Regarding the Existence or Absence of God

[stu]

You cannot be all knowing and give choice, the two are opposed definitions

Free means an unfettered exemption from a rule or requirement.

If God had omniscience you would be obliged to meet the inevitability of the omniscience and thereby fulfil it's requirement .You would have no choice in the end but to carry your actions through. That is fatalism.

If I tell a child not to play with a knife and give it the choice by information I give it, to put the knife down or keep playing with it and hurt itself, but I know the outcome, no matter what I tell it, the outcome MUST occur. In effect the child has no choice.It must follow through to the omniscient inevitable result.

According to christianity we are all born sinners. None of us has the freedom not to be sinnner from birth. That is pre determination. You cannot choose to start out a non sinner under those conditions. That is not
unfettered exemption from a rule.

If the outcome of all your actions are known before you have made them, then they are predetermined by that very omniscient definition.You have no choice how they will develop in the end.No matter what you do you would be unable to alter the outcome.

You cannot be all knowing and give choice the two are opposed definitions

 

[goldenarm]

Originally posted by stu
You cannot be all knowing and give choice, the two are opposed definitions

If God had omniscience you would be obliged to meet the inevitability of the omniscience and thereby fulfil it's requirement .You would have no choice in the end but to carry your actions through. That is fatalism.

If the outcome of all your actions are known before you have made them, then they are predetermined by that very omniscient definition.You have no choice how they will develop in the end.No matter what you do you would be unable to alter the outcome.

You cannot be all knowing and give choice the two are opposed definitions

If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, doesn't this imply that nothing is beyond His grasp? So by definition, He can give us free will and also know what we will do with our free will. By definition.

To God, the past, present and future are linear and finite. To mortal man, only the past is finite and the present and future holds limitless possibilities. From our perspective, we have free will as to what we will do tomorrow. From God's perspective, He already knows what we will do. It seems that we are just arguing semantics here.

While we DO know what free will means, we DON'T know how to define a being of unlimited power. Therefore, you can't define the properties of God. Comparing a defined term to an undefined term yields an undefined result.

Daniel_m, if I serve you at McDonald's I'll be sure to piss on your fries!

 

[rs7]

Originally posted by goldenarm

Daniel_m, if I serve you at McDonald's I'll be sure to piss on your fries!

Is this what Jesus would do? This statement really helps your case. Do unto others, etc.

I guess there is a big difference between believing in God and believing in humanity.

 

[stu]

If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, doesn't this imply that nothing is beyond His grasp? So by definition, He can give us free will and also know what we will do with our free will. By definition.

No not by definition. All knowing means exactly that - knows all, knows the outcome knows what we will do therefore by definition the outcome is known. If we don't want that outcome - tough - its already known therfore that is what WILL happen


To God, the past, present and future are linear and finite. To mortal man, only the past is finite and the present and future holds limitless possibilities. From our perspective, we have free will as to what we will do tomorrow. From God's perspective, He already knows what we will do. It seems that we are just arguing semantics here.


Your first sentence is a definate statement when it can only be your presumption in this debate. I would contend it to be an enormous presumption and an erroneous one, however if from our perspective we have free will, that does not then make the jump to it was given by god. Such a conclusion in my opinion is unsupportable. That is not semantics


While we DO know what free will means, we DON'T know how to define a being of unlimited power. Therefore, you can't define the properties of God. Comparing a defined term to an undefined term yields an undefined result.

You can't define God then you can't prove him and it becomes difficult to discuss things you can't define. You may believe in such things but you can't then make categorical statements such as "To God, the past, present and future are linear and finite". Under such conditions your "God" is unknowable, it is your personal god. It cannot rightly be stated to be the TRUTH. Truth requires examination, observation and confirmation within our known context. It is a.k.a.Science.

Daniel_m, if I serve you at McDonald's I'll be sure to piss on your fries!

LOL No vinegar on mine puuuuleeeze

 

[stu]

Originally posted by rs7


Is this what Jesus would do? This statement really helps your case. Do unto others, etc.

I guess there is a big difference between believing in God and believing in humanity.


Apart from the humorous side of that, rs7 is right.

Christians and the like would make a better start by practising what they want to preach.
If you defend righteousness in the name of your God to the extent that you do , such comments suggest an insincerity which defeats and denies your cause and your God, whom you try so hard to say exists

 

[goldenarm]

Originally posted by stu
Originally posted by rs7


Is this what Jesus would do? This statement really helps your case. Do unto others, etc.

I guess there is a big difference between believing in God and believing in humanity.


Apart from the humorous side of that, rs7 is right.

Christians and the like would make a better start by practising what they want to preach.

Hey, I never claimed to be Mother Theresa. I am a Christian and I believe in God but I have my failings when it comes to obnoxious know-it-alls who like to lob insults at me. Sometimes my temper gets the better of me. So sue me.

 

[TriPack]

Originally posted by stu
You cannot be all knowing and give choice, the two are opposed definitions

Free means an unfettered exemption from a rule or requirement.

If God had omniscience you would be obliged to meet the inevitability of the omniscience and thereby fulfil it's requirement .You would have no choice in the end but to carry your actions through. That is fatalism.

The crux of the argument is that because god knows what will happen it must happen. Therefore god forces it to happen. This is a logical stretch at best.

It is akin to the following scenario: I know I must get to work on time today or I will lose my job. Because I know I must get to work on time, I therefore have no choice in the matter, and fatalistically go to work today because I know I must do it, therefore I have lost my free will.

God forsees the future as a state which naturally and surely will be, not as one which must be because he has arbitrarily willed that it shall be.

If I tell a child not to play with a knife and give it the choice by information I give it, to put the knife down or keep playing with it and hurt itself, but I know the outcome, no matter what I tell it, the outcome MUST occur. In effect the child has no choice.It must follow through to the omniscient inevitable result.

The outcome will occur but nothing is forcing the result on the child. This is a prime example. The key is that no interference occurred, therefore it was truly a free act by the child. There was no restriction by the parent on the child. Just because you know the outcome doesn't make the child's act any less free. The child still exerted his free will to do what he wanted with the knife, even though you have forseen the eventual outcome. If you had forced the outcome to occur then yes I would agree that the child had no free will. But if you don't interfere then free will exists nontheless.

It is like Star Trek the Next Generation where on a given planet they set up a watching post where they spy on the inhabitants of a planet. The inhabitants don't know they are being watched. Let's say the inhabitants of the planet are on the verge of making a major scientific breakthrough. Piccard knows that they will eventually discover the warp drive or whatever. Does this knowledge preclude the free acts of the people on that planet? Could you then say that they were fated to discover warp drive?

Couldn't you say the same thing about all the scientific discoveries that have occurred in our world? We were fated to discover the television, x-rays, microwave machines, the internet, the I Love You virus etc., all fated because it was forseeable that these things would occur.

According to christianity we are all born sinners. None of us has the freedom not to be sinnner from birth. That is pre determination. You cannot choose to start out a non sinner under those conditions. That is not
unfettered exemption from a rule.

Not all christianity agrees with that creed, so it isn't fair to say "according to christianity".

If the outcome of all your actions are known before you have made them, then they are predetermined by that very omniscient definition.You have no choice how they will develop in the end.No matter what you do you would be unable to alter the outcome.

You cannot be all knowing and give choice the two are opposed definitions

The fallacy I see is that predetermination is not the same thing as having foreknowledge. Omniscience is indicative of foreknowledge, but not of predetermination. To get predetermination god would have to directly interfere with the choices made by men. God would have to actively prevent us from making decisions that would be "wrong" and force us to make decisions that would be "right" according to the will of god.

But supposing that god has to force people to act according to his desires or that he desires that we make a particular choice over the other presupposes that god can't in fact see what will eventually happen, and that his knowledge is in fact fallible. This is the fatal flaw of fatalism, for it assumes that god is not in fact omniscient in order to prove its logic. If god is indeed omniscient events always unfold as he has forseen then there is no "must". But this knowledge does not in any way limit our ability to freely make our own choices as we see fit. This is how I define free will - the ability to act according to our own choices, and this is why I see no contradiction between god being omniscient and with the free will of man.

 

[axeman]

This is very subtle but important.

No one is claiming that god is FORCING you to
do what he has foreseen.

SImply put, if omniscience is possible, wether it be
by god or any other entity, this means that the
future is fixed.

Now given that this is the case, anyone making choices
in this state will always end up making the choices
which lead him to his predetermined future.

A movie analogy explains this perfectly I think.

Suppose you watch a movie and have a photographic memory.

Then you watch the move AGAIN, knowing full well everything
that will happen in the movie.

Suppose that before the movie starts you claim that half way
through the movie the actor named tony is going to shoot
himself in the head.

Then the movie begins. You watch it for the second time
and predict that Tony will shoot himself in the head, and
in fact Tony does in fact shoot himself in the head again.

(This is just like being god, since we are a fixed movie to
him due to his perfect knowledge of future past and present)

Someone now asks you: Did Tony exercise his free will
and decide to shoot himself in the head?

Tripack would answer YES.

But what im saying is, that his FREE CHOICE was really
just an illusion. Tony was not capable of even changing
his mind at the beginning of the movie, the second time
around, to NOT shoot himself in the head.

He has no free will. But it seems like he does ONLY to him
since he is a character in a predetermined fixed set of events.

Tony did in fact MAKE THE CHOICE to shoot himself
in the head in this predetermined movie.

You, the watcher of the movie, DID NOT FORCE Tony
to shoot himself in the head. There is no force involved.
The movie is simply a predetermined set of events.

However, simply being able to make a choice, does not
necessarily mean you have free will.

I think that Tripack is arguing that as long as you make
your choices and god does not force your choice, then
you have free will, just like the OBSERVER of the movie.
If that is the case, then our definitions are simply different.

Free will to me, by definition, means that my actions are
NOT predetermined and that I make my own choices.
That I am capable of changing the future through my actions
because they are truly free. I am not trapped into
"making ONE set of choices". That is not much of a choice,
like the actor in the movie.

peace

axeman

Originally posted by TriPack


The fallacy I see is that predetermination is not the same thing as having foreknowledge. Omniscience is indicative of foreknowledge, but not of predetermination. To get predetermination god would have to directly interfere with the choices made by men. God would have to actively prevent us from making decisions that would be "wrong" and force us to make decisions that would be "right" according to the will of god.

But supposing that god has to force people to act according to his desires or that he desires that we make a particular choice over the other presupposes that god can't in fact see what will eventually happen, and that his knowledge is in fact fallible. This is the fatal flaw of fatalism, for it assumes that god is not in fact omniscient in order to prove its logic. If god is indeed omniscient events always unfold as he has foreseen then there is no "must". But this knowledge does not in any way limit our ability to freely make our own choices as we see fit. This is how I define free will - the ability to act according to our own choices, and this is why I see no contradiction between god being omniscient and with the free will of man.

 

[stu]

you say:

The outcome will occur but nothing is forcing the result on the child

Thanks for your post TriPack, just stopped in and saw it I would like to respond later , have no time now, but just to say this for in the meantime,

If the outcome is known then it exists. If the outcome exists the child cannot change it. You have no choice The outcome has to then be the result irrespective of the action, that should not offer free will and further it is the ultimate contradiction

see ya later

 

[CaroKann]

I think you are arguing semantics and definition.

If you define free will as the ability to make a decision that will "surprise" the alleged God-being, then free will does not exist.

If you define free will as the ability to make your own choices by relying on your own devices, then free will does exist, at least from your perspective.

I would say that for free will NOT to exist, you would have to make a choice and not be allowed to carry it out.

Say I write a computer program to trade. Being the creator, I can look at a chart and tell you what the program will do. Does that prevent the program from looking at its own indicators and coming to the decision on its own? As far as the program is concerned, it has free will because it makes its own decisions. If the program decides to buy, and I prevent it from doing so, then I am interfering with its free will.

stu asserted:

If the outcome exists the child cannot change it.

I would argue that as far as the child can tell, it has free will, since it can make its own choice. The child can see nothing preventing it from doing what it wants.

I push you off a building, and you are falling. You have the will to not hit the pavement. You still hit the pavement. Does that mean you do not have free will?

Anyway, just an FYI, I am leaving for Vegas in a few hours and won't be back til Sunday night.