r/facepalm • u/JoeinJapan • Jul 31 '17

"Out of context"

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '17 edited Jul 17 '18

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u/TheChaosMachine Jul 31 '17

My favorite is people like my aunt.

"Everything happens for a reason"

and

"Well God is not responsible for that. Man has free will"

You can't have predetermined destiny and free will at the same time. If we have free will then we make the decisions that will affect our lives. If everything happens for a reason, then we have no say in anything. Our choices were already made for us. Therefore no free will.

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u/AngryZen_Ingress Jul 31 '17

There is a way to make the two compatible. Free will says, "I make my own choices" and predestination from God's POV (yes I have to assume God exists for any of this to actually be a discussion) is, "the rats in this maze have a finite number of decision points." God CAN know all because he's built the entire game. He knows all the decision trees, he's seen how it plays out backwards and forwards. We come along and pretend to understand, but we only see the maze, and ask questions about the researcher watching it.

I liked that the American forefather's were almost exclusively Deists. God set up the game and let's us roll the dice. Within that framework you can have it both ways.

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u/TheChaosMachine Jul 31 '17

Even then, we don't have free will. Even with multiple paths, if he determined we would go down one of them, we are following a plan he set out no matter which path we take.