Free will

So a few assumptions

-There is a God who created everything
-God is all powerful
-God is all knowing

With these in mind God created the world with the ability to change anything and knowing everything to include seeing through time. This justifys the position that everything that happens is in line with Gods purpose. If these premises are accepted anyone believing them has to accept that they are in the subset of determinism called fatalism. When you ask 'Why did my friend die' you can answer it with 'Its part of Gods plan' and justify it with the excuse that 'We can not know Gods will.'

But

How can free will exist under these circumstances? If we have an all powerful and all knowing creator he knew every decision we would make the second he created the universe as he did. Further- he knew how changing 1 molecule of the world at the point of creation would change an individuals actions because he could see through time.

So how can we believe in free will if we accept the model of fatalism that comes with the premis that God is all knowing and all powerful?
And if we demand that we have free will how can we do so while maintaining that God is both all powerful and all knowing?

I would love to hear an answer that does not revert to existential nihilism

I’ve wondered if it’s knowing every outcome and decision or knowing the possible decisions of which there are multiple.

I suppose you boil it down to he know what you will choose regardless of the possibilities and at that point is it free will

This is one of the reasons I don’t believe in a specifically all knowing force.


Free will in a system where your decisions are known before you make them comes from the perception of those in the system. Ignorance of the matrix if you will. Essentially doesn’t exist

Is omniscience and foreknowledge the same? If it isn’t this is a different discussion

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Originally Posted by Damus_Graves

Is omniscience and foreknowledge the same? If it isn’t this is a different discussion

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This post.^

If god or anything is all powerful he/they can make an immovable rock. If god or anything is all powerful he/they can move any rock. Contradiction = nothing can be “all powerful”.

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Originally Posted by aamirus

If god or anything is all powerful he/they can make an immovable rock. If god or anything is all powerful he/they can move any rock. Contradiction = nothing can be “all powerful”.

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For the purposes of this discussion, we can assume he's sufficiently powerful to influence the universe in any way he desires, and has enough "processing power" to follow the motion of every molecule and perfectly predict its activity.

That said, I don't think this situation implies there's no free will. Sure, an omniscient pseudo-omnipotent being determines all your actions, but that doesn't mean you're not making choices. If someone makes an ad that makes you buy a product, we don't say the person who made the ad made the decision to buy the product on your behalf, even if he ultimately determined whether you bought the product. He just manipulated your actions.

You're still making choices. They're just a little... Redundant... Now =P

I'd argue I as an atheist face a stronger dilemma. Am I truly making decisions? Who is even "I" in the first place? Ultimately, due to the absence of a soul, surely"I" am just a collection of neurological calculations that determine my next decision, and my emotions are just electrical impulses. When I do something, where is the "me" who decides to do that thing? Ultimately, some electrical impulses made a calculation based on predetermined factors, then acted. They did not choose to do anything. However, I am perceiving some "self" to do a thing, regardless. Is that perception just an illusion? There is no free will if you're essentially a complicated string of fleshy if statements.

Fuck the god, hail Satan.
Satan loves ya all so give some respect to him.

'to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God'
Soren Kierkegaard

Helz said:
" With these in mind God created the world with the ability to change anything and knowing everything to include seeing through time. This justifys the position that everything that happens is in line with Gods purpose. If these premises are accepted anyone believing them has to accept that they are in the subset of determinism called fatalism. When you ask 'Why did my friend die' you can answer it with 'Its part of Gods plan' and justify it with the excuse that 'We can not know Gods will.'

But

How can free will exist under these circumstances? If we have an all powerful and all knowing creator he knew every decision we would make the second he created the universe as he did. Further- he knew how changing 1 molecule of the world at the point of creation would change an individuals actions because he could see through time. "

I pretty much agree with what this guy said,
yzb25 said:
"That said, I don't think this situation implies there's no free will. Sure, an omniscient pseudo-omnipotent being determines all your actions, but that doesn't mean you're not making choices. If someone makes an ad that makes you buy a product, we don't say the person who made the ad made the decision to buy the product on your behalf, even if he ultimately determined whether you bought the product. He just manipulated your actions. "

There has to be physicality and permanence to the universe, as in laws of physics, laws of biology and spiritual/religious/natural law(morals and ethics-wise) for there to be any defined physical location, physical biological form and functions or purposes, respectively. If there are no "boundaries" like these, then there is no place for any actual consequence, ie. everything remains conceptual and not defined or tried. If there are no consequences, then it cannot be said that there was ever a prior sequence, you catch my drift?
Most cars can only fit two people in the front seat as par their function, maybe four people if you squeezed them all in uncomfortably together in the front, but simply because you can't fit five, six etc., doesn't mean that you lack free will simply because you are not capable of doing this physically impossible action, as this poster seemingly suggested:

aamirus said
" If god or anything is all powerful he/they can make an immovable rock. If god or anything is all powerful he/they can move any rock. Contradiction = nothing can be “all powerful”. "

If anything, the boundaries of a car have now opened new doors (HEH) on the possibilities of exercising free will, with the knowledge in hand to construct cars, humans can now choose to enter any car (ideally with the necessary expertise in how to operate it), and use it to move at speeds that were "impossible" before this level of understanding. God cannot create a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift it, but that is because God's unlimited power can only be of use to the effect of possible things. Possible things that are instituted by the existential laws that He has designed, God's power is unlimited, so it is impossible for Him to create a rock that even He cannot lift, He is the author of all Creation, all of Creation's properties and laws are instituted by Him and bend to His will. It's not that God or the quality of "All-Powerful" that is contradictory, there are just simply some concepts that are defined by being conceptually and realistically separated from other concepts, such as a square and a triangle, a square cannot be made up of 3 sides, nor can a triangle be made up of 4 sides, there are no 2-sided triangles or 5-sided squares. If concepts were not individuated by the expression of their realistic nature, they would be indiscernible from the background of nothingness or oblivion, white noise.

This is pretty much the answer to your question, from here on, I will further elucidate.


'All the shrewdness of 'man' seeks one thing: to be able to live without responsibility.'
Soren Kierkegaard

Drawing from what I would hope are accurate personal insights, Man's fallen nature as according to Christian theology is exactly this subject that you have brought up, ie. Fallen Man believes that he is All-Powerful or Godlike when he has the ability to escape the consequences of his actions and exercise lawlessness instead, allowing him to do things that even God cannot do, such as lie or deny himself, as God is not the Father of wickedness, Satan is.
This juvenile existential perspective allows Fallen Man to feel like he is Godlike, or can become God, or surpass God, and he uses human establishments to further achieve this end, at the behest of Satan and his cohorts, which I suspect is also known as the mystery of iniquity (Satan/Cohorts, Man, Woman) which is if you haven't picked it up yet, an unholy trinity. Satan used the Woman in the Garden of Eden to give birth to an inverted reality where the possibilities of Creation not performing their function or their nature can "exist" (though in reality they do not actually exist), ie. a world where falsehoods reign and provide great power to those who use them. Fallen Man (ie. every human being in existence) is currently trapped in this world of our own making, you may not have personally been Adam or Eve at the time of the corruption of the world through Eve eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they remain our progenitors, and as such we share their same nature, their same disposition. Pre-Fall Man was likely incredibly intelligent, spiritually aware and even generally more physically adept/genetically stable, but Man has been degrading from that time up until the present day, the entire line or body of Fallen Man having aged over the ages in this dynamic reality where concepts and realistic nature are capable of being divorced from one another, resulting in cognitive disharmony which naturally results in physical chaos.


But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.
Proverbs 8:36

Although Fallen Man is under the impression derived from history that he is improving, evolving, ie. A Rising Beast in the vein of Friedrich Nietzsche, Man is in fact dying as a collective consciousness, getting more frail and closer to death because of the application of concepts in a wicked way (which I find conveniently similar to the word 'wick' and I imagine has roots within it) as opposed to the righteous way (right use) because Man and Woman are by default divorced from God when born from a Woman in this world, and prone to conceptual or spiritual confusion, and from there, physical evil, without holy intervention. Satan's promise in the Garden of Eden was that if Eve were to eat the Fruit, Man and Woman would become as Gods, knowing both Good and Evil, and the Fallen World was the result of that promise. This may sound like a whole bunch of hogwash to you at first glance, but think about it, what has Man done to the Earth except harm it, producing technological advancements that on their face are seemingly benign and can be used for benevolent purpose, and yet have been used to inflict incalculable horror, death and destruction to its residents, either overt or subtle, to the point where there are disasters and problems that humans cannot even begin to comprehend or solve, whether environmentally, psychologically, genetically or economically, the current age world is heading towards a frightfully apocalyptic conclusion that most people are not even mentally aware of, let alone addressing.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Psalms 23:4-6

Since the days of the Garden of Eden, Man (and Woman) have trusted in their own power to save themselves from the shadow of death, they chose to put their faith in the promise of the Serpent rather than in the promise of God, and have reaped the recompense.

yzb25 said:
I'd argue I as an atheist face a stronger dilemma. Am I truly making decisions? Who is even "I" in the first place? Ultimately, due to the absence of a soul, surely"I" am just a collection of neurological calculations that determine my next decision, and my emotions are just electrical impulses. When I do something, where is the "me" who decides to do that thing? Ultimately, some electrical impulses made a calculation based on predetermined factors, then acted. They did not choose to do anything. However, I am perceiving some "self" to do a thing, regardless. Is that perception just an illusion? There is no free will if you're essentially a complicated string of fleshy if statements.

The dilemma that yzb25 describes is the dilemma that literally all of Mankind suffers from, it is the existential cognitive dissonance that is experienced from reaching for an understanding of why we are here, what are we, where are we going? We can grasp concepts like God, souls, angels, divinity, immortality, holiness and righteousness, but because of our spiritual divorce or separation from God, we have no objective truth, we can only initially perceive everything from a relative point of view built upon personal experience, and can get trapped in our own perception of reality, becoming a sort of faux god unto ourselves. Why is it that such concepts exist, if there appears to be no physicality defining or confirming them? When we think of a triangle as a concept, it can be fleshed out, and has been fleshed out, to great practical use in architecture and engineering and all others sorts of purposes throughout the ages, yet when we think of the concept of God, we have no physical comparison, we have no way to construct a "god" and the defining attributes of what God actually is are left up to personal interpretation seemingly. As a result, there are myriad beliefs of how the world came to be, and atheists in particular believe that God, souls, angels, divinity, immortality, holiness and righteousness are conceptual phantoms, not actually possible or true, but just fairy tales, schizophrenic ramblings, elusive ideas that gave primitive people who lived in humble conditions a purpose to live and reason for why they are where they are. Whether they view religiosity as detrimental or potentially benign, these transcendental concepts pale in comparison to the competing evolution interpretation taught by centres of education across the world, and most, atheist, religious and even so-called Christians alike gobble it all up, without considering one thing:
Faith
'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.'
John 1:1-5

Humans have faith that they are living, humans have faith that their brain is experiencing reality accurately, humans have faith that their experiences of the world confirm all of this and so much more, because all human physical experience is actually taking place within the mind itself, not the outside world. A worldview is adopted and the information received from it can only be used to derive certain judgements or conclusions because of faith. It's all faith baby. Faith in intellectuals, faith in fossil records, faith in governmental authorities. A vacuum cleaner might be a very visceral and real appliance to one mind because of experience and understanding of the concept, but if you cannot grasp the concept, the physical object is not actually real to you, it is white noise, useless. If you can't understand a language, the words spoken to you mean nothing. Evolution teaches that physical life begat concepts through the development of intelligent life comprehending them, but in reality, conceptual movements begat the physical world, the mind of God begat all of Creation, even the Creation that would fancy itself a competitor deity.

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.
Luke 23:34

What I believe to actually be going on in this existence of ours, is that we as human beings throughout generally accepted recorded history, both ancient and modern, and in the mythic period, have been trying to become like God due to the deception of Satan, the Enemy or the Accuser. However, due to Creation (Man) trying to usurp the role of Creator in a universe defined by Him (which is impossible), we are actually losing our identity, self-destructing metaphysically. This is where my example of the design of the car from way earlier ties in, we are trying to achieve the impossible, we are trying to fit 10 people into a 2 seater car, we are trying to fly off a mountain when we have no wings, we are trying to become Creator when we are the Creation. Our souls which are prone to corruption without the Holy Spirit guiding our lives and development, are killing themselves from spiritual/conceptual confusion, and this has direct impact on our actions in reality. Although it seems that we are making the world ever more safe, more secure, more comfortable, more healthy, more knowledgeable, more polite, more emotionally understanding, more politically correct, more civilised, we are actually only succeeding in warding off the inevitable downfall of a decadent world-spanning culture and socio-political system. The more Man as a collective would-be god strains against the boundaries of existence, the more we hate that within our own souls which is capable of aligning with God and the divine, becoming divorced not just from God but from sound conceptualism itself, forming a doomed hybrid of concept and reality which is incapable of sustaining. This is the goal of the Synagogue of Satan, Illuminati, Freemason, Rockefeller, Rothschilds, all those elite evil overlord types, groups, establishments, agencies and thinktanks of the world who are in league with Satan and probably sold their souls to him. I could go on further with my theories on why they've allied themselves with what should be understood as pure evil, but that's a subject for another time.

And the LORD 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: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
John 10:11
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
1st John 2:17
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. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
John 3:16-19

Man and Woman brought sin into the world, and thus brought about their own demise in their temptation and lust for Godhood. The moral law of God is clear, to offend against the provider of all life is to deny your own life, and so from this mythic age until now, the "Old Man" has suffered from this original sin which brought about their physical mortality and spiritual damnation. Jesus Christ was sent into the world in due time for the remission of sins, so that the "Old Man", the collective consciousness of the Fallen Man, Adam, might be redeemed and saved by God, in the body of the New Man, in the Body of Christ. When one accepts Jesus Christ as their redeemer, saviour and king, He gives to them the guidance of the Holy Spirit to help them change their life and ways, pick up their cross and follow Him to salvation.

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
1st Corinthians 1:18

Wow, that's a nice reply.


On the topic of the paradox of the immovable rock, that is indeed the "deist" point of view. The issue with it is the "He makes all laws of creation" part, which is indeed true if God exists (which I am not here to prove or disprove, because that is very hard/impossible), doesn't solve the issue. The definition we, humans, use for "immovable" and "all-powerful" don't fit with the "absolute truth" of God (still, assuming He exists).
That would lead, still from that assumption, to the belief that we cannot grasp as much as we think God's views.

Note that this fits with my beliefs strangely, so I will keep an healthy doubt because of a potential bias, here. Feel free to debate.


To solve, or at least attempt to solve, the subject of this thread, one cannot ignore the concept of faith. Regarding the recent reply, there is confusion between definitions. By definitions, I here mean that how humans percieve the concept of faith and of knowledge as two different things.

Knowledge is a concept that can be verified (as much as our understanding of things go) via our senses; it is therefore an empirical way to acquire "truth", the two questions coming up then being: Can the entire Truth be obtained by humans (determinism) or not (indeterminism). This describes the scientific method. Descartes is considered to be one of the, if not the precursors of it; Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) illustrates this point of view quite well (see Discourse on the Method).

Faith, on the other hand, is a concept of unverifiable belief in something, which opposes knowledge (in the definitions we, humans, have). It is a way, to take your quote's wording, to win God (whatever one believes God(s) to be), or simply to acquire a safe assumption to function in life (just like knowledge).
In order to assert that faith is superior to knowledge, one must first believe that knowledge cannot be acquired by humans by themselves; if it could, then knowledge, with the scientific method, would be the way to go.
From that assumption, there are two paths : there is either no omniscient/omnipotent being(s), which leads to knowledge being something that is simply out of reach because of the (current) limitedness of our minds (of our bodies, from a purely atheist point of view), which leads to transhumanism ideals, OR there is a omniscient/omnipotent being(s), and we simply cannot comprehend its reality, which is the one of the world, for it is beyond our capacity. This implies that It would have created us to be limited.

This point of view is the one of most people who go by the Bible (the Tree of Knowledge, etc.). The issue with it is is summed by this quote from Galileo: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Of course, it could be one of God's mysterious ways, but then it becomes absolute faith, with no empirical knowledge. It is and will always be a possibility under the previously stated assertions, because this point is unprovable and undisprovable. What does not work with this is that one could say they believe in anything that is not God, but that has some kind of omniscience/omnipotence, and everything would still apply; however, the assertion would fall because the very faith is based on the Bible, which is (supposedly) that superior being's words.

Note, once again, that this is not proving or disproving, nor is it stating or denying God's existence. It only makes the absence of knowledge possibility caused by a superior being's will extremely unlikely.


About free will : Assuming God (Christian, our standard God we all "know" here) exists, His omnipotence does not mean that He has to influence our acts. Following the beliefs of Christianity, God's greatest gift to humans was free will. An omnipotent being can chose not to have influence on anything, or to limit it. It's not because one can eat the apple in their hand that they won't leave it on a table.
In short : If God is omnipotent, He necessarily has free will himself, and free will combined with omnipotence makes Him able to give us free will by the absence of actions.

Those text walls are so big, why you can't just say "fuck you" to God himself?

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Originally Posted by Arsonist

Those text walls are so big, why you can't just say "fuck you" to God himself?

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Because we aren't... you lol. Keep that in Circlejerk, please.

This post is in reply to Marshmallow Marshall:

Sorry that it has taken me this long to make a reply, I have not really had convenient opportunity to do so, and I've been considering your post as well. Although I do not believe you are directly addressing me, I believe there is something more I can add that would clarify further.

Rather than faith and knowledge being opposites, I am convinced that faith precedes cognitive experience, and cognitive experience precedes sensory experience, and sensory experience precedes knowledge.

Faith>Cognition>Senses>Knowledge

While what is termed as thinking is a combination of cognition utilising reason (a particular mode of cognitive experience) and analysing the sensory world to formulate what would be considered knowledge.

I see it this way not because I believe the physical world to be an illusion, or cognitive experience to be a solipsistic exercise, but rather because it is my choice to believe or have faith that it is real. The aspect of existence that could be mistakenly be judged as solipsistic is the plausible deniability due to a fallible physical shell that encases the human soul, which includes the body, brain, all biochemical cognitive and sensory experience.

No amount or extent of physical evidence can actually confirm that cognitive or sensory phenomena is real, it is an infinitely far-reaching existential choice to trust in existence, trust which is faith, or to actively distrust it, and thereby metaphysically destabilise your own existence, which is an existential contradiction, a bottomless pit of sorts, where by denying existence, you cancel your own assertions out of the picture. The meaning of the seemingly epic prose and drama of the Bible is to highlight the gravity of the result of sin, which is an existential war on life, life itself being the eternal enemy of death. I feel I have more to say on the matter, but my insights are not coming as readily as I would hope, likely due to the disharmony with God's mission in my own life, I believe the heights of my understanding were when I had my greatest, world-rejecting faith, when I was truly losing my mind in an attempt to win God, and perhaps God to win me.

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Originally Posted by Da FuZzMeIsTeR

This post is in reply to Marshmallow Marshall:

Sorry that it has taken me this long to make a reply, I have not really had convenient opportunity to do so, and I've been considering your post as well. Although I do not believe you are directly addressing me, I believe there is something more I can add that would clarify further.

Rather than faith and knowledge being opposites, I am convinced that faith precedes cognitive experience, and cognitive experience precedes sensory experience, and sensory experience precedes knowledge.

Faith>Cognition>Senses>Knowledge

While what is termed as thinking is a combination of cognition utilising reason (a particular mode of cognitive experience) and analysing the sensory world to formulate what would be considered knowledge.

I see it this way not because I believe the physical world to be an illusion, or cognitive experience to be a solipsistic exercise, but rather because it is my choice to believe or have faith that it is real. The aspect of existence that could be mistakenly be judged as solipsistic is the plausible deniability due to a fallible physical shell that encases the human soul, which includes the body, brain, all biochemical cognitive and sensory experience.

No amount or extent of physical evidence can actually confirm that cognitive or sensory phenomena is real, it is an infinitely far-reaching existential choice to trust in existence, trust which is faith, or to actively distrust it, and thereby metaphysically destabilise your own existence, which is an existential contradiction, a bottomless pit of sorts, where by denying existence, you cancel your own assertions out of the picture. The meaning of the seemingly epic prose and drama of the Bible is to highlight the gravity of the result of sin, which is an existential war on life, life itself being the eternal enemy of death. I feel I have more to say on the matter, but my insights are not coming as readily as I would hope, likely due to the disharmony with God's mission in my own life, I believe the heights of my understanding were when I had my greatest, world-rejecting faith, when I was truly losing my mind in an attempt to win God, and perhaps God to win me.

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If I understand you correctly, you regard logical deduction itself as something people must have faith in to acknowledge. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I nevertheless find the point of view fascinating.

I would personally regard knowledge based on logical deduction as something that does not require faith. If faith is classed as statements we reasonlessly believe in, it feels kind of wrong to class "the belief in reason" as something one reasonlessly has faith in. Reason is not something that requires faith - in fact, you needed the notion of reason to define faith in the first place, which suggests reason exists above faith. Reasoning is a process you partake in innately. You have to choose to have faith in things, but reason occurs to you naturally.

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Originally Posted by yzb25

If I understand you correctly, you regard logical deduction itself as something people must have faith in to acknowledge. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I nevertheless find the point of view fascinating.

I would personally regard knowledge based on logical deduction as something that does not require faith. If faith is classed as statements we reasonlessly believe in, it feels kind of wrong to class "the belief in reason" as something one reasonlessly has faith in. Reason is not something that requires faith - in fact, you needed the notion of reason to define faith in the first place, which suggests reason exists above faith. Reasoning is a process you partake in innately. You have to choose to have faith in things, but reason occurs to you naturally.

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Put another way, you don't have the "free will" to accept or reject reasoning itself. You may use fallacious reasoning or reject a perfectly reasoned argument, but reason itself is something you innately understand to be true, even if you claim otherwise.

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Originally Posted by yzb25

If I understand you correctly, you regard logical deduction itself as something people must have faith in to acknowledge. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I nevertheless find the point of view fascinating.

I would personally regard knowledge based on logical deduction as something that does not require faith. If faith is classed as statements we reasonlessly believe in, it feels kind of wrong to class "the belief in reason" as something one reasonlessly has faith in. Reason is not something that requires faith - in fact, you needed the notion of reason to define faith in the first place, which suggests reason exists above faith. Reasoning is a process you partake in innately. You have to choose to have faith in things, but reason occurs to you naturally.

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Logical, step-by-step deduction is indeed something that I believe requires faith to believe in, and this is more easily highlighted in the way that as one conclusion is logically deducted from available data, as new, ground-breaking information potentially comes in, the false conclusion is discarded and loses that logical quality which made it worthy of faith or belief, and a new deduction begins, with a new paradigm then adopted.

faith
To believe; credit.
n. The assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition or statement for which there is not complete evidence; belief in general.
n. Specifically Firm belief based upon confidence in the authority and veracity of another, rather than upon one's own knowledge, reason, or judgment; earnest and trustful confidence: as, to have faith in the testimony of a witness; to have faith in a friend.

I also do not believe faith is accurately defined as something that is accepted without reason, or at the very least I am not using it in such a way, I'm saying that reason requires faith, because faith is required to adopt a certain line of reasoning, although reason can conceptually judge the nuances of what exactly faith is in strictly definitive terms, though it is a reflection of the actual substance or quality of faith. Faith is not its definition according to the accepted dogma regarding diction, rather the accepted dogma is a literary reflection of the ethereal quality that is faith, diction is a way to conceptually mirror it in words to make it easier for metacognition to comprehend.

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Originally Posted by yzb25

Put another way, you don't have the "free will" to accept or reject reasoning itself. You may use fallacious reasoning or reject a perfectly reasoned argument, but reason itself is something you innately understand to be true, even if you claim otherwise.

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I disagree, you can reject reasoning itself, you can accept a temporally sound line of reasoning internally and choose to do the exact opposite of what reason should dictate you do next externally, what is the internal relevance of reason if it is not drawn from and tried in the external world? If it is never expressed, from theory to action, can the line of reasoning be said to have ever existed? Furthermore, do infants exercise reason? Did reason come first for infants, or did trust/faith come first? If infants can be said to have no reasoning capabilities, does this mean from this line of argumentation, they are non-persons? Reasoning can be rejected I think, what can't be actively rejected whilst you're still alive however is cognition, which can only be validated by faith it is occurring, reason does not need to be employed to validate consciousness, rather reason is employed by human consciousness that is capable of it in varying magnitudes or depths to more clearly comprehend intuition/imagination, physical existence, and subsequent natural law. However, faith is required to believe that you have a consciousness or cognitive experience.

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Originally Posted by Da FuZzMeIsTeR

Logical, step-by-step deduction is indeed something that I believe requires faith to believe in, and this is more easily highlighted in the way that as one conclusion is logically deducted from available data, as new, ground-breaking information potentially comes in, the false conclusion is discarded and loses that logical quality which made it worthy of faith or belief, and a new deduction begins, with a new paradigm then adopted.

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To be clear, when I say "logical deduction", I don't mean it in the way people often use it - the way a detective "deduces" who the murderer is, for example. When I say "logical deductions", I'm talking about the basic principles of logic, like "a implies b and b implies c means that a implies c". For example, you can logically deduce that, if Euclid's axioms for geometry are true, then pythagoras' theorem is also necessarily true. That is not something that will change in light of new data or a new way of thinking. You can reject the axioms and develop different theorems, but the fact remains that, upon accepting those specific axioms, you reach that specific conclusion.

For some reason it didn't occur to me to clarify this in my previous post. Sorry lol.

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I disagree, you can reject reasoning itself, you can accept a temporally sound line of reasoning internally and choose to do the exact opposite of what reason should dictate you do next externally, what is the internal relevance of reason if it is not drawn from and tried in the external world? If it is never expressed, from theory to action, can the line of reasoning be said to have ever existed? Furthermore, do infants exercise reason? Did reason come first for infants, or did trust/faith come first? If infants can be said to have no reasoning capabilities, does this mean from this line of argumentation, they are non-persons? Reasoning can be rejected I think, what can't be actively rejected whilst you're still alive however is cognition, which can only be validated by faith it is occurring, reason does not need to be employed to validate consciousness, rather reason is employed by human consciousness that is capable of it in varying magnitudes or depths to more clearly comprehend intuition/imagination, physical existence, and subsequent natural law. However, faith is required to believe that you have a consciousness or cognitive experience.

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Another way of arguing my point could go like this: You can't possibly imagine a world where A -> B doesn't result in not B -> not A. If you're under 18, you are forbidden from drinking alcohol. Therefore, if you are not forbidden, you cannot be under 18 - you can't possibly imagine a situation where the second statement is contradicted, given the first statement. This is because if the second statement is not true, there must have been someone who is under 18 AND is not forbidden... which contradicts the first statement.

The infant may not be able to abstractly appreciate why A->B results in not B-> not A or even make the deduction for concrete examples like the alcohol one. However, the infant can't possibly grasp a situation where that isn't true. Even if you lack the cognition to build logic, you can't possibly use your cognition to break it. In this way, you are necessarily constrained to it. Your mind inherently exists within a logical framework, regardless of whether your mind is aware of that or wants to accept that. Even if every person chooses not to act upon a deduction they are aware of, it still exists as the only correct deduction.

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I need to brood on the middle part of your post. If I have followed correctly, what you're saying is that the definition of faith doesn't function well if we read the definition totally literally, and read each word in the definition in its most basic sense. Faith, as you use the term, is difficult to perfectly describe (or impossible to perfectly describe) using our language. Our language can only gesture to the "feel" of the term.

That's fair enough if that's the case, but it means I'll probably need to read over your stuff some more to get a stronger intuition for the exact concept you're referring to with the word "faith".

Fuzzmeister :

That is interesting. God is beyond our reach, and therefore we cannot even see that all of our knowledge is influenced by Him, meaning that free will is absolutely inexistent. That is not provable, obviously, but I think it is not the point of your belief to be provable, either.

About existence, I do not understand how you can say that you or me do not exist. How can a non-existing being type these words? We at least exist in the mind/spirit/whatever you want to call it of something, if we do not exist materially. Even if we were just a simulation, we would still be.

I think it's a good thing to believe in God, as long as you make good use of it. Your point of view is permanently assuming that God, in a way that is more or less close to the "exact God" the Bible preaches, exists. I think that something similar to God exists, but that it is far from comprehension of humans and that we cannot ever be 100% knowing what it is. That is also why we only come to unprovable results when we debate these "existential questions".


I don't really have time to fully debate on this, even if I would love to, since it takes a lot of time to think and rethink, so I might not reply / reply really later. Sorry.

You could say that in those circumstances, you could have free will, but not really the means to exercise it. That or perhaps, an individual's actions ultimately have little to no impact in the long run. God can be an active agent in the world, which would no longer completely impede one's ability to act according to their own will.

At the same time, you could say that you would (still) possess free will - after all, you can, for the most part, predict someone else's behavior/reactions to various situations, if you know them well enough. And yet that does not mean they are subject to you.

I think the last argument might be a bit sloppy so let me know XD

Free will can't exist under those terms, it's all made up.

You think some Arab dudes in Jerusalem or whatever 2000 years ago who were constantly tripping balls and having seizures managed to think of a good reason for the weird Jewish fanfiction they were spewing?

And then that soccer moms in Mississippi with Jesus fish bumper stickers actually put a single iota of thought into their "religion", or hell, even understand what the concept of free will is?

They legit just made it all up and thought it sounded cool without realizing that none of it makes sense, then nobody else actually thinks about it. Sometimes people get so deep into the delusion that they try to cognitive dissonance themselves out of it but their explanations make no sense either and usually fall back to mysticism.