Chance in Philosophy Essay

I strongly believe that some people have their destinies mapped out for them at an early stage during their life. Some might call this fate, but I prefer to see it as a calling which is a clear and unquestionable path we are destined to follow.

The first matter to be noted is that this view is in no way in contradiction to science. Free will is a natural phenomenon, something that emerged in nature with the emergence of human beings, with their

Every person would like to think that they have free will as if we did not than our existence would be pointless. Expanding on the idea of free will is the core of a naturalist argument against that of an intelligent creator in a traditional Abrahamic sense that is omniscient. Taliaferro outlines this situation aptly stating that “If God knows what you will do tomorrow, you cannot do otherwise. But if the future is fixed how can you be free?” to outline the structure of the naturalist’s point of view (Taliaferro, 34). For instance, if a God who was omniscient knew you were going to eat at the Reitz tomorrow is it really your choice to eat at the Reitz if this God knew you would eat there, and not at Chick-fil-a?” The objection seems to be

4. Boethius relates the human experience of destiny/fate and the divine foreknowledge/providence by interpreting their meanings in real life. “Providence is the immovable and simple form of all things which come into being, while Fate is the moving connection and temporal order of all things which the divine simplicity has decided to bring into being” (Boethius, 92). Boethius says that providence is what happens in one second for God and fate is what happens in the course of a lifetime for human beings. He suggests that God knows the end of our lives right from the beginning but he doesn’t necessarily know each individual action or thought that it will take for a person to get there. Fate on the other hand is free will. Human beings

The juxtaposition of predestination with the exercise of free will is an age-old question. In the pagan world, prior to the upsurge of Western development and Christianity, predestination was deemed a truth; pagan gods were superlative and dictated the lives and fates of subordinate humans. Around 524 A.D., a Roman writer, Boethius, published a tract entitled The Consolation of Philosophy. Changes in medieval times were formulated around this document. By delving deeper into the possibility of chance, Boethius proclaims that, should one identify philosophically that chance is random, there is no such thing. Because “… nothing comes out of nothing” (p. 116), it is an impossibility that, with God maintaining security, there are acts of arbitrariness. Given that humans are rational creatures and cannot exist without reason, the presence of free will is a plausible assumption because philosophy acknowledges that there is freedom for cogent beings.

Philosophy has been a subject with many views, and has been a topic of many scientists and philosophers for thousands of years. One of the vital concepts in philosophy is the idea of God and what kind of being he is. Christians believe that God is an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. If God is an omniscient, all knowing being, to what extent does his knowledge reach? If God is an all knowing being, does he know everything a person will do every day for the rest of their life? And if he does know everything, do people truly have free will? There are four major views on divine foreknowledge that attempt to explain the extent to which God’s knowledge of the future reaches; Open Theism, Simple Foreknowledge, Molinism, and Calvinism. These four views are explained throughout the book “Divine Foreknowledge” written by Gregory A. Boyd- Open Theism, David Hunt- Simple Foreknowledge, William Lane Craig- Molinism, and Paul Helm- Calvinism.

This demonstrates a basic understanding of free will and is correct technically, but he is not using it to the fullest possible extent. This is reflected in his progress of reaching enlightenment. He has just begun, and so he has only started to realize what free will is.

The classical understanding of God's relationship with time, eternity, and his knowledge of the future, as exemplified by Classical thinkers such as Boethius, Aquinas, and others, creates problems in regards to creaturely freedom. The question is typically phrased, "Since God is never wrong, if God knows at one moment that one of his creatures will perform some act at a moment which will occur after the moment he knew of the act, then will his creature perform this act?" I maintain that God does not know the future, because, first, God's knowledge of the future destroys creaturely freedom, second, God is always ever Creating, and, finally, the future is not knowable.

Seemingly, when first confronted over the issue of Free Will and Divine Foreknowledge, one tends to initially think that the two are incompatible and cannot co-exist. However in the Consolation, Boethius claims that both do exist and relate to each other, in a freeing yet also in a meaningful determined way.

We make the decision on whether or not we are going to do good in the world or evil. If he made us all only have the choice to do good in the world then everyone would be perfect and it would be like we are just going through the motions of life. No one would get the experience you gain from overcoming evils. There are also other evils in the world that include illnesses, natural disasters with whether and etc. No one will know when it’s there time to go so in order to make it into heaven you need to be living your life according to God’s standards. Even though he has our life planned out he wants to make sure you’re making the right decisions in your life on your

A thing that is omnipotent (all powerful) has complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding, and perceives all things, past and present. Free Will gives a person the ability to think and act voluntarily. They are allowed to be the authors of their own life and are able to reject that a human’s actions that is determined by external conditions or fate. That being said if we don’t have free will all actions by every person would be a direct expression of God’s will. The question is whether we life by God’s fate that has been created for us or if we live by free will. However, the life we are living is governed solely by free will. We are all given the option to make our own decisions. Our fate, or the way our life turns out is the outcome of which ones we make.

I honestly believed that I have 'free will' prior to reading this chapter or even this textbook. Because it makes you question if everything even actually exist. However, I do feel that everything exists for a reason. As they make event happens. The event can be past history which is already happening and we can not change anything about them. The formal word philosophers called determinism. It defines the basic idea that future is defined by our past. I do not fully agree with them as I am working on my future to make it better.

There are two fundamental beliefs that are common in all the major religions in the world. One of them is that God is all knowing, or omniscient. This means that God knows everything that is currently occurring, everything that has ever happened, and everything that will ever happen. The knowledge about the future is captured in a familiar statement: “He knows the end from the beginning.” In other words, nothing ever happens without God ever knowing about it. Nothing is ever a surprise, since he already knew it would happen.

He says free will is just an illusion and we often get distracted of it, truly we have no free will and decisions take us instead of us taking them. It's impossible for us to free yourself from causality that's god's doing we just don't understand it when it happens, everything is conditioned. He says if we understand our nature and how it affects us we could get better at life. When there's knowledge and understand the laws of nature and you find the answers in what you need then your life will be

Good things happen to people; bad things happen to people. Life is like a tug-of-war; we either get pulled towards the Spirit, or we get pulled towards the flesh. When a baby is born, it has not acquired knowledge yet. It can only acquire knowledge by experiencing life. The choices it makes as it evolves into a person with more knowledge draws it closer to God. Nevertheless, are the choices that we make influenced by ourselves alone? It is certainly true that we have the power to make our own decisions, but where does that power come from? It comes from God. And where does the temptation to make the wrong decisions come from? It comes from Satan. In regards, it may be true that as humans, we should be able to control which pathways we take in life; however, some people's life experiences cause them to think differently than others. Life is interactive; while things happen to us, we are the ones who choose our pathways; that is our role in life. Yes, we do have a role in life. We are the ones who make our own choices because God allowed it to happen, as it is good. The decisions that we have the power to make bring us closer to God.