did God give us free will?

Originally posted by galveston75
Lol...Your contradicting yourself.

Originally posted by galveston75
Do what is right and your fine...

I find a contradiction in the bible and you say I contradict myself?
The whole bible is a contradiction for gods sake.

Answer the question (if you can) or accept the contradiction:
"Why give man free will if he is forbidden to use it?"

We should treat genisis as a legend, not as any kind of truth. A story to tell at the campfires; for fun, for joy, for entertainment. It's when you think the stories are true you find the contradictions.

Originally posted by bbarr
Why do you think free will requires that choices have no causal antecedents? That, in a nutshell, is the libertarian position. But there are competing philosophical accounts of free will...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

“…Why do you think free will requires that choices have no causal antecedents?...”

I just assume, rightly or wrongly, that is one of the things what most people imply by what they mean by the term “free will” in everyday english.

I also assume, rightly or wrongly, most people don’t study philosophy such as Plato etc. too deeply to allow that study to decide in their own minds what they should mean by “free will”.

Originally posted by galveston75
Do what is right and your fine...

So you are only allowed to make the “right” choice else you will get punished?
What’s the point of that? It is like deliberately giving a child the choice of having a tantrum but saying:

“ok, I now will give you the ability to CHOOSE to have a tantrum. BUT, if you DO choose to have a tantrum, I will spank you so hard!!!”

Don’t see the point of this “free will”; if you don’t want to be “punished” then you have no real choices at all.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
“…Why do you think free will requires that choices have no causal antecedents?...”

I just assume, rightly or wrongly, that is one of the things what most people imply by what they mean by the term “free will” in everyday english.

I also assume, rightly or wrongly, most people don’t study philosophy such as Plato etc. too deeply to allow that study to decide in their own minds what they should mean by “free will”.

Fine. You just seemed so confident in your dismissal. I figured you'd be interested in reading about a very popular account of free will that avoids the dilemma you mentioned above. My mistake.

Originally posted by bbarr
Fine. You just seemed so confident in your dismissal. I figured you'd be interested in reading about a very popular account of free will that avoids the dilemma you mentioned above. My mistake.

“…You just seemed so confident in your dismissal….”

I didn’t dismiss alternative definitions of “free will”. On the contrary, I recognise the fact that there is no fundamentally and objectively “correct” definition and meaning to any word.
I only “dismiss” (if that is the most appropriate word here; not sure if it is) what I guess, rightly or wrongly, would be the average layperson implicitly means by “free will”; that is all.

Originally posted by divegeester
You're the one who insists the universe is governed by 'laws' - you figure it out.

What do you mean?

What has the existance or not-existance of physical laws got to do with what the Bible says about free will?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
So you are only allowed to make the “right” choice else you will get punished?
What’s the point of that? It is like deliberately giving a child the choice of having a tantrum but saying:

“ok, I now will give you the ability to CHOOSE to have a tantrum. BUT, if you DO choose to have a tantrum, I will spank you so hard!!!”

Don’t see the point of this “free will”; if you don’t want to be “punished” then you have no real choices at all.

So why would God not have the right to ask humans to do things in a right and good way? He created us and gave us the earth to live on and to take care of. So to simply obey him would never be too much to ask. And he only asked Adam & Eve not to do one thing. Leave that tree alone.
It's no different then a parent of a child asking or telling them not to do certian things which mostly would be things to keep them safe from harm.
So God did create us with the free will to choose and not be a robot of some type. But as with a child in a home there are consequences if one does something they shouldn't do. Is that not a logical thing and also a loving thing to expect from God who we all owe our life's to?

Originally posted by galveston75
So why would God not have the right to ask humans to do things in a right and good way? He created us and gave us the earth to live on and to take care of. So to simply obey him would never be too much to ask. And he only asked Adam & Eve not to do one thing. Leave that tree alone.
It's no different then a parent of a child asking or telling them not t not a logical thing and also a loving thing to expect from God who we all owe our life's to?

heh...knowing the difference beteween right and wrong such that they could decide that disobeying God was the wrong thing to do sort of requires they eat from the naughty tree in the first place...and upon doing this they (and as a consequence WE!) get a severe bollocking for it! :]

Furthermore...parent-child analogies don't seem to fit in this scenario since when a parent spanks his child for say throwing a brick through someones window it is done (most often) with the assumption he/she will think twice when considering doing the same thing again in the immediate future*. The supposed condemnation of us humans to a world of sin** and permanent expulsion from the garden of Eden is an entirely different situation.


* (I say immediate future because I am of the opinion parents smacking their children when they are not yet at an age that they be receptive to reasoned arguments against doing X isn't actually a bad thing.)

** I treat 'sin' as an intrinsically bad thing more for your benefit here because the term arbitrarily refers to what your God doesn't like be that disobeying him, or worshipping false gods etc...

Originally posted by Agerg
heh...knowing the difference beteween right and wrong such that they could decide that disobeying God was the wrong thing to do sort of requires they eat from the naughty tree in the first place...and upon doing this they (and as a consequence WE!) get a severe bollocking for it! :]

Furthermore...parent-child analogies don't seem to fit in this scenario sin ...[text shortened]... age that they be receptive to reasoned arguments against doing X isn't actually a bad thing.)

Well they should have loved God and trusted him of his warning not to eat of it. So to say they had some kind of right to try it isn't true. Adam no doubt had been in the garden for awhile and possible Eve too, so they both should have known what death was from seeing animals die. There was no reason to experiment. And yet they did not obey God and instead did their own thing, so to say. A trait that most of the world still has.

Originally posted by galveston75
Well they should have loved God and trusted him of his warning not to eat of it. So to say they had some kind of right to try it isn't true. Adam no doubt had been in the garden for awhile and possible Eve too, so they both should have known what death was from seeing animals die. There was no reason to experiment. And yet they did not obey God and instead did their own thing, so to say. A trait that most of the world still has.

Well you say they had no reason to experiment but I disagree with this on account of the fact that to acknowledge this requires that some of the wisdom be imparted unto them by the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the first place. If one has no concept of good and evil, how does one know what is good and what is not good?...ie: how does one know that trusting god and disobeying Satan (or talking snakes) is always good??

Finally to drive home my other point a little further, if we are to believe your account of our origin here on Earth, your god didn't so much put us on the metaphorical 'naughty step' for disobeying him so much as he disowned us and cast us naked, scarred, and broken into some crime and disease infested back-street far far away.

Originally posted by Agerg
Well you say they had no reason to experiment but I disagree with this on account of the fact that to acknowledge this requires that some of the wisdom be imparted unto them by the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the first place. If one has no concept of good and evil, how does one know what is good and what is not good?...ie: how does one know that trus ...[text shortened]... us naked, scarred, and broken into some crime and disease infested back-street far far away.

Well hang on a little here and go back to the Bible's explination of that process. The tree was placed in the garden as a symbol of God’s right to determine or set standards for man as to what is “good” (approved by God) and what is “bad” (condemned by God) for all generations to come. It thus constituted a test of man’s respect for his Creator’s position and his willingness to remain within the area of freedom decreed by God in an area that was by no means cramped and that allowed for enjoyment of human life. Therefore to violate the boundaries of the prohibited area by eating of “the tree of the knowledge of good and bad” it would be an invasion of or a revolt against God’s domain and authority.
So again God had to set a president from the very start of humanity of what he expected from us for the very point that we were created with a free will.
If Adam & Eve had remained faithful to God they would still be alive today and would have continued on with physical perfection that we all should have.
And who says they had no concept of bad? According to the Genesis account God virbally visited with Adam everyday and possibly with Eve to. We weren't there to hear what the conversations were about but God no doubt taught them many things and the knowledge of many things could have been explained to them.
My question to you is why do you think man needed to experiance or know bad? What benift would that have been to us?
And if you look at the scriptures that are discussing this, what exactly did they learn or experiance once they ate of the tree? Did it open their eyes to some knew and exciting knowledge as Satan promised?
And one thing that people seem to miss is there was another tree in that garden. What do we know about that one?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
What do you mean?

What has the existance or not-existance of physical laws got to do with what the Bible says about free will?

I was being a little tongue in cheek I admit. But there is a truth in what I was suggesting; the universe has laws of physics by which we are governed and we must obey we cannot circumvent them no matter how hard we try. There is no such thing as "free law" - law is law.

God has law of the spirit of life, by which we are set free from the law of death. Free will in that sense is still an illusion, as we are either governed by the law of life or the law of death.

There are two wills man's will and God's will. Free will is man's will yes, but it is not "free" it is governed by the law of death.

Originally posted by galveston75
Well they should have loved God and trusted him of his warning not to eat of it. So to say they had some kind of right to try it isn't true. Adam no doubt had been in the garden for awhile and possible Eve too, so they both should have known what death was from seeing animals die. There was no reason to experiment. And yet they did not obey God and instead did their own thing, so to say. A trait that most of the world still has.

You're guessing. You are extrapolating from the legend. You know nothing.
There is nothing in the legend saying that Adam saw any animal die. If I'm wrong, then state your source for that. Chapter and verse will do.

Originally posted by realeyez
Just wondering what everyone thinks

Did you come up with this yourself, or were you compelled by named or unnamed outside forces?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I have just worked out how to say all that in just one sentence:

We can choose but we cannot choose what causes our choices therefore there is no free will.

Wouldn’t it be nice to say in one sentence what others take a whole book to say?

So, back to the question: did God give us free will?
Answer: no; because there is no free will (there is also no God but that is not part of my argument here).

As bbarr has delicately attempted to enlighten you, free will typically applies to choices, regardless of antecedent forces. The choices facing the man and the woman were unique to them, but thematically repeated for their progeny. It's like going to a restaurant. The choices are limited, but--- ultimately--- you are the patron.