Here’s an interesting post I ran across, and invited the blogger over for conversation if she’d like: discoveringgodtoday.com/2010 … -will.html If you have time, give it a read; it’s not long, and dropping a comment as encouragement, etc., might be nice too.
Cool, I’ve thrown my 2c in too, hope she at least visits us 
That’s a nice Article that I agree with Cindy.
Every single decision we make is based on previous influences on us. We are truly God’s Workmanship, Growing up, learning, falling, learning, experiencing as we move towards Godliness and the image of Christ he is moving us toward.
“Free will” basically means that having chosen some action A, we COULD HAVE chosen otherwise.
This statement is true. However our choices are not DETERMINED by these influences.
Why not? When we make free choices, these choices are UNCONSTRAINED by external agencies. The definition does not affirm that these choices are NOT INFLUENCED by external agencies.
I have a slighly different take on this. I believe that God is outside time, and hence can see all our choices and their consequences. This has several results. Firstly there is a limit to how much he can tell us without revealing what our subsequent free choices are going to be. This I think is why he chooses to speak through prophets and through the bible rather than directly.
Secondly we talk about probabilities and other choices we could have made, but the universe as a whole is an experiment we can only do once. From God’s point of view there is only one set of choices that are actually made.
That, for me, is one of the strongest arguments for EU. Nobody is forced to accept grace, it just works out that everybody freely does.
It’s also interesting to note that we have bodies that get tired, hungry, cold, ill and downright cranky. These things influence my choices. If I’m having a day when everything goes wrong at work, I’m tired and as a result I drop things in the kitchen, and it rains and floods the road outside, then somebody phones trying to sell me double glazing, I’m more likely to give them a short-tempered answer than on a good day. It’s still a free choice, but if I was free of the body I’d be more likely to be free of the bad temper it can cause.
Now scale this up: Think of someone whose parents were opressively religious, who was badly treated by mad nuns at school, who has been treatened with eternal hell, and who finally turns around and rejects God. Would it be surprising if, in the next life, having left all that behind, they could accept salvation? And wouln’t you expect the God who gave his son to offer them exactly that choice?
I would. My God is nice.
AMEN Wormwood, very nicely said!! (especially since I experienced the last paragraph of yours) And welcome to the board.
Blessings,
Bret
This is an excellent article. I especially liked her listing of those things we have no choice and control over. Our conception is either due to the sovereign choice of God, or happenstance. -thanks Cindy!
I am not sure what you mean by “based on”. But do you think that every decision we make is caused by forces external to ourselves? The determinist as well as compatibilist affirms so. In other words, the determinist and the compatibilist claim tht everything we do, could not have been otherwise, due to prior causes. Is this your position? If not, you believe in libertarian free will.
To the best of my knowledge, NO ONE holds that our decisions are not influenced by other people or by external conditions. For example, if a mosquito starts biting us, we are likely to swat it. The biting mosquito influences us to do so. However, the mosquito doesn’t CAUSE us to swat it. We may choose not to do so.
If a man points a gun at us, and demands our money, we are faced with a much stronger influence. But even in that case, this influence doesn’t CAUSE us to hand over our money. Even in such a case, we could choose not to do so, and carry out that choice.
The blogger first defined “free will” as “the power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies”
However, then she went on talking about “influences” rather than constraint. No one denies that our decisions are influenced by external agencies. But that’s very much different from the claim that they are “constrained”, that is “caused” by external agencies. The word “constrain” means “to force” or “to compel”.
If you do not believe external agencies force or compel our decisions, then you believe in free will.
Do you believe that your own conception and existence depended upon the free will choice of others, including that of your own parents towards each other? Just one different decision out of countless billions of free will decisions would have meant your non existence. It reminds me of the amino acids in the primordial soup. You are more special than that Paidon… God sovereignly determined YOU. He didn’t just create the universe and then step back and leave it all up to chance. Free will = chance occurance. Specified complexity could not exist.
I’m not wanting to debate much, so this is all I have to say. Hope all is well.
No need for you to debate, Puddyacher. Notwithstanding I will answer your questions in a general way.
I am making no claim that everything which happens, occurs directly as a result of free will decisions.
I do think God created the universe with the propensity to continue on it own. For example, he created a means for man and other sentient life to reproduce. He doesn’t create each individual dog or cat or human being directly.
I agree completely! Indeed, in my case, I know exactly what free will decision would have ensured my non-existence. My maternal grandparents lived in Chicago. In the late 1800s, my Grandfather made the decision to move to the area in which I now live. He sent a large trunk (filled with many important items) by train, ahead of him. Then he changed his mind and decided not to move to this area. Then upon further reflection, he thought, “I’ve sent ahead the trunk. I don’t want to lose all of those things. Okay, we’ll go after all.” If my grandfather had not sent ahead that trunk, he may have decided not to move to this area. Then his daughter (my mother) would never have met my father, and thus I would not have existed.
But I don’t see how this is an argument against free will. If you would just explain in what way you think it is, I would be grateful.
God’s sovereignty doesn’t imply that He is the cause every choice made by every person on earth. If that were the case, then He would be responsible for the many atrocities which constantly occur, such as the torture and murder of little children, and many others—too painful to mention.
In the case of my parents, I don’t know. But I do know that some parents practise birth control and never have children. Many who do practise birth control, cease doing so when they decide to have a child. So this free will choice resulted in a child who otherwise probably would not have existed if they had continued to practise birth control.
That’s a nice article that I agree with too, Cindy. I would add that the manner in which (a) Paul, and (b) the dry bones in Ezekiel 37, were/will be converted appears to have very little to do with free will. And if the “worst of sinners” was given lots of outside help with his “decision,” why not everybody?
And finally, a related quote from my favorite author, Thomas Allin …
“But it is said, that if man be not wholly free, his goodness is but a mechanical thing. If so, I reply, better ten thousand fold mechanical goodness that keeps one at the side of God for ever, than a wholly unrestrained freedom which leads to the devil. But the assertion is in fact as hollow as it is plausible. Man is not a machine because the power of defying God finally is not granted to him. Freedom enough is granted to resist God for ages; freedom to suffer, and to struggle; to reap what has been sown, till, taught by experience, the will of the creature is bent to the will of the Creator. If all this does not involve a freedom that is real, though limited, then human words are vain as a vehicle for human thought.” --*Christ Triumphant *(1890)
As I understand it man has freewill up to the point God decides otherwise. I tell my kids “go play in the back yard but don’t go out the front”. In the back yard my kids can do as they will… step beyond that and my will becomes an issue. At least that’s how it used to be when they were little. 
Human beings—who have been blessed with free will, who daily exercise free will, but who do not believe in free will.
This is what puzzles me. i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g374/Paidion9/Emoticons/hmmm.gif
It depends on how it’s defined. I think we have it, to a point… I just don’t think it’s as free as some would have us believe.
I like Davo’s illustration. I’d say we have real choices within our appointed limitations and boundaries. Some decisions are very random, but many are strongly influenced by our nature as humans, by our genetic makeup, by circumstances and experiences, and by the actions of others, including God.
Why is it that all healthy babies choose to start learning to walk at a certain stage of their development? Is that a free choice? Is it programmed into us? Can it be programmed into us and still be a free choice?
Sonia
Yes, Sonia and Davo – I think you have it.
As Paidion says, we DO make choices every day; maybe every minute. Many if not most of those choices are relatively free. I just got back from driving three miles to pick up our garbage cans. Did I have to? No – only if I want them back. Did I have to pick them up in the fairly early morning? No. Only if I don’t want passing carloads of people to toss their trash into them before I get there. I have a choice whether and when to pick them up, but I don’t have a choice to pick them up late AND have them definitely be empty.
If I want to bring home empty garbage cans at 4:00 pm in the middle of the summer, I probably can’t do that. This infringes on my freedom of choice. What’s more, if passing carloads of people would like to dump their garbage into a can somewhere convenient, I am taking away their choice to dump it into mine.
God, on the other hand, has absolute freedom of choice. If He wants to fill up my garbage can with rotten fly infested stinky garbage, He can do it with barely a thought. And if He wants to fill it up with roses and pearls, He can do that too – just as easily. Only God has absolute free will.
I’m pretty sure that this is more an argument of the meanings we attach to terms like “free will,” at least as far as most of us are concerned. Some of us believe in more; some in less free choice. We all believe in SOME, even the Calvinists if they think it through. Even the hard-core atheist who insists that EVERYTHING we do is a matter of interior and exterior determiners beyond our influence, cannot seriously discuss their beliefs with any credibility because after all, they’d only be reacting to those forces about which they can do nothing. Their discussion is meaningless.
Blessings – Roses and pearls! 
Cindy
I’d like to ask all of you this question.
Suppose you chose to eat a piece of cheese cake yesterday for your lunch dessert, and did in fact, eat it.
Could you have chosen not to eat it?