or is it your will?
2007-01-12 13:59:01 · 25 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Free will.
2007-01-12 14:01:29 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
No. That would be double predestination, making God the author of sin. Hyper-Calvinism takes that stance, but this idea is nowhere to be found in Scripture. You're also presenting a false dichotomy since there is a third choice of Calvinism that is equally distant from both views. The Fifth Head of Doctrine, Rejection of Errors, Paragraph 6, of the Canons of the Synod of Dort, addresses the opposite of this issue, i.e. those that are saved being "robots". "For these show that they do not know the power of divine grace and the working of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit...". Predestined rejection, then, while being the "robots" to sin that Satan DOES want, is not what God would have.
2007-01-13 11:05:04 · answer #2 · answered by ccrider 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's my will. I've never really believed in God, even when I was 7. I thought about it when I was a teen, though. But after a few years, in my early 20s, I really became an atheist. Honestly, it didn't change my life! I just wanted to say I hadn't stubbornly rejected the idea of the existence of a supreme being.
And I don't believe in predestination. It's true that pretty much everything is ordered in nature, that what follows is due to logical consequences. But science has proved that "accidents" happen at the molecular level (actually, I think it's at the level beneath that), so I don't believe in predestination.
2007-01-12 22:04:10 · answer #3 · answered by Offkey 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Just because you are an unbeliever today doesn't mean you will be one tomorrow - so we cannot say we were predestined to be an unbeliever because our lives are not over yet - who knows what may change our hearts and minds about God. We choose our destiny but God already knows what choice we are going to make whereas we really don't know. We may think we know but if we had a visitation or revelation, we would change our mind.
2007-01-12 22:12:35 · answer #4 · answered by PURPLEREIGN 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
That's a good question, try asking whether a person is determinist or non-determinist in the philosophy section. Or ask whether people believe in free will or not. I don't believe in free-will (that means I'm a determinist, believing in cause and effect, each thing that happens is the result of a prior cause) which is akin to predestination, but predestination is determinism combined with a deity. In predestination, the deity has sort of set up the world like zillions of dominoes and pushed the first one and made everything happen, which is, of course, preposterous.
2007-01-12 22:05:57 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The correct answer is both. If you reject God, it is your will. But you were predestined to do it. It's like a book or a movie: each character is individually responsible for his or her own actions - but at the same time, they are not: the author or writer is responsible for their actions. So who is responsible, the players, or the playwright? The correct answer is both. But as a player: You are ultimately responsible. But it was predestined? Yes.
That doesn't seem very fair to God, or makes him look very bad indeed. Unfortunately, God does not report to us to provide explanations for His actions and cannot be held responsible in that sense. The final word: if you reject God, it is Your Will and.. you were predestined.
2007-01-12 22:22:28 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Eph. 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will...
According to the Wholly Babble, God has already determined who will believe in Jesus. That means everybody else is automatically left out and goes to hell. So, yeah, the Bible (or at least, the author of Ephesians) teaches predestination, which means that whether you believe or don't believe, it is God's will.
Read also the story of Moses, where it is GOD who hardens the pharoah's heart in order to make an example of him. Poor Pharoah wasn't even given a chance to repent, God made him do bad things so that God's glory would be all the more amazing. Really, this BibleGod character is quite the rotten bastard. Good thing he's imaginary.
2007-01-12 22:22:44 · answer #7 · answered by Antique Silver Buttons 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, that is your choice. To be predestined to reject God would be the same as God sending you to Hell without a chance which is not so or He wouldn't have sent His son to die on the cross so that we could go to Heaven.
2007-01-12 22:04:09 · answer #8 · answered by Angela F 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Kinda both actually. On one hand we are all originally "Unbelievers" born into the Sin of Adam. All mankind is granted Free Will to decide for themselves whom they will serve for eternity.
However according to the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares in Matthew Chapter 13 it is implied that God does separate mankind among those who are receptive to Him and those who are not.
2007-01-12 22:09:14 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
People who believe in God, probably believed in
God the last time they showed up. And people
who don't, probably didn't.
Out of the three point one, million energy bits that
surround a gene, only 3 percent show any real
difference.
Conclusion? A gene probably doesn't change
much from one cycle to the next.
2007-01-12 22:07:45 · answer #10 · answered by kyle.keyes 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No. Free will is only an illusion. As would be predestiny, because it would require a deity.
Everything is, however, predetermined as the natural processes of the universe are perfectly mathematical and the arrow of time is merely an illusion. All of reality, past present and future, was created in the Big Bang. My future is as set as my past.
The universe is basically nothing more than one huge self-computing structure.
2007-01-12 22:03:43 · answer #11 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋