The question of free will is unanswerable and irrelevant.
Did God give us free will?
by ldrnomo 35 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Finally-Free
We are told we have free will so that, when things go wrong we are told we have no one to blame but ourselves. In truth, we're f*cked no matter which choices we make.
W
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angel eyes
yup we sure do, hence Jah gave Adam and eve a command yet allowed them to make their own choice. (thanks Adam!!!) We too have it, we decide if to serve Jah or if to believe in him.....our life, our choice :)
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booby
why did adam's dumbass decision make it impossible for me to have an honest chance at what we call free will.
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booby
does god himself have free will and if so why did he choose the punishment for adams' use of his free will be dibilitating for me.
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XJW4EVR
If we do have free will, what does that mean?
Two questions, and I do not mean to sound flippant, but there are two terms in this sort of debate that never seem to get defined.
1. What is the "will"?
2. What is it "free" from and free to? For example, the slaves, after the Emancipation Proclamation, were freed from slavery, and to citizenship (theoretically, that is).
Without the proper defining of these two terms, the argument seems to get ambiguous, speaking from my own experience, that is.
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PSacramento
will:
The faculty of conscious and especially deliberate action, the power of control of the mind over ones actions, the power of choosing ones own actions, the act or process of using or asserting one's choices.
free will means we have the freedom to decide to put our "will" into play.
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moshe
-yup we sure do, hence Jah gave Adam and eve a command yet allowed them to make their own choice.
My Rabbi teaches that the Garden of Eden story is allegory, not literal. You might as well look for spiritual direction in a novel like Moby Dick. But, then who pays any attention to how the Jews interpret their book?
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XJW4EVR
PSacramento said:
will: the faculty of conscious and especially deliberate action, the power of control of the mind over ones actions, the power of choosing ones own actions, the act or process of using or asserting one's choices.
I believe that this is a very good definitiion of will. I may have to use this in the future.
However, this phrase seems kind of circular. You said:
free will means we have the freedom to decide to put our "will" into play.
Are you saying you have free will because you are free to exercise it? If so then that seems circular to me. I do not think that the word "free" implies ability to use, but rather freedom from restraint. For instance, when you walk into an ice cream parlor, you are free to choose any flavor of ice cream you want, but your free choices are narrowed by your previous experience of tasting ice cream, and you personal preferences.
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Spook
If you "will" something, it is already in play. The problem is accounting for desire because no one contests that, all things considered, people act out their desires.
People who want to defend that humans were "given" free will first need to establish that we "have" free will, which they can't because we can causally account for a great many desires.