Volition is not evidence of the will being free. If you wish to discuss philosophical concepts,
you are of course free to do so, but this is the BIBLE discussion forum. Oh, to be sure, there
are many here who reject a plethora of verses to claim the will is free. The Pelagian heretics
will even tell you that God is not required to bring people to belief. Man is a good guy, oh, my
goodness, he is certainly NOT the creature Scripture makes him out to be, and nor is God Who
the Bible says He is according to the many heretics who love to pretend they know what they
are talking about while contradicting and denying clearly articulated Biblical facts.
Here the discussion revolves around what Scripture says of the natural man being a slave to sin and lover of darkness refusing to come into the light as a God-hater taken captive to do the will of the devil, opposed to the spiritual things of God, which he can neither receive nor comprehend, but yet we have many here contradicting and denying what Scripture says of the natural man. They claim the man of flesh, flesh within which nothing good exists, which serves the law of sin and brings forth fruit unto death, will decide with his incurably wicked heart to believe what he hears as foolishness. They are not above rewriting verses to make them say what they want even if it is Jesus' words they are butchering. In short, they have put a philosophical construct before the Truth explicitly articulated in Scripture. They ascribe to the natural man qualities, characteristics, and abilities that are true only of the spiritual man, and then to prop up this error, pretend the natural man is a carnal Christian and not the man who is not indwelt with the Holy Spirit of God.
Part of the problem is that people think that making choices equates to the will being free. They say such things as, if the will is not free, then people are puppets. This is a logical fallacy. Making mundane choices does not in any way address what the Bible teaches about man's will being enslaved to sin, blinded to the truth, unable to hear, incapable of submitting to God, a lover of darkness, refusing to come into the light, hearing the gospel as foolishness, unable to receive or comprehend the spiritual things of God, to which he is opposed and to Whom he is hostile toward while under the power and influence of the devil, as is the whole world, out of which believers have been called. Thinking your will is free simply because you can choose what colour of socks to wear or what to have for lunch, or whether to do the right or wrong things, or what book to choose out of the mountains of them available, has no bearing on the eternal fate of your soul, and mixing those things in with what the Bible teaches about the estate of fallen man is a distraction from the real issue.
This is the crux of the conversation, such as it is, for it is out of man's nature that he makes choices, and it is with the heart that one believes... the free will proponents essentially assert that the incurably wicked heart of the natural/unregenerated man is free to choose to believe that which he is not only opposed to, but that which he can neither receive/accept nor comprehend while in the flesh as are all before becoming indwelt with the Holy Spirit of God. They have the man with zero wisdom acting wise to do God's will when Scripture says that man cannot, that flesh cannot please God, that flesh serves the law of sin and brings forth fruit unto death, not life, and is unable to submit to or obey God. And their idea of wisdom is that person choosing to believe what they hear as foolishness. They reject what Jesus said about it being impossible for a bad tree to bring forth good fruit... there are none good, no, not one! Even when asked who can be saved, Jesus said that with man it was impossible, and there are other places where we are explicitly told it is not by the will of the flesh or man but by God's will that any are saved. Some philosophers and philosophy books have said man has a will that is free and that is enough for many to parrot what they hear and throw over a slew of Scriptural truths. They ascribe to the natural man qualities, characteristics, and abilities possessed only by the spiritual man.
