Christian / Jew / Muslim - free-will, or predestination, or both?

Answer 1

I am islamic and I believe in preordainments of allah. Everything that happens or will happen is all meant to be. For me to question "why?" is to question the authority of allah(GOD). When it comes to free will, many say it is the gift of satan. It most probably is, but to my understanding it is all the will of allah. Good and bad. Reasons? I am not GOD, I can't tell you better than HE can prove/explain.

And when you say predestination, do you mean like fate and destiny. To what I have come to learn, they are one and the same. The difference is, people conjecture if they can write it themselves or not. To my acceptance, the answer is no. Though the human self has pride thinking they are capable of manifesting themselves, things, or others without the help of GOD. Maybe that is allah teaching in HIS own manner. Future untold, but already written. I myself have no free will, and that is how I like it. It keeps me away from malice. Correction, it keeps me away from sin. Malice comes with the territory of BEing.

Anyways, the thought process of your inquiry can circle itself for eternity if it chooses. Like I said, it is all one and the same. But already written. If you accept that.

PEACE!

Answer 2

In christianity , predestination it is like ...I am predestinated to having two hands ...Can I choose to have only one ..yes I can (free will )but I choose to have them both...So predestination is the good things that God holds from you in His hands .There is no predestination in Christianity , the way it was in Greek mithology (Moiras)
In Christianity God organises your life, but He doesn't predestinate you to bad things...(that satan does). God could let you fight with the evil , if you don't obey to God , but everything is under the observation and the care of God.You can ask forgivness anytime , fullfill the ten comandements, feast and pray and you are forgiven and receive health and good life.

Free -will means you can choose. But who could choose to be ill?And everything that is good is on the God's area.

Of courseif you don't choose God , you shall get troubles , even after manny years...But we all choose God , don't we ..God has no rival. Can we choose a tree?

Answer 3

Allah Knows everything that will happen. The first thing that He created was the "pen" and He ordered the pen to write. The pen wrote until it had written everything that would happen. And then Allah began to create the universe. All of this was already known to Him before He created it. He does have absolute and total control at all times. There is nothing that happens except that He is in control of if.
There is a mistake in the question: "Free Will." Allah alone, has Free Will, He Wills whatever He likes and it will always happen as He wills. We have something called, "Free choice." The difference is that what Allah "Wills" always happens and what we choose may or may not happen. We are not being judged on the outcome of things, we are being judged on our choices. This means that at the core of everything will always be our intentions. Whatever we intended, is what we will have the reward for. Each person will be judged according to what Allah gave them to work with, how they used it and what they intended to do with it.

As regards the actual "Judgment Day" - Allah tells us that everything we are doing is being recorded and not a single tiny thing escapes from this record. Even an atom's weight of good will be seen on the Day of Judgment and even a single atom's weight of evil will be seen too.

The one who will bring the evidences against us will be ourselves. Our ears, tongue, eyes and all of our bodies will begin to testify against us in front of Allah on the Day of Judgment. None will be oppressed on that Day, none will be falsely accused.

He could have put everyone in their respective places from the very beginning, but the people would complain as to why they were thrown in Hell without being given a chance. This life is exactly that; a chance to prove to ourselves who we really are and what we would really do if we indeed had a free choice.

Allah Knows everything that will happen, but we don't. That is why the test is fair

Answer 4

For me: Christian, Will (not completely free), and Predestination

You may be asking how God's omniscience allows man's will to exist. To tell you the truth, I don't know. There have been many speculations about it written, but we don't know for sure. Frankly, I don't have a problem with that. It is well-known that somebody with greater understanding than I can understand things I cannot. With God, we're dealing with somebody with INFINITE understanding. Humility demands that I allow God to understand things that I cannot.

However, by escaping into materialism, you don't get rid of the problem: in fact, you make it worse. This is the dirty laundry I never hear materialists discussing. How, given a mechanistic universe plus chance, could we ever have free will? Isn't everything predetermined such that you could figure out what I'm having for dinner tonight given the initial configuration of atoms and a lot of free time? You can throw in chance, but that still doesn't give me any power of free will.

There is one critical difference: with God we're dealing with something more intelligent than you or I; with the mechanistic universe, you're not. That seems to me to be a much greater problem for atheists and other materialists than it does for theists.

Answer 5

They are related to different things. Free will is about our right to choose to do right and wrong. For example, to recognize that the relationship between a man and wife is exclusive and adultary is wrong.

History itself is predetermined and on going-ly influenced by God. So for example, some people are determined to be born rich and others poor, others to become rich and others to become poor.

There is something else you did not mention which is difficult thing to cover entirely right now but I'll do my best. We can also influence things by our actions. So there is free will and History but there are the smaller parts of history we can choose such as our career choices, unless for some reason it was not meant to be then one may find himself facing a brick wall when trying to go down a certain path.
We also influencing things by putting in some effort. Like wealth, few people have accomplished it by doing almost nothing such as winning the lottery. Most have to work hard to get there. Once you start to do the motions then if you supposed to be successful then you are aided in your quest and things work out for you.

Answer 6

predestination means that the future is pre-determined. Christians will argue that God knowing what is going to happen is not the same as having things pre-determined. I'm not sure HOW they would argue that, but they will.

Answer 7

To know the outcome of a situation and keep silent is God's way.To act with free-will and not know the outcome is man's way.It does not matter if you are a believer or not. That is my opinion.

Answer 8

Calvinist predestination, which is not at all how it's been described to this point.

Answer 9

Free will.