October 8, 2002

Re: Annatar Fate/Destiny
Danny

I agree with your points made. Truth is that some of the issues you brought up also depend largely on a person's beleif about their own existence. A philosophical beleif that I have never bought into is that we did not exist before being born into this life. That implies that God created our personality, our disposition towards good and evil beings etc. That would imply that a God with foreknowlege of how we will react is then responsible for how the world turns out because He created good and evil beings and placed them where He knew they would commit atrocities etc. What I have always beleived is that there is an element of each person that has and will always exist. God gave bodies to those spirits if you will. My thoughts on that are that He knows each one personally and knows how they will behave. This life is not for us to show Him how we will react, but to show ourselves. God could have predicted where each spirit would end up, but it is through living that experience that we discover that about ourselves, and grow because of it.

So each person has choice in life. Just because a supreme being knows what choices we will make doesn't mean that He condones those choices, nor does it remove the choice from our shoulders.

My view on life differs from Tolkien slightly seeing that in the very begining of Silmarillion Illuvitar created the other Valar etc, and as I understand each Valar reflects certain attributes of Illuvitar. That poses some interesting questions about Melkor that I don't want to get into right now. However, when looking on a level of the Lord of the Rings (the concluding chapters in the whole epic tale) it has some application. Olorin (Gandalf) brought aspects of his character, wisdom and power from an identity that he had long before he was ever called Gandalf or Mithrandir. Illuvitar could forsee that Gandalf would do what he did, but that doesn't remove the choice from Gandalf's shoulders.

On a finishing note, my stating that a supreme being can forsee the dominoes as you put it doesn't say that He doesn't also see the infinite variety of possabilities. I feel that He does see that infinite variety of possabilities, but that beyond that He has the wisdom and knowlege to know which sequence out of them all will be the one that happens, which to me is even greater knowlege and wisdom than just seeing them all.