How can fate and free will coexist?

Question

Fundies believe in both of these, right? How?

If we truly have free will, that would nullify any predetermined outcomes and God's omnipotence.

If fate controls the outcomes, then we do not have free will. We are merely puppets.

another contradiction???

Answer 1

i think the answer to this is you have the choice but the sky wizard knows what choice you will make

get your shovel out

Answer 2

Paradox
When I was a child there was a hurricane that hit my city, Richmond, Virginia. Agnes dumped so much rain that the James River flooded most of downtown Richmond (now refered to as the Flood Zone). During the storm I vividly remember going outside in the pouring rain and looking up at the sky with my best friend Eddie. I was absolutely awestruck. The wind was breaking limbs off of trees as you would break a toothpick in half and was lifting a roof off a house down the street. I noticed how the clouds were turning in the sky. Like a clock, exactly like a clock. I thought of it specifically because I was learning how to tell time at the time (the days before digital clocks). Eddies mom and my mom screamed frantically at us from the front door of the duplex where we lived for us to get back into the house. I don't remember about Eddie but I do remember that I got the *** beatin of my life that day and now as I think about it, it is rather uncomfortable for me to sit here in this chair.

Years later, on a test in high school there was a question that asked about the direction of a tropical storm, namely, a Hurricane. Does the storm turn clockwise or counter clockwise? I knew the answer to this one without even having to think about it because of the powerful impression Hurricane Agnes had on me that day. To my astonishment, the test came back and that answer was marked WRONG. What? I took the test up to the teacher and told her that there must have been a mistake; my answer could not possibly be wrong. She checked my test, glanced at her book or sheet or whatever and said, "No, you got that one wrong, the correct answer is counter clockwise." I was speechless. I looked it up in the library just to find out the teacher was right. Hurricanes do turn counter clockwise. How could I be soooo wrong about something so powerfully carved into my memory.

A number of years ago, Hurricane Isabel hit Richmond and as the storm passed over I noticed, once again, that the clouds turn in a CLOCKWISE pattern. Wait, could I have been right all along? What is the deal here? Before the electricity went out in my neighborhood this time I noticed the satelite time lapse images tracking of the storm. The satelite picture showed the storm moving CounterCW but I could see with my own eyes that it was moving clockwise. I went to the back porch where my son parked his bike, lifted the front tire off the floor and gave the wheel a spin. I looked at the wheel turning; it was turning clockwise THEN I looked at it from the other side, still turning, only it was turning counterclockwise. Epiphany!! Perspective!! WE WERE BOTH RIGHT! WOW!!!!!!

From the view above, the teacher was right. From the view below, I was right.

Fate (predestination) and Free Will? Coexisting? You do the math.......

Answer 3

What is free will "free" from, exactly? Free from causality? Acting without cause would not be any kind of "free" will, if you think about it. It wouldn't be a "will" at all, but a puppet controlled by random, causeless impulses.

Usually, "free will" actually means free from coercion. A more interesting question is this: How can God have free will? What determines His actions...actions without cause are hardly becoming of a deity, so He must of course be a victim of reacting to a chain of events the way we are.

"God" is not a very comprehensible concept, under scrutiny. I suggest reading about determinism. It's an idea that's not exclusive to fundies who believe in fate.

Answer 4

Cause there can be many different paths to one outcome. Fate can exsist with free will as long as fate does not dominate all choices. Say that it is fate for the world to be destroied tomorrow and I am the one to do it, but I make a decision to kill myself, it is still fate for the world to be destroied, so another person would be put onto the path to destroy the world tomorrow. Though this is moderatly complicated and makes some events unescapable look back at our history and and try to figure out what would happen if certain big events hadn't happened. Fate is there, but we always have our free will to decide what to do with the time we have.

Answer 5

I'm not a fundy. Read books on predestination such as : PREDESTINATION: THE MEANING OF PREDESTINATION IN SCRIPTURE AND THE CHURCH, by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

Since God sees the future. He knows what what choices we will make and yet he does not mess with our free will. He lets us do what we will do, knowing all along what our decisions will be. When we die, we die when our soul is most ready. If we live a life of sin, he lets us die before we would do even more evil thus saving us from even more punishment and torture in the afterlife. He allows certain evil figures such as Hitler to do a certain amount of destruction because it is part of His Divine Wrath for the sins we commit. It is a wake up call for us to return to Him. That is why He allows evil in the world. It is sometimes the only way that we will turn back to Him. Best Wishes

Answer 6

I am not a fundie but I believe they can both exist. Fate gives you possible outcomes based on your past. Your present decisions limits what possibilities you will follow from here on out.

Answer 7

I believe that fate is the product of cause and effect , in other words , karma. The Nameless One might be omnipotent but not in the sense that we understand it , like intervening in our daily live
and forcing us one way or the other in every little thing we do. I imagine that a system or million of systems were created by that intelligent force that we call by many names , each one with it's own particulars and different ways of interacting with them.

Answer 8

No... your entire assumption is linear and incorrect.


Why do Bee's fly?

Why are Whales Mammels?

Why does a platypus lay eggs and then nurse it's young and have a poisonous dew claw?

Nature is full of contradiction. God created diversity and distinctions. You canno't know love without hate and you can have no concept of up without down.

Everything is relative. Everything is God.

You have the free will to decide for yourself what you will do as a result of the circumstances brought about by fate. How's that?

Answer 9

They don't fate is a man made answer to the un-known factors that exist in mans endeavors. Where as free will is considered to be a Gift from God, during the creation of mankind.

Answer 10

Well I'm a firm believer than fate can only take you so far. After a while, we all have to start taking responsibility for our own actions. We take ourselves the rest of the way. Fate can only account for so much.. The rest, we have to do ourselves.. They coexist by allowing one to intervene when time calls for it.

Answer 11

'Omniscience' is logically incompatible with 'free will'. 'Omniscience', all by itself, is sufficient to put the lid on 'free will'; omnipresence and omnipotence are irrelevant. It is not necessary for god to intervene in order to negate 'free will' as a possibility. Omniscience negates free will all by itself.

If we really DO have 'free will', then an omniscient god is logically excluded. The logical fallacy lies in the premise that if god is omniscient, all outcomes are already known to god... everything that you think, decide and do... and everything that you WILL think, decide, and do.

For an omniscient being, all of existence over all of time is laid out as a tapestry before him... past, present and future, down to the smallest detail of material, of thought and of deed, and all is constantly in his awareness. There is no past, present and future from that perspective... there is only an eternal 'now'.

If that is the case, since god already knows everything that will happen, then everything is already decided... and as we go along through life, we are merely doing what has already been seen by god. Since god knows and sees everything that will happen, NOTHING that we think or do can be contrary to what god already sees and knows. We might THINK we have free will... but since we are merely acting out what god already sees and knows, this can be no more than an ILLUSION of free will.

Put another way, if you come to a point of decision, you have no choice but to take the path that god already knows you will take... there is no other option. That works all the way down the path of cause-and-effect... and, along the way, it even casts doubt on the validity of the concept of cause and effect. I don't want to get into that, though... thinking about that makes my hair hurt.

So, imagine that since before time began, since before the universe was created, god has 'known' that you would come to a point of decision at some spatial and temporal coordinate, and that faced with the possible paths A and B, you would take path A.

Now, during the course of your life, you arrive at that spatial and temporal coordinate where this choice exists. You evaluate the potential outcomes, and you have it in your head that you have 'free will', and thus, you are free to choose between path A and path B. However, since god is 'omniscient', and god 'knows' that you will take path 'A', then path B IS NOT an option... it IS NOT a matter of choice. OF NECESSITY, you WILL take path A. Not 'must'... not 'can'... you WILL take path A. You DO NOT HAVE a choice. Path B is NOT an option... it is not even a POSSIBILITY. You can only have the ILLUSION that you are free to choose.

So, either god is omniscient OR we have free will. It is QUITE IMPOSSIBLE for BOTH of these conditions to coexist.

The only way out of this logical dilemma is to limit god's power; i.e., start taking away things that god can see and know, until we get to a point where free will BECOMES a possibility. But when we start doing that, then he ceases to be omniscient... and thus ceases to be a 'supreme being'.

So... free will is an impossibility concomitant with an omniscient diety. The following sums up the possibilities:

1. There is no omniscient diety... therefore, the whole argument is stupid and irrelevant.

2. IF we possess 'free will' AND god exists, THEN, of necessity, it is IMPOSSIBLE that god is omniscient. (This does not preclude the notion of 'god'... it just means that he can't be as 'supreme' as one might think he is... or wish him to be.) You are (logically) obliged to acknowledge that god CAN NOT BE all knowing... and since omniscience is one of the things that makes god 'all powerful', then this means that god CAN NOT BE omnipotent, either.

3. IF god exists AND god is omniscient THEN, OF NECESSITY, it is IMPOSSIBLE that that we have free will, and you are (metaphorically speaking) nothing more than a piece on god's eternal game board; and, thus, "... man is not responsible for his actions."

Personally, I vote for number 1. You can pick any one you want... but YOU MUST PICK ONE, because there are NO OTHER possible outcomes... NO OTHER logically valid choices.

It is unfortunate (for the Abrahamic death cults of desert monotheism) that the concepts of god were solidified as dogma a few thousand years before the philosophical discipline of 'logic' was dreamed up by the Greeks. Those that concocted the religion did not have access to the intellectual tools that would have enabled them to realize that they had 'screwed the pooch' with respect to assigning god's impossible attributes. It wasn't until the 4th century that this logical impossibility garnered serious attention, and churchmen got their theological 'dancin' shoes' on, trying to weasel their way out of the logical dilemma.

They did not succeed, and this issue continues to be debated even 'til this day. This logical dilemma (and the resulting 'cognitive dissonance') was a key element in some of the various 'heresies' that were spawned in the early days of Christianity.

However, the simple observation that these impossible beliefs still exist shows that this does not seem to have been a very big hindrance, under the simple expediency that "There is no problem so big that we cannot ignore it, until it will go away." Too bad for them, though... it DOESN'T go away.

Corporate religion is helped along by the fact that most 'believers' do not employ logic or critical thinking skills; heck... that's why they're believers in the first place. If they employed logic and critical thinking, they WOULD NOT BE believers. So, even though these concepts create a logical impossibility, it does not seem to present a significant problem for them.