Does God have free will or did Adam have free will?

[Kozmik]

There are only two people on earth; Adam and Eve.

Adam commits suicide.
Therefore, Eve dies barren.
Therefore, the human race is finished with Adam and Eve.
Therefore, God does not have free will.
Therefore, Adam had free will.

Either God has free will or Adam had free will.

[Captain Amazing]

How does Adam committing suicide negate God's free will?

[kunilou]

God creates another Adam.

[Kozmik]

How does Adam committing suicide negate God's free will?And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply
Gen. 1:28

[Erinaceus europaeus]

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply
Gen. 1:28

:confused: Messing up god's plans doesn't mean he has no free will.

[Bytegeist]

How does Adam committing suicide negate God's free will?
Yes. It's pretty much the same scenario when a person chooses to have a child, and that child later grows up and chooses to commit suicide. Either one, or both, parties might or might not have free will. You can't tell from the information given.

(Actually, you can't even tell what free will is exactly supposed to mean in the first place, but I'm punting that thorny question for now.)

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply Gen. 1:28

I don't see how that answers Amazing's question. God is exercising his free will, giving humans a general order. Then Adam kills himself (in your scenario), exercising his free will too. Perhaps that would greatly disappoint God, or anger him, but that would only mean that He is not omniscient. He can't forsee everything. Either that, or He's a sadistic prankster, playing with life and death.

[Kozmik]

Perhaps that would greatly disappoint God, or anger him Eve would be disappointed, too. :)

[Good Egg]

Before Adam died, he had impregnated Eve, and she has twins, a boy and a girl. Life goes on.

[ouryL]

Adam was immortal until...

[Talon Karrde]

Or gee, yaknow, maybe God lets things happen that he doesn't want to happen.
Why is it that nobody ever considers that?

[Mangetout]

Free will doesn't guarantee getting what you want, it only means the ability to choose what you want.

[Kozmik]

Now that I think about it, maybe this situation is the same for the eating of the forbitten fruit. In both cases, Adam disobeys God. But are the implications different?

[Mangetout]

That Adam was able to circumvent God's choice (assuming for the sake of argument that he did - rather than actually playing straight into God's hands) is nothing to do with God's free will - God chose something, he just didn't [i]get it. It might be an issue concerning omnipotence, or the assertion of it, but as I said, free will just means you get to enact some kind of choice, it doesn't mean that choice has to play out as you would wish it to.

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

Before Adam died, he had impregnated Eve, and she has twins, a boy and a girl. Life goes on.In a pinch, just having a boy would work, too.

[Kozmik]

Is Adam disobeying God by committing suicide is the same as Adam disobeying God by eating of the forbidden fruit?
Do both examples have the same theological import?

[Catalyst]

Augustine held that both God and Adam (pre-fall) had perfectly free will. In fact, they had free will to a greater degree than any human that followed them; Augustine's term for their state was posse peccarre, posse non peccarre, able to sin or not to sin. Post-Adam & Eve humans would have fallen in to one of two other categories:
non posse peccarre (not able to sin): describes humans in the "City of God," or acting in perfect accord with God's will. Despite being unable to sin, Augustine considers this condition to be one of free will.
non posse non peccarre (not able not to sin): describes the rest of us schmucks. If I recall correctly, Augustine considered this to be a less free-willed condition than non posse peccarre because it is tainted with sin.
Personally, I've got some problems with Augustine's reasoning, particularly when it comes to reconciling the idea of both man and God having free will. Since only Adam and Eve have, according to Augustine, what I'd call free will, this is where the problem sticks out most for me. Assuming that

God has free will
Adam & Eve have free will
God is omniscient and has foreknowledge of future events
God is omnipotent
God is infallible

let's suppose that Adam tries to off himself. It seems to me that there are three conclusions one can draw:

God didn't expect it, negating the idea that he's omniscient
God knew it would happen but couldn't do anything to stop it, negating the idea that he's omnipotent
God would see it coming and prevent it, negating the idea that Adam has free will.
Augustine's answer is pretty much to accept as given that God is both omnipotent and omniscient (as well as omnipresent and omnibenevolent), but to live like you have free will regardless, because living otherwise invites one to act sinfully.

[Strinka]

God would see it coming and prevent it, negating the idea that Adam has free will.I disagree. Adam could want to kill himself but be unable to due to god. Not really all that different from if you tried to kill yourself, and someone stopped you through non-supernatual means. You'd still have free will; you just wouldn't be able to do what you want to do with that free wil.

[Captain Amazing]

let's suppose that Adam tries to off himself. It seems to me that there are three conclusions one can draw:

God didn't expect it, negating the idea that he's omniscient
God knew it would happen but couldn't do anything to stop it, negating the idea that he's omnipotent
God would see it coming and prevent it, negating the idea that Adam has free will.
Augustine's answer is pretty much to accept as given that God is both omnipotent and omniscient (as well as omnipresent and omnibenevolent), but to live like you have free will regardless, because living otherwise invites one to act sinfully.

Or, God knew it would happen but doesn't choose to do anything to stop it, which maybe negates the idea he's omnibenevolent.

I also don't see how God preventing Adam's suicide negates Adam's free will. If I see you trying to commit suicide and stop you, that doesn't negate your free will. You can still choose to try to commit suicide, you just wouldn't be successful. That's not the way "free will" tends to be used. I mean, no matter how much will I have, I can't levitate across the room, shoot fireballs out of my fingers, or run a 3 minute mile.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Or gee, yaknow, maybe God lets things happen that he doesn't want to happen.
Why is it that nobody ever considers that?
Because it's logically impossible.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Augustine held that both God and Adam (pre-fall) had perfectly free will. In fact, they had free will to a greater degree than any human that followed them; Augustine's term for their state was posse peccarre, posse non peccarre
The main problem with this is that Adam and Eve supposedly did not know right from wrong until after they ate the fruit. How is it possible to able to choose right from wrong if one does not know the difference?

I agree with everything else you said.

[Catalyst]

I disagree. Adam could want to kill himself but be unable to due to god. Not really all that different from if you tried to kill yourself, and someone stopped you through non-supernatual means. You'd still have free will; you just wouldn't be able to do what you want to do with that free wil.
Fair enough; I suppose I'm thinking more of free choice than free will. Still, I question whether free will is meaningful without free choice, particularly when choice is being arbitrarily restricted by an omnipotent will. That setup seems significantly different to me than being prevented by non-willful laws of nature from, say, shooting death rays from my eyes.

The main problem with this is that Adam and Eve supposedly did not know right from wrong until after they ate the fruit. How is it possible to able to choose right from wrong if one does not know the difference?
I haven't studied Augustine nearly well enough to know whether he answered that particular question, but I suppose one could argue that even if you don't know right from wrong, you're still making choices; Adam and Eve had the ability to sin or not to sin, even if they didn't know what it meant to sin or not to sin.

Another question comes to mind: if God is omnipotent and Adam has free will, can God make Adam not want to commit suicide? If he can, doesn't that mean that Adam doesn't have free will? If he can't, doesn't that mean that God isn't omnipotent?

[ambushed]

Einstein always wonderred if "God" had free will. He tended to doubt it.

[Good Egg]

I have an interesting thought. I read that death didn't come into the world until sin happened; the eating of the fruit. So Adam couldn't die before that, not possible. hmmmm

[Kozmik]

Einstein always wonderred if "God" had free will. He tended to doubt it.Einstein said, "God does not play dice". I always wondered what he meant. It's very profound. Did he believe that the universe was not just some cosmic throw of the dice? What is the relationship between God and chance?

[ambushed]

Einstein said, "God does not play dice". I always wondered what he meant. It's very profound. Did he believe that the universe was not just some cosmic throw of the dice? What is the relationship between God and chance?I'll avoid undue precision for understandings stake...

"God does not play dice" was Einstein's response to Neils Bohr's (and others') arguments that nature is deeply and fundamentally random at the level of the atom (Bohr's view has prevailed overwhelming now for three-quarters of a century). Einstein adamantly refused to accept such randomness for the rest of his life, fiercely defending the idea of strict determinism (and thus, the absense of free will, even for "God").

I must emphasize that when Einstein used the word "God", he merely meant it as a synonym for Nature. He wrote a letter explicitly proclaiming himself an atheist, but there has been disagreement about precisely what he meant ever after (and I don't consider it groundless debate, even though I personally believe he meant he was a soft atheist and areligious).

If randomness and indeterminsim are the way of the Universe (and this view appears unassailable at present), then this would affect the definitions of the word "God" one would be allowed to use. In a sense, "chance" might arguably limit "God's" power. But since another of "God's" near-universal attributes is its transcendence, and, by definition, nothing transcendent can be limited by the laws of Nature or the beliefs and actions of the non-transcendent, it is by no means clear that "God" must be limited.

My own view is that the attribute "transcendence" is merely nonsense, and even if it weren't, it would mean that "God" will be forever unknown and unknowable.