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No

Only Judeism

Only Islam

Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[Orange Wizard]

To me, God has created a deterministic world. This fits in with the doctrines of election and reprobation that I've spoken of earlier. It also follows that an omniscient god can easily predict the future when he knows all of the rules governing the universe.

[penguinofhonor]

If I recall, there was a study done a few years back (searching for it has proven quite difficult) that strapped EEGs to people as they viewed a slideshow of images of either neutral or emotional content, set in a random order. They recorded their responses, and found that, as expected, people would react differently to the emotional images than the neutral images. The kicker, though, is that they would react up to 5 seconds before the image was on the screen. So they were unconsciously aware of the emotion carried in the next image, but only to within a few moments of it happening. Would that imply a sort of "range of determinism," where random processes are random up to a certain range of time prior to the process itself? Would that imply that our actions are predetermined within 5 seconds of that action, but are otherwise random?

I found a similar study. Not sure if it's the one you're thinking of.

The people were shown random letters and told to press right or left whenever they wanted to, so there was no expected reaction to any of the images. The conclusion was less that people unconsciously knew what was happening five seconds in the future and more that people unconsciously decided "I'm going to press left in a few letters."

[penguinofhonor]

I also found a cool painting! It's a sci-fi interpretation of a scene from Ezekiel.

Spoiler: Ezekiel's Wheels (click to show/hide)

^source

[TD1]

Well, makes as much sense as Jesus walking on water, I suppose.

[Arcvasti]

oOOOOOH, shiny paintingy thing.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Tonight was random question night, kinda coincidental since I had several question from you guys to ask. I only got to ask one though and only had a little bit to discuss it so I will have to wait till next week for the full discussion.



It was on free will and one teacher boiled it down to, god knows what you will do but can not force or change what you will choose to do, the other teacher said that we have all the choices and that it is not predetermined, he then poked me and said, was it pre determined that I would poke you? No, I made the choice to poke you.

[Orange Wizard]

That's kind of a silly argument, really, which doesn't prove free will at all. How can you say that his decision was not an objective result of his nature, upbringing, mood, etc., etc., etc.? If you were to go back in time and play the night over again (without any memory of the first night) do you think everything would occur the same way? Or would it change, because people made different, unbiased, free will choices?

[Rolan7]

Thanks for asking that for us (:

God influenced people's decisions many times in the old testament, indirectly or sometimes directly.  His recent mysterious lack of action is a decision on his part.  Consider a potential believer in the wild who hasn't been found by missionaries.  God could send a miracle (or yet another missionary), but instead lets the person live and die without any knowledge or path to salvation.  That is no accident, that is a choice on the part of God.

And depending on what you believe, that person roasts forever through no fault of their own...  Though more progressive Christians choose to disbelieve such horrible things.  For their own conscience, and continued faith.

[Frumple]

... that's... there's bits in the bible where YWHW actually does force/change what people choose to do? The bit that was shifted from Ra to YWHW was mentioned either in this thread or the broader one -- forcing the Pharaoh to harden his heart and whatnot. Critter's also known for its behavior mangling curses, too... s'pretty explicitly taken choice away from people at times.

Beyond that... was there any mention of scriptural basis for their position?

Though the know-but-not-force thing... is explicitly stating predetermination. If YWHW already knows what you're going to do, then... you're going to do it. Choice is illusory, in that scenario -- there's only one path that can be taken, because the path is already known. You think you have choice, but you... don't, really. Just the belief that you do. _{Which plenty say is enough, in and of itself -- and I wouldn't really disagree -- but it's definitely a scenario without actual choice.}

Neat that you're getting contradictory responses from the same denominational base, though.

Though I'm very mildly surprised no one responded to "I made the choice to poke you." with "Did you? How would I be able to tell?" As fruitoyo mentioned, it wasn't really an argument against predetermination. At least not one that wouldn't get knocked over in a high-school level philosophy class, heh.

And yeah, cheers for asking.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I did say we didn't finish the discussion and that the rest would be later
There is more to say, we just ran out of time

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I may change this opinion later but
The reason that god knows what you're going to do is because he designed your soul, he knows what your soul is going to choose though he gives you the choice to choose
Kinda like handing a random stranger on the street a gun and tellig them to shoot you
You know that they are not going to shoot you (ok this random individual isn't pysicotic or anything) but you know they have the option to

As said though, the discussion didn't finish so there is more that he has to tell me

[Orange Wizard]

Three ninjas. Can't be bothered editing this post.
Edit: Added Rolan-quotes to clear up confusion.
Edit2: Yes, I'm aware of the irony.

...

through no fault of their own

I'm going to have to stop you there. If we're going biblically, then "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God", "there is no-one who is righteous, not even one", "the wages of sin is death", and so on. If you're really desperate then I can retrieve more verses and references, but as it stands you'd have to disregard a significant portion of the Bible to believe that people are not by nature sinners. Whether or not that's fair, or moral (especially if we consider that it's up to God to save people from the evil that he ordained for them to do in the first place) is another matter entirely, and one I'd prefer not to go in to.

...

progressive Christians

In other news, the word "progressive" is one I hear flung around a lot. I think it's an American thing, and as such I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. "Progress" in NZ usually refers to expanding businesses and the like, which doesn't really make sense when applied to religious beliefs.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I'm not sure who the first one is aimed at


I never said anything about people not sinning

[Frumple]

Re: Progressive: Well, if you want to ask the doctor...

Broadly speaking in relation to american christians, it mostly means the ones tossing out/reinterpreting/pointedly ignoring the bugnut insane/bronze age/violently evil strongly socially conservative parts of biblical text. Trying to make their faith more butterflies and rainbows and love and less fire and brimstone and mass infanticide.

Basically the ones that don't think homosexuals are causing YWHW to curse the US, and whatnot. No clue if they use similar terminology in europe.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I don't think homosexuals are bringing that on the US but I'm not all sunshine and rainbows


Though on that it's America's insatiable appetite for sin. Though it's not the only place and it's probably not the worst