If you believe he did, then he did.
You have stated a truth greater than the subject at hand. We all know that if you believe Jesus came in 1914, well....he did.
Did God give us free will?
by ldrnomo 35 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
leavingwt
-
Chalam
Adam was given free, but not unlimited will.
Genesis 1:28 (English Standard Version)
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
Genesis 2:16-17 (English Standard Version)
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
Our choices are even more limited since the fall.
Limitations are good, and keeping within those limits is even better. Shame we are all rebels and think we know best. All the best, Stephen -
PSacramento
Chalam,
Adam was given unlimited free will, he had the free will to do anything he wanted, there was just consequenses to it, but whther he did or didn't, that was 100% up to him, his choice HIS RESPONSIBILITY.
-
leavingwt
he had the free will to do anything he wanted
????
(No response needed.)
-
Chalam
PS, I agree in one sense but disagree in another.
Adam was free to do anything but eat from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil. As is was he did that freely!
He was free to have dominion over the earth. He was not free for example create a universe or planet of his own, nor the capability. In that sense he was limited also.
All the best,
Stephen
-
PSacramento
Leavingwt,
Not sure what you posted...
-
leavingwt
Not sure what you posted...
I was just highlighting the word "anything".
If I could still edit my post, I would just retract everything. This topic doesn't really interest me and I would have done everyone a favor by remaining silent. Sorry.
-
PSacramento
Well anything within the scope of his limitations of course !
-
Spook
(Spook, where have you been?) Hey leavingwt! I took a new job in June and was too busy to have much online time. Here I am again!
Here is the dilemma of "free will" or determinism so we all can stop talking around each other. The existance or otherwise of a deity plays less in this conversation than many want it to. Their are theists and atheists all along this spectrum.
People in general interpret an agent (usually a human) causing something as different than an object causing something. For example, saying John caused the newspaper to be on the table is taken as an end in itself. Saying the wind caused this does not. Upon further questioning, one may want to know how the wind did this. Of John, one may say John "decided" to put the newspaper on the table.
This is the kind of "free will" that nobody contends: Namely, people do that which they desire, all things considered. This view of "desire" can be as broad as "philosophical contemplation of alternatives" or as narrow as "habits / instincts."
The problem is not accounting for "decisions." This is a question for microeconomics and psychology, and is well studied in natural science. The philosophical problem is accounting for desires.
If you believe that desires are metaphysical uncaused ends in themselves, then you may believe in some kind of metaphysical libertarianism. If you believe that human desires can be accounted for by other causes, then the concern is that eventually some "cause" was random. By extension, the end result of any causal chain which includes a random cause is itself random. The concern is that all human action seems to be either (A) Determined or (B) random.
Strict theological "free willers" are those who believe that individuals are responsibly causal for their desires, regardless of the environmental or genetic influences involved. This is problematic, since if desire has no explanation it seems to be random. If in a theological system a persons decisions are based off of randomly distributed desires then it seems irrational for a deity to hold them accountable. It would be akin to salvation being doled out by the random distribution of drawing straws or "eenie-meenie-minie-moe." Believing metaphysical "will" is something spiritual and apart from the bilogical being does not solve the problem. It only regresses a level to the causal process of why certain individuals would get certain souls.
To me, I find that even though it appears that desires are naturally determined, an individual agent is so supremely unique that decisions can be viewed by extension as supremely unique and completely illustrative of character. This approximates the same utility in justice theories where-by we can hold people accountable for their actions.
I like this better than free will. Because when John kills his wife, we can say "John is the kind of person who can kill a person, all things considered." Not leaving us with either "Anyone would do the same given John's circumstances" or else "John made a bad decision." This informs the rest of society what we ought to do in order to either protect ourselves from John or else what we need to do to rehabilitate John.
-
Spook
Oh, and the Garden of Eden story has nothing to do with free will. You are inventing that to make it match a modern theology.