RE: In your opinion what causes christians to believe in Jesus
May 16, 2025 at 7:39 pm
(This post was last modified: May 16, 2025 at 7:44 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
There's a meaningful distinction between fatalism and determinism. In a fatalistic universe things will always turn out whatever way they were going to even if we have free wills and those free wills are opposed to that outcome. In a deterministic universe there may be many different ways for things to turn out depending on an ever growing tree of prior circumstances even if we don't have free wills.
We're jumping the gun if we're talking about falsifying or confirming determinism. The question is far smaller than "how universe work"...it's just "how we work". I don't know if everything that looks like free will is itself determinism, but the examples you've offered so far demonstrably could be, both in theory and in actual practice. I'm not personally motivated towards either proposition. I don't have other beliefs which depend on it which would compel me to privilege one or the other because it fit my overall web of belief to "make sense" or gave me satisfaction. Do you think a genuine christian could say the same?
We're jumping the gun if we're talking about falsifying or confirming determinism. The question is far smaller than "how universe work"...it's just "how we work". I don't know if everything that looks like free will is itself determinism, but the examples you've offered so far demonstrably could be, both in theory and in actual practice. I'm not personally motivated towards either proposition. I don't have other beliefs which depend on it which would compel me to privilege one or the other because it fit my overall web of belief to "make sense" or gave me satisfaction. Do you think a genuine christian could say the same?
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