(This topic is mainly for Christians, but anyone else is free to tag along I guess)

What do you think about the idea of predestination, as talked about in Romans 9? A lot of people interpret it differently, and I personally believe that God does pre-choose whether or not someone will believe in him. I'll state my reasons, but first I want to hear from you.

This is silly. God knows where you are going, but that do count on wherever you go is completely based on what you will have chosen to do. Complicated.

I'd like to chip in as an atheist

I'll find the reference later but scientists have discovered what is effectively the 'faith gene' which determines the likelihood of someone having a religious faith. It alters the way sections of the brain are wired depending which allele you have.

The same effect can be had by using electromagnets to alter the brain waves and you can induce faith upon someone.

I know not technically what you were asking for but I feel some people are naturally going to have a faith.

What your parents believe is a much bigger factor for most people anyways.

It is, or it used to be. My parents were both raised in Christian houses, one Protestant and one Catholic but have both moved into the grounds of atheists, or at least not practising Christians.

But this gene still shows the trait of believing and not, mainly due to its effects within the brain.

I'm sure there is. I just think it can't be too big of a factor such as environmental ones.

Can you give the exact location of what you're talking about? I don't see anything about predestination in Romans 9.

errm what? In like the first five pages of the bible god gave the first Humans (Adam and Eve) free will Which eventually lead to Eve's temptation and their expulsion from the garden of Eden. Part of our free will is the right to believe in whatever we want to believe in.

If God knows everything, he already knows if you're going to believe on him at the moment he creates you. As well as that, if God is omnipotent, he knows everything that's going to happen in your life...


If he already knows what's going to happen, as in, it's destined to happen, do you really have any free will?

If randomness doesn't exist everything is going to happen in a pre-determined way. What happens in the future is out of our ability to find out because of the complexity involved. If you bounced a trillion balls around in a room, we can't calculate where any ball will be from our own limitations, but the location of any ball is already pre-determined. Though we don't know, it is not random but may appear random. True with everything else but on a much more complex level. I'm an atheist btw but if a god does exist with infinite knowledge then everything is predetermined. But to us it's not as we can't comprehend everything -- so it may as well appear as freewill.

god is omnipotent
god knows what eve was going to do and what 'satan' was planning to do
god 'created' this free will
god knew eve would take the apple

if you combine this, +-, it will result in 'god wanted eve to take the apple, so that he could punish him'

doesn't make sence what so ever


anyway, if you believe it or not (predestination), doesn't matter
if you think 'i'm not destinated, so i'll do my best to still get destinated', then it's actually god that made you destinated, but made you start with 'contradestinated' (something like that )

to make all this confusing shizle easy:

don't worry about it, there is nothing you can do about it

He knows what's going to happen. It won't be by his doing that what he knows is going to happen is going to happen.

Have you ever watched Minority Report?

I liked that movie. It's impossible for the material world to ever experience it, though.

Not in the literal way, but think about the beginning and the ethics of arresting people for what they haven't done yet. Predestination is not the basis for an arrest; precognition of the intent is. The visioned murders never take place, and so predestination is not viable.

The reason it's up for debate is because we're talking about an omniscient, omnipotent God.

Look at it this way:
God determining what everyone's outcome will be is like a strong man lifting every piece of furniture he comes across- it's just not feasible. True, the prophecies in the Bible are evidence that God sometimes does determine someone's future, either by making sure the end result is accomplished or by knowing that it will be, but there were also warnings in the Bible (like His warning Cain in advance that if he didn't watch himself, he was going to kill Abel and therefore Abel's blood would be on his hands) that were designed to prevent bad outcomes from occurring. The fact that God did not either take a laissez-faire approach and do nothing, or prevent bad things from happening at all by miracles (most of the time), shows that He values his creation having free will more than doing what He would prefer.

The double pendulum is an example chaos theory or randomness, but it isn't random at all. It is governed by the same set of rules that everything else is governed by. It is just more complex.

Frankly, I don't understand the arguments against predestination. Indeed, if your god is meant to be omniscient then there's no questions asked: the future is determined. After all, an omniscient god knows past, present and future. He knows what all our fates are and he created the universe already knowing this. Ergo: God created us knowing what choices we'd pick; free will is an illusion.

Is it? That kind of God would know what would happen but wouldn't necessarily cause it or do anything about it. As far as I'm concerned it's still free will if the God isn't making you do it.

What do you think 'fate' is? I think it's the idea that no matter what anyone does, their lives will end the same; no matter what you do, you cannot change the future. I don't believe this.
"An omniscient god knows past, present and future"? Besides the facts I stated in my last comment, "he created the universe already knowing [our fates]"? That would mean that God himself is governed by fate! And if God cannot outrun fate, then he is not omnipotent! Fate, therefore, is faulty.

If you believe that God is truly omniscient, then you believe in destiny. There's no arguing there. If God is all knowing, then he knows everything, including your future, and the future of every other person on the planet.

No matter what you do, God already knew you were going to do it, and he already knew the outcome of your choice. There is no such thing as free will with an all-knowing God.

Um, do you mentally grasp the idea of 'free will'? Free will means doing what you want, not being hard-wired like a computer. Granted, nothing I do will surprise God, and he has the potential to see anybody's future, but does he choose to see it? No.

If Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden did not have free will, that means that God wanted them to choose death over eternal life. In that case, God would not be loving. And that's not the God I worship.

I don't think you understand the implications of free will. As well as that, you're fabricating claims about God. And you're demonstrating a lack of understanding of "omniscience." Well, you're pretty much ignoring things and making up things as you go.


The Old Testament God isn't quite as loving as the New Testament God.

If God didn't know that Eve was going to take the apple, that means God is not all knowing. Which means God isn't really that much of a god.

THEY ARE THE SAME GOD.

Then why is one God always killing people and the other God always loving people? If they're the same God, God is bipolar and on a 2000 year upswing.

The reason that God was killing people in the Hebrew Scriptures was that they had no excuse for acting up. Many of the times in the first few books of the Bible, the Israelites were put to death in large amounts because they were either committing blatant idolatry or trying to mutiny. And if he was so hell-bent (if you'll excuse the term) on killing people instead of compelling them to repent, why did He have the Babylonians capture them, and then release the remnant 70 years later? It was an act of loving discipline.

In the Christian Greek Scriptures, Jesus gave the commandment to love one another mainly because "by this they will know that you are my disciples". Henceforth, God's chosen people would be the minority and would not be able to fight and obtain a country to own to themselves- they would be spread all over the world, until the nation of Israel.

Verse 16 is a good start, homes.

"So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy"?

Why wouldn't you use a common English version?

It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.
ie: It doesn't matter what you want, what you do, or what choices you make. It's all up to God. You have no free will.

This verse just says that without God's mercy, there is no everlasting life. I guess our religions read it differently.

I simply interpret that passage as God's mercy allows us to decide our own fate...

Didn't Jesus say that the wheat would be separated from the chaff/tares?

Just a pointer. But that wouldn't suggest God has already chosen. It's better as disprovenance of purgatory I guess.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Kind of sums up your final point.

According to the Christian he knows everything that is and ever will be so he'd know everything. Meaning predestination has to exist.

So your definition of predestination is that God has the potential to know every single detail that's going to happen? I agree with that.

The potential? If God is omniscient, he does know every single detail. That's what omniscience is.

God's omniscience and free will are pretty much irreconcilable. People have been trying to find a way for the two to coexist since the 1200's, and nothing has really come of it. Free will and omniscience cannot coexist.

OK well people get too hung up on the definition of omniscience. He sees everything in the PRESENT and PAST and has the ability to discern the FUTURE.

He is God. He is omniscient. He knows everything.

There's only two relevant options here:
1) God is not omniscient.
2) Free will is an illusion.

The first one contradicts the views of at least the three Abrahamic religions.

All-knowing does not have to refer to the future.

Here is the problem here, your thinking is all fourth dimensional, assuming the existence of multiple versions of reality then the fist question is "Does god exist in all realities as the same or does he exist above all realities?"

The answer to this question would be seemingly above all realities elsewise there would indeed be multiple Gods. Still all hypothetical, but if this was the case then in some realities Eve didn't take of the fruit and nobody goes to hell, in fact in some realities Lucifer is still a good guy.

So this would mean that predestination exists in only the broadest terms.

If he doesn't know the future, how can you claim him to be all knowing?

All knowing means all knowing. Not all knowing... except the stuff you decide he shouldn't know because it inconveniences your belief system.

There's absolutely no logical reason future can be exempted from omniscience. Either you know it all, and you're omniscient, or you only know parts of stuff and you're limited omniscient. And I don't think most people want to view their god as limited.

How does predestination factor into this again? He doesn't MAKE us do stuff against our will. If we didn't have free will, then there would be no atheism. The existence of other religions is proof against fate.

If God does not know the future he is not omniscient.

Omni = everything or all
scient = knowing

speaks for itself. Where does it say omniEXCEPT THE FUTURE OR STUFF THAT CONFLICTS WITH MY RELIGIONscient?

Fine, then where does it say that God has to be completely omniscient?

Have you read any of our arguments at all?

If God knows everything, God knows the future. If God knows the future, he knows every choice you will make. Everything that is ever going to happen in the world- God already knows, and he knew it from the beginning.

If God knows everything that's going to happen, that means there is a set path for the world. You may not know your destiny, and you may think you're acting freely, but God already knows your destiny, he knows what you're going to do- your future is already set. It is predetermined.

You may think you're making choices, but God already knew what choices you were going to make from the beginning.

I don't think anyone is saying God is forcing you to make decisions. But the fact that all your decisions are already laid out... that's not free will.

If you don't understand all of that, there's no reason you should be posting in this debate...

Oh. Romans 8:29.

"For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers."

Everything you said is absolutely true, but the things God knows you're going to do, even though they were bound to happened, weren't really literally forced upon you. You can choose to never go bungie jumping. God knows if you ever do. He doesn't force you to or not to.

Basically because God knows doesn't mean that it is a bad thing.

But if God already knows if you're going to bungee jump at age 80, then it is destined for you to do so. It's not in your free will- it was going to happen period, no matter what.

I believe that God knows the future, and He knows who will all get to heaven or not, but it's still an act of our own free will.


God never forced him or made him bungee jump. It was his own choice.

But if God already knew he was going to jump, then it wasn't his choice- it was his destiny. Sure there was an illusion of free will- he thought he was making the choice to jump, but the outcome was already set- it was set before he was even born.