> > Why? If someone gives you a hammer, does he control how you use it? In the same way, God gives free will, but doesn't control how it's used.
>
> See, I don't think this analogy flows with what you wrote in the paragraph above. If the souls don't have control over the tools they have for decision-making, they don't have control over the hammer. In your sense, they were given a hammer, and also a bunch of programming on how they could use it. They are, in essence, automatons.
>
> > However, God doesn't choose for us to do a as a result of A, we do. He simply knows what we're going to decide ahead of time and uses that knowledge to achieve his purpose.
>
> But god has also controlled how we are able to make decisions, so, in essence, he controls how we will make those decisions.
>
> Consider this argument:
>
> (1) Given: God creates and controls physical laws.
> (2) Given: God creates and controls the intrinsic nature of souls.
> (3) Given: Souls have only physical factors (experiences and makeup of their bodies) and their intrinsic nature to control their decision making process.
> (4) Therefore: God creates and controls the decision making processes of souls [from (1), (2) and (3)].
>
> Is this faulty reasoning?
>
> Stephen

Hmm.

This is faulty, I think, for one thing: God cannot commit an evil act. By stating that humans are automatons simply doing God's bidding (which seems to be what you might be trying to say), you are implying that, via control of the decision making process, God is committing evil acts, being evil. The Christian God cannot do this. I think an argument that there is some semblance of free will within us is based upon the fact that humans *do* decide to commit evil acts, something the Christian God is incapable of, as per my understanding. So I do think that we the fact that we can commit evil means that we do have free will to *some* extent. What that extent is, I'm not entirely sure of, and frankly, I doubt whether we can ever know.

Something I keep coming back to in my mind is the fact that you, I, everyone else, are trying to use the laws of logic/reasoning/whatever to explain how God works, when God exists outside of those laws. He created those laws, not vice versa. God can defy logic, because God *created* logic. Therefore, I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that there *is no* reasonable explanation, comprehendable by the human mind, as to how our wills interact with God's. The capacity to know this, the tools necessary to figure this out, were not given to us.

What this means, I'm not entirely sure. :-P

The Other "Definitely feeling like the Single-A shortstop called up to the majors unexpectedly throughout this entire discussion" Matthew