Predestination Versus Free Will Via Oedipus Rex and Genesis 1

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One of the many classical philosophical and theological arguments regarding the existence and legitimacy of a “God,” as described by the Christian Bible, is predestination versus free will. In it, the concepts of whether a God who supposedly gives all humans free will can actually bestow such, considering the powers that entail being a “omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient.” Two stories that contribute to the conversation of predestination versus free will are Oedipus Rex and the Creation Story of the Book of Genesis of the Christian Bible. In examining these two stories, according to the rules set by their gods, who have dominion over them as their creators, Oedipus seems to be predestined while Adam and Eve have free will. Because of this analysis, in our own world, there are three possibilities as to what the answer to whether predestination or free will exists is: we live in a world with an non-deistic god who simply controls all events and thus free will does not exist but predestination does similar to the story of Oedipus; we live in a world with a god who watches all events but allows for both predestination and free will like the Genesis story; or we live in a world without a god where free will exists and predestination does not. Here, the first two will be examined as they are pertinent to the two stories discussed in class. To justify my beginning assumption of both stories being representative of the option of a world with only predestination, the mythology or so-called “rules,” of the worlds examined must be explained. With Oedipus Rex, the realm of Greek mythology is entered, so there were many deities, and for these deities, there were several categories. For example, there were the Primordials, Titans, Olympians, Aquatics, and Chthonics. The one that relates to this argument is Moirai, which were the three sisters who controlled all the fates of
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