> General Discussions
We Can Only Experience
Kat:
Hi dessa,
Here is an excerpt from Ray's audio transcript on - ‘FREE WILL’ IS AN OXYMORON. Hope this will help your understanding :)
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,5154.0.html -------
Mark Hallett, (researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes) said, “If Free will does exist, it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free.”
It’s a feeling, nothing but a feeling.
“The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it.”
In other words, he said we feel like we have it, we feel like we have this thing called free will. I mean you get up in the morning, you say I’ll have coffee and reach over an have that to eat. This is all free, see. Why is it free? Because we PERCEIVE it to be free. When you look at it carefully though, what does this scientist say, the more you look at it and scrutinize it, you realize you don’t have it. It doesn’t exist, it’s a figment of your imagination, it’s an allusion, it’s an idol of the heart. It’s something you wish you had and you want to have and whether you do or you don’t, you’re going to say you do. That’s what it is, it’s an allusion at best.
“That is hardly a new thought (the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said), as Einstein paraphrased it, that a human can very well DO what he wants, but cannot WILL what he wants.”
Have I not said that through out my papers. Have I not said that if a man lusts after a little girl, he can figure out a way to corner her, steal her away, kidnap her, have sex with her and cut her head off. Can he do that? Can he not do what he DESIRES to do? Yes he can.
This is so profound. This is coming from Arthur Schopenhauer, “that a human can very well ‘do’ what he wants, but cannot ‘will’ what he wants.”
I’m telling you there is more truth in that statement than most theologians have ever gleamed from the Bible in there entire lives.
You can choose what you desire, what you want, how can you do that?
The human brain, the human mind has the ability. It is beyond any computer, it is so fabulous and marvelous, it is beyond comprehension. That it can gather information and data and analyze it and make decisions regarding it. It can do that, there is no doubt that it can do that. But that it can do that without a cause, is total hog wash and unscriptural heresy and demeans the very sovereignty of God. It’s tantamount to saying, I know we are here, I know we exist, but no God made us.
Everything has a cause. Your thoughts, your choices have a cause and the second you take away the cause, you don’t have a choice. So the idea, that you have a freedom that has no cause to make choices, is insane, it is stupid.
But when you check all the definitions of words, as we did. We looked at ‘free,’ we looked at ‘will,’ we looked at ‘free will,’ and we looked at ‘choice.’ They all point to the same truth, they all point to the law of cause and effect. All of them do. All scientific research and discovery point to the same truth. There is no effect without a cause, there is no choice without a cause.
But we read the definition, if it has a cause it’s not free. Guess what…..you don’t have free choice then. If free means without a cause, then you can make choices, but you can’t make ‘free’ choices, because there is no such thing. If free will is something one controls, then by its very nature it is not free. It is a self-contradictory term, it’s an oxymoron, it’s like dark light, cold hot, or true lies, it’s a square circle.
----------------------------------------------
mercy, peace and love
Kat
YellowStone:
Hi Kat,
Thanks for posting that, it was very interesting and made a lot of sense.
However, I would like to add that there is much, much more that goes into "choice" than a given circumstance alone. I think this may have been meant, but for clarrification only; two boys may see their father beat and abuse their mother from an early age. Both lived in the same house, both seen the same things, except from the beginning, one felt justification for his father and the other felt hatred. One grew up doing the same to his wife, while the other grew up never even raising his voice to his wife.
But there is more to circumstances than the obvious; something caused the two boys to see things differently, their actions were the effect. Had their father never laid a hand on their mother, one of the boys may have still grown up to beat his wife.
Circumstance now, this very minute, right here could be and probably is the results of millions of causes and effects, the cause that began the life of the tree/s that makes up my desk. The concept is unfathomable, including our actions, which may result from a DNA.
Cause and Effect.
Thanks and Love in Christ,
Darren
ciy:
Darren,
Are you saying that you do not believe God is in control and causes everything that happens in this world?
CIY
rjsurfs:
Kat,
I agree...
Free Will is a beast... an idol of the heart that is very hard to let go of...
To quote some more from our Lake of Fire in the sections of "The Myth of Free-Will Exposed"
--- Quote ---Why does it matter one way or the other whether man possesses free will or not? Would the future of the human race be changed somehow if man did or did not possess free will? Here’s how much it matters: If the basic free will doctrine and the eternal torture in hell doctrine taught by Christendom are both true, then man himself, and not God, is ultimately responsible for where he will spend eternity.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote ---"…it is God [not man] which works in you BOTH TO WILL [God causes us ‘to will’] and TO DO [God causes us ‘to do’] of His good pleasure" to bring about His intentions (Phil. 2:13).
--- End quote ---
This was very tough for me to swallow the first time I read through it... it is difficult to let go of the theology of man that you have been taught all of your life... but for me that is what I had to do... try to forget those things I was told and be willing to accept the scriptures for what they say... not what a man behind a podium in a church of man teaches.
Bobby
dessa:
Darren,
My faith today agrees with your writings. When I was about seven years old my granddaddy told me everything I did I wanted to do. When I tell that today I usually add that given the choices and consequences we do what we most want to do.
My heart/mind constantly thinks how to best express myself in love and yet say what needs to be said. Even when I goof I trust our Heavenly Father to make it right.
I'm looking forward to brand new learning experiences after the conference.
Shalom,
dessa
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version