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omniglottal | 2 years ago

This rationale is fundamentally incorrect. God's gift of Free Will (unto Man) is specifically the power (with faith) to manifest that which is nondeterministic. Where you got this notion of determinism, and thus nonjudgment, is a fancy set of mental gymnastics which is inconsistent with any known Christian teachings.

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stareatgoats|2 years ago

> Where you got this notion of determinism (...) is a fancy set of mental gymnastics which is inconsistent with any known Christian teachings.

Nice try. But I'm assuming you are just unfamiliar with the history of the Christian church. Or if you just want to weigh in on the side of orthodoxy. But there is obviously a logical conflict between the notions of free will vs the deterministic aspect of religious teaching, sometimes called divine foreknowledge.

It has been the topic of more or less heated discussion up through the ages, where some people claim they have cracked the code (St. Augustine primarily). See these Wikipedia articles for a brief overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_theology, and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_antiquity#Christi....

Or, maybe it's mainly the link between determinism and nonjudgement that you refer to as "mental gymnastics" etc (even though that's not what you are saying)? Well, granted that's not lifted from any theology that I'm aware of. It just seems a reasonable conclusion, given the premise of a predetermined world. And maybe also a way to sneak in a reminder that religion (and Christianity in particular) is mostly about keeping track of the beam in one's own eye, rather then the mote in someone else's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_and_the_Beam