god or no god?

[jmdrake]

No, I personally don't understand the difference.

Then you need to think about that some more.

But what's your answer to my question. For your sake, I'll ask it again.

For my "sake"? Don't kid yourself.

Is it logically possible for someone to have free will and for their choices to be 100% certain?

If you don't understand the difference between knowing what someone else's choice might be and pre-ordaining that choice (and that's something an elementary school kid can understand) then you'll never understand the answer to your question. Look up entrapment law though and that should explain it to you. It's the difference between the police watching someone they've been investigating going up to make a drug buy, and the police setting up the drug buy and pressuring the person to buy the drugs. In fact the legal term is "overcoming their will". Under one situation the criminal is held responsible. On the other he is not.

Your answer should be either "yes" or "no."

That's as much a "yes or on" question as asking "Do you still beat your wife"?

As for your "why" question, I've told you I can't possibly know why. Nor do I see any reason I ought to know why.

If you want to know God you should know why. But since you like to pigeonhole people into "yes or no" questions, here's one. Do you think God was telling people to do something impossible when He told them to choose Him?

 

[erowe1]

Not until you at least attempt to answer my question. Why would God tell people to choose Him if they don't have a choice?

I have answered it. My answer is I don't know.

But since you keep doing this, and I keep correcting you, I'll try one more time. I have said repeatedly that I do not accept your premise that "they don't have a choice." So why do you keep trying to pin that on me?

And I'm following the example of Jesus. When the pharisees refused to answer His questions, He refused to answer theirs.

See Matthew 21:27

A minute ago you insisted that you weren't refusing to answer my question. At least now we're both clear that that's what you're doing.

 

[jmdrake]

Edit: And, once again, I don't accept the premise that "people don't have a choice."

Once again? You've pushed that premise in this thread and on multiple occasions in other threads. So what premise exactly are you accepting? It's time for you to stop asking questions and start giving answers.

 

[erowe1]

Once again? You've pushed that premise in this thread and on multiple occasions in other threads. So what premise exactly are you accepting? It's time for you to stop asking questions and start giving answers.

I have never said or suggested that in this thread or any other.

In this thread I have repeatedly rejected it.

 

[jmdrake]

I have answered it. My answer is I don't know.

But since you keep doing this, and I keep correcting you, I'll try one more time. I have said repeatedly that I do not accept your premise that "they don't have a choice." So why do you keep trying to pin that on me?

My premise? What on earth are you talking about? I've been saying from jump that man has freewill. From other threads you know that's my position. Freewill means man has a choice.

Really this is getting silly. From jump I said man has a choice. Someone tried to "rebut" my claim that man has a choice by asking if sin would happen again in heaven. I say no, but not because I don't think man would then lack a choice but because the people who make it to heaven will have chosen never to sin again. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?

 

[jmdrake]

I have never said or suggested that in this thread or any other.

In this thread I have repeatedly rejected it.

I've not seen that. But okay. We can both agree that man has choice and be done with this obviously stupid argument.

 

[erowe1]

My premise? What on earth are you talking about?

I'm talking about how you presented that as the premise of your question.

When I answered your question, I was only accepting that as its premise for the sake of argument, since it was the way you chose to word it. I wasn't claiming that I would word it that way myself.

I personally don't accept the premise that for a person's choice to be 100% certain means the same thing as them not having a choice.

 

[jmdrake]

I'm talking about how you presented that as the premise of your question.

When I answered your question, I was only accepting that as its premise for the sake of argument, since it was the way you chose to word it. I wasn't claiming that I would word it that way myself.

I personally don't accept the premise that for a person's choice to be 100% certain means the same thing as them not having a choice.

If that's not your premise then you really had no point of disagreement to start this argument with me in the first place. Again, my whole point is that Lucifer had a choice, Adam and Eve had a choice, in heaven people will still have a choice, but they will have already made and sealed that choice before getting there. Anything about that you don't understand?

 

[erowe1]

If that's not your premise then you really had no point of disagreement to start this argument with me in the first place. Again, my whole point is that Lucifer had a choice, Adam and Eve had a choice, in heaven people will still have a choice, but they will have already made and sealed that choice before getting there. Anything about that you don't understand?

Yes. I still don't know if you think it's logically possible for someone both to have the ability to choose and for their choice to be 100% certain.

If it is logically possible, then it would have been logically possible for God to create all of his creatures with the ability to choose, and for it also to have been 100% certain that they would never sin.

If it is not logically possible, then it cannot be true of people in Heaven.

 

[jmdrake]

Yes. I still don't know if you think it's logically possible for someone both to have the ability to choose and for their choice to be 100% certain.

If they've already made the choice. But really, at this point I don't think you're trying to understand.

 

[erowe1]

If they've already made the choice. But really, at this point I don't think you're trying to understand.

I am. But ...

Oh never mind.

 

[Sola_Fide]

Jmdrake,

1. There is absolutely no inconsistency in saying that man is commanded to do something that he cannot do. The command of the gospel is to "repent and believe." Man cannot obey the gospel. Man is fallen and has lost all ability to will any spiritual good. Man's righteousnesses are filthy garments. Not his unrighteousnesses, his righteousnesses. Man has stumbled at one point and thus become guilty of breaking the entire law.

Like other so-called Protestants today, you have confused the law/gospel distinction.

2. The conception of the universe that you are proposing where there are two equal forces in the universe, one good and one evil, is dualism...not Christianity. The view you promote is more akin to Zorastrianism or Gnosticism. The Bible is not dualistic.


3. You truly don't understand how you demean the power and glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ by saying that Jesus only made salvation possible. I believe Jesus actually saves real people who are dead in their sins. He didn't make their salvation possible, He saves them. Your Roman Catholic (thats really what it is) view of soteriology guts the power out of the Gospel and denies Jesus His position of God and Savior. If salvation rests ultimately on our choice then we have a ground of boasting, which Paul rejects. If salvation is based on what we do, then we are just getting paid back for our goodness, which is the same as saying we are saved by works. The Bible rejects this.

 

[jmdrake]

Jmdrake,

1. There is absolutely no inconsistency in saying that man is commanded to do something that he cannot do. The command of the gospel is to "repent and believe." Man cannot obey the gospel. Man is fallen and has lost all ability to will any spiritual good. Man's righteousnesses are filthy garments. Not his unrighteousnesses, his righteousnesses. Man has stumbled at one point and thus become guilty of breaking the entire law.

It's not impossible.

Matthew 19:26 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

Joshua didn't just tell the Israelites to choose God. He added but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord. He made the right choice. Your thinking is backwards. You believe that someone choosing to accept Christ's garments is somehow wearing his own. That's just silly.

Like other so-called Protestants today, you have confused the law/gospel distinction.

Not hardly. You don't believe in the power of Jesus. I do.

2. The conception of the universe that you are proposing where there are two equal forces in the universe, one good and one evil, is dualism...not Christianity. The view you promote is more akin to Zorastrianism or Gnosticism. The Bible is not dualistic.

You are being dishonest. I never said anything about the forces in the universe being "equal". In fact I've made it clear that ultimately evil will be destroyed. The only beings that will be left are those who have chosen to reject evil.

3. You truly don't understand how you demean the power and glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ by saying that Jesus only made salvation possible.

You demean the power and glory of the gospel by saying that Jesus sacrifice was not for all.

I believe Jesus actually saves real people who are dead in their sins. He didn't make their salvation possible, He saves them. Your Roman Catholic (thats really what it is) view of soteriology guts the power out of the Gospel and denies Jesus His position of God and Savior.

That is totally untrue and you know it. My view is not the Roman Catholic view. That view is that salvation depends in part on continuing the sacraments and going through earthly priests. The protestant view, which you reject is that man can come "boldy before the throne of grace".

If salvation rests ultimately on our choice then we have a ground of boasting, which Paul rejects. If salvation is based on what we do, then we are just getting paid back for our goodness, which is the same as saying we are saved by works. The Bible rejects this.

Accepting a free gift is not doing anything. If you are on death row and the governor grants you a pardon as long as you say "I accept it" you have done nothing worth boasting about. What the Bible rejects is your false view of God. Really, if you could ever understand what a free gift is then you would understand how foolish Calvinism is.

 

[jmdrake]

I am. But ...

Oh never mind.

Okay. I'll assume that you're being genuine and try to answer this one last time. I'll answer it by asking questions to make sure we're on the same page.

1) You believe in God right?
2) You believe that God knows everything about the future right?
3) You believe that God gave man the freedom to choose right? I assumed that you didn't, but you said I was wrong, so then you must believe man has a choice.

The only way that you can reconcile those 3 beliefs is through and understanding that foreknowledge is not the same as foreordaining. If you understand that they are different (and I attempted to explain to you through entrapment law how they are different) then you should be able to know how people in heaven can never sin but still have freedom of choice.

Now I think what's tripping you up is the fact that I'm making a difference between choice before sin existed and choice in the earth made new. That's why I talked about immunology. It's easier to make the correct choice once you've seen the full consequences. Before sin, the sinless beings had to accept on faith that evil is something that would not want as they never saw it. Now we have to accept that heaven is something we would want since we've never seen it. But a group of beings, having seen only sin and deciding "I really don't like this" and accepting on faith to trust God would have no reason to want to "see what sin is like" in the earth made new. So said I was trying to "have it both ways". But I was talking about two different set of circumstances. One is with beings that didn't have any knowledge of evil and made the wrong choice. The other is with being that had full knowledge of evil, only a veiled knowledge of good, and still made the right choice. I sincerely hope that helps.

 

[erowe1]

3) You believe that God gave man the freedom to choose right? I assumed that you didn't, but you said I was wrong, so then you must believe man has a choice.

Sorry for nitpicking here. But I actually have deliberately tried to be pretty careful about what I say I do and don't believe, and what I prescind from addressing altogether.

Here you use the word "freedom." I do not claim to believe in "freedom." I also don't claim not to believe in it. I just find the word too problematic for me to be comfortable saying positively that I do or don't believe in it. Any time I have used the term has been in reply to someone who already used it, and I was trying to stick with their usage.

The statement you attributed to me earlier that I said I do not believe was something more like "they don't have a choice." I do believe that people make choices. I also believe that the choices they make are 100% certain, and that the choice Adam made to sin was every bit as certain as the choices not to sin that people will make perpetually in Heaven. I do not know if the word "freedom" is appropriate for this, so I don't use that word. But I reject the claim that what I am describing is the same thing as people having no choice.

I understand the position you're outlining about people already having made choices. But what I was getting at was the question of what is logically possible or impossible. My argument is as follows:

If it is logically possible that people in heaven can continue to have the ability to choose and for their choices to be 100% certain then it cannot be the case for it to be logically impossible for someone to have the ability to choose and for his choices to be 100% certain. This general claim must be the case no matter what the specific circumstances are for people in heaven and how immunology might provide an analogy to those circumstances.

If it cannot be the case for it to be logically impossible for someone to have the ability to choose and for his choices to be 100% certain, then one cannot say that it would have been logically impossible for God to create people with the ability to choose whose choices were 100% certain. Whatever their reason for thinking God couldn't have done that, it can't be the logical impossibility of the situation.

And when I read what you say about what you think the difference is between choices before sin existed and choices after sin existed, it doesn't appear to me that you're basing that distinction on simply what is logically possible or impossible, but on something else.

 

[jmdrake]

If you understand the point I'm making about people making a choice before going to heaven then you should understand the fundamental difference between the two states. You are saying what must be true for state A (people who have never experienced sin) but also be true for state B (people who have experienced sin, know the results of sin, and rejected it). While I understand your argument, I don't understand why you don't see a fundamental difference between state A and state B.

One other thing. You seem to be misquoting me repeatedly. I never said that it was logically impossible for someone to have the ability to choose and for his choices to be 100% certain. What I said was:

But the only way an all powerful God could eliminate evil would be to eliminate the possibility of choosing evil.

I believe that there is a difference between knowing what choice a person will make and forcing them to make that choice. I'm not certain if you believe that or not. As you say, you're careful not to say what you believe, yet you want to pin others down on exactly what they believe. If you want to have an actually conversation then you must be as open as you want others to be.

Anyway, back to my original point. Atheists were saying that God either doesn't exist or that He is evil because He allows evil to exist. My point, that's been lost in all of your admitted nitpicking, is that to allow freedom of choice, God must allow evil. But after the 2nd coming and the earth made new (what people call "in heaven") you will have a population that have already exercised their freewill to choose God, seen the consequences of sin, and would never choose it again. I sincerely hope that helps.

Edit: Maybe it would help you if I amended my original statement to say this:

But the only way an all powerful God could eliminate evil would be to eliminate the possibility of choosing evil or only allow into heaven those who have purposefully rejected evil and embraced Him.

That's the reason why there's a final judgement.

Sorry for nitpicking here. But I actually have deliberately tried to be pretty careful about what I say I do and don't believe, and what I prescind from addressing altogether.

Here you use the word "freedom." I do not claim to believe in "freedom." I also don't claim not to believe in it. I just find the word too problematic for me to be comfortable saying positively that I do or don't believe in it. Any time I have used the term has been in reply to someone who already used it, and I was trying to stick with their usage.

The statement you attributed to me earlier that I said I do not believe was something more like "they don't have a choice." I do believe that people make choices. I also believe that the choices they make are 100% certain, and that the choice Adam made to sin was every bit as certain as the choices not to sin that people will make perpetually in Heaven. I do not know if the word "freedom" is appropriate for this, so I don't use that word. But I reject the claim that what I am describing is the same thing as people having no choice.

I understand the position you're outlining about people already having made choices. But what I was getting at was the question of what is logically possible or impossible. My argument is as follows:

If it is logically possible that people in heaven can continue to have the ability to choose and for their choices to be 100% certain then it cannot be the case for it to be logically impossible for someone to have the ability to choose and for his choices to be 100% certain. This general claim must be the case no matter what the specific circumstances are for people in heaven and how immunology might provide an analogy to those circumstances.

If it cannot be the case for it to be logically impossible for someone to have the ability to choose and for his choices to be 100% certain, then one cannot say that it would have been logically impossible for God to create people with the ability to choose whose choices were 100% certain. Whatever their reason for thinking God couldn't have done that, it can't be the logical impossibility of the situation.

And when I read what you say about what you think the difference is between choices before sin existed and choices after sin existed, it doesn't appear to me that you're basing that distinction on simply what is logically possible or impossible, but on something else.

 

[austin944]

If the probability of something is actually zero, how is that different than it being logically impossible?

I've had people insist that there's a difference between saying that something absolutely can't happen and saying something absolutely won't happen. But I have trouble seeing it.

I was speaking of a non-zero probability, in order to distinguish between the highly improbable and the logicallly impossible. For example, it is highly improbable that an asteroid from outer space will land on my head while I'm typing, but it's not logically impossible.

I was trying to understand if jmdrake was equating the highly improbable likelihood of someone choosing to commit sin in heaven, with the impossibility of them choosing to sin. They may be "practically" the same, but they are not logically equivalent.

 

[CasualApathy]

And you follow a retarded leader then (Ron Paul). Freedom of speech right back at you.

Dude, nobody is perfect, not even Ron Paul. And in this regard he IS totally retarded. Rights don't come from anywhere, they don't need to, they just ARE because we decided they are, that's all. If we had god given rights, no one would be able to take them away, yet that happens all the time. Get real

 

[Conza88]

And here he is again. The master of quoting another's mental process outcomes instead of his own. Just the ditzy hairdo on the clown in the video frame tells me I don't need to watch it. I return you now to your "service to self" paradigm failure.

Best Regards
Rev9

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem[/URL]

 

[robert68]

Its not that people in Heaven cannot sin, it is that they will not. Their natures have changed so that they no longer desire sin in any degree. While still able to act and sin, they simply don't want to anymore.

What changed their natures? Why weren't their natures made that way to begin with?