Free will means "the freedom of the will to choose a course of action without external coercion but in accordance with the ideals or moral outlook of the individual" (Webster). What you mean is that people are coerced by God's foreknowledge to do things?

My definition of free will also requires more than one option of action. My definition of free will requires that in the dawn of creation, there always was the option that Lucifer would not have sinned. It requires that Peter could have chosen not to follow Jesus in to the high priests courts and be challenged there. It requires that Judas could have stayed in the upper room and only walked out in company with Jesus and the diciples and refrained from carrying out the betrayal. Anything less, wether it be predetermination or if it be that in each of these cases the individuals where free to choose the course of action that was foreknown, I cannot see as free will.

I have learned that this creates some problems to the understanding of God being all powerful and all knowing. But the difficulties of the other view, where by one cause or another, wether by predestination or because God has forseen it, a sertain result will come to pass, has greater weight.

If God has decided that I will be saved or that I will be lost, that would greatly concern me that my destiny would be decided by factors outside of my controll. If God knows that I will be saved or that I will be lost, that would greatly concern me that if God knows that I will be lost I really cant do or choose anything that would end up in a different end result than in my damnation, or if God knows that I will be saved, I couldnt really do or choose anything that would have a different end result than in my salvation.

Oh well, this has all been said before and saying it again is not likely to change anything.

Thomas

Tom, you said:


Isn't this determinism?

"Determinism states that the way things will be is a result of how things are and the work of natural laws. That is only to say that if we know exactly how things are at the present moment and the laws that govern how the world (or the universe) works, then we can derive how things will be at some future time."
(http://www.galilean-library.org/int13.html)

God only sees what you will choose, and He died to make this choice possible. It's simple. Choose salvation and you will be saved. Choose it every day and every hour.

Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed

I would say No at this time. And I agree with your conclusion.

Sin was not random. There was a reason why it arose in Lucifer; reasons that did not exist in others.



The SOP tells us that it was a species of insanity.



The cause can be something outside the physical realm. There may be spiritual phenomena that can cause physical effects.



Perhaps. We humans are ignorant of a great many things. What may seem random might turn out to be perfectly predictable.

Irrational, though, is a different class from random.



Though it is not random, it is not rational. But I suppose Satan might disagree. My daughter sometimes disagrees when I point out to her that being mean is a bad thing.



They are not all true.

Individual salvation is based on whether or not the individual partakes of grace through faith. But there are many factors that come into play throughout one's lifetime. I believe that God knows all those factors.

If we accept the idea that our thoughts and actions are based solely on physical processes in the brain, then there is no freewill. Either everything is determined by how particles interact with each other in your brain, or they are probabilistic due to random occurences. Either way, your character is just the result of physical processes beyond your control.

But beyond the realm of human science, there is the possibility of non-physical factors that can come into play. Spiritual matters are beyond the scope of science, but is the only way I see for free will to exist. IOW, there are unseen forces at work that affect our characters.

I believe God knows all about these things as well. When all factors are taken into account, He can see the end from the beginning.

Is that fixed or open? I'm not sure how the terminology is used, but I would say open and known. Open because we have the ability to affect what will happen to us, and known because God knows all about it.

It's interesting that you would suggest weather here, because the experience of Lorenz regarding weather is probably the best known item that kicked of chaos theory. Here's one account of it: http://pear.math.pitt.edu/mathzilla/Examples/chaos/studentReports/DanielAnderson.html

Van Neumann was interested in using supercomputers as you suggested, but Lorenz' experience sort of killed the idea, changing the whole approach to trying to predict the weather. It showed that the problem was not having enough information, but that small changes in one are can respond in large changes in another. For example, two drops of water can be right next two each other and fall of a waterfall. One drop goes one way, while the other goes another. There are water eddies which exhibit this type of behavior as well. The problem is not one of simply not having enough information.

Daryl, If the future were like a TV rerun, then there could be no risk or danger for God. You can see that, can't you?

This is the compatibilitistic definition. This is not the definition Arminianists use. This is from wikipedia:



The ... represents "Libertarianism" or "Incompatibilistic free will," which is what SDA's have traditionally believed (having come from an Arminian tradition).

The definition I've been using is that ability to do either of more than one mutually exclusive alternatives. For example, the wikipedia articls says "at this moment, one could either continue reading this article if one wanted, or cease." The compatibilistic definition, that you cited, would says that one is able to do what one wishes to do (either read the article, or not, according to what one wishes).

I'm not getting where your question, "What you mean is that people are coerced by God's foreknowledge to do things?" comes from. I wrote the following:



This makes it awfully clear that I couldn't possibly mean "that people are coerced by God's foreknowledge to do things," doesn't it?

Aside from this that I've quoted above, I've also made the point many, many, many times that God's foreknowledge does not cause us to do anything. I've also stated many times that this isn't the issue.

Tom, you said:

Quote:
God knows the end from the beginning not only, or even primarily, because He foresees what will happen, but because He understands the principles involved.

Isn't this determinism?

"Determinism states that the way things will be is a result of how things are and the work of natural laws. That is only to say that if we know exactly how things are at the present moment and the laws that govern how the world (or the universe) works, then we can derive how things will be at some future time."

This is from a wikipedia article on determinism:



I don't believe this is true. This is logically consistent with the idea that the future is like a T.V. rerun, which has been argued by Jonathan Edwards and others. I don't agree with the premise, however. I believe one is able to act different than what has been "programmed." For example, Adam and Lucifer were "programmed" not to sin, yet they chose to sin. This is a mystery, and unexplainable, yet possible because of the reality of free will.

God did not intend or plan for sin to occur, nor did God anything do anything to predispose either Lucifer or Adam to sin, yet they used their free will to sin.

Anyway, to answer your question, determinism doesn't have to do with how one foreknows the future but rather with the question of whether all actions (especially actions of the will) can be explained by previous consequences.

Actually, your question, while interesting, is a bit out of place. You've taken a definition which has to do with physics, but "determinism," in the context I've been using it, has to do with philosophy, which has a different definition for the term than physics uses.