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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
 Posted - 02/27/2003 : 19:55:01
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Well, the other thread (like most threads around here lately, for some reason...) on Free Will has been totally derailed, so I thought I'd attempt another one.
One often hears from Xians that "God never gives us more than we can bear", or some such nonsense (you're surprised that I'm biased?!  ).
Now it suddenly occurred to me just the other day, upon hearing this again, that this directly contradicts any and all claims that we have free will.
The very fact that an omnipotent and omniscient being has any interaction at all with our lives, thus affecting our decisions, circumstances, and outcomes, negates free will completely.
quote:
JULES
We should be fuckin' dead!
VINCENT
Yeah, we were lucky.
JULES
That shit wasn't luck. That shit
was somethin' else.
VINCENT
Yeah, maybe.
JULES
That was...divine intervention.
You know what divine intervention
is?
VINCENT
Yeah, I think so. That means God
came down from Heaven and stopped
the bullets.
JULES
Yeah, man, that's what is means.
That's exactly what it means! God
came down from Heaven and stopped
the fuckin' bullets!
And of course we all know that because God stopped the fuckin' bullets, Jules leaves the business, thus leading eventually and directly to Vincent's death! (Yeah, it's spoilers, but if you haven't seen "Pulp Fiction" yet, you deserve no sympathy).
My family thanks God for our well being and all of our lives' good fortunes. They thank God that they were raised in good Xian households. They thank God for strong healthy children. They thank God for the circumstances that enabled us to become well educated.
This God-granted good fortune allowed me to learn about reason and logic, of which God created me with the ability to utilize! This good fortune allowed me to aquire a decent education that provided me with an opportunity to learn all about computers, and to have a love of reading.
This God-granted good fortune ultimately allowed me to stumble across a web site entitled "The Skeptic's Dictionary", where I read all about spooks, monsters, aliens, and... wait for it....
atheism.
I had never questioned my Baptist (shudder!) beliefs before. Never even occurred to me to. I never thought to apply the skepticism that made me laugh and ruefully shake my head at the entries in the Skeptic's Dictionary that talked about kooks and their crazy ideas. But then I stumbled across a link to Carl Sagan's "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" essay. Sounds good! Let's get his book, "The Demon Haunted World"! Sounds like fun. What's this? Invisible dragon? That sounds familiar...
The rest is history.
History that apparently (at least according to my family) is completely due to God's direct intervention and foreknowledge.
God's intervention is directly responsible for my atheism.
Don't speak to me of "free will", else I will fart in your general direction, and claim that your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
Just kidding. Discuss.
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
 Posted - 02/27/2003 : 20:47:17 [Permalink]
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Romans 9
16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."
18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
19 One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?"
20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' "
21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
Can it be denied that Paul is saying that God has predetermined who he would "have mercy on"? |
| Edited by - Tokyodreamer on 02/27/2003 20:49:49 |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2003 : 21:08:44 [Permalink]
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quote:
Quoth TD:
God's intervention is directly responsible for my atheism.
*shrug*
I'm not surprised. If your worldview reduces to only three sources for all actions: God for all things good, Satan and free will for everything else, there's gonna be a whole lotta rationalization happening when something doesn't fit the paradigm. Your family at least doesn't seem the fire-and-brimstone type believers - they don't attribute your atheism to the influence of the devil, but, presumably, they consider it a part of God's grand plan to bring about some greater good.
Now, however, though they have basically rendered Satan a metaphor, they must reconcile God's plan (and your atheism) with free will. And, again, I insist the two things simply do not go together.
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I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.
-Agent Smith |
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Jelly Fish
New Member
46 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2003 : 01:46:00 [Permalink]
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Who is Will Redux?
Jelly Fish |
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darwin alogos
SFN Regular
USA
532 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2003 : 09:56:34 [Permalink]
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Jelly Fish: quote:
Who is Will Redux?
That is the most intelligent question I've seen on this thread.BRAVO Jelly Fish! |
To deny logic you must use it.To deny Jesus Existed you must throw away all your knowledge of the ancient world. To deny ID
you must refute all analogical reasoning. So the question is why deny? |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2003 : 12:56:57 [Permalink]
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quote:
quote:
Originally posted by darwin alogos
Jelly Fish: Who is Will Redux?
That is the most intelligent question I've seen on this thread.BRAVO Jelly Fish!
Very uncharacteristic of you DA. You usually at least attempt to address the topic before trolling (at least in those rare times when the two are exclusive  ). I take it you have no good counter-argument or explanation for the Romans passage?
[is it just me or are nested quotes screwed up?] |
| Edited by - Tokyodreamer on 03/02/2003 13:00:10 |
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