CAMPBELL34 VS. LIBERTINE :The War To Settle The Score...

But he did not make you do it he just knows what you are going to

ex.fast forward on videotape

 

why did god create & give satan the ability and opportunity to overcome a human's free will and make it nil? you're saying that the devil does not merely influence ("psst, hey, do it") a person's free decision-making, which is evil enough, but actually removes the person's freedom and causes the person to do acts against his will.

this, i think, many christians would dispute, and argue that all persons maintain free will, no matter how often they turn their backs to the lord. in this way, even the most unbelieving unbeliever has a fair, free chance to right walk back into the flock.

more than this, where do you base your claims that the devil eats up humans' free will upon? you say "free will is a choice" - yes, by definition, free will is choice. but i know you mean that we decide whether or not we have free will, which is absurd, and as far as i know, not maintained in scripture.

according to you, if i choose to check out of the 'flock', i have zero chance of turning around and choosing to re-enter it, because i'll cease to become a human being with free will, and will become satan's robot. haha!! the verse you provide simply says, "choose who you will serve", not "choose whether you want to have free will".

 

It is written in the bible, that sinning is giving a place to the devil. Obviously someone like an atheist who sins frequently, talks out against God and doesn't care will be harder to try to turn around than some other people.

Although even if you are hardened, you aren't unbreakable. Only in the afterlife, will there be no turning back. Up until death you will have the chance to get saved, you will have the free will (however small) to accept Christ. It may be harder and some walls might have to come down, but it's still there.

 

As in, the devil says, "psst, do it, you know you wanna", and you freely choose, "yeah, i'm going to do it."

or do you mean to say that giving a place to the devil is letting him make your actions for you?

why?

if you have no free will because the devil's gobbled it up, then you are nothing.

have you ever seen "a clockwork orange"?
you should watch it, it's brilliant.

there's a line from the prison chaplain when alex is about to undergo a new treatment
to change him from a freely-choosing criminal into a freedomless, but "good" member of society.

the chaplain says, "If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."

the point is, no matter how good alex is after the treatment, it is worthless because he did not freely choose to be good.
likewise, if we don't freely choose to perform evil acts, they are worthless, having no bearing upon us spiritually.

 

Clutching head in hands, writhing in fighting to be free, as Beethoven's 9th plays.

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" I don't think that there is a subconscious mind. I hear people say, ' Well, we are really guided by our subconscious mind.' This is just silly, we don't have a subconscious mind. Things are just as we see them, no more than that. "

What are your thoughts?


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i think there is a subconscious mind; in the sense that i often feel things that are irrational, or seemingly unwarranted. if i take the time to question my motives, reasons often go back, and back, to some old memory or incident, which some part of me was remembering.
for example, an easy example, i will sit and listen to a song and really think about something, intensely, emotionally... later, weeks, i hear the song again and seemingly without reason, feel strange intense emotions welling up. some kind of forgotten memory is working. does that count as subconscious workings?

(many times, perhaps most times, we act according to these changing emotions that seem to come up of their own accord)

 

I wholeheartedly agree. And what of NMR, EEG, and other biophysical monitoring that demonstrates that our minds respond to stimuli that we do not consciously recognize, 'subliminal flash' realted studies (flash one 1/24th second of a coke can and more people buy coke), and what of dreams, and what about... the list goes on and on.

Yes, it exists. How "big is it' relative to the conscious mind; can we, possibly, quantify in this way ?


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it actually frightens me, or perhaps not frightens, but frustrates me.... like i said, it seems that much, or most, of the time, we act according to parts of ourself that we are not in control of. i find myself questioning myself very often, "why do i feel this way? why do i think this way? what do i mean by this?" etc. i think it is enormous, in relation to the conscious mind. talking of free will, i don't think we truly have free will at all, because we are controlled, albeit by our own minds. to truly be free, we must understand ourselves, and what an enormous undertaking that must be..

 

maybe a more practicle question would be "how much power does it have over us?"

 

Immediately after seeing a faimiliar visual image the brain, a high percentage of the time, generates an EEG-measured signal called 'P-300' that indicates that that the image is familiar:


http://www.brainwavescience.com/research.php

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How does understanding one's self make them free? and what exactly is the standard of knowing one's self?

 

people say, "what do you like?"
and i say, "right now, i like ..." because i don't know what "i" like. i don't know what "i" am.

similarly, i don't know what "i" think, and i often feel that i am not in control of myself. i like how occam speaks of himself in the third person, "occam thinks... occam knows..."; i don't wish to speak for occam, but i interpret that as an understanding of how "i" is so continually changing.

 

because when we understand ourselves, we act according to what we want to do. i do something because it is what "I" want to do.

good question!!

 

isn't that interesting!! i think we remember and catalogue our memories much more efficiently than we consciously are aware of.

 

we're all being controled to some degree by our subconscous minds.

"There is no war between good and evil, only one between perception and deception"--St. Anchovie of Pesto

I don't think there's a standard of measure, persay, I think it's more a matter of deciding which direction to move in--discovery or denial.

 

that's probably the most important decision, that's good - it's a million times better to admit that you're lost than to pretend that you know where you are.

 

Let me know when you figure out how to figure yourself out. And then let me know if that "frees" you.

I like to know what works and what doesn't, because so far I have only found one standard for true liberation. I love to be Liberal- ahhh *sighs*... freedom is a bliss.

 

Humility vs pride. "Pride goeth before a fall" because the guy who's too proud to admit he bought the wrong map doesn't know where the edge of the cliff is.

 

"be humble like the grass", haha
advice all of us need to be given at times