ThothHermes:
Hell bawo
Paradise

Until Jesus told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, no one before then, actually knew about the rules there in hell and paradise.

ThothHermes:
These sound like fictional places to me ooo.

Time is a snitch, its a mater of time to know, trust me, time will tell

MuttleyLaff:
Until Jesus told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, no one before then, actually knew about the rules there in hell and paradise.

Parable. That's all it was

Time is a snitch, its a mater of time to know, trust me, time will tell

Ditto

NnennaG6:

I'm talking of the conscious you. You are the same consciousness when you were born and you will be the same consciousness until you die. That's why your experience on earth is continuous and not broken by you being a different consciousness at different moments.

That's another story about the soul. I am just answering the question about free will.

Nne, that is an interesting assertion,.....
but are you sure that it has any basis in fact?......
Or is it simply a necessary supposition for the free will argument to remain coherent?......

JujuSugar:

Nne, that is an interesting assertion,.....
but are you sure that it has any basis in fact?......
Or is it simply a necessary supposition for the free will argument to remain coherent?......

It has an objective basis with regards to the nature of consciousness. That's why the solution to free will and omnipotence allows for both to be true.

ThothHermes:
Parable.
That's all it was

"I will use parables when I speak to them; I will tell them things unknown since the creation of the world"
- Matthew 13:35

Na so little needle, reach and bin small, yet pesin still dey gif am respect.
Without that parable, no one before that, knew about the rules in Sheol and paradise

ThothHermes:
Ditto

Waiting and watching

Vic2Ree:

Unfortunately, i don't know if Nairaland comments have a character limit and i wouldn't want to bore guests and users who may be viewing the thread, so I won't be able to talk about literally every single square-millimeter in the universe. But here are a couple more examples of my amazing prediction skills

There will be a human colony on mars if there will be a human colony on mars.

There will have been a nuclear WW3 on earth if there will have been a nuclear WW3 on earth.

There will be sentient soap dispensers if there will be sentient soap dispensers.

I never realised I'm basically omniscient. LoL!!

So which of those are the most likely scenario humanity would experience given the current trend? Does any of those future involve understanding God and proving God's existence?

Vic2Ree:

You didn't say that god knew the probabilities of all choices. You didn't even mention that human choices are random, which I agree is the only alternative to determinism, but many believers in libertarian free will deny.

God does know the most likely scenario based on human trends. Think of it as a river current and where the current flows is the most likely future humanity will experience. Yet, it can be changed because of the human free will steering out of that current. Also, do you consider God being discovered and understood in 200 years as a possibility?

GodHead85:
The laws of physics as we know them apply (as far as we are able to confidently determine) only to our own universe. We can not, with any certainty assume that these same laws exist outside our universe or within other universe is other universes exist (However, through our assumption that god exists and god created the universe then there must be an 'outside' our universe to whatever extent that would mean). We can not assume that an entity that perceives their reality differently perceives time in the same way we perceive time. If an entity outside our universe has the ability to perceive time as a spatial dimension (not locked into perceiving only an instantaneous point in time) then that entity would be able to see the effect of a choice without being the instigator of that choice.

That would be fine for a timeless passive observer of the universe. They could view the entire history of the universe at once. They could view the big bang, the death of the universe, and every event in between simultaneously.

The problem is that God isn't a passive observer. He's the timeless creator of this universe. That means that he didn't start the big bang and wait it out to see what we chose. He created the universe without regards to time so he created all of the time and matter in it in an instant. That means he created every "choice" we make in the same instant he created the start and end of the universe. "Seeing the
effect of a choice" implies being bound by time waiting to see what happens but that contradicts being timeless and ignores that God created everything. That makes him the instigator of that choice.

That means any choice I could make would have to happen before the creation of the universe before I was even created which doesn't make any sense as far as free will is concerned.

a) For God to exist and be the creator of the universe and
b) For us to have free will, he can't be timeless and if he is constrained by time then he isn't omnipotent so there's still a few problems when reconciling free will and the Christian description of God.

The major conflict between freewill and God is the presumption of predestination. This conflict arises through what is called the divine omniscience of God, which is assumed to mean that God knows everything before it happens, and is reinforced by [url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+1%3A5&version=NKJV]Jeremiah's[/url] “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you". This however falls flatly on its face when scrutinised.

Eagle eyes would note God didn't know where Adam [url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+3%3A9&version=KJV]was[/url], or who told them that they were naked, and if they had eaten from the tree. This would be sufficient to question God's so called omniscientness. I am suggesting that an omniscient and predestining God would not ask such questions since it ought to have known what happened even before it happened because it had predetermined that it would happen just as it happened. And that's just at the very beginning!

The Bible is peppered with numerous such occurrences (which I'm going to rely on atheists to list), that seem to be a surprise to God. The question is, can anything be a surprise to a god that is omniscient and had predestined all things? I'd say, no, at least where predestination is concerned, and I have a feeling that most theists, Christians at least, work on this assumption, that their existence is not predestined even when they say otherwise. If they did believe their existence were predestined, they would not be praying for an alternative destiny and would accept their destiny as determined by God, which they obviously do not since they do pray that God change their destiny. Nor would they blame anyone for their actions since those actions are predestined by God and not the freely chosen acts of the individual.

In the beginning, it is written that God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

The key words here, "be fruitful", "increase", "fill the earth", "rule over it", all imply sovereignty, the supreme power and authority which God is said to have blessed humans with. How it can then be said that that sovereignty is limited by a God who already predestined what would happen is completely absurd and false since a God who predestined everything would not give sovereignty, the freedom to do as they please, to those it created. I'd go further and state that in the quoted verses, God, who most obviously must have freewill to do as it pleases, and who is said to have [url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1%3A26-27&version=NIV]created humankind[/url] "in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground”, is actually giving humans the freewill to do as they please.

Freewill is the power to act without the constraint of necessity or fate and is the ability to act at one's own discretion, yet many would admit that their freewill is very heavily constrained, and not by some God whom they see not and who was incapable of constraining the devil and Adam and Eve (unless one wants to argue God created Adam and Eve for the benefit of being tempted), but by their own environment, both physical and social. The truth is, we are constrained in the womb and it continues long after birth by our parents, siblings, neighbours, and even our own minds eventually, all of which determine our existence and our actions. It is not after all ones own freewill which determines who one's parents are, and their subsequent ability to provide sustainance for one's development. Not many would argue that one's parent's ability to provide sustainance has no an effect on one's so called destiny. The mere fact of the quality of nutrients they provide is enough to determine how well, or not, one develops, and a parent who values education and sacrifices to pay one's school fees, for instance, is surely determining a better destiny than parents that don't. And that's the constraint on freewill, one may say. However, from at least after two years old, one can see where one has decided ones own actions, unless you never said "no" to mummy and daddy of course.

Christianity clearly states (or at least as understood by me), that Freewill is a power given by God to "be fruitful", to "increase in number", to "fill the earth" and to "rule over it". It is because you have freewill that we hold you responsible for your actions regardless of whether you know you exercised freewill or not. It is the reason some are said to be going to some sort of hell while some would go to better places. Some counter this by "Grace", the assumption that God would use some arbitrary criteria to determine who shall dwell in God's tabernacle. But this is in complete disregard to scripture that clearly states in numerous places what the criteria is which every individual has the freewill to comply with or not.

Those who assume they lack freewill and who's actions are supposedly divinely predestined are those who are infants, "tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind". While those with freewill know that they are created in the image of God with godly freewill and are therefore gods in their own right with the supreme (I call it) ability to "be fruitful", to "increase in number", to "fill the earth" and to "rule over it" and create even. If you assume that there is freewill, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world. But if you don't, you are more likely one of those who takes no responsibility for their own existence and actions and looks up to heaven for manna.

I have mainly stuck to references from scripture because op seems to think God and freewill are opposing concepts in scripture. I'm suggesting op, and many if not most, have adopted concepts of God that have been given to them by their fellow human beings and have not really sought for God where the God that made you human dwells.

TheArranger:
Lol. Now i know this debate has been done to the death and you all (christians especially) are sick and tired of it. But before you sign off this thread. Please hear me out...

This free will debate is not about the modal fallacy committed by accusing Gods foreknowledge of determining our choices, don't worry.

My thesis is that we seemingly do not have free will, but merely the illusion of it. Essentially it's a part 2 to the whole thing. I'll outline my premises here.

1. There are an infinite number of potential universes God could create. (Any slight difference = a different universe)

2. In two of these potential universes, I have my classic choice A or B.

3. In one universe I choose A

4. In the second universe I choose B

5. God, being omniscient and all-
powerful, created and thus selected the universe in which I chose A rather than B.

6. Hence because God chose to create universe ONE where I selected A over B, with full knowledge (his omniscience) of the outcome of my choice, He determined my choice for me. Thus I do not have free will.

How do I reconcile this?

Ihedinobi

1. If all we have is an illusion, it is as good as the real thing, since free will is not made real by our cognition or lack thereof. If we think we are making choices, and if we appear to be making choices, there is no real reason to believe that we are not.

2. God invents reality. There is no array of choices from which He is expected to select. What He creates is what is. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, we can only talk about the universe we actually see around us. In this universe, you make your choice.

It is true that all choices made or being made or that will be made have been decreed by God, but they are still freely made. In fact, it is to preserve the absolute freedom and actuality of all choices made that God decreed them. So, we do have a choice.

TheArranger:

I perfectly understand the picture painted by this analogy. But you seem have omitted an important issue here. The "many worlds" interpretation is just window-dressing on the underlying problem, which is that perfect foreknowledge -- knowledge of the truth value of propositions about future events - requires predetermination. If God can see all the whole space-time continuum and every branch of every choice made by free agents, but knows in advance which of the many worlds will be realized by so-called "free choices", then the choices are not free in any satisfying sense of free will.

I think what bothers you the most is the omniscience of God. Your birth creates infinite possibilities,God knows those infinite possibilities but isn't aware before hand the exact choices you would make. I'd like to think that every sec we spend on earth is changing the course of our lives.Every action closes and opens possibilities.