Faith, Reason, and Free Will

God granted humankind free will in order to choose to do right, and, to choose God as the one and only God.

Would you agree that inherent with free will is ability to reason? In order to choose, one must have the ability to reason otherwise the decisions made are made instinctively without reflection and based on physical survival and automatically without free will, or randomly which would be chaos.

So if God granted humankind free will, and therefore the ability to reason, then why is it necessary that one can only come to believe in God through faith?

 

Why don't you ask Him and find out?

 

I don't know that it is the ability to reason but the ability to choose.

 

That is one of the many contradictions in religious faith that atheists love to point out.

 

Don't be flippant, Avatar. I would appreciate a serious answer if you would oblige me. I actually thought about you when I posted this, hoping you might have an answer that would thoughtful.

 

Yes, but the ability to choose means nothing without being able to think about it. That's my whole point. To just choose to do right automatically isn't actually choosing. But thinking about the decision and weighing the consequences of all sides of the decision and then choosing to do the right thing - despite what may be in your own financial interests or what may tempt you to do otherwise - or choosing to accept Jesus as your savior (or whomever depending on the religion) is what makes free will important, wouldn't you agree?

 

And an important one, I think. But I also don't understand the importance of faith - or I should say I don't understand what makes faith important to those who believe and who hold faith so sacredly when at the same time having free will to choose to do the right thing and to choose to accept a spiritual savior such as Jesus, is also of such foundational, even critical importance to those who believe.

 

Nope. In fact, when we have more faith in God, we have more faith in ourselves.

 

I'm somewhat dubious that FREE WILL actually exists.