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To: r9etb
However, the ideas of an active God, and human free will, are not mutually exclusive, as you insist on making them out to be.

Certainly seems that way to me.

Either one has free will, or he does not. One may not have a "free will subject to over-ride by an outside entity".

If God moves (even occasionally) to stay (or encourage) the hand of his creation, then they do not have free will. Even his choice to leave his creation to act in accordance with it's own will, becomes subject to his judgement (rendering free will illusory).

17 posted on 10/01/2001 12:15:34 PM PDT by OWK
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To: OWK
If God moves (even occasionally) to stay (or encourage) the hand of his creation, then they do not have free will. Even his choice to leave his creation to act in accordance with it's own will, becomes subject to his judgement (rendering free will illusory).

Nope. You're imposing your viewpoint onto a particular theory of reality, and then subjecting God's freedom of action to it. At root, you're claiming that a God who could create an entire universe from nothing, couldn't create a being with free will.

Then again, you already know that there is no "free will" in any absolute sense. For example, your will might be to float when you walk off a cliff. The harsh fact is that you don't have the ability to do so. Your free will is constrained by the force of gravity. Which is to say, the universe places numerous constraints on free will that you have no difficulty accepting.

Likewise, you have many, many times stated that humans operate -- indeed, are morally required to operate -- in a manner such that their exercise of free will is constrained by morality. Yet free will, however constrained, exists in spite of moral rules against raping the lovely young woman who steps into the elevator.

The one constraint you're fighting against, is that there might exist a God who could create the Universe (which would be the ultimate example of acting in History), and could still allow you to move with a free will.

You're certainly free to state that there is no such God -- but of course your say-so has no bearing on whether or not such a God actually exists.

Here we must recognize an important distinction: we're not talking about some all-encompassing concept of free will. We're really talking about a particular type of free will here -- moral free will -- which takes us straight back to those endless threads on the subject of the sources of morality.

But let's suppose you're right: suppose there's a God who acts in history, and that we don't have ultimate free will (and in the sense that it predicts Judgement, Christianity agrees with that idea to some extent). If that's the way it really is, an objectivist such as yourself should have no grounds for complaint.

All the peripheral discussion is of your creation, not mine.

Just following your comments to their logical conclusion.

23 posted on 10/01/2001 1:16:03 PM PDT by r9etb
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