Is freewill real?

Question

only one knows what will happen to us. but how can God be so sure if we have freewill? we can alter any outcome that has been designed to us. how could it be that God already know what will happen to us even if we are not yet born if we have freewill to do anything? or how can it be designed in a perfect way if we could ultimately alter it? i'm confused.

Answer 1

I believe entirely in fate, and it is the one thing that cannot be known. The fate in which I believe has no intelligence behind it, no planned destiny, and no godly will, only an end which cannot be escaped, and also a middle which is equally inescapable, just as it's beginning. Anything which can be know can be accurately predicted.

If a person were able to know all the facts concerning a coin flip, and how those facts affect each other, he could determine the outcome before it is flipped. Everything would have to be known, the size and shape of the coin, its deformities and mass, the amount of force to be applied, and at what point, the air currents, everything- impossible things to know for any human, but were he to know them, his prediction would be fact.

Applying this theory more broadly, each instant in the universe is governed by the laws of nature and are caused by something effecting those causes. Even actions within and caused by creatures and humans have their own causes. People do things through chemical reactions in their brains, which then send neural impulses to their muscles which then react. While people may choose what they do, those descisions are restricted by the thoughts and feelings passing through their minds at any one moment. If a person is placed in the same exact situation twice, which is of course theoretical, as it is impossible to be in the same situation with nothing being variable, as at least time will have passed, but if in two alternate realities, the same person is faced with the same decision, both copies would act in the same manner. As in the coin toss, if there is no difference in the situations, then the ending result would have to be the same.

Thus, if any being were able to be truly omiscient, he could determine, through his nearly infinate knowledge of every atom and every chemical reaction, and every law of nature, the exact outcome of any situation, and then based on that newly gained knowledge, could determine the following effect, and on and on into the endless time. Thus being able to accurately predict any event, and knowing each person and each objects fate within the universe. However, just because this infinate knowledge is unatainable, that is not to say that their results are erroneous. To return to that ancient and overused addage of doing simple addition; two and two makes four, and even if we are unable to do arithmetic and know that, our ignorance of the truth doesn't change its eventual existence.

I began by stating that fate is the single unattainable truth, but if you were able to know everything, and believed you were able to predict your own future, by knowing the causes, two and two; and by knowing their effects on each other, the laws of addition; your answer, four, would not be your fated end, because now that knowledge will affect you, and must be added into the equation, and then that answer, too, must be added, and so on into infinity, thus keeping that knowledge unknown.

Though we have our freewill to do whatever it is that we want to do, we cannot act outside of the laws which surround us. Id est, my free will doesn't allow me to suspend myself in a vaccuum as we are all constrained by gravity. Also, our actions, made entirely of our own volition, without any other exterior intelligent force acting on us, are made freely by us. It is only an unattainable knowledge which tracks our actions, predicting their ends. It is not that end which determines what a person does, but the person who determines what that end states.

Answer 2

Only in thought. In the scriptures you use to build your belief, did Judas have free will? Had he not done what these writings say he did then the story would have a different ending. Did the god of those scriptures choose someone for destruction as Paul later wrote in those same scriptures? If you forget about every thing you've been told by the people who introduced you to the idea of 'scriptures' and 'God' and look at how your body, the living organism, is operating right now, you should see that there are no choices. There is only stimulus and response that we can sense but even below that there is just life. No big story, no need for deep meanings. Just living. Not too much free will necessary there.

Answer 3

According to Christian religions we have free will but it is not without consequences. So that is right away a contradiction is terms.

I do not think free will exists.

We pay for every thing we choose. Everything we do comes with conditions. The Christian God does not even try to practise unconditional love.

My own Mother, immortal as she was would never have tossed toss me into a burning cauldron because I practised the free will she promised me and then chose against her advice....And Mom , she was claiming to be all knowing and Divine, in fact she did not always like me but she always loved me.
You should be confused. Keep searching, you are on the right track.
I do not think you get punished for the investigation.

Answer 4

there is no more freewill. I'm not so sure it was a pure thing ever in the past. there is no freewill because;although we may decide to do something in our minds, another thing will come along in our minds and tell us not to do it. we have killed our own freewill. no matter how rebellious or freethinking any one of us say we are, there is always that little voice inside our minds that kills it for us. that voice is put there by a belief/fear in/of god/s, a fear of parents or law, or of a fear of ourselves. we can pursue freewill, but we will never gain the true, pure thing that is freewill.

Answer 5

No. If that designed path were to be perfect, why would we desire to choose a path less than so?

To those who are fervent believes in an all-powerful, all-knowing god, then free will is not possible. If god were to know your every single future action, then you will inevitably take that course regardless of whether you think you're choosing your own path or not. As for those who do not, they fail to take into account our own natural biological urges that we have little or no control of; we, for the most part, are at the behest of those urges. People may be able to free themselves from the restraints of supersition, but our own "natural inclinations" get the best of us.

Answer 6

First you have to ask yourself the question - do I exist.

And if you can answer that question, then you can ask if you have freewill.

I personally am a huge believer in humanism, so I think that we do exist. And I think that freewill and fate co-exist.
We act together on freewill that is intermengled with others interests. Their interests can directly / indirectly impact our ideas and thoughts, thus swaying our freewill to inevitably create the fate that can be the best or worst for our lives and theirs (i.e. perfect example is peer pressure).

Answer 7

God is good, so all He does has to be good, so it's all good and it will all end up good.

Free Will is not about altering the end, but about choosing the right path now to get to the right outcome later. This is actually very simple, it's called learning from our mistakes. Today, you can change the way you feel about something you did yesterday, so you will feel different about it tomorrow.

Good luck!

Answer 8

Well, god has nothing to do with it, as he is a creature of the imagination.

In essence it makes no difference if we have free will or not. If we have free will, we make our decisions and live by them. If we live in a deterministic universe all of our decisions have already been made for us, so we can do nought but make them the appointed way at the appropriate time. It could be that we think we have free will, but live in a deterministic universe, so nothing changes any way, as it was determined that we would be under the misapprehension that we had free will.

Answer 9

Good thinking. Fore-knowledge of an event or behavior is not the cause of that event or behavior happening. a piddly example, for instance, a parent knows her child is going to do a certain thing; however, that knowledge is not the cause of that child doing it.

So yes, we do have free will. It doesn't absolve us of responsibility for our choices to say god knew I would do it, didn't stop me, therefore it's his fault. We're still accountable for our choices in this life and the next.

Trying to get our minds around all-knowingness, omniscience, omnipresence, and the like is a frustrating endeavor, something akin to a lump of dough trying to comprehend the bread-maker.

We are perfectable and have the potential for endless perfection, i.e., there's hope for everyone. Now, start kneading ;-) God wants worthy lovers.

These words resonate with me.

O SON OF BEING!

With the hands of power I made the and with the fingers of strength I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light. Be thou content with it and seek naught else, for My work is perfect and My command is binding. Question it not, nor have a doubt thereof.

Answer 10

This is more about the nature of God than free will.

Firstly, Jesus never mentioned that God had a plan for us. In fact this was an addition made by the Greeks who were the main followers of Jesus. The Greeks took christianity to Rome.

Anyway, there is a general view that God is allpowerful and allknowing. Therefore God exists outside of time and space so God already knows what you will do, God does not see you in a linear manner, being born, growing up and dying. Instead he sees the total you, which means he sees all of your life together.

Alternatively, God created us in his own image. Which would reflect the idea that God's cognitive abilities are greater, but similar to our own. So God sees time like we see time.

Of course, people use God as an excuse. You were born with no legs because it was God's plan that a chemical factory was built upstream from your house, you are poor and I am rich because of God's plan. I want to try this. I want to punch a christian on the nose and then plead, but it was God's plan that I punch him in the nose...so I plead no Guilty.

Remember God does his thing, but people do their own. They lie, cheat and so on. They use God's name in vain and most God does not strike them down with lightening bolts.

If you want to understand God, don't just follow others, find out God's plan in your own heart.