Rene,

 

You have completely skirted the issue of contradictions in the Free Will argument.  You deny them, ignore them, and attempt to devalue them, but you have not explained how they are irrelevant.

 

As for Logic, it is a necessary tool in objective reasoning.  Logic exposes contradictions.  And just because Darwin or anybody else claims that their argument is logical doesn't mean that it actually is.  Anyone can claim what they are saying is logical.  But the test is if there are contradictions in what they are saying.  There are no contradictions in the Predestination argument and I challenge anybody to find one.  To deny that the Truth is necessarily logical is to say that the Truth can contain contradictions. 

 

You have failed to understand my explanation of how the Free Will argument requires the fallibility of God.  I'm not the one saying He's fallible.  I'm saying His omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence make Him infallible and makes predestination necessary.  Its the Free Will doctrine that makes Him fallible. 

 

There is another thing you accuse me of saying that I am not saying.....that predestination allows us to blame God for our sins.  I don't, nor would I ever blame God for anything.  That would be insane!!  What you don't understand is that saying God is the cause of something isn't the same as blaming Him for it.  Blame requires guilt, and God is not guilty of anything.

 

You are absolutely wrong in saying that God can be omniscient while at the same time we can make a choice from our free will.  You can't have it both ways!!  If God knows what decision you are going to make before you make it, YOU CANNOT MAKE ANY OTHER DECISION THAN THE ONE HE KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO MAKE!!   Deeper thinking will show that the denial of this is the admission of God's fallibility.  God knew everything about you before He even created you.....everything you do and every decision you make.  And where did you and your actions and decisions come from?  From the Mind of God!!   He had you all planned out before He created you.  You can do nothing other than what He foreknew you were going to do.  You were not around when God's Mind was planning you.  He didn't need you to tell Him that you would make this or that choice under these or those circumstances.  He created you so that those choices could be made by you.  Can't you see that? 

 

God knows EVERYTHING and created EVERYTHING.  But you say that He didn't create the choices you make.  See the contradiction?  If you have the ability to create a decision that didn't exist before you created it, then you are equal with God in that you can create something from nothing.  And you are not equal with God.  Therefore all of your decisions were created before you made them.....in the Mind of God.  Thats not circular reasoning.  Thats not insanity.  Its the rational, intelligent, logical Truth!

 

Furthermore, God cannot act in any other way than He does.  Everything He does is perfect.  If He could choose to do something other than what he does, that other choice would be imperfect because its something other than the perfect action He is doing.  There are no choices with God.  He is perfect and does what He must do!!  Are you getting it now?  Everything that happens has to happen exactly as it does.  If not, then God is not perfect. 

 

Think of it like a human author writing a book.  The author has everyone in the story believe that they have free will. And the author has the characters believe that everything they do is of their own free will.  That will work in the mind of a created being.  They don't know any better.  But little do they know that they, and everything they do and say, is actually coming from the mind of the author.  And thats the way it is with God and us.  We are characters in His story.  Only His story has to happen exactly how it does because it is the perfect story. 

 

Like it or not, our fate is sealed.  If a person ends up in Heaven, they were predestined to end up there.  If they end up in Hell, they were predestined to end up there.  From our extremely limited perspective, it appears that we have the free will to make choices.  But that's just part of the plot of the story, a story that was written before time and is now being acted out in time.  If man has free will, then God couldn't have had the Book of Revelation written yet....He would have had to wait until man chose his own destiny. 

 

One may say, "Why do I have to go to Hell if I didn't choose to sin?"  The reason is because Hell is where sinners end up, regardless of how they came to sin.  Its part of the perfect story!!  I am inexpressably glad that I am one who ends up in Heaven.  Heaven will be a Place of bliss because there will be humans there to feel the bliss.  Likewise, Hell will be a place of horror because there will be humans there to feel the horror.  Both circumstances require human experience.  All lives that end up in Heaven or Hell do so because Perfection requires it.  But its not you or God that makes the choice of where you end up, or any other choice.  We end up where we end up and make the choices we make because Perfection necessitates it.  Anything else is impossible.

 

You can scoff and ridicule all you want.  You can call Predestination the doctrine of the Devil till the cows come home.  But that doesn't do away with the fact that Predestination has inherent in it the beauty of pure, abstract Truth....it is not contaminated by contradictions and conclusions that are drawn from limited thought processes.  Nor does it need you ar anyone else to believe it for it to be True.  Its True in spite of us.  If it makes you feel better and powerful to think that you can create your choices, thats fine.  No harm done.  You only feel that way because you were predestined to feel that way anyway!

 

By the way......the title of your letter is inaccurate.....I'm not disposing of Free Will, since you can't dispose of what doesn't exist.

 

And I hope that you will respond to Joe Hoyle's letter posted Apr. 28th.  He wanted your comments on a couple of Verses in the Bible....one's that I forgot to bring up.

 

Lastly, please don't respond by giving examples of Satan or humans using their alleged free will, or tell me that the Bible says we have free will.  I know what the Bible says.  And I understand your interpretation of it.  What I'd like for you to do is show where there are contradictions in Predestination, and how there are none in the Free Will doctrine.  In your letter you claim there are none, but you don't show how there are none.