Do we have freewill ? is it biblical ?

Yes there is. Look into Lucy. She shows evidence of evolution. There are others. You just don’t know about them.

 

Of course there isn't.

By the time humans evolved and started making "human history" we had already evolved into our current state.

There are a TON of examples of speciation in human history.

 

Anyone can claim to be a prophet and many do. Exactly how is it determined that the head of your church is in fact a prophet? Cause if I understand your history they all are prophets.

Correct me if I am wrong but I believe it was your prophet Spencer Kimball that declared that Black people no longer represented the mark of Caine. So which of your prophets declared that Black people did have the mark of Caine?

I just watched the Netflix mini-series Keep Sweet, Pray, and Obey. and it was shocking to me that people would hand over their underaged daughters to Warren Jeff to be raped, and also hand over their wives, and the business properties to Warren Jeff at his demand because as a so prophet he spoke for God when he wanted girls to rape or pimp out.

Why is it that God never speaks to people directly at say a church service? I understand that the FLDS is not the current LDS, but what is the difference in terms of how the head of the church become a prophet. What makes Russel Nelson more of a prophet than Warren Jeff? Is Warren Jeff a real prophet?

If there are real prophets running around perhaps they can demonstrate that they are real by calling down fire like Elijah.

 

P

Prophecy does not exist. A 'prophet' is one who can understand situations of the time and see the results of various actions. In the Bible Isaiah is supposed to have prophesied the downfall of Judah by the Babylonians. The simple fact is that he could see the result of signing a contract with Egypt in opposition to Judahs masters - the Babylonians. And his warning was ignored. Judeans in numbers were exiled. Jeremiah ditto regarding the Northern tribes and the Assyrians. Astute men down the ages have seen events of their time leading to disastrous results. In the UK of the 1930 we had such a 'prophet' called Churchill. He could 'read and understand' Hitler and warned time and again of what was likely to happen if we did not take him seriously. We didn't. It happened and WWII was started. Long term prophecy is simply nonsense. 'Prophecy' is can only be of use if it it applicable to the time and gives people a chance to avoid consequences. Then it is simply doing a 'Churchill'. Nostradamus is used as a 'prophet' but all of his 'prophecies' may be considered to have come true because of the passing of time and the multitude of events down the centuries.
There are no prophecies in the Bible. Christianity has simply misused Hebrew scriptures to claim many of their beliefs.

We can't see the future. If we could the world would be different than now.

If you want to see some 'prophecies' try The Trump Prophecies https://www.sordrescue.com/:banana: And I'm not trying to be political.

 

I suppose that you are referring to Joseph Smith. That would be a personal spiritual confirmation that the Church is true.

I don't know. It's my understanding that at the Church's beginning, there were a few black Priesthood holders. I don't know what transpired from then. As for me I don't really care. There are far worse things that can happen to a person under the oversight of God than to be prevented from something. I spent twenty six years without an inkling of God, and was then put away for many more.

The branch in which Jeffs was born broke away from the LDS Church. They can claim what they want to claim.

In my experience, it is the message and not the man. The message is repentance and salvation thru baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost by one with authority to do so. I suppose that if such signs as fire from the sky are ever appropriate, then God will do that. The book of Revelation speaks of two men in the last days who will carry out a similar mission, and the whole world will hate them. So if you ever find yourself in such a situation as hating, in tandem with the world, Gods two servants, you should take a step back and reconsider. Or at least, that's what I tell myself as a personal failsafe.

 

There is no proof of that.

 

Are you familiar with “Manuscript Found” by Solomon Spalding?

 

Revalations also says the Ocean will turn into blood. If I see that happening I will certainly seek salvation. Thanks for serious answers to my questions. We don't agree. But I appreciate the sincere discussion.

 

I am not. Did a check Internet search and will read about it. Thanks.

 

My grandmother on my mother’s side was a Spalding. She was a member of the D.A.R. and to be a member she had to prove via genealogy research that her direct line ancestry goes back to ancestors who were here at the time of the American Revolution. That study found that she was directly descended from Solomon Spalding and the story behind Manuscript Found was presented in the genealogy book that was produced and which I have today.

In the process of research the testimony of Spalding’s relatives who read Spalding’s book were presented. They testified that the storyline was a parallel of The Book of Mormon and some of the names in Spalding’s book were even used as in book.

 

Not buying it. Bones of an ape which they say are millions of years old, have nothing to do with mankind who go back 6-8 thousand years with no evidence of evolution. Fwiw, giving animal bones a human name doesn't make it an ancestor. That's some witchy processing there. But I respect your right to believe in it.

 

There are many definitions of freewill there is freewil for the non-religious, the religious, freewill perfect, the law of mosaic from the slavery concept, Jesus from sin you have freeill to choose him or being to keep on sinning. and freewil from liberals. Modern freewill as well concept.

 

I’m sure you know far more about it than anthropologists do.

 

They haven't proven that they know anything about mans origins. It's like the difference between Satan and God. Satan can appear as God or a glorious being. But it's an approximation lacking veracity. That to me is the theory of the evolution of man. What the evolutionists expect, is for me to leap completely out of 6-8 thousand years of human history, into the forgotten and murky time before time and before man, and trust in their theory. Why in the heck would I jump off of a sound foundation onto an unsound foundation. Besides, I already know that God lives and that my life is in him, literally. So if there is no room in evolution for God, then there is no room in it for me. I am persona non grata. Btw, there is nothing apish about God.

 

The theory of evolution is not there to make a conclusive statement about god. It focuses on the fossil record and other data to form a model of the evolution of species. It’s not about why species evolved it’s about how species evolved.

As an analogy, I could say “the car started because I wanted to drive to the store” which is why the car started. I could also say that “the car started because when the key was turned in the ignition a spark resulted, causing the spark plugs to ignite the fuel/air mixture in the cylinders of the motor.”Both statements are true and provide information relevant to different situations. If you were trying to learn about the operation of a motor the first reason would be irrelevant. If you wanted to know what I was doing with the car the second reason would be irrelevant.

God is not relevant to evolution, just as evolution is not relevant to god.

 

In our dualistic reality, one must tread carefully with freedom and free will..

Yes, to the limits set by physics and nature.

We are free to follow rules or not, to the point of killing ourselves should we choose to.

No, in the sense that what and how we think is affected by our DNA and chemistry at all given points in time.

Genius thinkers are pulling out their hair in recognizing,--- given that we have so little free will, that in legal and moral terms, our legal system is all screwed up, --- and most prisoners should be set free.

None of us have a real choice about where and how we end up, all while having all the freedom we could ever want.

Duality has it's quirks.

Regards
DL

 

Peer reviewed case please?

She cannot appear as both at the same time, proven by this depiction.

https://imgur.com/a/dhjn5Fu

Regards
DL

 

I see much I could argue against here but that would send us way off the topic that I have just started following.

I know what you are saying and mostly agree, but to say that our evolution, (mental and moral), has not been affected by the 5,000 thousand years of war Gods we have followed, primarily thanks to religions, seems wrong.

Ask the LGBTQ+, and women, if religions have been good for their equality?

Many think we should not have the freedom to love whom we wish.

Regards
DL

 

Religions make it relevant because science conflicts with their creation mythology.

 

I see you have done a lot of thinking, but will try prompt more.

Read this old O.P. of mine carefully where I speak of free will directly.

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Eve was correct in eating of the tree of knowledge and rejecting God.

It was God's plan from the beginning to have Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. This can be demonstrated by the fact that the bible says that Jesus "was crucified from the foundations of the Earth," that is to say, God planned to crucify Jesus as atonement for sin before he even created human beings or *******ned sin.

1Peter 1:20 0 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

This indicates that Jesus had no choice.

If God had not intended humans to sin from the beginning, why did he build into the Creation this "solution" for sin? Why create a solution for a problem you do not anticipate?

God knew that the moment he said "don't eat from that tree," the die was cast. The eating was inevitable. Eve was merely following the plan.

This then begs the question.

What kind of God would plan and execute the murder of his own son when there was absolutely no need to?

Only an insane and immoral God. That’s who.

The cornerstone of Christianity is human sacrifice, thus showing it‘s immorality.

One of Christianity's highest form of immorality is what they have done to women. They have denied them equality and subjugated them to men.

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Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by whipping out their favorite "free will!", or “ it’s all man’s fault”.

That is "God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy."

But this simply avoids God's culpability as the author of Human Nature. Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

If all sin by nature, then the sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not sin. That being the case, for God to punish us for following the instincts and natures he put in us would be quite wrong.

Psalm 51:5 "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."

Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil is all human generated. Evil is our responsibility.

Much has been written to explain what I see as a natural part of evolution.

Consider.

First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created.

Evil then is only human to human.

As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.

Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil at all times.

Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.

This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.

Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, we should all see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us.

There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.

-----------

Evolutionary theology.


==========


Apologies for the TLDR.

Before you answer, I left your words on Adam and God's plan on purpose to remind you of what you sing in your Exsultet hymn about those.

You seem to want to derail God and natures plan.

Regards
DL

 

Of course! Once there is a human, there will continue to be humans unless they go extinct.

Evolution points out that seven million years ago a species split into two different groups. One group became chimpanzees, apes, etc. The other became humanoid.

There was plenty of evolutionary change since then:

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-origin-of-our-species.html

Modern humans have undergone change, too. But, the rate has been slow for various reasons.

One change is that over the last 20k years we've lost about one tennis ball sized hunk of brain.

 

For the short term we have eliminated natural selection, a key part of evolution. A sort of reverse evolution which can perhaps be called devolving. However, in the long run there will be natural selection.

I believe religion codifies knowledge that primitive people have learned about from natural selection and the need to survive and codifies them as religion. In other words, there is no supernatural invisible man in the sky, but some of the morality associated with this invisible man was at one point, something that ensured the survival of a tribe. Although we are no longer members of a tribe, our brain has evolved from being in tribal groups thoughout most of our history. Ergo, people need to be part of a tribe and that is something religion provides.

 

Natural selection is at work all the time. And as you point out, it is a key aspect of evolution - not some sort of reversal.

There are many sources of selection. Your conclusion that we need religious isolation for evolution to work isn't supportable.

 

What I am suggesting is that disgarding moral tenets because they come from a religion that falsely claim these tenets from from a God is not in some cases not a good idea for long term survival.

 

Ok. Ok. You’re one of those who talk of faith in a god and think it’s fact. I’ll leave you to your beliefs. Bye.