Do we have free will?

And if I were to truly question these people, would they be able to tell me they actually saw, heard, touched god? No, they will tell me that they feel him inside their soul, or some other such nonsense. I am not saying these people don’t believe what they feel, but it is not proof of the existence of an actual diety.

Yes. There are people who will be able to tell you that they saw Him and heard Him. Of course they can not touch him because on one can touch a spirit.

f he won’t then he making a choice to torture someone. That is evil. We don’t let our justice system do that to criminals, yet this all powerful loving god needs to exact on revenge on people for the sole reason they don’t believe. He provides zero proof of his existence, yet expects people to believe, and if you don’t, yopur are sent to hell to be tortured for eternity. Does this sound like a loving god to you?

Actually all He is doing is respecting their choice period.

1. He has created this world, people see this world and yet choose to say God has not provided proof.
2. There are so many eyewitness and yet you choose to say God has not provided any proof.
3. He has people trying all they can to show you that God exists yet you choose to say God has not provided any proof.

PEOPLE GO TO HELL BECAUSE THEY REJECT HIS ESCAPE PROVISION.

I have free will to do what I want. I don’t deny that. It has nothing to do with god. As I already said, your definition of free will is nothing but an excuse for god to commit attrocities.

You don’t think before you make any statements. Would you like anyone forcing anything on you? Obviously you don’t. You would want everyone to keep your freedom in mind when they deal with you wouldn’t you? That is God also does.

Why do you want to delude people into believing in a god that would torture perfectly good people? Your belief system is backwards, and even dangerous. I will expose it every chance I get.

Why do you want to delude by saying that a God does not exist and that He tortures everyone to hell? I am here to give people the truth which I will do.

Actually all He is doing is respecting their choice period.

How can he ‘respect their choice’ when they didn’t know there was a choice to begin with? You’re an idiot. This has been brought up NUMEROUS times, and you ALWAYS evade the reality of the subject. You say people choose to go to hell by not being Christian. BULLSHIT. Christianity isn’t worldly. There are places in the world where it has NO presence. Oh and I know, as you’ve said before, you like to pretend that EVERYONE had heard of Christianity, because that, in your mind, removes and gaps in your opinion. Otherwise, God WOULD be sending people to Hell WITHOUT any opportunity to escape; and that WOULD make him cruel and evil. As always, you have to LIE to yourself, to make YOUR beliefs seem perfect TO YOU… all of your bullshit revolves around continuing to convince YOURSELF, not others. Again, CONVINCING… not proving.

1. He has created this world, people see this world and yet choose to say God has not provided proof.

You can’t prove he created this world, because there IS no proof… idiot…

2. There are so many eyewitness and yet you choose to say God has not provided any proof.

There are ZERO eyewitnesses, because God cannot be perceived with eyes… idiot…

3. He has people trying all they can to show you that God exists yet you choose to say God has not provided any proof.

…because there IS no proof… idiot…

I am here to give people the truth which I will do.

LIAR

Yes the guy is too busy screaming insults at you at the top of his voice that he does not hear the truck. He is busy looking for stones and is fully concentrating at throwing those stones at you that he does not see the truck. So that poor fellow will be crushed.

Like I said… a bad analogy… which makes no point. We know you cannot rationally convey your opinions, so its equally pointless to make irrational analogies.

Not necessarily. What if I have seen a murder when no one was around. It was not tangible nor was I able to record it. So is there no evidence? The court would take what I say as an evidence wouldn’t they?

You’ve already used this analogy before, and its already been run over by a truck. Your testimony IS evidence, and it can be verified via polygraph. The perpetrator can ALSO be polygraphed, and there is also a highly effective process called forensics. Again, another bad analogy…

Do at least TRY to come up with something original and VIABLE.

You are tangible, your testimony is observable. You are the evidence. Yes, the court would accept your tesitimony as evidence.

Well in that case am I not an evidence for God. Why could I not be accepted as an evidence?

This discussion was not about the ability to make choices in our actions, it was about whether a conclusion is a decision

The discussion is about weather we have free will or not. I was answering that. Your statements agree that man does have a free will.

So you are saying it is out of god’s hands who gets saved or not? And FREE will is a restriction? If god has free will, he could use it to save everyone, not just those who worship him.

Yes. Man’s free will is God’s restriction. God will not override a man’s free will.

ummm… that is just stupid. I thought the reason he was throwing stones was because you were tryting to save him, but he didn’t see the truck and didn’t want you to grab his arm. It wasn’t the throwing of the stones that prevented him from seeing the truck, he already couldn’t see it before he threw the stones. But as I already said, you have completely twisted to orginal poilnt of the analogy.

What I wanted to show you was that in all your beautiful story you forgot that, that man also has a free will. He has to be willing to be saved or even to look in the direction of the truck. Obviously you are having to save him because he is not seeing the truck. I am not twisting. I am just explaining.

Sure you are. Just not very credible evidence. Have you actually seen a vision of god? Have you heard him speak to you? Have you physically felt him? A single eye witness would in most cases not be enough to prove something. There would need to be other physical evidence.

When I said I meant a Christian. There are so many Christians out there. I have personally not seen him with my eyes but I have heard him speak to me. There are many Christians who heard Him speak like me. Unlike me there are many Christians who have seen Him. So now you have tangible evidences according to your logic. What you are now going to do is talk about credibility and not accept these evidences. Are these people not tangible evidences and if so why are they not credible?

Will not? or Can not? If he can’t do anything about it, then he is not all that powerful. If can, but just won’t, then he is an evil, egotisitcal, and vindicitive SOB.

Yes he can but he will not. If he can and He won’t why is He evil? It is not enough if you just call God names you need to explain?

I don’t give a crap about the disussion of free will. It is a bogus concept made up by christianity in order to let god off the hook for all the atocities he has let happen.

If you don’t accept that you have free will then that is your problem. You have a problem. You have reduced to even denying the obvious. If you don’t want to accept reality please don’t. But why do you want to delude other people and prevent them from escaping hell?

I never said that. You are really putting words into my mouth. I am only saying man has the ability to choose anything he wants. The reality does not change according to what one believes.

You claimed that one can choose to believe in santa. In order to do that, you have to believe something that our reality tells is not true. Unless your reality includes magical men who can fly around the world on a sled pulled by flying reindeer and give billions of presents out in one night. You are being extremely disingenuos if you expect me to believe that you could CHOOSE to believe such a thing.

Choice leads to conclusion. You reach a conclusion because you make a lot of choices in the process of study, which only shows that you have choice.

Choice leads to conclusion? How utterly ridiculous. The only choices one might make is how to proceed in the study, not a choice of whether you believe in the conclusion.

Lets bring this back to belief in god. I make no choices in my process of confirming the existences of god. I merely look at evidence, and then come to a conclusion based on that evidence. You obviously see the same evidence and come to a different conclusion. Knowing the conlusions you have made on that same evidence, could you truly CHOOSE to stop believing in god? I doubt it. Certainly no more than I can choose to start believing.

How is We are all on our way to hell and The Loving God does not torture contradictory statements? Our default destination is the Hell because there is sin in us. If WE are going to HELL because of OUR SINS why do WE BLAME God?

If you see a truck coming at someone, and you can easily grab their arm and pull them to safety, but you choose not to. Wouldn’t you be responisible for that persons death? The dirver didn’t see him, so for him it was just an accident and not purposeful. Yet you knew what was happening, could have prevented, yet chose not to.

Couldn’t this loving god prevent someone from going to hell? If he could and yet doesn’t, then it is the same thing as him sending us there. He is making a choice as to who will and won’t be tortured in hell. And their only sin might be that they didn’t worship him while alive because he provided no evidence of his existence.

When I said I meant a Christian. There are so many Christians out there. I have personally not seen him with my eyes but I have heard him speak to me. There are many Christians who heard Him speak like me. Unlike me there are many Christians who have seen Him. So now you have tangible evidences according to your logic. What you are now going to do is talk about credibility and not accept these evidences. Are these people not tangible evidences and if so why are they not credible?

And if I were to truly question these people, would they be able to tell me they actually saw, heard, touched god? No, they will tell me that they feel him inside their soul, or some other such nonsense. I am not saying these people don’t believe what they feel, but it is not proof of the existence of an actual diety.

Yes he can but he will not. If he can and He won’t why is He evil? It is not enough if you just call God names you need to explain?

If he won’t then he making a choice to torture someone. That is evil. We don’t let our justice system do that to criminals, yet this all powerful loving god needs to exact on revenge on people for the sole reason they don’t believe. He provides zero proof of his existence, yet expects people to believe, and if you don’t, yopur are sent to hell to be tortured for eternity. Does this sound like a loving god to you?

And me call god names has the same effect as me calling santa claus names.

If you don’t accept that you have free will then that is your problem.

I have free will to do what I want. I don’t deny that. It has nothing to do with god. As I already said, your definition of free will is nothing but an excuse for god to commit attrocities.

You have a problem. You have reduced to even denying the obvious. If you don’t want to accept reality please don’t. But why do you want to delude other people and prevent them from escaping hell?

Why do you want to delude people into believing in a god that would torture perfectly good people? Your belief system is backwards, and even dangerous. I will expose it every chance I get.

Well in that case am I not an evidence for God. Why could I not be accepted as an evidence?

Sure you are. Just not very credible evidence. Have you actually seen a vision of god? Have you heard him speak to you? Have you physically felt him? A single eye witness would in most cases not be enough to prove something. There would need to be other physical evidence.

The discussion is about weather we have free will or not. I was answering that. Your statements agree that man does have a free will.

Please try to keep up. The discussion at this point had shifted to the choice god makes when he allows perfectly good people to be sent to hell simply because they did not believe he existed.

Yes. Man’s free will is God’s restriction. God will not override a man’s free will.

Will not? or Can not? If he can’t do anything about it, then he is not all that powerful. If can, but just won’t, then he is an evil, egotisitcal, and vindicitive SOB.

What I wanted to show you was that in all your beautiful story you forgot that, that man also has a free will. He has to be willing to be saved or even to look in the direction of the truck. Obviously you are having to save him because he is not seeing the truck. I am not twisting. I am just explaining.

No you are twisting, because man’s free will had nothing to do with the anaolgy. It was very simple, yet you seem incapable of understanding. God has the power to save people from hell, just as you have the power to save the man from the truck. It is a matter of choice.

I don’t give a crap about the disussion of free will. It is a bogus concept made up by christianity in order to let god off the hook for all the atocities he has let happen.

Can you truly choose to believe that Santa Claus really exists? *

Of couse you can. *

So you think you can just change your perception of reality by simply choosing to? You can easily choose to say you believe, but to truly choose to actually believe is something entirely different. Your reality tells you that a magical man who lives on the north pole, knows every kids name, and gives billions of presents to kids in a single night, cannot possibly exist. And if you say this is not true, then you are a liar.

When a person sees a certain evidences he is not forced to believe it. But at a point when he thinks the evidences are sufficient fro him to believe he just makes a choice.

You are confusing a conclusion with a choice. Different people might look at the same evidence and make different conclusions. That has nothing to do with belief. If I look at the equation 2+2=5, I could come to the conclusion it is true, and you come to the conclusion it is false. Knowing you are right, could you choose to truly believe otherwise?

There are people who used to believe in a God and then after years of persistence when they don’t see any evidences that satisfy them they just choose not to invest anymore belief in God.

I think you meant to say this: There are people who used to believe in a god and then after years of persistence when they didn’t see any evidences that satisfied them they just CONCLUDED that there is no god.

Big difference…

Think of it this way. Why are we in those stuffy offices or class rooms? Its because we choose to. It is a different thing that our conditions led us to make those choices. But ultimately we are the ones who made the choice.

Believe me, I would not choose to be cooped up in a stuffy office. But I have CONCLUDED that the best way to pay for food and a roof is to have a job.

You keep trying to equate someone concluding there is no god and choosing not to believe, but your argument is very weak. As usual.

First if all it is not a concept. It is a reality.

What does this even mean? They are not mutually exclusive.

Secondly it is the atheists who want freedom. They are the ones who are behind free will. Many have testified that they have become free after they became atheists.

Don’t we all want freedom? I don’t think I became free, as I always had doubts. I felt better when I was able to stop pretending. I don’t know that I would use the term free.

The loving God does not torture anyone. It is amazing how you people would like to repeat the same thing again and again. We are ALL on our way to that torture because we have all SINNED.

You take only three sentences to contradict yourself. First you say: ‘The loving God does not torture anyone.’ and 2 sentences later you say: ‘We are ALL on our way to that torture’

So which is it? Or is it that your god is not so loving after all?

Yes. There are people who will be able to tell you that they saw Him and heard Him.

Ah, well then. Clearly Islam, Hindi, and Judaism are all correct too, since there are people who make the same claims about their gods.

He has created this world, people see this world and yet choose to say God has not provided proof.

Well, there are, as mentioned above, many claimants to the title of “creator of the universe”, but none of them have managed to unambiguously identify themselves as the real one. Seems a bit of an omission, no?

I have personally not seen him with my eyes but I have heard him speak to me.

Uh huh… what did his voice sound like? What language did he speak? What dialect? What did he say verbatim? Any special effects added? Delay? Reverb? Phasing?

Not necessarily. What if I have seen a murder when no one was around. It was not tangible nor was I able to record it. So is there no evidence? The court would take what I say as an evidence wouldn’t they?

You are tangible, your testimony is observable. You are the evidence. Yes, the court would accept your tesitimony as evidence. It would be up to the jury to decide on it’s veracity.

Exactly. So you are free to make those choices. That means you have a free will to make those choices.

This discussion was not about the ability to make choices in our actions, it was about whether a conclusion is a decision. Of course, one will make many choices during a study or investigation of something. A crime investigator will make decisions on who to interview, on how to collect evidence, etc… But once he is done with his investigation, he is not making a choice to charge someone with the crime, he is coming to a conclusion based on the evidence.

That is not what I said. You have misunderstood. I said Choice leads to conclusion. Please read again what I have posted.

This is what you said intiitally that started this discussion: ‘When a person sees a certain evidences he is not forced to believe it. But at a point when he thinks the evidences are sufficient fro him to believe he just makes a choice.’

What you said was that it isn’t until you have seen all the evidence that you make a choice to conclude something. That is patently false. Stop moving the goal posts, and please try to keep up.

Yes of course. I would do all I can. But if he is determined to not allow me to get near him so I can physically drag him then the truck will run over him before I can reach him.

And again, you are forgetting the premise of this analagy. You are god, and you are choosing to try to save the man. If God is truly ominpotent, he could save anyone, even if the person doesn’t want to be saved. He chooses not to save certain people. That would be the equavelent of you doing nothing as a man gets run over by a truck.

How do you know that He does not have such restrictions? See you are assuming a lot. He does have a restriction. It is called free will.

So you are saying it is out of god’s hands who gets saved or not? And FREE will is a restriction? If god has free will, he could use it to save everyone, not just those who worship him.

Yes the guy is too busy screaming insults at you at the top of his voice that he does not hear the truck. He is busy looking for stones and is fully concentrating at throwing those stones at you that he does not see the truck. So that poor fellow will be crushed.

ummm… that is just stupid. I thought the reason he was throwing stones was because you were tryting to save him, but he didn’t see the truck and didn’t want you to grab his arm. It wasn’t the throwing of the stones that prevented him from seeing the truck, he already couldn’t see it before he threw the stones. But as I already said, you have completely twisted to orginal poilnt of the analogy.

I think you are in way over you head already. You should really give it a rest, it is obviously to taxing for your brain to comprehend.

I make no choices in my process of confirming the existences of god. I merely look at evidence, and then come to a conclusion based on that evidence. You obviously see the same evidence and come to a different conclusion.

Actually you don’t see any evidence. You can’t see any evidence. You don’t want to see any evidence. I have seen evidence. Therefore it is not true that we both are seeing the same evidence and coming to a different conclusion. However there are instances where two people see the same thing and come to a different conclusions. How does that happen? Choices.

The only choices one might make is how to proceed in the study,

That is what I meant. If you don’t have choices at all you cannot reach a conclusion.

If you see a truck coming at someone, and you can easily grab their arm and pull them to safety, but you choose not to. Wouldn’t you be responisible for that persons death? The dirver didn’t see him, so for him it was just an accident and not purposeful. Yet you knew what was happening, could have prevented, yet chose not to.

The example is not right. You forget will again. Here is a more appropriate example. You see a truck coming at some one. You can easily grab him but that someone also has a free will. He thinks you are trying to hurt him and he keeps throwing stones at you in such a way that you are not able to get near him. You try to show that person the truck that is coming at him but he does not believe that it is coming at him. You try all you can to approach him but as long as he does not co-operate with you cannot help him.

That is a more apt example. God cannot help anyone unless that person wants the help because He cannot override your free will.

Yes. Man’s free will is God’s restriction. God will not override a man’s free will.

Wait, are you saying your god is incapable of alleviating suffering in any way without infringing free-will? I thought he was omnipotent?

Evidence is something tangible that can be observed and recorded.

Not necessarily. What if I have seen a murder when no one was around. It was not tangible nor was I able to record it. So is there no evidence? The court would take what I say as an evidence wouldn’t they?

I never implied that there aren’t decisions to make while trying to figure something out.

Exactly. So you are free to make those choices. That means you have a free will to make those choices.

You are saying that the ultimate conclusion is actually a choice and not based on the evidence you just studied.

That is not what I said. You have misunderstood. I said “Choice leads to conclusion.” Please read again what I have posted.

And wouldn’t you still try and save him if you could?

Yes of course. I would do all I can. But if he is determined to not allow me to get near him so I can physically drag him then the truck will run over him before I can reach him.

God doesn’t have such a restriction on his ability to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. He could do it anyway.

How do you know that He does not have such restrictions? See you are assuming a lot. He does have a restriction. It is called free will.

Funny how the guy can see YOU, throw rocks at you, and HEAR your warnings. Yet, he can’t see or hear the truck coming…

Yes the guy is too busy screaming insults at you at the top of his voice that he does not hear the truck. He is busy looking for stones and is fully concentrating at throwing those stones at you that he does not see the truck. So that poor fellow will be crushed.

Can you truly choose to believe that Santa Claus really exists?

Of couse you can. That is the reason why there are so many religions. When a person sees a certain evidences he is not forced to believe it. But at a point when he thinks the evidences are sufficient fro him to believe he just makes a choice. Some people for example have chosen not believe in a God. There are people who used to believe in a God and then after years of persistence when they don’t see any evidences that satisfy them they just choose not to invest anymore belief in God.

oh come on if we had ultimate free will , the will to do what we wanted when we wanted, half of us wouldent be sitting in stuffy offices or class rooms day after day,

Think of it this way. Why are we in those stuffy offices or class rooms? Its because we choose to. It is a different thing that our conditions led us to make those choices. But ultimately we are the ones who made the choice.

Free will is a ridiculous concept created by religion

First if all it is not a concept. It is a reality. Secondly it is the atheists who want freedom. They are the ones who are behind free will. Many have testified that they have become free after they became atheists.

Because if you didn’t believe, that loving god up in the sky would torture you for eternity.

The loving God does not torture anyone. It is amazing how you people would like to repeat the same thing again and again. We are ALL on our way to that torture because we have all SINNED. God has only provided a way for us to escape. By rejecting the escape we are all just going where we are already on our way to.

So you think you can just change your perception of reality by simply choosing to?

I never said that. You are really putting words into my mouth. I am only saying man has the ability to choose anything he wants. The reality does not change according to what one believes.

You are confusing a conclusion with a choice.

Choice leads to conclusion. You reach a conclusion because you make a lot of choices in the process of study, which only shows that you have choice.

You take only three sentences to contradict yourself. First you say: ‘The loving God does not torture anyone.’ and 2 sentences later you say: ‘We are ALL on our way to that torture’

How is “We are all on our way to hell” and The Loving God does not torture” contradictory statements? Our default destination is the Hell because there is sin in us. If WE are going to HELL because of OUR SINS why do WE BLAME God?

Funny how the guy can see YOU, throw rocks at you, and HEAR your warnings. Yet, he can’t see or hear the truck coming…

Hmmm… yep… just another bad analogy…

First if all it is not a concept. It is a reality.

Really? Prove it.

Secondly it is the atheists who want freedom. They are the ones who are behind free will. Many have testified that they have become free after they became atheists.

Yes, we just want to ignore religion so we can be evil, evil people and do whatever we want. Funny, though, when you look at the statistics, there’s no correlation between atheism and crime. Why is that, do you suppose?

We are ALL on our way to that torture because we have all SINNED. God has only provided a way for us to escape.

Suuure. The omnipotent being who set up the way the entire universe works isn’t responsible for our fates if we fail to worship him unquestioningly. The devil did it!

good question, I think we have certain rights, but we dont have ALL the rights the Constitution says we do until we’re 18, which suckss. but we do still have some free will. jsut not as much as 18 year olds.

Free will is your ability to choose what you want to do, accept whatever you want to, believe whatever you want to, think whatever you want to.

Can you truly choose to believe that Santa Claus really exists? Or can you only pretend he exists? No, people can not choose what they believe. Either they do or they don’t. We can’t force ourselves to believe something simply because others want us to.

Free will is a ridiculous concept created by religion. It was a way to scare people into believing, or at least pretending to believe. Because if you didn’t believe, that loving god up in the sky would torture you for eternity.

I believe we all do have free will, as far as our human bodies allow. There’s also the matter of, Sure, do what you will. But there’s consequences afterwards for every action. [I really like to see the deep philosophies many of you have expressed!]

oh come on if we had ultimate free will , the will to do what we wanted when we wanted, half of us wouldent be sitting in stuffy offices or class rooms day after day, getting told what we’re supposed to do, and what we cant do, we have free will to an extent before people who think they are higher than us break it and take it away, of course we all think we’ve got free will, its all we’ve got, we cant to anything

Of course we do. Don’t all of you whatever you feel like? Free will is your ability to choose what you want to do, accept whatever you want to, believe whatever you want to, think whatever you want to.

In fact if we did not have a free will we would be nothing more than a Robot.

• We don’t have souls if that’s what you mean.-

To an extent, that may be true. But in Genesis 2:7 it reads “ And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” King James Bible (KJV). Therefore, we don’t HAVE souls, we ARE souls.

It’s neither. Fundamentally, the universe is random (quantum mechanics). So although on average things may appear determined, really, they are not.

At the same time, the psuedo-deterministic aspects of the universe apply to the neurons, synapses, etc. in our brains. Our brain feeds back on itself. In that regard, we have free will, but it complies with the probabilistic nature of the universe itself.

I hope this helps, but it probably doesn’t. We don’t have souls if that’s what you mean.

‘Free will’ as it’s usually construed is supposed to be some sort of ability to act outside the constraints of what the universe dictates. Since our brains are purely physical things, there’s no foundation for free will as such - how we think and behave is determined by the state of our brains and the universe around us.

honestly I believe that we fully control our own lives. I do not believe thatthere is a god that causes everything and manipulates all our lives. We choose what we do and how we live and we have to live with the benefits or consequences that result from them. and please nobody say that I dont know god both of my parents are christian pastors and I grew up in church, I just dont happen to believe in the predestiny everything happens for a reason at the appropriate time crap.

I agree choices are different but thats not the issue I think that we have free will after we are born and before we die no matter what there is ALWAYS a choice so free will is inevitable based on the number of descisions we make every nanosecond descisions are what make the synapses in our brains activate every action is in effect a descision of somme sort and nething that complex could not possibly be monitored or predecided by anything the human brain can possibly imagine

But based on someone’s past, their choices in life will be much more different than that of other’s. A person who lives in poverty and steals to survive does not have the same choices as someone who is rich and lives in luxury.

we all belive we do but it turns out 2b goverment

I personally think we have free will to an extent