God Returns to MoFo! ~ Why You Should Believe in God

How did you get to be so religious, seanc?

I grew up around it is the short answer. Which of course can go the opposite direction as well.

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*laughs* Okay. By that measure then, murder is enriching because it enriches me.

It was here (quoted below). I essentially agreed with you while explaining that while it may be true, it wasn't a practical argument:

Saying there's no such thing as "free will" is all well and good, but if you're still going to hold people accountable for their decisions, then it ceases to be a mean anything.

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"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

You kind of need to understand the notion of "Scripture," especially in it's historical context, how it was received when it was written, and in what it says about itself.

When God spoke through the prophets, he inspired them to write his word and deliver it to the people. When the people received it they knew right away that it was inspired by God. All Scripture has been received this way. It was instantly acknowledged as Scripture by God's people (not necessarily by the world) and copied and passed down from generation to generation.

Here are some things the Bible says about itself:

"God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world." -Hebrews 1:1

"You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." -2 Timothy 3:14-17

"Then the Lord stretched out His hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me, 'Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.'" -Jeremiah 1:9

It just depends on what sense you mean "free will." If all you mean by free will is that we are accountable for our decisions, then yes in that sense we have free will. But I was referring to the theological term of free will, because that was the context of the discussion, free will vs grace. In the sense of being accountable for your decisions, both the doctrine of free will and the doctrine of grace agree. It is the nature of salvation that these two doctrine's disagree very strongly. Are we saved by free will, or are we saved by grace? Are we saved by a choice to believe in God, or is the right choice a gift God gives to those whom he chooses? If he is enabling us to make the right choice, and ensuring that we do, then it's not an act of our free will to believe in him. We don't have free will in the sense that we can not choose to believe in God and love and obey him on our own, we need him to intervene in our daily lives.

Do you have the free will to believe in God Omnizoa? Okay, then do it. Go ahead. Prove to me that you have free will and believe in God right now. Don't just say that you believe in him, but actually genuinely honestly do from the depth of your being. You can't. The only way that you could believe in God is if he proved to you that he existed, because you are already convinced that he doesn't exist.

Fixed.

My life must have meaning because everything I do has meaning. I tie my shoelaces for several reasons. To keep my shoes held fast on my feet, so I don't trip over the laces, so I don't wreck my shoes by slipping them on and off all the time, etc...

If my shoelaces have that much meaning, how much more so must my life have meaning.

I'm trying to illustrate a principle, that you have to take life seriously and ask questions and figure it out before you die. Ignorance is the cause of many deaths. Like for example low-fat or sugar-free foods that are presented as healthy but actually cause cancer. If you don't examine your surroundings, ask questions, and diligently seek truth, then you won't survive.

Hey! That's my line!

Me and you are going to be rehashing old ground here but I have to ask again. What is the point of faith and grace if God chooses who he intervenes and doesn't for? We need to ask him to intervene, otherwise all God's spiritual gifts are for naught.

Accountability is not free will though. They're separate things. IF we have free will, then accountability is reasonable, if we DON'T have free will, then accountability is unreasonable.

Whoawhoawhoawhoawhoa, you've just opened up a whole thing...

What does it matter if I have no free will?

You just said I can't choose not to believe so what does it matter if I believe more or less strongly?

It's not fair to assume the opponent's position, I haven't taken a stance in this argument. That would be a strawman.

Oh no, murder IS quite enriching to me. I know it for a fact.

And you'll be hard pressed to dispute that.

Well said.

Real murder that you have committed yourself? Or pretend murder (in movies, books, maybe your own imagination)?

Faith is a gift from God and it is the foundation for our salvation. We're saved by grace through faith. (see Ephesians 2:8 and Romans 12:3)

We need to ask him to intervene, but not in order for him to intervene. He doesn't need our permission. Us asking him is for our benefit. He is sovereign over all things, and that includes our will, and any questions we may ask him.

That's not in dispute from me. What is, is that when you say we have no free will you are dismissing that he has given us a choice. If he hasn't then everything we believe as Christians is a mirage. There was no reason for any of this, beginning with the garden.

My sadistic cruelties are a separate topic.

Hypothetical murder. The point is the argument, "it's enriching if you think it enriches you" is problematic at best.

But it becomes irrelevant when you cite it as a factor in making decisions which you then hold people accountable because it implies free will. It's self-contradictory.

If by "meaning of" you mean "reasons for" then the meaning of your life is that your parents had sex and conceived you.

Fair enough, but where's the risk to my life if I don't solve the origins of the universe? There isn't exactly someone pointing a gun to my head telling me to "PHILOSOPHIZE DAMMIT OR I'LL BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT!"

A straw man fallacy is when you deliberately misrepresent someone's views in order to refute them. If my assumption is false then my argument fails, but it's not a straw man. Judging by the way you've ridiculed religion and God in the past, I think it's pretty obvious that you're an atheist. Please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll retract what I said.

It sounds to me like you're making a straw man out of not having free will. Why do you think that not having free will means you're not accountable?

I think it's just a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of choice. We are not presented with choices all the time where there are two options and you're completely free to pick whichever you want. For starters we don't have all the information, and our options are often misrepresented to us. Other people manipulate us. We have fears and bias. We may not choose a better option just because we think the worse option is better. We make thousands of choices every day if not millions, and most of them we don't even think about. We are all ignorant about so many things. Are we free to choose things that we don't want, or things that we don't like or understand, are we free to make choices that we aren't even aware that we have? We can be manipulated and controlled. We don't have perfect self control, so we can't even control our own actions sometimes. We have emotional outbursts and do things that we regret.

If you have free will, try going the rest of your life without telling another lie. Can it be done? Can anyone go their entire life without telling a single lie?

I think if we had free will, then we would have perfect self-control.

From the Biblical perspective our will is enslaved by sin and only God can set us free.

I think the opposite. If God created us in his image with no free will, then we would practice perfect self-control.

Isn't that kind of like saying that the TV turned on because you pressed the power button? That's not incorrect, but it is also not the only reason. That may be enough for you to figure out how to turn on a TV, but if everyone stopped there then we would never have TV's in the first place because it requires a lot of study and hard work in order to invent a TV and make better TV's and find greater applications for them. The deeper you dig the more you get out of it. Asking why you exist is not going to stop once you get an answer. It is a life long process of gaining more and more insight into it, and the more you gain the more it benefits you.

You don't have to solve the origins of the universe. You just have to believe in the truth, turn away from evil and do good, and love and obey God because he made you. All your life God is testing your heart, and when you die you'll stand before him and he will judge you for everything you've ever done in your whole entire life. Eternity is a long time for regret. You have one life, now, to figure this out, and you don't know how much time you have left.

Not necessarily. It means that how much self-control we have is dictated by God. We would have perfect self-control if he made us have perfect self-control, and we would struggle with self-control if God wanted us to struggle with self-control. God could have made us all perfect in heaven, but he wanted to create a full spectrum to show all of his attributes. That's why he made it a process of sanctification, that gradually we grow in our relationship with him and we grow in grace and we grow in faith until eventually we will be perfect.

Besides, it doesn't matter what we think, if not having free will doesn't make sense to you. We must conform our thoughts to the pattern of his will. Scripture is what dictates whether we have free will or not. If the Bible says we're saved through grace, why do you say you're saved through you're own choice? You can't take a verse that says we have to choose and are responsible, and use it to ignore verses that say God gives us faith and God knew us before the foundation of the world. You have to reconcile all of the passages of Scripture with each other in order to understand them. Having to choose to believe in God can't be interpreted on it's own without the rest of the Bible.

Because we have to choose grace. It ceases to be grace as soon as you take choice out of the equation. Now you would just be being dictated too. It's hard to reconcile an all powerful God with us being in control of our destiny. However as soon as you take away that choice, everything in Christianity loses its power, especially grace.