Why is it that we who believe in God take…

5 years ago • May 21, 2021 • by ourCOG

Why is it that we who believe in God take issue with atheists and others who claim that everything just came into existence by mere chance, randomnesses, and chaos; and adamantly argue against them by saying that there is a Creator, a Prime Mover (Unmoved Mover); but yet when it comes to the subject of choice, we’re willing to believe that choice arises from a void, a place of mere chance, randomness, and chaos?

Does choice arise from a void? A vacuum devoid of cause and effect? Something from nothing?

Categories: #ourCOG

Discussion

51 comments

Ben Incoll says:

April 26, 2020 at 6:40 am

Predetermined …. we have free will, we are not robots. God knows the end from the beginning. Just because he knows our outcome doesn’t mean he made us do anything … he just knows what our decisions are before we make them and knows who decided to be a believer or not.

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Johnathon Morris says:

April 26, 2020 at 6:55 am

Choice is a gift from God. We cannot fully or completely understand God’s nature or character acceot where He reveals to us certainly through His Word.

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Ebenezer Bartholomew says:

April 26, 2020 at 7:35 am

Free will God respects your opinion if you don’t want to be with Him set yourself free.

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Andre van der Sandt says:

April 26, 2020 at 7:45 am

Same old same old misunderstandings….

Please people, nobody has yet been able to answer the following:

1. If I am 99.99% certain that my wife will have tea and not coffee when she goes to the coffee shop down the road, then PLEASE TELL ME HOW I HAVE INFLUENCED HER WILL.
1a. If God KNOWS that I will go to movies on Sunday rather than go to Church, then PLEASE TELL ME how His knowledge has influenced my will.

2. (Hypothetically) If God is 70% sure that I will take 4th Ave to work tomorrow, or else that I will take the Boulevard, then HOW HAS THAT KNOWLEDGE changed my will???

Bottom line, foreknowledge does not equal determinism.
(Look up “Middle Knowledge”)

If you want to prove lack of free will then you have to use a better argument than foreknowledge.

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John Camara says:

April 26, 2020 at 7:56 am

Revelation 17:17

“For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.”

King James Version (KJV)

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John Camara says:

April 26, 2020 at 7:57 am

“27 In fact, this has happened here in this very city! For Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate the governor, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were all united against Jesus, your holy servant, whom you anointed. 28 But EVERYTHING THEY DID WAS DETERMINED BEFOREHAND ACCORDING TO YOUR WILL.”
– Acts 4:27-28

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John Camara says:

April 26, 2020 at 7:58 am

One thing is certain. None of us made the choice to exist. Or did we? If we did then we are indeed free agents with the will to determine our existence and future. But if we didn’t then we have no claim to autonomy.

Are we simply the product of chance and randomness, or were we put into motion by a Prime Mover outside ourselves? A Prime Mover who knew the eventual outcome of our lives before we even existed, and who desired that outcome above any other foreseen possible outcome? For in bringing about our existence was also brought about the outcome of our lives. An outcome which was foreseen as one amongst many other possible outcomes. And yet that one outcome was chosen out of all the others.

If God knew what we would do before he created us, and had the option of creating someone else who would make different choices, who is ultimately responsible for our choices and actions?

If I am contemplating creating a human and I can look into the future at their every decision, I am responsible for the decisions that person makes because by bringing that person into existence I also bring that person’s choices into existence.

Example:

I can create Mike. I have looked into the future and Mike will be a good person.

Or,

I can create Jim. I have looked into the future and Jim will be a murderer.

In like manner, when God created Lucifer he knew he would become the devil, and when he created Adam he knew he would become a sinner.

Along the same lines God had the choice of creating Mike whom he foresaw making a choice to love him and as a result go to heaven.

And he had a choice to create Jim whom he foresaw not loving him and as a result go to hell.

If he creates Mike who makes the choice that he go to heaven?

And if he creates Jim who makes the choice that he go to hell?

There is immediate responsibility, and there is ultimate responsibility.

It’s up to us to make decisions, but in the ultimate scheme of things those decisions come to be because the Prime Mover brought us into existence knowing that we would make them.

If before creating man God knows that man will sin and proceeds to create man is His intent to create a sinner?

Does God have the ability to do something different from what He foresaw Himself doing?

Is He bound to create a sinner, or can He instead create a man that He foresees not sinning?

Pink had this to say…

“If then He foresaw that in creating a certain person that that person would despise and reject the saviour, yet knowing this beforehand He, nevertheless, brought that person into existence, then it is clear He designed and ordained that that person should be eternally lost.”
– A. W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God

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John Camara says:

April 26, 2020 at 7:59 am

“Psychologists need to comprehend that the logic of the physical universe – indeed, any possible universe – rules out free choice, and irrespective of the indeterminism of quantum theory. Why? Well, because who a person happens to be from a moral point of view cannot possibly be under his or her control. To be responsible for how they act they would have to be responsible for how they are, and to be responsible for how they are they would have had to have created themselves, and no one can be the causa sui, the ultimate ‘cause of oneself’, because in order to do so, he or she would have to be in every sense his or her own parent, his or her own author. If you try to argue that a person has created himself or herself then you have to posit an earlier self that creates the later self, but then you note that the earlier self could not have created itself but must have been created by an earlier self, and you end up with an infinite regress of selves needed (Strawson, 1994). Yet, ultimately for libertarian free will you need an initial creator self, a ‘prime mover’ self, which is impossible to get to because how would it have come into existence?”
– Excerpt from an essay on free will

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John Camara says:

April 26, 2020 at 7:59 am

“Present-day libertarians tend to pin their hopes for free will on quantum mechanics, but the random chance of quantum theory has no connection whatsoever to the concept of ethical freedom; the freedom to choose, the freedom to will. Doing something because (hypothetically) a subatomic particle randomly moves inside your skull offers no more freedom than doing something because genes or culture dictate it. The quantum event may be uncaused, but your (hypothetical) resulting action would itself be caused by the quantum event. The action is therefore not uncaused, and it is most certainly not chosen or willed. Indeterminism cannot save free will for humankind, because if the mind is, at least in part, undetermined, then some things ‘just happen’ in it outside the laws of causation for which, by definition, nobody and nothing is responsible. An individual is not responsible if their actions are caused, because those actions were ultimately set in motion before they were even born. But an individual is also not responsible if some of their actions are uncaused, because those actions just came out of nowhere. To be freely choosing an individual would have to be free from both deterministic effects and indeterministic effects. Free from both A and not-A, as a logician would put it. To be freely choosing you cannot have A, but you cannot have not-A either; free choice requires something that cannot logically exist in this or any possible universe.”
– Excerpt from an essay on free will

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John Camara says:

April 26, 2020 at 8:06 am

Proverbs 21:1

New Living Translation
The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the LORD; he guides it wherever he pleases.

English Standard Version
The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.

New American Standard Bible
The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes.

King James Bible
The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.

Christian Standard Bible
A king’s heart is like channeled water in the LORD’s hand: He directs it wherever he chooses.

Contemporary English Version
The LORD controls rulers, just as he determines the course of rivers.

Good News Translation
The LORD controls the mind of a king as easily as he directs the course of a stream.

International Standard Version
A king’s heart is a water stream that the LORD controls; he directs it wherever he pleases.

NET Bible
The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD like channels of water; he turns it wherever he wants.

New Heart English Bible
The king’s heart is in the LORD’s hand like the watercourses. He turns it wherever he desires.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
The heart of the King is like a stream of waters in the hands of God, and he turns it wherever he chooses.

GOD’S WORD® Translation
The king’s heart is like streams of water. Both are under the LORD’s control. He turns them in any direction he chooses.

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Steve Taylor says:

April 26, 2020 at 8:15 am

It’s simpler than all that – God himself is inevitably free, and that is a fundamental attribute of his nature. In the same way, making mankind “in his image” requires us to be like Him in this way – a mere robot is nothing like the Father, or like Christ.

God is all powerful, and in that power has created us as creatures with free will. He could choose to overpower us in that and control and predetermine every action, but like any good Father it would appear that he has rather chosen to allow us to make our own choices.

And similarly as a good Father would, he also supplements our will and choices with guidance and gifts and strength, especially by the working of his Holy Spirit, who enables us to do things that our freedom and strength alone could never accomplish – such as trusting fully in Jesus.

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Raymond L Foster Jr says:

April 26, 2020 at 8:37 am

Not predetermined. Foreknew.

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John Camara says:

April 26, 2020 at 8:40 am

When God looks into the future he sees what can be, and he sees what will be. In other words, he sees all the possibilities, and he sees the final outcome of all the possibilities.

But God does more than just foresee the future. If all he did was foresee the future then he would see events born out of chance, chaos, and randomness. He would not speak of having a plan or a purpose. He would simply go along with history as it sprang from chance, chaos, and randomness. But the truth is that God directs what he foresees. And he foresees what he directs.

The future already happened.

Think of time this way. Visualize in your mind a DVD. On that DVD is a movie. As that movie plays in a DVD player the only part of the movie you see is the one on the TV screen. That to you is reality. What you are presently experiencing. But the rest of the movie is also existing in the present moment. It’s just not showing on the screen. For on that DVD at this very moment is the past, present and future existing simultaneously.

Reality is like the movie on that DVD. The past, present, and future exist simultaneously. So don’t think of the future as something to come. It has already happened.

“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
– Albert Einstein

“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.”
– Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities

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Wesley Dover says:

April 26, 2020 at 8:46 am

Chosen but Free by Geisler would be a good book to read.

Predetermined means that God knew the choice we would make. Our choice is simultaneously free, yet preknown. Predetermination is more about God’s omniscience than omnipotence – that He knows all things that will happen, not that He forces the will of His creatures.

Unfortunately, because of our sin nature, we freely choose to sin against God. But when God convicts our hearts, we have the ability to freely reject or deny Him. This is because of God’s grace. God is sovereign and in control over all, but He is so gracious, that rather than making us as robots, He allows us to exercise our wills, whether those wills are good or bad.

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Reggie Lee says:

April 26, 2020 at 8:53 am

Oh wow!

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John Camara says:

April 26, 2020 at 8:58 am

If before creating man God knows that man will sin, and proceeds to create man, is His intent to create a sinner?

Does God have the ability to do something different from what He foresaw Himself doing?

Is He bound to create a sinner, or can He instead create a man that He foresees not sinning?

Pink had this to say…

“If then He foresaw that in creating a certain person that that person would despise and reject the saviour, yet knowing this beforehand He, nevertheless, brought that person into existence, then it is clear He designed and ordained that that person should be eternally lost.”
– A. W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God

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Deborah Ferella says:

April 26, 2020 at 9:06 am

You got this wrong. God did not predetermine our choices for us. We have always had free will. What God did do was see the whole future to the end of the earth age even before He created it and everyone on it. He just saw ahead of time everyone’s actions. It’s about Him having foreknowledge.

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Naathan Lewis says:

April 26, 2020 at 10:03 am

Foreknowledge is not the same as predestination.

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Herb Van Schoick says:

April 26, 2020 at 10:09 am

freewill vs. predestination comes up in this group often. Seems like there is usually more heat than light. Predestination properly understood and taught does not violate man’s freewill. There should be some required reading before the debate…lol

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Peter Taylor says:

April 26, 2020 at 10:24 am

The Bible is clear about choice, even with sovereign kings. It’s all in his hand, steering these choices where he will. And if a sovereign king, even more so with pee-ons like us.

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Victor Van Der Woude says:

April 26, 2020 at 10:31 am

The concept of free will when defined as an all or nothing concept against predestination would be a huge problem but it’s just much more complicated issue than that. Freewill gets modified by God’s will and predestination by human frailty and choice. It’s complicated and to say we truly understand how they interact is probably an understatement. The best people do is explain it from G-d’s perspective downwards or from the human upwards. Neither really can reach the complicated nature of the interaction between the human and divine interaction.

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Robert Finney says:

April 26, 2020 at 10:45 am

First, show me ‘free-will’ anywhere, let alone in Scripture. If a claim is made for the exercise of a limited will within very narrow confines, that I’ll buy, as that can be backed Scripturally.

There’s either some amount of choice for moral agents or the whole thing’s a pointless puppet show.

Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

The choice of whether or not to serve isn’t available, but whom one shall serve is.

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Kevin Richards says:

April 26, 2020 at 10:49 am

It’s just people being reactionary and not thinking about the Bible saying that you have no place to condemn the people of the world. But then… that’s also a matter of not realizing our true identity…

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Larry Koester says:

April 26, 2020 at 10:55 am

God is not a void. God is a personal being from which has come all that he called into being by his command. In a philosophical sense we could well call him the ground of being. And the only thing that really exists. Everything else is dependant on him.

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Alberto F. Gonzalez says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:00 am

Yours is a PRIMITIVE view of My Religion.

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Javier Lopez says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:04 am

lol Notice, how reformed folks don’t do this to the same fervor. But some people just can’t seem to let God be God. The ignorance and denial just keeps coming. I answer it this way.. Why is the antagonist so concerned that others are predestined for punishment? — perhaps they’re always putting themselves in the spot of the sinner? Living in guilt is a terrible way to live. If we live holy lives, do you think we’ll live constantly running from God’s sovereignty? I don’t think so.

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Paul Matthew Wilson says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:22 am

It doesn’t really follow logically that free will could be the result of physical forces. If your brain is a collocation of particles, then whatever happens next in your brain will the be the result of those particles acting upon each other according the laws of gravity, thermodynamics, the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism. You will not be free to make a “decision” because that would mean that you decide where the particles in your brain go next despite whatever natural forces are acting upon them. Everything I read about brain science these days seems to indicate that behavior is determined, not free. I think free will must be the result of design.

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Michael-Jona Anastasiou says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:24 am

Romans 9’s objection just put into a meme. Nothing new.

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Rick Montilla says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:27 am

John Camara this will answer your question , I promise . https://youtu.be/fXL-dAto7Tw

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David Stacks says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:32 am

Were only predestined to be in the likeness of Christ

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David Stacks says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:40 am

Was it predetermined for this to be on here at this time.And for all of to be talking about this.i think not.Once you make a claim like this you rise above self determination.

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Mong Santiago says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:43 am

This actually boils down to the interpretation of Isaiah 46:10:

“Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;”

Determinists believes that this means that everything that happens is according to God’s desire, including evil, that’s why even evil is being attributed to God according to them, which also means we don’t have free will. However, the Scripture is replete with verses and passages that men goes against God’s desire. God clearly indicates on the Scripture that He hates sin, yet it’s obvious that we sin, so it’s then evident that we go against God’s desire. So in that case, the interpretation must be something else. It rather indicates that all of God’s “plan” would be accomplished and not necessarily all of His “desires”

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Ruben Jackson says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:50 am

Who believe choice arises from a void? Cause and effect is a result of choice or a lack there of a lot of the times.

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Rob Dyson says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:51 am

I love these kinds of conversations. I just don’t have the time to read all the comments!

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Rob Dyson says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:53 am

I will say this though: in my search to understand these issues, it’s important to separate the issue of salvation from other issues.

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Leo Reese says:

April 26, 2020 at 12:57 pm

If things are predetermined why pray for something different. God has already made a decision how you gonna come along a ask for something different?

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Ashley Moore says:

April 26, 2020 at 1:31 pm

Isaiah 10:5: “Woe (judgment is coming) to Assyria, the rod of My anger (against Israel).”
Parallel realities: God’s Sovereignty with man’s responsibility

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Paul Norman Hanover says:

April 26, 2020 at 1:50 pm

Well salvation is predestined and based on election BUT that had to be balanced with the fact that we are COMMANDED to receive salvation and believe. It’s a heart choice, so not an outward work of any kind. However, it is an imperative and He rewards those who DO it with eternal life. Those who won’t are punished. A reward/punishment system implies that we must be both allowed to follow imperatives and that we must be able to reject them as well. God said predestination is followed from foreknowledge. If God knows what we will choose, He foreknew it from before time and all Creation and made us all in His perfect timing knowing we would choose to accept salvation through faith. He also knew others would reject on their own free will wanting to stay dead in their sins and God made them anyways too. Just based on common sense, God makes those predestined to go to Hell knowing they will reject Him. Still man is accountable for his individual life choices. If God knows it and makes them anyways, and knows their poor free will choices of rejecting God, they are predestined based on foreknowledge of whether they would choose. So are we all. God knew we would choose to accept, assuming you have or will in reading this, and God knew that and made you for this purpose. You also had free will bit an all knowing God makes people either way. Man is still accountable, you are accountable. Predestined is most assuredly Biblical, but be careful, predestined and foreknew imply direction, not compulsion. He’s not forcing you. He wouldn’t have called you though, unless He knew you were coming to Him. But an all knowing has to have known in advance, meaning every individual was created with that predestined knowledge of what was already going to be decided in this life, and what that would mean for the afterlife.

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James A. Henson says:

April 26, 2020 at 4:08 pm

Choice doesn’t come from a void…it comes from a Holy Almighty God!

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Damon Slachter says:

April 26, 2020 at 6:11 pm

Free will allows us to change what could or would be. God has plans for everyone and not everyone plays a huge role in the grand scheme of things, but he wants for each and every one of us to learn who he is, what he has done and what he can do for you.

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Mark Frost says:

April 26, 2020 at 7:40 pm

Ya calvanism is crazy.

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Eddie Jessup says:

April 26, 2020 at 10:20 pm

Very interesting OP.

I would say that the idea of libertarian free will, that is (as I understand it), being able to choose completely independent of previous events, present circumstances, personal history, etc. is both incoherent and impossible.

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Maria Petrillo says:

April 26, 2020 at 11:56 pm

No it’s not that God predetermined for you to do it. He just knows the end from the beginning meaning that he knows what you’re going to do but does not make you do it. You have free will. You can make another choice God is not choose for you but just knows what you’re going to choose.It’s like if I record the football game and somebody already told me how the ending was. I already know which team wins. But it doesn’t change how the players act or perform in the game just because I know how the ending is.

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Andre van der Sandt says:

April 27, 2020 at 12:20 am

Some people seriously think that God is an insecure narcissistic tyrant that forces them to sin against Him, and then punishes them for those sins.
This is the basis of Calvinism. And this is why its called the Doctrine of DEMONS.

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Zach Payne says:

April 27, 2020 at 12:21 am

I don’t know if I’m getting your question right. Theists believe order has to have an orderer. Christians believe Christ is the fulfillment of God’s plan for humanity. As for your question, choice comes from the mind, not randomness. If you say your mind runs on randomness you can’t even trust what it is you are saying.

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Seth Shay says:

April 27, 2020 at 1:24 am

so you wore clothes today out of mere randomness and tomorrow you’ll go naked to work?….Nope you made a choice.

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Jeff Adolphson says:

April 27, 2020 at 1:47 am

Choice is something God has us as freewill. Because love is a choice.

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Grant Reedy says:

April 27, 2020 at 2:22 am

Can’t have something from nothing no matter how hard you try.
God has the will and purpose and there has only ever been one will and purpose.
It is mankind who introduced a new will and purpose because they wanted more, to become their own puny little gods.

There can only be one God, not 7.5 billion puny little gods and when mankind decides to get over themselves, they can be the prodigal son or daughter and go back Home to the Father.

That opportunity is running out and God will be forced to make the decision for mankind and they are not going to like it one single bit.

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Toby Nobel says:

April 27, 2020 at 2:29 pm

Huh? I don’t recall anyone really, who believes choice comes from a void, random cause. God specifically gave us free will, does free will differ from “choice”? I think there is far more to it than anything “random”

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Clint Rasmussen says:

April 27, 2020 at 11:57 pm

We are the cause of our own choices. There is no void where our bad choices come from
God did not predetermine our bad choices just because He foreknew them

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