Questions about God: Omnipotence and Free Will

[@Lemon-pf3pm]

Free Will allows for a participation in creativity which allows for a higher gradient of perfections if the counter-weight of possible destruction isn't dominant. The ability to destroy Free Will is an ability to harm, and an ability to harm is a weakness, and a weakness is a reasonable limitation to God's perfection, thus He does not have it. Beautiful deduction. The Holy Spirit has no passion to dominate, to *make* us follow Him, he invites us gently in order to set us free by baptising our will. Also, creat-ivity in an ontological true sense means the ability to *create* like God does. We are allowed to be co-creater, not just as a mechanical reordering of present goods but as an act of true spontaneity, which is the locus of our mirroring of God and the act of creation ex nihilo. I am certainly working on not only accepting Free Will in a compatiblist sense, but as outlined here, spontaneity and deciding otherwise: libertarian

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

Yes.

[@Jamienewman0]

You toss a mighty fine word salad.

[@flavioa2252]

@@Jamienewman0maybe it’s an IQ issue for you?

[@tomatopotato2881]

The theistic problem of free will was always the most challenging for me to wrestle with, although the gap I find difficult to close isn't between omnipotence and free will: an omnipotent being can create beings free to choose as they see fit. Rather, I struggle with what I perceive to be a gap between omniscience and free will. If omniscience means the ability to see the future, then it seems impossible to see it if we are free to shape it spontaneously with our decisions. If a being knows what I'm going to do before I do it, along with the entirety of my life decisions in advance, then I could not have possibly shaped my life any other way than it was capable of being preconceived in advance. Either my fate was already sealed in advance while I was destined to do everything I did so far and will do in the future, or else my decisions should not be foreseeable in advance even by a creator who gave me the ability to dynamically shape the future with every decision I'm making, including now. At least any other way is working beyond my ability to comprehend.

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

I think . . . I think you may need one of my other videos in this series.

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

Or maybe 4 of them!

[@DaddyBooneDon]

I think of God's omnipotence, particularly His sovereignty, is more like He's orchestrating events. In Genesis, Joseph said "you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." I've also heard that God's will is like a river, and our free will is like an ant that lives in a ping pong ball floating down that river. We can freely choose among a smaller set of choices, but ultimately God's will is done. Maybe... when we say "Thy will be done," this increases the set of choices we have, since we would be aligning our will with God's, albeit in an imperfect way.

[@W.Aaron32]

Thank you for your analysis and breakdown of the logical paths to take. I don't think men have free will, but rather free agency - to accept God's will or go against it, and God maintains the choices available to us. His power spawns from being "all knowing" knowing us so perfectly that he already knows they choices we'll make, just like the science of statisitcs can genreally predict the future with a measured degree of accuracy (imperfectly due to our imperfect knowledge [of course]). One thing that had stumped me was a spiritual experience I had (what I believe is Nirvana, Kundalini Awakening, or equivalent) in which whatever I had thought of manifested itself. It seriously confused me if I was living in my own reality, and multiverses exist - and thereby I was essentially "god" of my own universe. If my thoughts create reality, how does that affect the free will of others? Are people simply conjectures of my own mind? Yet, if I had that ability, why couldn't I return to that spiritual state again? What's the relation to complete submission to God to receive that power, and why is it necessary? What resolved the confusion for me, was realizing that my will was "swallowed up" in God's will, and that effectually God was giving me the thought and desire, thus resulting in miraculous experiences.

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

So we still have choices we are able to make? I'd be careful of all the kind of spirituality. Prayer, the Bible, and the Golden Rule--that's what we need.