Hmm, okay, again, my apologies to all the people that are feeling some degree of disappointment for seeing this thread re-appear. And for the people that wonder why I don't just start this in a brand new thread? Well, it seems like more people will involve themselves in the discussion this way...
Anyway - I suppose anyone can feel free to answer although I am asking this mainly to TurboMike. And I am asking this out in the open so that it might give anyone who reads these words something new to consider.
When I was younger I did not believe in God. After some unique life experiences and contemplation, I have a 95% belief in the existence of "God". I will say that I encourage different beliefs (including disbeliefs) more or less in the way that I encourage everyone to have the car of their choice in the color that they prefer.
So - the Calvinism-vs-Arminism thing. I have put a lot of thought into this. I have the free will to make a choice. For instance, I put a lot of thought back in 1997 whether to stay in the Navy or to "get out" so I could go back to school. Yet looking back on that decision now, I take a Calvinist view that I was already pre-destined to chose to go back to school based on the things that have happened between then and now. This is but one decision in a long line of decision that I feel like I made from free will, but when I look at all of my decisions, all put together, my feeling is that every one of them was already predestined for me to have been made exactly as I chose them.
(10:14pm) Certainly, there will be some that think I'm completely insane. And during my moments that take up 5% of the time, I feel the same way. In my contemplations of this, this belief could be expanded to say that not only these decisions were predestined, but everything in between - my decision to have a hamburger instead of a salad (or vice versa thanks to mad cow?) The tree root that I didn't see and tripped over. Or maybe the fact that I did see the tree root and avoided it (but maybe
THAT detail might have escaped my memory because it wasn't significant enough?)
Maybe someone can correct this quote (as well as include the location in the bible?) God says something like "Even before you were born, I knew you."
(10:20pm) What this means to
ME is that God was saying I knew you were going to be a boy, or a girl, and you were going to be born in Bethlehem, or Atlanta, or Moscow, and you would grow up and be a math teacher, or a plumber and you would get married when you were 27 years old, and on Tuesday, November the 4th, you would have a turkey sandwich and applesauce with kool aid for lunch.
Does this not sound crazy to anyone?
But then here's the real kicker - how can a person believe this, and believe in free will at the same time? Sometime in my future, I'm might have to chose between two jobs that I have applied for. Maybe only one application will turn into a job offer, maybe it will be neither. But I believe the outcome has already been determined. I do not yet know what it is. If this does turn out to be a case of a choice between the two job offers, God already knows what my choice will be. I might give it a lot of thought, or instead, I might decide immediately. I might not have any choice at all. I will not know what will happen until it happens. But it causes my great constipation to believe that god already knows what my choice will be!
So how is it that I really have free will? (this is in my own perspective, in any case)
(message has been submitted before completion, further thinking & typing continues as of right now, with additional words soon to be added)
10:29pm - completed.
I decided to add that my current belief is that "free will" is an illusion - we (myself included) feel we have free will, but if the truth were known, we don't really have free will. sound crazy to you?