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Jay520 said:
KeptoKnight said:
1. By analogy, knowing what will happen does not mean that we are preventing or causing that thing to happen. The sun will rise tomorrow. I am not causing it to rise nor am I preventing it from rising by knowing that it will happen. Likewise, if I put a bowl of ice-cream and a bowl of cauliflower in front of my child, I know for a fact which one is chosen - the ice cream. My knowing it ahead of time does not restrict my child from making a free choice when the time comes. My child is free to make a choice and knowing the choice has no effect upon her when she makes it. 

 

Part of the issue here is the nature of time. If the future exists for God even as the present does, then God is consistently in all places at all times and is not restricted by time. This would mean that time was not a part of His nature to which God is subject, and that God is not a linear entity; that is, it would mean that God is not restricted to operating in our time realm and is not restricted to the present only. If God is not restricted to existence in the present, our present, then the future is known by God because God indwells the future as well as the present (and the past). This would mean that our future choices, as free as they are, are simply known by God. Again, our ability to choose is not altered or lessened by God existing in the future and knowing what we freely choose. It just means that God can see what we will freely choose -- because that is what we freely choose -- and knows what it is.

Logically, God knowing what we are going to do does not mean that we can't do something else. It means that God simply knows what we have chosen to do ahead of time. Our freedom is not restricted by God's foreknowledge; our freedom is simply realized ahead of time by God. In this, our natural ability to make another choice has not been removed any more than my choice of what to write. Before typing the word "hello," I pondered which word to write. My pondering was my doing and the choice was mine. How then was I somehow restricted in freedom when choosing what to write if God knew what I was going to do? No matter what choice we freely make, it can be known by God, and His knowing it doesn't mean we aren't making a free choice.

2. Is God sovereign or do we have a free will?


When we talk about free will, we are usually concerned with the matter of salvation. Few are interested in whether we have the free will to choose salad or steak for our dinner tonight. Rather, we are troubled over who exactly is in control of our eternal destiny.

Any discussion of man’s free will must begin with an understanding of his nature because man’s will is bound by that nature. A prisoner has the freedom to pace up and down in his cell, but he is constrained by the walls of that cell and can go no further, no matter how much his will might desire it. So it is with man. Because of sin, man is imprisoned within a cell of corruption and wickedness which permeates to the very core of our being. Every part of man is in bondage to sin – our bodies, our minds, and our wills. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us the state of man’s heart: it is “deceitful and desperately wicked.” In our natural, unregenerate state, we are carnally minded, not spiritually minded. “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can it be” (Romans 8:6-7). These verses tell us that before we are saved, we are at enmity (war) with God, we do not submit to God and His law, neither can we. The Bible is clear that, in his natural state, man is incapable of choosing that which is good and holy. In other words, he does not have the “free will” to choose God because his will is not free. It is constrained by his nature, just as the prisoner is constrained by his cell.

3. Conclusion:

There is no logical reason to claim that if God knows what choices we are going to make that it means we are not free. It still means that the free choices we will make are free -- they are just known ahead of time by God. If we choose something different, then that choice will have been eternally known by God. Furthermore, this knowledge by God does not alter our nature in that it does not change what we are -- free to make choices. God's knowledge is necessarily complete and exhaustive because that is His nature, to know all things. In fact, since He has eternally known what all our free choices will be, He has ordained history to come to the conclusion that He wishes including and incorporating our choices into His divine plan. Why?  Because God always knows all things: "...God is greater than our heart, and knows all things," - 1 John 3:20.

 On a side note: Libertarian free will, that a person is equally able to make choices between options independent of pressures or constraints from external or internal causes. Compatibilist free will holds that a person can choose only that which is consistent with his nature. Therefore, for example, a person who is a slave to sin (Rom. 6:14-20) and cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14) would not be able to choose God of his own free will because his free will doesn't have the capacity to contradict his nature. There is much debate on these issues and, depending on which side you lean, your interpretation of scripture will be affected.





Your post is debating against the belief that "God knows what we will do, thus, we have no free will". While I admire the effort you put into your post, you should know that I never followed that belief. I don't think we have free will, not becauae god knows what we will do, but because we don't control our actions.

A person's personality is determined by their environment and innate brain structure. When a person perceives something, the brain processes that information. You DON'T control this process. The brain is simply making evaluations in what it thinks is the best way. What determines what's best? Your brain does, based off of what it's learned through the environment and using skills it was born with. A person's actions are based off what they genuinely think is the best thing to do. People don't choose what's the best thing to do. It's only based off what they've learned. And people learn differently, not because they choose to, just because they've been through different experiences.

Here's an example for you. Let's say I could go back in time to when you were a newborn. Lets say I took your brain & soul and exchanged it with a seriel killer's brain & soul. So, you were placed in a seriel killer's body at birth. You would grow up seeing the exact same experience he saw. You would go through the exact same environment as the seriel killer.

My question to you would be this: Would you too grow up to be a seriel killer? If you answer yes, that you would be a seriel killer, then you must agree that a person's personality is determined by their environment. In this case, you can't control your personality.

If you answer no, that you would NOT be a seriel killer, then that means there must have been something innately different about your brain/soul. In this case, you also can't control your personality because it's determined by your innate traits. You can't control innate traits.

What is your answer?


Brain, Soul and Resiliency are critical subjects to cover.  Yes we may be born into a different environment but is upto us to make the choices including whom do we listen to and not. Within my belief God also places individuals in our lives so either we reject or not what they are saying. My INNATE traits is INFj yes I will always be wired that way, it will never change. We may fluctuate into the other trait but comes back to what you were wired since the begining.