God has a plan for each one of us, but we have free will.

[originalpckelly]

Anyone want to take a shot at explaining that one?

Aren't those two things mutually exclusive?

If you have free will, that means you can choose your destiny, as the choices you make before arriving at your destiny are your own.
If God has a plan for you, that means he has selected your destiny, and at decision points in your life your choices have been constrained in such a way as to give the result God chose.

You might be able to get away with saying that it's a little bit of both, that God has selected your ultimate destiny, but he allows you to choose the path to it.

The problem with that is that you still don't have free will, because God would have to bend your will to cause you to end up at the destiny he has chosen for you.

[ixion]

1. Trying to apply logic to fairy tales will only give you a headache...

*cheers* :beer:

[hlthe2b]

6. This is one agnostic who is tired of the derision & disrespect...

that this kind of comment sends to those who hold religious beliefs. Really, can't you try to be a bit more tolerant towards others? :shrug:

[ixion]

16. I don't care what people believe

as long as they don't insist that I believe it as well. That's about as tolerant as you get. Otherwise, am I not entitled to my opinion? :shrug:

[hlthe2b]

17. You can do so respectfully...

what might equate to a "fairy tale" to you and perhaps to me, is obviously not to those who believe in a certain set of religious beliefs and tenets. You could have made the same point by saying "it is impossible to apply traditional logical arguments to a subject of faith."

[darkstar3]

20. Nothing but a tone argument.

Read me:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x240069

[hlthe2b]

44. No thanks...

I read your attempt to justify your derision of others. It doesn't fly as an argument to justify intolerance.

[darkstar3]

55. Oh please, the canard of intolerance here is nothing more than special pleading.

You want religion to be held in a higher and cleaner state than any other position held by people in this world. We deride Republicans, we deride conservatives, we deride global-warming deniers, and people in GD have been deriding anyone who doesn't latch onto the bandwagon of wind and solar energy as nuclear shills. Yet for all that derision and intolerance you care not a whit, until it reaches one particular topic, a topic that YOU wish to be immune.

Fuck. That. Shit.

[AlecBGreen]

65. ah, but the question is...

SHOULD you?

"We deride Republicans, we deride conservatives, we deride global-warming deniers..."

[darkstar3]

68. Ridiculous positions receive rightful ridicule.

[kwassa]

72. It is not a canard. You are intolerant.

Just admit it and get over it.

[darkstar3]

73. Really?

So because I don't genuflect and tiptoe with regard to someone's sacred cow I'm intolerant?

Tolerance deals with people, not ideas. I'm more than happy to live and let live. I'm more than happy to work with you, eat with you, and fight alongside you if necessary to defend things we both consider precious. But I am not willing to censor myself because your ideas won't stand to criticism.

[ixion]

38. lighten up

is really all I have to say to that.

[hlthe2b]

42. Intolerance is not a progressive value.

Learn some respect and civility...is really all I have to say to that.

[ixion]

45. Do you even realize the irony in your statement?

It is you, sir, who are being intolerant, from my perspective. Nor do I see a civil tone in your posts. I hear a snide and condescending voice, and those aren't really progressive values, either.

My OP was not intolerant, nor was it uncivil. It was a tongue-in-cheek quip, nothing more. I'm not sure you should really be telling others to be civil. Perhaps you should say that looking into a mirror. ;)

And I find it ironic for someone to call me intolerant, and then tell me how I ought to be phrasing my posts.

[hlthe2b]

46. Calling out those DUers who firmly believe in their religion as

holding a belief in a "fairy tale" shows your intent to deride and your intolerance of those who do not follow your views. It is YOU who can not recognize intolerance versus someone calling you on your shameful behavior.

[ixion]

48. There was no call out. That was in your mind, as in the intolerance that

persecutes you so. And if your faith is so fragile that it is unable to withstand opinion to the contrary, that is your problem, not mine. You can believe whatever you want to believe, it makes no difference to me whatsoever. I will not, however, alter my opinion to suit your faith. Nor will I apologize for not doing so. I am free to believe what I want, just as your are. If you don't like what I'm saying, don't listen.

This is a ridiculous conversation. You really need to take a good long look at your belief system if it is unable to withstand criticism.

[hlthe2b]

49. As an agnostic your argument is quite specious.

But I think you are escalating from a mild disagreement to a really unpleasant and uncivil argument. It is not MY beliefs at play although it certainly is my sense of fair play, tolerance, civility and kindness towards others.

I hope you take some time to think about your treatment of others whose beliefs do not track with your own. I will simply discontinue further discussion with you and wish you a good night.

[ixion]

50. And I hope you will learn tolerance

because you're not, even though you think you are.

I've stated that it matters not to me what someone believes. That is tolerance. Telling me I need to phrase things to fit in your worldview is the very definition of intolerance.

[hlthe2b]

51. You really need to have the last word...

so, in light of your obvious insecurities, I will give it to you.

[originalpckelly]

57. If it's not true, it's simply no better than a glorified fairy tale.

And oddly enough, there is not one shred of evidence to support it.

[skepticscott]

47. Tolerance means

allowing things you think are foolish or that you may disagree with or that may offend you to go on without interference as long as they don't harm others or restrict their freedoms. Tolerance does not mean allowing untruths to go unchallenged or evil and oppression to go unopposed. When things cross those lines, as religion does routinely and unashamedly, then your tone argument of "intolerance" no longer carries the slightest weight.

And respect must be earned...no one is obliged to grant it to foolishness. As far as civility, atheists and anti-theists have had to be civil (or fear of punishment or death) for many centuries, and where has it gotten us? Mired even further in the ignorance and bigotry of organized religion. But those days are gone, and gone for good. Cope.

[PassingFair]

61. Is "myth" appropriate? n/t

[tekisui]

2. Religions require a certain amount of double-think.

Or, alternatively, the practitioner can just turn off the thinking altogether and swallow what they are fed.

[DeadEyeDyck]

52. reality requires a certain amount of the same...

do I exist? Does DU exist? Light reflects from the screen of your computer and into you eye and through the optic nerve and you make a meaning out of those photons and air-distrubances. So what is real? On what basis? Don't quit your day job.

[tekisui]

53. Funny stuff.

Reality requires nothing. It happens and is. Reality is what you wake up to and go to sleep to. It is yesterday today and tomorrow, and none of that.

None of it requires double-think or bullshit. When you start thinking you know what happens when you die or where you came from, you are fooling yourself. If you believe an entity has planned your destiny yet you have fee will to choose it, you are delusional.

Reality is easy. It is right in front of you, every moment. Religion requires self-delusion.

[AlecBGreen]

66. wow, thanks for clearing that up for me!

"If you believe an entity has planned your destiny yet you have fee will to choose it, you are delusional."

Know any good psychotherapists? :P

[Curmudgeoness]

3. I guess god has a plan, and each one of us screws it up.

Plans never do pan out. Even if you are god.

[hlthe2b]

4. I'll applya more secular take on this...

My parents had a plan for me and my sister. Neither of us followed it in terms of career direction though both of us got the advanced education my parents sought. For those who believe, can God not also have a path (plan) for all of us, that the individual has free will to follow or modify?

[originalpckelly]

5. No, that's not possible.

Your parents didn't get to have their way. Their plans failed. What you did was your plan. Their plan was for you to pursue the career of their choosing, right?

If that is true, their plan has not been fulfilled, as you did not choose the careers they had in mind for you.

Now, if their plan was for you to just go to college and be successful in life (which I hope you have been :-)), then that has been fulfilled.

So in that case, your example is not usable for this situation, as you are conflating two different goals into one goal.

Goals:
1. Get an advanced education
2. Pursue their career choice

On one you followed their plan and accomplished that goal of theirs, and on the second you did not. In one case you followed their plan, and in the other you did not.

I could actually prove to you how this works with a decision tree if I had to, and I could show graphically how God's plan is not possible if you have free choice.

[hlthe2b]

7. That is ridiculous. Your rigidity in terms...

has no purpose but to deride those who hold religious beliefs. I respect those who hold the beliefs that I dont' happen to share. That is a large part of what makes me a progressive, IMO.

[originalpckelly]

8. The rigidity is logic.

Logic is the strongest sword ever fashioned and it cuts through nonsense quite well.

[hlthe2b]

9. Hardly.. You used the term "plan".... A plan is not an EDICT.

A plan is synonymous with "path."

[originalpckelly]

10. By creating an edict, one has interfered with the choice of the "free" person.

If God says I should pray on Fridays or I'm going to burn in hell, that's one mighty form of persuasion and it might just influence the decision of a person. That weighs the decision to be made in the favor of the one God prefers and therefore prevents a person from having free will.

It is bending the path in the decision tree. It's almost like relativity in a way. You could graphically represent the interference from God as a bending of the lines in the decision tree toward the decision God wants.

If I was a better artist and I had a scanner I would simply post it. I don't even have the software right now to show you, but basically it can be proven how even just an edict, define as a formal proclamation, a law to be kept issued by God or his prophets, can influence decisions. And influencing a person's decisions is not free will.

[hlthe2b]

11. Exactly... That's why relgious people believe it a plan & not edict.

and thus free will is provided to them. What is so damned hard about that?

[originalpckelly]

18. So let me get this right:

Someone can plan out all of my life, but I get to choose what to do with it?

I guess the best thing is to ask is a question:
How do I know whether or not to follow the plan without knowing the plan, or the rules to choose the right thing to let me end at the destination of God's choosing?

And how would you not be influenced to make the decision God wanted if you knew what it was?

So, in other words, because you are being influenced by God, even just by knowing which choice to make that God agrees with, how are you not being influenced by God and therefore have free will?

A truly free will would be free of God's influence.

To use Christianity as an example, how would you not be influenced by the fact that Christ ever existed?

Isn't that sort of like the mother of all influences?

[GKirk]

29. ....A truly free will would be free of God's influence.....

voice of God: "Wait a second! I said you had free will but let's not get carried away here now"

[hlthe2b]

35. there are theologians and theology students on this forum & even

on this thread who have provided a very articulate response to your questions and very clearly exposed your assumptions for what they are. I note you haven't responded to them. As an agnostic, it is really not for me to do so and I will encourage you to engage in those more specifically qualified to answer your questions.

[originalpckelly]

36. I am very good usually at replying to everyone who comes of their "free will".

Not many do, because they just don't have an answer that will make any sense whatsoever.

[quaker bill]

13. Only in the hands of a skilled practicioner.

Logic that begins with a poor apriori assumption can lead one off a cliff. Your confidence in your skills may be misplaced.

[originalpckelly]

22. Are you actually going to say something useful or insult me?

You honestly have no counter argument, do you?

[quaker bill]

40. There is no need

The argument has been made and remade hundreds of times over several hundred years. There are libraries filled with this. I hear they loan books.

Quakers dismissed all this nonsense as their basis for coming together 368 years ago. Many of us are scientists, wetlands ecology and evolutionary biology are my areas of study. We created colleges where science, logic, philosophy, and even skepticism are taught. Some Quakers are atheists, some are not, we all get along just fine, go figure that.

[hlthe2b]

43. A big thumbsup for the quakers...+++++

;)

[GodlessBiker]

12. Who says that any particular plan of god has to be fulfilled? Isn't that the whole...

Point of the term "plan"? A plan is contingent. It is dependent on many things, including the person's choice.

As an atheist, I don't have a problem with religious people saying god has a plan for me. What I think is ridiculous is that god would be upset if I disagreed with his plan for my life.

[originalpckelly]

23. Then again, not allowing me to float like a butterfly is also a form of control.

If I was truly free to make the choices I want, I'd do that. But I can't.

You know why?

Because if I listen to theists, God created me without wings.

But then again, I wouldn't even need wings without gravity. I could just float around.

Aren't the laws of physics a form of editing my decisions?

Maybe I wanted the speed of light to be faster? Or maybe I want a hydrogen atom to have two protons, instead of one.

Oh yeah, I'm not free to chose that. Skydaddy did it for me.

[GodlessBiker]

24. Sartre helps here: "Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."

[GKirk]

25. Or in other words

it's how you play the cards you were dealt.

[originalpckelly]

27. Yes, but dealing the cards is a form of predestination.

:-)

[originalpckelly]

26. If I outlawed the Democratic party and only gave you Republican candidates...

on a ballot, would you believe that you're free?

If you listen to Sartre, you'd be free.

How do you feel? What do you think?

Maybe you shouldn't quote a dead guy who can't explain in great detail what he meant and think for yourself? Notice how I don't quote anyone else? I can think, and I don't merely have to restate another person's position in order to justify my own.

That's the problem here, an unwillingness to think critically and really debate.

[GodlessBiker]

28. He's not talking about political freedom, but ontological freedom. I would be free...

to oppose such a system. Even the jailed man is free, as he can, for example, choose the order in which he eats the food on his plate. Of course he's not free to leave, but ontological freedom involves what consciousness is - the consideration of alternatives.

You're right, of course. Sartre is dead, but they will be writing about his ideas for centuries. Yours, not so much.

[originalpckelly]

30. "Even the jailed man is free"

Tell that to the jailer.

[originalpckelly]

34. "consciousness is - the consideration of alternatives."

There are also situations where one is not free to consider the alternatives. One case: mental illness.

Excuse me, but how is someone free to consider the alternatives if their entire process of doing so is incapacitated?
What if you have a hallucination which causes you think there is road out ahead of you, you walk down that road, and you fall off a cliff and die (your final destination I believe in this world) because you were hallucinating and there was no road?

Life's a bitch if you're nuts, and the last time I checked, the cards you were dealt indeed do play into whether or not you will be mentally ill, whether or not you are delusional, or even whether or not you hallucinate. They can eliminate your ability to make real choices, therefore stealing away your freedom.

And last time I checked, God had something to do with that. Skydaddy is really an asshole.

Talk about a thumb on the scale.

Funny that.

[northoftheborder]

14. God's plan? Some call it "predestination".

That is a doctrine believed by some Christians, but not all. I believe we all have totally free will, but can appeal to God for help and wisdom in the paths we choose to take.

[originalpckelly]

37. God's help would be a form of interference...

and would indeed cause you to make a different choice than you might otherwise make, again eliminating the idea of free will.

[quaker bill]

15. Many of the faithful do not buy predestination.

and never have. Lovely strawman though.

Interesting that one would choose to pose questions resolved 300 or 400 years ago as if they were some new and catastrophic insight.

[originalpckelly]

21. OK, so you have free will then.

No predestination?

So you can make your own choices?

How is God sending his son to Earth not an influence on you, and therefore, a form of predestination?

Didn't God create the universe and the laws of physics? Don't you have to follow those laws? Why aren't you free to jump up and fly to the moon? Not allowing that is a elimination of a choice, and therefore a form of influence.

Maybe you wanted to fly to the moon? Why can't you do that? Laws of physics, right?

So if God created the universe, and the laws of physics that prevent you from flying to the moon, isn't that a form of control and a way to choose your destiny?

[quaker bill]

39. Perhaps it was all created exactly as we observe it

and life is exactly as we experience it. Further, science is as correct as it can be about the origin of matter and the evolution of species. I have no problem with any of that. Perhaps the Bible contains allegory to illustrate various points the human authors were attempting to make.

Perhaps I would prefer to change into a porpoise, but I can't, isn't that unfair? Apparently I was either "predestined" to be a human, or alternately that is the only context in which that which I call "me" exists.

Silly Calvinist paradoxes were dismissed as irrelevant by many 300 to 400 years ago.

Move your thinking up 150 years, and at least ask "why would a "loving God" create a world like this?" (Dante')

Being only 250 years behind the times would be a big upgrade....

[sudopod]

54. Implying there's no debate over predestination, lol. nt

[quaker bill]

56. for many, there isn't.

and has not been for several hundred years. They seem to do just fine without it. It is not an essential part of Christian faith. Presbyterians, some of who still take Calvin fairly seriously might on occasion still struggle with this, but not often. For the most part they are busy bringing donations to food banks and such.

[laconicsax]

19. It's only fatalism if rational thought is applied.

There's no way around it--either everything is predestined, or nothing is. Trying to have it both ways leads to the contradiction you're asking about.

Of course, there's no reason why people can't simultaneously believe that their celestial dictator has a plan for them and that plan involves their own free will.

It's like with a lab rat and electric shocks--the rat is perfectly free to choose the path that gives them a painful shock, but the plan is that it won't. Behavior is easily predictable when people aren't given real choices.

[onager]

31. Your question is similar to Gawd's omniscience/omnipotence problem

If It is omniscient, it already knows what will happen. Or what's in "the plan," as it were. So there shouldn't be any need to change anything...like that baby crawling onto the Interstate.

But if It is omnipotent, It can change the plan anytime it wants. Hooray! Baby on the Interstate is saved when God causes a truck driver to miraculously swerve...thereby wiping out a school bus full of kids and 3 nuns in a mini-van. But as we all know, that Gawdly omnipotence Works In Mysterious Ways.

So those 2 attributes are contradictory. Or at least one is unnecessary.

Yet the believers still insist Gawd is both. Now before any of the Resident Theologians jump down my throat for making stuff up...my go-to source for the attributes of God is the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The creeds, for example, usually begin with a profession of faith in the one true God, Who is the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, and is also, in the words of the Vatican Council, "omnipotent, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and will and in every perfection" (Sess. III, cap. i, De Deo).

Divine knowledge - Description of the Divine Knowledge: That God is omniscient or possesses the most perfect knowledge of all things, follows from His infinite perfection. In the first place He knows and comprehends Himself fully and adequately, and in the next place He knows all created objects and comprehends their finite and contingent mode of being. Hence He knows them individually or singularly in their finite multiplicity, knows everything possible as well as actual; knows what is bad as well as what is good. Everything, in a word, which to our finite minds signifies perfection and completeness of knowledge may be predicated of Divine omniscience, and it is further to be observed that it is on Himself alone that God depends for His knowledge.

I'll be back as soon as I re-assemble my recently exploded head. BTW, this sort of nonsense, I'm often told, is a "rational" defense of Xianity. Good grief! For 1500 years the Catholics had a corporate monopoly on the whole Xian scam...until the Protestants horned in on the franchise. And THIS is the best they could come up with?

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06612a.htm

[originalpckelly]

32. Better question, and an old one:

Can an omnipotent being take away its omnipotence?

[quaker bill]

71. Perhaps Gawd

knows everything and could do anything, but choses not to. Perhaps we are just largely on our own, from one day to the next. This could sorta be the "free will" bit. Thought is these arguments is so two dimensional....

[sudopod]

33. PC, look man, He's ineffable.

It probably has to do with quantum or something. You know what I mean?

BTW, it would be awesome if we could get some Calvinists up in here.

[Festivito]

41. Free to choose not to follow the plan. Simple.

Now, if you believe in destiny, as some do, then perhaps you were always destined to not follow God's plan. Simple again.

Next, you go further to say that God selects your destiny, and therefore one has no free will, but this depends on your belief in predestination.

Some like destiny and predestination. I don't.

[quaker bill]

58. Most folks are called upon every day

and many respond without further thought and see no element of the Divine involved. This is not a problem.

Most of the argument here lays within and relies on the belief or non-belief in the supernatural. Supernatural things are not relevant. As Lao Tsu stated in the Tao te Ching "the ability to predict the future (supernatural power) is but a flowery trapping of Tao" (not the fruit or substance) "the sage ignores this".

It is whatever it is, and generally is not relevant to what I need to do now, in this moment. This is all that is ever truly relevant. Destiny, to the extent it exists, takes care of itself by definition, one need not concern oneself with it.

[originalpckelly]

60. "many respond without further thought"

That's precisely the problem with so many theists and even some mindless drone atheists. No thoughts of their own on the matter, simply regurgitating those of others.

They believe God gave them this wonderful brain, and yet they refuse to use it.

The sage ignores nothing that comes to the sage's attention and is worth examining.

If the possibility of God and it's implications for the very existence of the universe is not worth your attention, what is?

[quaker bill]

70. Per Carl Jung

"Quakers find the Divine in the mundane." The supernatural emphasis of so much thought on this matter is the distraction. It is the psychic noise that deafens nearly all who seek. Don't blame me for 5000 year old wisdom. It is what it is, take it or leave it as you may. The way is far simpler than you might expect or have been led to believe.

[originalpckelly]

59. But the problem is that God allegedly created the universe.

It created all of the possibilities you have in your life, and that mere fact is in itself a form of predestination.

Did you ever read one of those books with decision points in it?

It's called interactive fiction. You read a few pages into the book, and there there is a set of instructions:
1. To strike Molly in the head with the bludgeon, go to page 20.
2. To make sweet, sweet love to Molly all night, go to page 30.

Now, what I wrote was silly, but it's almost how the universe would have to be if God created it.

Someone wrote that book, and by constraining what options you had, they predestined you to their choice of choices. Maybe God was OK with either of those things, maybe he has contingencies in his plan? But you cannot say he didn't plan it out, because the mere facts of reality are a plan, are a form of predestination.

Do you see it now?

There is no way whatsoever that you can truly be free to choose in a world like ours if God even so much as created the universe, because the laws of physics are the constraints on your choices. You and I can conceive of a lot of impossible things, like playing Frank Sinatra's Fly Me To The Moon, whilst flapping your arms all the way there.

You can't do that though, because God created the universe in such a way that constricts your choices.

Furthermore, you can't even conceive of some things which might be possible. How do you make a choice about something if you don't even know something is possible?

In times when people had no idea how human biology worked (God's user manual for life is a little fuzzy on this) people did not have the choice whether or not to take the birth control pill.

Certainly, the creation of another human being is an event that will change your life in most profound ways, but there was a time when people didn't even know that was a true possibility, to control it and still have sex, while greatly reducing the likelihood of reproduction.

They, from myths like variations on Orion's creation and the existence of primitive condoms, had some idea in the Western world that semen had something to do with it, but when you read that myth now, it sounds crazy as it was totally unknown that women had eggs in them, and that's one of the vital components for procreation. In some tellings of the Orion myth, it was urine that created him. We know this isn't the way people are made, you know.

But these are the kinds of ideas flitting about at the time of Christ and before.

Because they didn't know how the human body worked, like we do now.

And they did have the same choices that we do now, in a very practical sense of the world, their choices weren't even conceivable.

In this way I show you that there are things which you cannot even conceive, for a lack of information that takes from you your free will.

[Festivito]

62. I think you're assuming something you shouldn't assume.

"It created all of the possibilities you have in your life, and that mere fact is in itself a form of predestination."

What I see you indicate is that the possibilities are not only a finite set, but further, a finite limited set, limited to all the possible outcomes of life, and then even further, limited to the only possible outcomes of life. You then take the only-ness idea and claim it means that predestination must be a given.

I don't agree with the only-ness.

Possibilities may be finite or countably infinite at minimum to me, and I'd prefer simply infinite. But, by no means is there reason to assert that the possible outcomes are limited to some smaller set, especially one that equals the exact number of choices we may find presented to us.

I think I see what you are saying. It's just that we disagree at the beginning of your statement.

[originalpckelly]

63. Do you think God created the laws of physics?

If so, you're choices have been constrained, and if that is possible, they are no longer infinite.

[Festivito]

67. Bullshit! The number of laws in physics can become as infinite as the universe.

But, I can see you're trying.

[moobu2]

64. Wow, exactly like the world would be if no God ever existed. hmmm

[Deep13]

69. There is no plan. There is no free will.

There. That was easy. B-)