Quote:
Originally Posted by monstert
To use your example:
- God puts you at the crossroad (controlling)
- knows the consequence of choosing either path (knowing)
- knows the path that you will choose (knowing)
- lets you make that choice (and the consequence of that choice) on your own anyway (ability to control, but not controlling)
And in some cases:
- God will give you a hint at which path to take or will tell you the consequence of either or both paths (interacting)
- or lets you make the choice but changes the consequence (controlling)
- or force you to pick the path of his choosing (controlling)
In all of that, neither God's omnipotence nor his omniscience is diminished by human free will.
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For the moment, I'd like to discuss only the bolded portion. I'm not sure if I communicated poorly, if you misinterpreted what I said, or if this is something you interjected on your own. Regardless, I'm a bit... at odds... with this assertion. Lets assume, for the moment, that you are correct in your assertion that God knows which path you are going to choose. In this case, would it be necessary for him to even put you at the crossroads? If he is truly omniscient, and he knows each path you're going to take at every moment, is there reason for him to force you to make those decisions? And then, are you able to make a decision that goes against the decision God "knows" you are going to make?
For me, if the answer to the last question is "No", then we have crossed out of the realm of freewill, and into the realm of absolute control.
Freewill is defined as "the power asserted of moral beings of choosing within limitations or with respect to some matters without restraint of physical or divine necessity or causal law." My interpretation of this is that freewill is the ability for man to make a decision outside of the influence of the "divine" or, outside of Gods influence. If God knows the decision we are going to make, and we cannot make a decision outside of his knowledge, then we are not really making a decision at all. I equate it to someone asking me if I'd like a Coke or a Pepsi and, when I say Pepsi, they say "Well, we only have Coke." If the decision we're going to make is already known then, to me, we aren't making a decision anymore; it is being made for us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh
In other words, you're saying atheism is negative.
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I didn't get that from his statement. I think it's more along the idea of atheism does not have a negative affect, but does not have as much of a positive affect as religion. As a numerical example: Atheism is 3, Religion is 8. They're still both positive, but Atheism is not as large a positive as Religion.