It cannot be denied

by logansrun 56 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  zen nudist

  why it does not make a difference on our level

  freewill or no, you must caluclate some response in some manner to your current circumstance, and no one cares if you had any real freedom in doing so, you will be held accountable by some for whatever you do... you will be rewarded or punished by them no matter how your choice was actually made.

  on the god level, it makes a difference

  if there is no real freewill, then any all knowing god punishing people for what he knows they cannot do is insane

  and if there is freewill, then any god who stands idly by and allows people to harm each other is criminal, as there is no defense

  for not stopping an illegal act foreknown by some party [see criminal neglect]
• 

  logansrun

  there has always been a choice and you are free to choose what you want.

  Well now, that settles it.

  B.
• 

  undercover

  "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"
• 

  Terry

  dh,

  I don't think anyone is evil, although I do classify some actions as evil. Notice I used quotation marks around "evil."

  B.

  OF COURSE you don't think anyone IS evil.

  It is the act or the failure to act which is EVIL.

  Example: I drove through the parking lot of a shopping mall nearby here in Fort Worth and saw a man pushing a young woman up against a wall repeatedly and yelling at her. She looked quite frightened. Impulsively I jammed on my brakes and jumped out of my car and ran over to the couple. I yelled at him to take his hands off her.

  He turned on me and said it was his girlfriend!

  I told him that I didn't care WHO it was he wasn't much of a man if he had to bully his FRIEND into staying around being pushed against a wall.

  Anyway, he let go of her and ran off. I don't know what became of it.

  Here is my point. I'm not a hero. I did what I'd want ANYbody to do if it was my daughter OR my son involved. Other people were clearly standing around and doing nothing but watching.

  Had violence occured it would have been WITH GOOD PEOPLE making room for it by not acting. This episode was not itself life or death (as far as I know). But, should I and others have waited to find out if he was going to punch her (or worse) before doing anything?

  The whole point of the discussion of evil is this.

  GOOD people allow things to happen. They don't act. They don't define. They evade cause and effect and turn a blind eye. A great many evil acts were with tacit PERMISSION of GOOD people.

  People aren't evil. GOOD PEOPLE allow evil.

  T.
• 

  Terry

  
  Here is an experiment.

  Each and every time you have an important binary decision to make, flip a coin and always make Heads "yes" and Tails "no" and abide by the result.

  After you do that a few times step back and ask if what you have been doing (flipping and letting the coin determine the outcome) you made a choice and if that choice was deterministic.

  But, before you answer that question; flip the coin to decide!

  Now, who's wife will she be in the resurrection?

  T.
• 

  googlemagoogle

  you are free to choose what you want.
  
  yeah, that's the impression you have. but in fact you'd choose the same thing over and over again if you'r life would be set back and you wouldn't know the consequences of your decision.
  
  one thing we often hear is "if i knew back then what i know now, i would have decided differently". but the fact is, you didn't know what you know now back then. so there's no way to decide differently.
• 

  LouBelle

  yeah but in reality we can't go back - One has to live in the here & now & make decisions & choices based on the Now.
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  katiekitten

  Whether we have a choice or not, the truth is that we are held to account for our actions.

  So the best idea would be to start trying to ensure that we only do things whose consequences we can cope with, rather than looking for a let out clause like 'It was my genetics that made me do it', or 'it was my upbringing that made me into this'.

  Who care what caused it, were still gonna throw theives and murderers into prison, cos we dont want them doing their thing in society.

  Who cares if a person is an obnoxious git because their mummy didnt love them? Were still not gonna invite them round to tea, cos their company is odious to us.

  The sooner we work out - nice actions result in nice consequences, nasty actions result in nasty consequences, the better time we will have through life.
• 

  sonnyboy

  Now, if you were born with that exact DNA, had that same brain chemistry and went through the same enviornmental stimuli and life experiences as they did, you would do the exact same "evil" things.

  I deny it.

  That's like saying that if one identical twin, raised under the same environmental stimuli, commits murder and rape, so will the other.

  They have the same genetic makeup. Regardless of what goes on in our brains, we all have free will. I often feel compelled to do all kinds of evil crap but I choose not to.
• 

  katiekitten

  I often feel compelled to do all kinds of evil crap but I choose not to

  Me too! (well sometimes I do just a little bit of evil crap, for fun)

  But if I did some evil crap, the court would not be too impressed with my philosophical arguments about whether it was nature or nurture that determined that I should do it, and that I had little real choice in the matter.

  They'd throw my sorry deterministic ass into prison. (the donkey always gets it!)