From: utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!tim
Newsgroups: net.religion
Title: Re: Free will and predestination make no sense
Article-I.D.: unc.5022
Posted: Wed Apr 20 00:14:33 1983
Received: Wed Apr 20 19:08:06 1983
References: 5941ux.246

In "Letters From the Earth", Mark Twain makes a statement to the
effect of "Although each of them believes that their God has
given them an intellect, there is not one of them that uses
this gift in matters of religion." This is the feeling I get
from looking at people trying to reconcile free will with
predestination (in order that their creator God may be truly
omniscient and omnipotent, yet our actions still free).

If God created the Universe, and knew exactly what would happen
as a result, AND COULD HAVE MADE THINGS COME OUT DIFFERENTLY,
then we have no responsibility for our actions. God made all
our choices for us before creating the Universe. The fact that
we don't know in advance what we'll do has nothing to do with it.
It has already been decided, and we are powerless to do anything
else but what God decided we would do.

Use a bit of common sense. If something is decided before it
happens, there is no freedom in its occurrence. To say "We
have free will because we don't know in advance what we will
do" is to confuse blindness for freedom.

I write a computer program. It does no input or random value
generation, so I know exactly what it will do before running it.
It so happens that this program moves a puppet around on
a graphic display device, and causes human speech to come out
of a speaker. By changing parameters of the program, I can cause
the puppet to say or do anything I want. Who is responsible for
the actions of the puppet? Me, obviously. Suppose further
that the program never predicts certain choices that it makes.
Does that make the choices its responsibility? No, they're
obviously still mine. The program hasn't a bit of freedom.

If people would just think about these things as they think about
things in real life, instead of just shuffling words in such a way
that all prejudices seem to be satisfied, this would be obvious. You
cannot have both free will and predestination. The two are mutually
exclusive opposites. If you decide that your religion requires both,
then you have decided that your religion is logically inconsistent.
If you cannot embrace a logically inconsistent religion, then you
must drop the requirement that both free will and predestination
exist. It's as simple and as inescapable as that.

Tim Maroney