Jj1236

Hi

I'm a long-time wikipedia editor, who joined the community more officially (finally set up an account) in January 2011. As an advocate of public goods I admire the philosophy of anonymous contribution.Jj1236 (talk) 19:22, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Your dispute regarding the Free Will article

The conflict you are speaking about indeed exists, but in such case the sentence would say just "can coexist with an omniscient divinity"; omnipotence has nothing to do with that. Adding omnipotence to the problem suggests connections such as in the problem of evil, which is not clear at all.

Also, the problem you spoke about actually appears when free will is assumed, NOT when it is denied; but the sentence says: "free will implies that ... can coexist", i.e. makes something in religion possible. So you can see that it makes no sense when taken with regard to the omniscience question. Quite to the contrary, it can at most undermine this divinity the sentence speaks about ("either free will or omniscience", like in theological incompatibilism).

In religion there is only one place where free choices of an individual are NEEDED to make something (e.g. a coexistence) possible: this place is moral theology. In moral theology free will is, first and most of all, needed to justify judging humanity by God (the second problem, so called problem of evil, is a derivate of this, for it is always assumed anyway that God is good and the source of notions of goodness; thus the question appears not really whether God is good but how can there be a "gulf" between (good) God and (evil) world).

If you need sources for this stance that judging by God requires free will, then have a look e.g. at this: http://www.aish.com/jl/sp/bas/The-Essence-of-Mankind.html (referenced on Free will and theology). Also, Nietzsche wrote many times on why any moral injunctions or obligations are metaphysically nonsensical when one asserts determinism or something close to it (see e.g. his Twilight of the Idols, The "Improvers" of Mankind, sect.6) - he is not neutral on the subject but hardly anyone is, or can be universally officially proclaimed as such in this subject. Many people confirm there is a problem with at least divine justice when determinism is assumed. In free time I can look for more sources just for you.

Clearly the problem is much more general and regardless of the extent to which determinism works. Especially when a "will of God" (or something similar: a desire or an aim) is assumed, whereas it would require modifying either the laws of nature of (when chances appear) one's destiny, both being absurd and creating a logical conflict. But this final paragraph is indeed an OR and I'd need to look for sources supporting it, so let's stay with the former statements. 89.67.140.182 (talk) 20:49, 8 September 2014 (UTC)