Yeah, I suppose that's true, but my point was that just because you "kill" Him in your mind doesn't completely eliminate him from all existance. If there is in fact a God, and when we die, according to the Bible, he will be there to judge us. What I got from Nietzche's point was if you kill him from your mind, he will no longer exist. Maybe I took that the wrong way.


That's just Nietzche's cynical over-generalizating ways, and where I call bullshit. Devoted believers still remain, and few people are still genuinely following their faith.

Like I said, he resembles pissed off ignorant teenager.

Does it not? No man can know until he dies (presumably) whether a higher power exists, so the only thing keeping God "alive" (or in existence) during his time on earth is his belief in God. If humanity as a whole believes God does not exist, then does God exist--or, more to the point, does He still have any power? If no one is living under the influence of God, then does it even matter if He exists? In other words, if God (or the belief of God) has no power over man, does he really exist (at least during man's terrestrial existence)?

Ah, good point(s).

However, that's only on one level of our mortal existance. What about after this life?

But we dont know what god knows which means anything could happen. The real question is why wont god steer us in the right direction if he is o so powerfull but that must be fate right? You cant change your fate.


Let me get this out there... I am a bleaver in god but we all have are questions...

Then that will completely eliminate free will. If he "steered us" in the "right" direction, then we would have no free will, and we would be forced to go a certain way. We would have no choices to make on our own, and our lives would be entirely mapped out. We would not be people, we would merely be robots.

I don't know if I believe in "fate", I don't know if anything is destined to happen when free will is involved.

yes thats right. im mistakein.

We all have to disifer God in our own way. My journey with christ is between me and him. There for he gives me free will to sin or not sin this is the basic truth on free will.

haha this is sorta turning into a debate about the existance of god... I'll plug free will and God together then. well supposedly God gave us free will so we can choose do do good. If he didnt want us to sin or suffer, he could have made us to not do so...but then it would just be mere programming, not really true good deeds.

btw, its okay if you dont believe in God, supposedly. The bible says to have faith, and faith is to believe in something you cant really put your finger on...with that theres a possibility that God doesn't really exist. He may be there if you believe in him, he might not if you dont.

Main Entry: om·ni·scient
Pronunciation: -sh&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: New Latin omniscient-, omnisciens, back-formation from Medieval Latin omniscientia
1 : having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2 : possessed of universal or complete knowledge
- om·ni·scient·ly adverb

Alright. If God truly is omniscient, by definition, he really does know exactly what you're going to do, free will or no free will. So, your first premise is a contradiction in terms, which inevitable, given your argument requires said premise, makes your argument invalid.



Since your premise is false and contradictory, the subsequent argument becomes inherently absurd and meaningless.



That's an awful description. For the majority of his life, Nietzsche was decently social. He only became familiar with solitude in his later years, and even then, could not be equated to an "angry teenager in his mom's basement proclaiming how much everything sucks." Nietzsche was a free mind who went against the grain in many of his philosophical positions. He was a very knowledgable and read man. He had worked as a professor, studied under many people, held many friends, published many works, and spent much of his life preparing and perfecting his ideas for future generations. To compare him to this teenager is an awful and shortsighted insult.



1. His father died when Nietzche was only 5.
2. He never, insofar as I know, went to school to become a Pastor.
3. He studided under Theology (Not to become a Pastor) at the University of Bonn for a short time.
4. Before his time at Bonn, he had been well learned in music and language at esteemed private schools such as Schulpforta. Although Schulpforta was once monastery, by the time Nietzsche had attended, it had long been reformed into a boarding school.
5. Although Nietzsche was an atheist, he rarely developed such arguments. He was a superman but not a super atheist.
6. His atheism could probably be more attributed to his time learning Philology, and with it, ancient mythology.
7. He didn't die of syphilis. He had fallen to pneumonia. It isn't even agreed upon that he ever had syphilis, it's very possible that he hadn't.








This is true. Nietzsche respected the Jesus figure as an overman (superman) and a holder of a master morality.




Nietzsche described two kinds of morality: A master morality, and a slave morality. A morality that was born out of rationality, reason, and knowledge from the individual would be considered a master morality. A slave morality was a morality derived from fear, insecurity, conformity, ignorance, and obedience.



Nietzsche had predicted that all of western civilization would fall under a kind of nihilism in at least two centuries (I guess his prediction still has some time to fufill itself). He expected that all values would become devalued. Religion would fall. Science would meet with much trouble. Meaning would implode as a result. This hasn't happened yet.



Mipadi explained this for the most part.
When Nietzsche said, "God is Dead," he was pertaining to how the concept of a christian God holds up in an increasingly rationale and scientific community. As science was beginning to explain the world around us, Nietzsche believed the influence of the most powerful slave morality, Christianity, would disapear, and the effects of a God, real or imagined, would disapear from the planet leading to his theory of impending nihilism. He saw in the enviroment around him, a very threatening force prepared to assualt the traditional values of western culture. This is what Nietzsche meant to capture in his phrase, "God is dead."



Actually, that's not what he thought would happen. He thought it would all disappear into a dangerous nihilism.

I think some things need to be cleared up about our friend Friedrich Nietzsche.
He viewed nihilism as a means to an end. Almost an intermission between two positive philosophical theories. Although Nietzsche spoke of nihilism on many different levels ("nihilism as a normal phenomenon can be a symptom of increasing strength or of increasing weakness"), in the most common sense, Nietzsche was not a nihilist. He refered to himself as a nihilist only so far as he denied traditional values and morality, adhered to his own master morality, and held a relativistic meta-ethical position. Nietzsche infact saw nearly everyone as a kind of nihilist. Although, the nihilistic future that he predicts is both loved and hated by Nietzsche. Nietzsche loves it as a means to a refreshing, real, and healthy positive philosophy, but hates it as a stagnant destructive force. In short, that it is destroying a slave morality is good, but to replace meaninglessness with a less powerful meaninglessness isn't exactly ideal. Nietzsche predicted, and wished, that the impending nihilism would be replaced with a better world view and leave humanity in a more favorable position for progress and future advances in all fields of thought.

Nietzsche refered to overcoming this nihilism as his revaluation of values. In the Will to Power, he wrote that there must be "a movement that in some future will take the place of this perfect nihilism—but presupposes it, logically and psychologically, and certainly can come only after and out of it." This was his revaluation of values.

Well, it's kind of like a book. Humankind actually writes it and God reads it. Does that make any sense at all?

Not possible if God is omniscient and predates humankind.
Granted this would be possible if humankind and our actions did indeed predate God, but they don't. The Christian model is that God came first. So, God new before humankind even existed what was in-store.

that wasnt my point...

and i was talking about a god purely in the terms outlined in the first post.

Your point seemed obvious enough to me.

did jesus make me so i would hate him? did he know when i was born i would hate him? if he didn't, is he really omnicent?

either i have free will, and when i say "jesus sucks", it is of my own choice, and thus god is not omnipotent and therefore not as outlined in the bible, or i don't have free will, adn when i say "jesus sucks", god knew it was going to happen, which means i could have never done any differently (because god is never wrong), and thus i cannot freely believe in jesus, therefore god has no power.

Kind of late... but



To be fair, he is NOT close minded to "any other" faith. If you'd refer to the Anti-Christ again, he is rather open minded about Buddhism. Though he does criticize Buddhism on a certain level, he is definitely more positive about it.

FAE! <3333

Justin makes a good point. If all non-believers go to hell, and God knew before any non-believers existed that they would be non-believers, isn't that a little bit of favoritism? If God really loves all people, wouldn't he make it so that all of his creations would go to heaven?

I also think Gregory Koukl offered a good analogy on this question. He said that the free will situation can be compared to what parents do by conceiving children. If God is responsible for the evil we choose to do, then we in turn are responsible for the evil our adult children choose to do. We know in advance that everyone does some amount of evil - at the very least, lying, insulting people or hurting their feelings, etc. - and that includes our children. We could choose to not bring this additional evil into the world by, say, getting ourselves sterilized. Thus we're in the same boat as God: we know evil will occur by our bringing children into the world, and we are able to prevent this, but we don't. Yet we don't hold the parents of adults responsible for what their children choose to do.

This doesn't necessarily answer the question well enough, but it does offer a little bit of God's rationale.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm#cat

parents are not all powerful. god is.

..
*looks around*
huh? this from justin, who is normally cynical and non-religious?

*gasp*

anyways, free will is an interesting concept. we use it to separate ourselves from barbarism. does it really make us better though? we murder each other, are hateful...and all by choice.

maybe barbarisms better, eh?

well, according the the bible god is all-knowing, and thus knows exactly what evils i will do. god is also all-powerful, meaning he can decide whether i do something or not. and deciding to not do anything is essentially determining the path. i can not touch the steering wheel of my car if it's going where i want. if it's not going where i want, i can turn it. but just becuase i don't touch the steering wheel doesn't mean it's not going where i intend.

same with god. just because he doens't interfere doesn't mean he's letting things run.

ergo, no free will, or no god.

I still think you're off kilter about this subject. What you guys are misunderstanding with the Christian faith is that not everyone (hardly anyone, really) is Calvinist. You guys are assuming that if God knows our path beforehand that we're predestined to go to heaven or hell. This is incorrect. Everyone begins with a blank slate, and everyone chooses what they're going to do; just because God knows what's going to happen, doesn't mean He creates us in this fashion. He doesn't necessarily predestine us to heaven or hell, He simply knows which path we're going to take. Again, if there were no evil in the world, how could we measure good?

EDIT// I'm really just trying to play the devil's advocate here. I'm just sparking debate and new ideas, I really think this is a confusing subject, too. I'm just not as determined as some of those in this thread that refuse to believe there is either a God or free will. I'm looking for any way to show that it's possible.

what i'm saying is if god is all knowing and all powerful, there is no free will.

1- he is all knowing and knows who is going to go to heaven and hell.
2- he has the power to make people either go to heaven or hell.
3- if he doesn't change it so you go to heaven or hell, then he is deciding that you should go to where he knows you'll go, and thus he has decided for you, and you have no free will.
4- if he does change it, then no free will.

No. Still no. He's not going to urge people in one direction...He may know that you're going to end up in heaven or hell but that has no bearing on whether you had the free will to get to either one you chose. He set the standards for getting into heaven; whether someone leads a life in the correct fashion to arrive there or not is the question. You're incorrect in your third statement where you say this:



The only thing He decided to do was put the person on the earth. What proof do you have that people don't start with a tabula rasa and make their own choices? So what if He knows what you'll do?

EDIT// Again, He doesn't predestine you simply by knowing what you're going to do.

Latent knowledge does not interfere with choice as it does not inherently effect causation. This issue presents no fundamental problem. As long as God does not influence individual choice, free will remains.

i don't think i'm doing a good job of explaining this...

let's try again.

if you know something's about to fall, and you have the power to stop it from falling, and choose not to, you have actively decided its fate even though you have done nothing.

maybe a specifc example will do better.

god knows faustus will go to hell. god has the power to stop faustus from going to hell. god chooses not to stop faustus from going to hell, and thus decides faustus's fate.

the logic is: god has a choice to make, and if he chooses one way, faustus will go to hell. if he chooses the other way, faustus will go to heaven. therefore, when god chooses, he seals faustus's fate. faustus has no free will, because after god has decided, nothing faustus can do will save him. if something could, god would not be all-knowing.

an all-knowing and all-powerful god cannot exist in conjuntion with free will. an all-knowing god, sure. an all-powerful god, sure. but not one that's both at once.