do you believe in causal determinism? free-will in that context is exactly the same. i believe predestination is a logical extension of God's all-knowing and all-powerful nature in combination with causal determinism.

if God knows all, then in making the world and universe in the way that He did He knew how it would turn it. there was always only going to be one way that this universe, created a given way, would turn out without His intervention, so He planned His intervention as well (remember Lukas' argument that God changed His perfect opinion? lol). we still have as much free will as causal determinism allows, assuming God isn't taking control of any of us without our permission (not that He needs our permission, but it needs to be our will for it to be free will, right?).

@Dan: good to see you on the forums again! and good to see your unbiased discussion. i was getting exhausted by some of the awfully useless arguments that were coming out (some more useful than others, but some are an embarrassment to "logical" unbelievers everywhere).

for many (but i highly doubt a proportionally large number of people) this is justified by ideas found in Universalism or Annihilationism.

i don't presume to know how this is justified.

but "free will" is hard, isn't it? if our choices aren't just a product of the circumstances around us and what has happened to us before, then wouldn't they be random? does true randomness give us more free will than causal determinism? i don't think so. so if anyone designed a world that was truly fair, wouldn't everyone make identical choices to each other? now i'm just streaming thoughts from my head. this paragraph doesn't really contribute a whole lot. but there's a lot to be said about "free will".

by the way, this is directed at everyone; the "@Dan" before was just regarding his return to the forums.

what about souls? who here believes in a soul? the thing is, AlbertoT dismissed my comparison with video games earlier, but if we don't have souls, we are nothing more than the product of chemical, physical, and biological processes in our brain, body, and the environment that can act as a stimulus to us. in which case, what makes "cruelty" to us, or to animals, any different from cruelty to a robot constructed similarly; or to an artificial intelligence in a virtual environment that is constructed similarly, even if more simply? is the only thing that separates all that its affect on humans as a species?

it's not an argument as such to encourage people towards my point of view, it's more out of curiosity.

do you believe we have souls? do you believe we are no more special than other animals? do you feel it is cruel to kill insects? do you think an insect feels hard-done-by if its relatives are killed?

is it cruel to destroy a computer running a program written with self-preservation in mind? does that depend on how well it can interact with humans?

julz

EDIT: btw, when i said "awfully useless arguments", it wasn't directed at all arguments in this discussion.