concerning what it is I am talking about.

Maybe these instructions are actually part of the deterministic process.

Materialists like to think that what goes on in the mind and soul are not physical, but these things clearly are linked causally with the so called "material" world. What this means is that the mind and soul are a part of physics.

And yes, physicists know this, which is why we have the internet spying on everyone and collecting data.. for science!

But the point being that even if we are making choices, our choices are the result causal forces acting on us. It was causal forces that brought us into accepting God to begin with.

It is also written..

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

You are the only one talking about gods.

How telling.

"Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors.

Don't care

You are the only one talking about gods.

The experiment you are describing was actually a later experiment. The main thing that I believe can be drawn from that experiment is the necessity of operationalism in the scientific process. What we see has a lot to do with the formulas we are using and such. 

But as for the unpredictability of anything, I would say this is because of chaos. Local variables, non-local variables. Things we can't possibly account for. This is why the most precise formulas deal in probabilities rather than exactitudes. The chaos factor.

But I do not for a second believe that our inability to perfectly make sense of things is proof that causality is somehow overridden by people simply because they are too haughty to accept that they too are subject to the laws of physics.

Which is of course, what I think of the matter, and I could be wrong.

If there is anything that has been proven through experiments in physics, it is that it is impossible to isolate all variables. I don't buy into the idea that chaos proves that there is anything truly random in the universe.

Neither do I believe that chaos proves that the electron chooses the slit that it goes through.

I understand that you don't think freewill and omniscience are mutually exclusive. I am leaning to the idea that they are, but I also acknowledge that I could be wrong. I'm not sure it is possible to know.

We certainly have an experience of having will. We have the experience of having choice. Augustine would agree with you, that though we have free will, God knows what we are going to do in advance.

I acknowledge that Augustine was a brilliant theologian and philosopher, but I am not sure I agree with him on this.

The kicker here is omnipotence. Omnipotence literally means that God does everything. Omnipresence follows from the idea that God does everything... God is everywhere in everything moving it all along. Omniscience, of course follows as well, because whatever is known by the one who is everywhere, moving everything, and created the knowledge.

So I lean more away from us having any true free will. Besides seemingly flying in the face of these prescribed qualities of God, it also seems to imply that human beings defy causality. I don't know about that.

Maybe the free will we do have is really the choice of whether or not we accept God's will as being true, and our own will as being false. But even then, coming to that choice was predetermined.

Yeah, I don't personally believe in free will.

I know we live in an age where self declaration is proof of identity, but if I were to call myself a pacifist and then start killing people, it would not in anyway show that pacifism is a murderous ideology. Even if I gathered up a large community of murderous "pacifists".

Christianity at its core is incompatible with religious persecution. 

"For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith."

 

Not at all, I am not making an equivocation fallacy. Without The Truth, there can be no truths.

I am not actually making a fallacy. But you are making a fallacy if you deny Ultimate Reality while simultaneously believing that there are truths. 

The Truth is the very essence of what makes something true taken to its finality. 

A truth may die, but The Truth doesn't die with it. 

Unfortunately, if I inform you that this is an identity fallacy, you would counter and say I am making a no true scottsman fallacy.

But I will say it anyway. Killing people for their beliefs is not Christian.

These truths you are talking about don't exist on their own. The fact that we all die and nothing can stop it is indeed a truth, but it is not The Truth. It is not The Ultimate Reality. If everything is dead and there is nothing left to die, it is no longer true that we all will die. It is true that we all will die, but the fact that we all die is not The Eternal Truth.

Death is very much related to time. There is no death without time. The Ultimate Reality does not change with time. It does not die. Therefore, God is lord over time. Time is not lord over God.

And who is trying to kill you or trample your rights?

Time and death have dominion over you. The Truth has dominion over time and death.

Clearly you were created through natural processes. What is your issue?

People without forgiveness or even tolerance kill eachother.

I don't think you know everybody well enough to make the assertions you are making, nor would I wager that you understand alll these community values.

Besides that, if many or most people are, as you seem to imply, ignorant, it would be better to treat them with charity than to hold their ignorance against them. 

No one is talking about gods except you.

I don't see why you'd have to unless you are someone who deep down longs for the world to conform to themselves.

It's really quite simple.

You will die. Everything you've ever done in your life will crumble with time. Everything you know and love will be obscure. Your life is a vapor. Everything in this world? Sandcastles.

What is truly eternal? 

The Truth.

And everything was made by and through The Truth.

"Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth"

So if your faith is in anything else in this world, your faith is in something that is subject to time and death. Only The Truth conquers time and death.

Abide in THE TRUTH. The creator rather than the creature.

I believe there has to be an offense for their to be tolerance or forgiveness, not simply a difference in opinion.

Unless differing opinions offend you... 

I don't think it makess sense to tolerate or forgive someone for not thinking the food was as good as yourself, but hey. Did you cook the food? Maybe then it could be offensive.

Just as it is not charitable to make note that you are being charitable, so is it with forgiveness.

Forgiveness, even charity, is what Christians are called to do. Inventing forgiveness is not really the point, the point is that forgiveness is a better attitude than tolerance.

We are all wrong. We have hopefully grown up since we  were younger. Even if we are "better" today, there was a time when maybe we weren't so. Even then, good as we may be today, we still all fall short. When we condemn others, we really condemn ourselves because we are guilty in our own ways, maybe even of the same things.

So tolerating someone implies that you are putting up with them. You are still holding on to something. There is still tension. Forgiving someone implies that you are not imputing the offenses of the offender against them. You are letting go. There is no tension.

Forgiveness comes from love. Tolerance comes from maybe a desire for peace over conflict. Charity is better than tolerance. Tolerance implies a holding on of judgement. It is like a tea pot full of water placed over a flame. 

We are distinguishable from our parents and grandparents, and so on.

I think everybody can wrap their head around that aspect of evolution, that life reproduces with variance. 

I think you are projecting your own hubris on to me. 

You are, after all, finding the idea that you are not mightier than the laws of physics obnoxious.

Absolutely nothing you have said is accurate to what I believe. I'm sure you know that.

Logic and reason is meaningless without The Truth. Without feuth, logic and reason amounts to little more than witchcraft 

"For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe."

"And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight"

If your faith is in transient things, created things... your faith is in death. If you identify with death, what actually survives? The second death is the death of death and all things hidden, when everything is complete as it is.

So eternal life is abiding in The Truth. 

"Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that yelove one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you"

Yet, at the same time...

No, I am not dodging your question, I am leading you to my answer.

What I believe with strong conviction is The Supreme and Ultimate Reality. The Truth. I believe in God.

I could not tell you what lead me to become "religious", because I was religious before I even knew I was religious.

The point I am trying to make is that you yourself may be more religious than you are aware of.

I think what you are saying that we can only be objective from a relative standpoint.This is precisely the reason that operationalism was introduced into scientific experimentation.

But going by your very stringent standards for what actually constitutes "objective", it would seem that nothing short of God actuallly could qualify as an objective observer. Since there are more observers than God, there cannot be objectivity, because only God sees things as they are, and no one else sees things the same way.

By these standards, you can't really make any statements of truth. As I said though, this is why operationalism was introduced into the scientific process.

But to get back on topic and tie this all in... what this basically all means, and I think you would agree, is that we are ALL WRONG.

And it is precisely for this reason, us all being wrong, that proper orthodox Christianity teaches a way that is superior to tolerance. FORGIVENESS. 

It is better to forgive someone than to tolerate them.

You wouldn't say that locking up and permanently depriving a moose from food will result in the moose starving to death? You wouldn't call that objective?

Keeping that in mind, are you aware of this definition of faith?

"something that is believed especially with strong conviction"

You probably are not familiar with this definition of religion...

" a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith"

Is there a cause, principle, or system of beliefs you hold with ardor and faith?

I wouldn't call the environment I was raised in religious, no. I'm not really interested in listening to Sam Harris.

Actually, theologians have been debating this for thousands of years. In fact, I'm pretty sure this debate originated in theology.

Even today, there is still a debate about it. In the protestant churches, the methodists are said to believe more toward free will while the presbyterians tend to lean more towards determinism. I use those examples because I think those churches tend to make it an issue. 

We experience a type of free will, in the sense that we seem to have choices. Do we really? I don't know. Like I said, I lean more towards the idea that everything is determined. To me it is what naturally follows from omnipotence.

Also, my personal faith very much has a great deal to do with accepting this determinism as a reality. There is the way I see things, and then there is the way that things actually are. Even my desire to abide in the way things actually are is a product of determism. Did I have any control over the events in my life that sculpted me to be who I am today? There are so many things going on. What I myself do, no matter how self willed it seems to be, is very minimal compared to the entire universe pressing down to make my experience possible.

So yeah, I don't believe that I defy physics. I guess that is really what I'm getting at.

I don't care about what a bunch of sexually akward teenagers did over 35 years ago.

Even if yhis non rape occured, people change in 36 years anyway.

Politics is going to get really nasty in the future qhen they start digging up 30 year old facebook/twitter posts... pictures?

Well, be as thorough as you'd like to be. I might goad you into writing a book for us in this thread. Hah

There is nothing strange about my claim, that you are the product of reality.

The Ultimate Reality is the creator of everything.

The Ultimate Reality is what God means.

And you as well as anyone can see that God is the creator of all by contemplating what "The Ultimate Reality" means. 

That is my position very simply.