I posted in a previous thread that I was raised as a Christian and that I believe in God and the Golden Rule. I believe mainly due to my life experiences and not from things I have heard in a church. I often look for ways to reconcile the necessity of choosing to believe in God with the idea of fate and predestiny. I firmly believe when a person is born their entire future is already laid out. I believe everything is on a set path. This causes most Christians to immediately make horrified faces. How can you be a Christian without free will? Why would you even pray? I've had enough philosophy to know the free will debate is not really a debate. On one side you have hard determinism, where everything is causally necessary. On the other side, which is more popular and flattering to people, people can deliberate and choose their own fork in the road. Both sides are actually right. We are on a causally necessary path, but we also have the ability to deliberate. We are "free" to make choices because we are not aware of all the causal factors that determine our actions. I really hate it when people say we could have done otherwise. This is nonsensical to me. If we rolled back time, and made choices in the exact same set of circumstances, we would repeat our previous choices. To say under the exact same set of circumstances, I would have sat somewhere else in the movie theater doesn't really make any sense. The belief in casual necessity brings many core problems to Christianity. If things necessarily unfold the way God intends them to, then how can there be wickedness, and are the wicked guilty of anything other than being born the way God intended. Why would there be a Hell? My beliefs are definately not popular or flattering to people, but I do believe in both God and Destiny.
I'm quite partial to the core of the idea that you describe, although there are details that I would disagree with. For starters, I probably disagree with your understanding of God, but your argument doesn't seem to rely on that, so that's not that much of a problem for the purposes of this topic. The second is that I believe in non-determinism through quantum effects. Basically, there are things in the world, such as decays of radioactive particles, that are spontaneous, random, and are not determined solely by the state before the decay. In one sense, this has a big impact on your argument, since the history is not predetermined. In another sense, it doesn't have a large impact, since guilt is no more real if it is based on true randomness than if it is predetermined.
Your 'problem' is that you've actually thought this through. Few believers seem to have done that, in my experience. If they do start, they stop shortly thereafter (consoling themselves that faith is all that's needed), because they don't like where that critical thought is taking them.
Very good, you have a rare mindset and inkling as to the mind of God. Yes, all things are laid out. Yes, "free will" is mostly a delusion, a fantasy, a Lie. Instead what you should focus on is knowledge, and in the Discovery of why and how things are caused. Because it is only within such a knowledge of causality, with God as Prime Mover, that destination and determination are revealed. Knowledge then, is a spiritual journey. You are not "willing" anything, but discovering the path laid before you, whereas others are blind to it. "To walk in the valley of Darkness" = Living life without knowledge of causes of things and sources of events, to be Ignorant.
This question has been on my mind a lot since I became a Christian back in the 1970's. I now believe that we do plan much of our lives but....... we have genuine freedom of choice and our lives can branch off in many possible directions based on the choices that we do make. http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/howard-storm.html#top http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/howard-storm.html#a06
The problem is you start with the assumption that there is a god. When you start with an obviously false assumption everything that follows is by necessity false. That said of course it may actually be comforting however false to believe that one is not responsible for one's own actions because god has predetermined them all.
I guess I was predestined by your god to come to the realization, at age ten, that he was nothing more than a comic book character. I guess I should thank god for my atheism.
I think it is important not to use predestination for the Oprah Effect. Oprah always focused on criminal behavior as simply a matter of personal difficulties or issues. It was never truly the criminal's fault. On the contrary, guilt is still concrete in a predetermined environment. I'm not sure why people believe fate terminates responsibility. As for my belief in God, I have come to this through experience. I don't believe simply because I was told to. Nor do I believe because I have to in order deal with daily life. I'm not a biblical scholar, but I believe there are passages in the Bible where people can see God in every living thing. Just appreciating the grandeur of the natural world, and being able to see God in each piece of creation is important to me. I will admit my view of God is much different than the church norm. Someone once told me there are many spiritual people who are not hard core into literal readings of a religion. My belief in causal necessity is also based on experience. Some people are more sensitive to the factors that control our actions than others. The more sensitive you are, the more brutal the effect on our sense of freedom and individuality. Just because something is necessary does not mean that people can not feel or give meaning to an event. Just because I can't control the rain does not mean I can't enjoy listening to it hit my roof. A necessary world is definately not one that does not have value to an individual. I am not strong in physics, and I never completely understood why radioactive decay made the Principle of Sufficient Reason or PSR, void. Is radiation proof of randomness? Is this randomness actually random or is it simply beyond our ability to measure? If it is random, does that mean footprints on a beach were not created by feet? I am even less familiar with Quantum Theory. Does quantum theory negate causality? I used to have friends who were physics majors, and they let me in on a little secret. They said a lot of people in the physics department make things up.
Please, allow a different perspective here. If our total life is road mapped when we are born, then what determined what that road map is to be? We see that nothing happens without a cause, and nothing happens that does not cause a subsequent event. That means, all we do must have an effect somewhere. Notice how an angry person creates angry life around him, how a caring person gets care from his surrounding, how a cheater gets cheated by life, and how a violent person lives a fearful life. Seems like, life is a mirror; it reflects your character. This reminds me of Jesus; 'Do unto others, as you would have done unto you'. To me this means that we constantly keep modifying our fate, that we were born with. This is volition. The trick is to follow your heart; put your effort where your heart is. Not the instantaneous surges of passions, but the whole, integrated heart. A father who prefers his own gratification over his children's well being, invites unhappiness in his heart. It is the conflict in your heart that makes you unhappy. A greedy person dwells on his shortages. What we feel is what we become. Only honesty of heart takes us to happiness. We must accept pain for our causes. We take on what comes our way. A soldier must kill, and a spy must steal. But whatever we do must be for causes higher than us. This how we conquer fears of life.
