The Tao Te Ching has a chapter which starts noting that the softest thing (running water) breaks the hardest thing (stone). Its last statement is "True words are contradictory." Westerners have a real hard time translating that last statement (even Ursula K. LeGuin).
When you realize that contradiction is the analogue of feedback, Taoism makes sense. Look at the brain; it's all circuits of nerves that excite and dampen themselves. Look at the weather, which is a bunch of systems that interrelate and are fundamentally unpredictable.
Another thing Westerners have a hard time with is understanding eternity. Let's suppose that time has dimensions analogous to space; thus you can move to a location in time similarly to moving to a location in space. An omniscient God is able to see what happens at all time locations. "Hardening the heart" is a poetic description of what happened, not a description of what God did or didn't do.
Free will is confusing because we lack omniscience. We don't even perceive eternity (under normal circumstances). And when it comes to interpreting ancient texts, we lack the contexts that supply the original meanings.
John Calvin and Martin Luther saw the contradiction, and came to the logical solution that there is no free will. Luther said his book criticizing the concept of free will was his best writing.
The urgency of the free will debate rests on the idea of ultimate accountability. If life isn't a test with heaven or hell at the finish line, but rather a space for learning and experiencing, then whether our actions are strictly pre-determined or freely chosen matters far less.
However, an unsettled future doesn't solve the free will paradox, because with how much certainty can you say you, or anyone else, wouldn't have done what Ted Bundy did with the same genetics and the same nurture?
God exists outside of time, an Omniscient Presence fully witnessing past, present, and future events at the very same moment. The experience of ‘time’ as we know it, for God, time is an illusion, the concept based upon Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and how Time Dilation brings together past, present, and future events into one single unified moment.
So, although God can know you ate that sandwich at 12:45, He did not “ cause “ you to eat it. He simply observed your choice, based upon your own free will to do so. Whatever the sandwich, whatever the ‘time,’ God saw your choice, your follow through, and could watch as the sandwich was fully consumed. So too, you could have chosen not to eat that tasty morsel, and God would have witnessed that as well. He simply watched the future happen as the present played out.
That's closer to the definition of a deistic God: a creator who doesn't interfere with day-to-day business and remains an observer. Whether that god exists means little for humans, since the universe runs on its own in any case. The Abrahamic God, however, is more hands-on.
But He did ‘interfere’ with all the day to day business. His acts, His involvement in your life, was already completed and in place in the past, present, future, unity of a single moment in ‘time.’ All of your choices, all of His responses to prayer, were known to Him because He was witness to your ‘future’ as your ‘present’ unfolded.
Can I do anything he doesn't want me to? Does he have no power over my will?
Given that he knew all the evil things one would do, he used his own will and chose to create them anyway.
Doesn't this mean that although he may not be responsible for Hitler's deeds, assuming free will, the choice to create him in the first place, with all its consequences, still lies with him? Doesn't this make God in control of what evil will or won't be done, simply by consciously choosing to create or not create particular human beings?
No one today blames Hitler's mother for her son, because how could she ever have known? But if Hitler's mother had known exactly whom she was raising, would we still consider her innocent, on the grounds that it was Hitler's free will that caused the evil, and not hers?
They’re not questions meant to corner you, and I’m not expecting anyone else to answer them for me either. They’re simply questions I came up with to stress‑test the theology, and they may well have solid answers. Each person can decide for themselves whether they want to take them on or leave them be.
As a matter of principle, I don't use comment sections to criticize any one person's faith. There's a huge difference between a critical look at Christianity and a critical look at someone's Christianity. I'm not in the business of the latter, if you know what I mean.
Well, Tanner, you’re getting into deep questions that I certainly don’t have the answers to. It’s that longstanding question of evil, from where it comes? And if there is a God, could He have controlled His creation, dispensed with the human capacity for evil, and just created the good guys and gals?
How and why the Hitler’s, etc, and the very first of the bunch, Cain? An eternal mystery, still unexplained and unresolved.
You asked if you could do things God doesn’t want you to do. Absolutely, that’s free will, I guess.
So God has only awareness of everything on the timeline, but can therefore alter the events at will, such as when you pray asking for his help? But God would have had to create the timeline in the first place.
Early Israelites believed the future was unsettled, even for God. Hence, Yahweh regrets creating humanity and sends the flood, starting again from the bare minimum. That theology is more coherent when it comes to free will.
The future was not unsettled for God. It was already in place, finished, a done deal, so to speak. Remember, time dilation, Einstein’s Relativity, all events occurring simultaneously from God’s perspective, but not from ours.
Wow, this stuff gets really heavy, and for me anyway, gets somewhat difficult to explain and even to understand. So my limited and narrow response is this:
‘Time’ came into being at Creation, past, present, future, a single moment, but to be played out with events occurring in separate time frames from the perspective of human experience. In that context, God created the ‘timeline’ we observe, but exists outside of it, ‘watching’ the past, present, and future, already finished, play itself out.
Free will and all choices made by each individual remain just that, freely chosen, BUT God knows the outcome of your choice because He sees the future while the present is happening. You could change your mind, alter your own choice, and the future would record your ultimate decision.
Prayer is already built into the ‘timeline,’ answered even before you ask. Remember that your future, from God’s perspective, has already occurred, prayers have been attended to, and your petition was not something ‘newly delivered’ to God. So no, God does not alter the outcome based on your prayer. The outcome, and God’s response, from your experience of ‘time,’ had already happened.
Best I can do, so if it sounds confusing and convoluted, well, it does to me too.
Ok. Then I must ask, what is the purpose of God creating the universe and people just to see all play out according to a pre-determined script?
Since Adam and Eve, people were told they would not know everything, but would learn through time. It would, at least to me, make more sense if God allowed free will within the confines of his creation, to watch people grow and develop. He can intercede if desired, but would treat people as his children learning their way about his creation and themselves - able to make changes and mistakes, and eventually rectifying the mistakes.
Under that scenario, we are possibly now at the level of young adults struggling to live the kind of lives God wants. In ancient times we were toddlers needing God's guidance often. Pre-teens during the middle ages, older teenagers during the renaissance period, and young adults now.
But there is no pre-determined script! There is 100% free will But it is imperative to apply Time Dilation based upon Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, in order to understand the whole concept.
God is aware of ALL past, present, and future events simultaneously, as though no separation exists between events. So whatever choices you make throughout your life are seen by God as He watches your future unfold while you are acting in the present. Whatever final decision you will make about anything is known by God before you even make that decision because your future is played out immediately.
Again, you have to understand Time Dilation, Einstein’s Relativity, in order to grasp the fact, and it is a fact, that time is an illusion and past, present, future, coexist as one unified time span, no separation. No life lived is pre-determined.
Physics acknowledges Time Dilation/Relativity as scientifically valid.
You are, of course, using the standard interpretation of Christianity. Augustine’s Original Sin makes Adam and Eve become disobedient by disobeying God. Some older Jewish interpretations see eating the apple as the birth of consciousness.
I know that tomorrow morning you will wake up and most likely brush your teeth at some point. Does that mean I took away your free will because I know what you’re going to do? No because in reality you could wake up and for some reason that do, choose not to. But guess what, you’re going to do it. That’s the way God knows everything that’s going to happen, with free will still being the mix. Make sense now Tanner?
Could I choose to brush my teeth if God willed otherwise? Or could God compel me to do so against my own intent?
If God holds power over human volition, we hit a philosophical wall: how could we ever tell where divine influence ends and human autonomy begins? This isn't a problem for the passive, hands-off deity of Deism. But for the hands-on God of Abrahamic religions, a deity who hardens hearts, answers prayers, and moves history, the boundary becomes entirely opaque.
The goal isn't to demand a simple answer, but to show that the intersection of divine omnipotence and human agency is far more complex than traditional theological formulas suggest.
The Tao Te Ching has a chapter which starts noting that the softest thing (running water) breaks the hardest thing (stone). Its last statement is "True words are contradictory." Westerners have a real hard time translating that last statement (even Ursula K. LeGuin).
When you realize that contradiction is the analogue of feedback, Taoism makes sense. Look at the brain; it's all circuits of nerves that excite and dampen themselves. Look at the weather, which is a bunch of systems that interrelate and are fundamentally unpredictable.
Another thing Westerners have a hard time with is understanding eternity. Let's suppose that time has dimensions analogous to space; thus you can move to a location in time similarly to moving to a location in space. An omniscient God is able to see what happens at all time locations. "Hardening the heart" is a poetic description of what happened, not a description of what God did or didn't do.
Free will is confusing because we lack omniscience. We don't even perceive eternity (under normal circumstances). And when it comes to interpreting ancient texts, we lack the contexts that supply the original meanings.
When you stop viewing contradiction as a logical error and start seeing it as balance in action, the whole thing lights up.
Thank you for sharing this.
I understand eternity as possessing no time. For example, the present is always the present, no future, no past, only the present.
John Calvin and Martin Luther saw the contradiction, and came to the logical solution that there is no free will. Luther said his book criticizing the concept of free will was his best writing.
The urgency of the free will debate rests on the idea of ultimate accountability. If life isn't a test with heaven or hell at the finish line, but rather a space for learning and experiencing, then whether our actions are strictly pre-determined or freely chosen matters far less.
Then should I conclude that praying to God to resolve an issue is asking him to alter the script? Or was my intention to pray part of the script?
If God is all-knowing, then He already knows what you want to happen, which makes praying unnecessary.
Somehow I do not think that conclusion will be widely accepted, regardless of the position taken.
I made a mistake in my comment, but I’ve corrected it now, and I’m sure you got what I meant.
Pretty good argument that's there is no god and we are just chaos in an uncaring universe.
However, an unsettled future doesn't solve the free will paradox, because with how much certainty can you say you, or anyone else, wouldn't have done what Ted Bundy did with the same genetics and the same nurture?
In a nutshell, crazy as it may be …
God exists outside of time, an Omniscient Presence fully witnessing past, present, and future events at the very same moment. The experience of ‘time’ as we know it, for God, time is an illusion, the concept based upon Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and how Time Dilation brings together past, present, and future events into one single unified moment.
So, although God can know you ate that sandwich at 12:45, He did not “ cause “ you to eat it. He simply observed your choice, based upon your own free will to do so. Whatever the sandwich, whatever the ‘time,’ God saw your choice, your follow through, and could watch as the sandwich was fully consumed. So too, you could have chosen not to eat that tasty morsel, and God would have witnessed that as well. He simply watched the future happen as the present played out.
That's closer to the definition of a deistic God: a creator who doesn't interfere with day-to-day business and remains an observer. Whether that god exists means little for humans, since the universe runs on its own in any case. The Abrahamic God, however, is more hands-on.
But He did ‘interfere’ with all the day to day business. His acts, His involvement in your life, was already completed and in place in the past, present, future, unity of a single moment in ‘time.’ All of your choices, all of His responses to prayer, were known to Him because He was witness to your ‘future’ as your ‘present’ unfolded.
Can I do anything he doesn't want me to? Does he have no power over my will?
Given that he knew all the evil things one would do, he used his own will and chose to create them anyway.
Doesn't this mean that although he may not be responsible for Hitler's deeds, assuming free will, the choice to create him in the first place, with all its consequences, still lies with him? Doesn't this make God in control of what evil will or won't be done, simply by consciously choosing to create or not create particular human beings?
No one today blames Hitler's mother for her son, because how could she ever have known? But if Hitler's mother had known exactly whom she was raising, would we still consider her innocent, on the grounds that it was Hitler's free will that caused the evil, and not hers?
They’re not questions meant to corner you, and I’m not expecting anyone else to answer them for me either. They’re simply questions I came up with to stress‑test the theology, and they may well have solid answers. Each person can decide for themselves whether they want to take them on or leave them be.
As a matter of principle, I don't use comment sections to criticize any one person's faith. There's a huge difference between a critical look at Christianity and a critical look at someone's Christianity. I'm not in the business of the latter, if you know what I mean.
Well, Tanner, you’re getting into deep questions that I certainly don’t have the answers to. It’s that longstanding question of evil, from where it comes? And if there is a God, could He have controlled His creation, dispensed with the human capacity for evil, and just created the good guys and gals?
How and why the Hitler’s, etc, and the very first of the bunch, Cain? An eternal mystery, still unexplained and unresolved.
You asked if you could do things God doesn’t want you to do. Absolutely, that’s free will, I guess.
So God has only awareness of everything on the timeline, but can therefore alter the events at will, such as when you pray asking for his help? But God would have had to create the timeline in the first place.
Early Israelites believed the future was unsettled, even for God. Hence, Yahweh regrets creating humanity and sends the flood, starting again from the bare minimum. That theology is more coherent when it comes to free will.
The future was not unsettled for God. It was already in place, finished, a done deal, so to speak. Remember, time dilation, Einstein’s Relativity, all events occurring simultaneously from God’s perspective, but not from ours.
Wow, this stuff gets really heavy, and for me anyway, gets somewhat difficult to explain and even to understand. So my limited and narrow response is this:
‘Time’ came into being at Creation, past, present, future, a single moment, but to be played out with events occurring in separate time frames from the perspective of human experience. In that context, God created the ‘timeline’ we observe, but exists outside of it, ‘watching’ the past, present, and future, already finished, play itself out.
Free will and all choices made by each individual remain just that, freely chosen, BUT God knows the outcome of your choice because He sees the future while the present is happening. You could change your mind, alter your own choice, and the future would record your ultimate decision.
Prayer is already built into the ‘timeline,’ answered even before you ask. Remember that your future, from God’s perspective, has already occurred, prayers have been attended to, and your petition was not something ‘newly delivered’ to God. So no, God does not alter the outcome based on your prayer. The outcome, and God’s response, from your experience of ‘time,’ had already happened.
Best I can do, so if it sounds confusing and convoluted, well, it does to me too.
Ok. Then I must ask, what is the purpose of God creating the universe and people just to see all play out according to a pre-determined script?
Since Adam and Eve, people were told they would not know everything, but would learn through time. It would, at least to me, make more sense if God allowed free will within the confines of his creation, to watch people grow and develop. He can intercede if desired, but would treat people as his children learning their way about his creation and themselves - able to make changes and mistakes, and eventually rectifying the mistakes.
Under that scenario, we are possibly now at the level of young adults struggling to live the kind of lives God wants. In ancient times we were toddlers needing God's guidance often. Pre-teens during the middle ages, older teenagers during the renaissance period, and young adults now.
But there is no pre-determined script! There is 100% free will But it is imperative to apply Time Dilation based upon Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, in order to understand the whole concept.
God is aware of ALL past, present, and future events simultaneously, as though no separation exists between events. So whatever choices you make throughout your life are seen by God as He watches your future unfold while you are acting in the present. Whatever final decision you will make about anything is known by God before you even make that decision because your future is played out immediately.
Again, you have to understand Time Dilation, Einstein’s Relativity, in order to grasp the fact, and it is a fact, that time is an illusion and past, present, future, coexist as one unified time span, no separation. No life lived is pre-determined.
Physics acknowledges Time Dilation/Relativity as scientifically valid.
You are, of course, using the standard interpretation of Christianity. Augustine’s Original Sin makes Adam and Eve become disobedient by disobeying God. Some older Jewish interpretations see eating the apple as the birth of consciousness.
I know that tomorrow morning you will wake up and most likely brush your teeth at some point. Does that mean I took away your free will because I know what you’re going to do? No because in reality you could wake up and for some reason that do, choose not to. But guess what, you’re going to do it. That’s the way God knows everything that’s going to happen, with free will still being the mix. Make sense now Tanner?
Could I choose to brush my teeth if God willed otherwise? Or could God compel me to do so against my own intent?
If God holds power over human volition, we hit a philosophical wall: how could we ever tell where divine influence ends and human autonomy begins? This isn't a problem for the passive, hands-off deity of Deism. But for the hands-on God of Abrahamic religions, a deity who hardens hearts, answers prayers, and moves history, the boundary becomes entirely opaque.
The goal isn't to demand a simple answer, but to show that the intersection of divine omnipotence and human agency is far more complex than traditional theological formulas suggest.