PDN wrote: » Great! Now, my point is this. God, or at least God by Christian definitions, is Eternal. As such there is no past, present, or future tense for God. However, unless we ever learn to travel at the speed of light or perfect a time machine, we live in a steady space/time straight line running from the past, through the present, into the future. So, it makes no difference to God whether an event (from our perspective) is past, present or future. To Him it is always present. When I cried as a baby - God sees me. As I type this post - God sees me. And whatever I choose to eat for lunch next Tuesday - God sees me. So we exercise our free will, and God sees us. He doesn't see it before we do it (from His perspective) because 'before' does not exist for Him. He is the God who revealed Himself to Moses as "I AM" (not I was, or I will be). There only appears to be a paradox concerning free will because we find it so hard to imagine Eternity. Therefore we think of God as being trapped into a Newtonian timeline like us, instead of grasping that He experiences time as something more akin to an Einsteinian space/time loaf. (Brian Greene, in "The Fabric of the Cosmos" had a great diagram of this, demonstrating how, according to one's position in space and speed of travel, it is theoretically possible to see into the past or the future, effectively cutting through the loaf at different angles. I tried google image search, but couldn't find it. Of course this is theoretical because we humans can't travel fast enough - but that would hardly be a problem for a God who has, in your words, "all omni qualities".)
Morbert wrote: » Where is the inconsistency in God being aware of what we do in the past, present, and futurue, and us determining what we do in the past, present, and future?
Wicknight wrote: » Without an undetermined future we cannot have free will, since we cannot have the opportunity to choose which future will come into existence for ourselves. This seems a pretty standard definition of free will, our choices are open and determine our future.
As you correctly state if God exists then space time is an already baked Einstein loaf, ie all points of space time are set and their is one loaf, not a loaf being formed as time's arrow moves through it.
So at any point in time there is only one point ahead of it in the future, not an undetermined choice of points. We do not determine which point this is through our actions in the present. Thus we don't have free will.
You will notice in Greene's book the loaf does not change as time (the present) moves through it. And in fact you could play the whole thing backwards and it would operate the same way just in reverse.
CerebralCortex wrote: » I'm saying ultimately he decided what we do/did/will or else he loses omnipotence and omniscience. He created the snake He either knows what the snake was going to do or He's not omniscient and if the snake acts out of His control then He's not omnipotent.
PDN wrote: » You are still thinking as if God is stuck in your limited space/time straight line of past-present-future. You have an undetermined choice of points, but in the end you will only choose one of those points. God sees your choice Thus you do have free will.
pts wrote: » I'm delighted we're revisiting this subject as I felt we didn't reach closure last time. This problem becomes interesting if we model our choices as a decision making mechanism which takes inputs and produces a decision (it doesn't matter if the mechanism is our brain, our soul etc.) God designed that mechanism and he knows all the inputs the mechanism will receive. His choice of how the inputs map to a decision effectively sets us on a path we can not deviate from.
PDN wrote: » You just made a bit of a logical slip there. Omnipotence means that God can do anything, not that He does everything that He can.
PDN wrote: » So, He can control the snake, but if He decides to give the snake a bit of freedom to do whatever the snake feels like then that is in no way a denial of His omnipotence. Unless you're arguing that an omnipotent being can't give free will to one of his creatures (in which case He wouldn't be omnipotent, would He?)
pts wrote: » I'm delighted we're revisiting this subject as I felt we didn't reach closure last time. This problem becomes interesting if we model our choices as a decision making mechanism which takes inputs and produces a decision (it doesn't matter if the mechanism is our brain, our soul etc.) God designed that mechanism and he knows all the inputs the mechanism will receive. His choice of how the inputs map to a decision effectively sets us on a path we can not deviate from. God can not create a mechanism which he does not understand and still be Omniscience. If he understands how his choice of mapping will effect us he effectively chooses our path in life leaving us without free will.
antiskeptic wrote: » What if we don't model our choices that way. What if we model our choices as the product of a freewill? Where freewill is defined as non-deterministic.
PDN wrote: » Ah, but now you're arguing that all our choices are determined by inputs. In that case you are not arguing that there's a paradox between omniscience and freewill, but rather that there is no such thing as free will.
PDN wrote: » So your logic, it appears, is as follows.x is incompatible with y. Why? Well because I don't believe in x to begin with. Do you understand why some of us will find that line of logic less than convincing? If your choices are determined by the inputs, then they are not really choices at all. Nobody has any free will, irrespective of whether an omniscient God exists or not. In that case, it's a bit of a waste time debating since you don't have the freedom to change your mind anyway. We're all just meat puppets going through our pre-programmed routines. Wow! Now I'm depressed!
PDN wrote: » Yes, our future - but not God's future, since future does not exist for Him.
PDN wrote: » If I watched a video of your life, then each choice you made in the video would be a free will choice which, until that moment, was undetermined. God watches the video of your life too, but He sees it from an eternal standpoint. He watches you make your free choices.
PDN wrote: » Actually I recommend you read Greene's book (or reread it if you've forgotten some of his points), because he has some very interesting things to say about that!
PDN wrote: » Yes, if someone plays your life-video backwards then it will indeed operate the same way but in reverse, because it is still dictated by the choices you freely made.
Wicknight wrote: » If the consequence comes before the choice then the consequence cannot be determined by the choice. A film reel makes no different if you play it forward or backwards, the relationships between the frames are fixed. Frame 55 is not dictated by frame 23 being played first. You could play it in reverse, get to frame 55 then 54 53 52...23 and it would be fine.
CerebralCortex wrote: Because we are contained within the causal chain. We are in a system created by a god who is claimed to be both omnipotent(can do everything) and omniscient(knows everything), correct me if I'm wrong, by Christians. Am I wrong?
I'm saying ultimately he decided what we do/did/will or else he loses omnipotence and omniscience. He created the snake He either knows what the snake was going to do or He's not omniscient and if the snake acts out of His control then He's not omnipotent. Tense aware or not to be omniscient unless I'm mistaken He'd have to know the actions that will/do/did take place, he set them in motion ultimately as we are told over and over again by the ultimate cause argument.
pts wrote: » Again the way decisions are modelled are not important. If we assume that god understand how we make decisions and that god did create our decision making mechanism then his choice of how that mechanism works decides our future.
PDN wrote: » But, once again, you are making the mistake of referring to an Eternal being as if he were subject to our perspective of time. There is no 'before' to God. For God, being omniscient, does not see frame 55 after (or before) He sees frame 23. He sees them all at the same time - in Eternity.
PDN wrote: » Not at all. Your very choice of the word 'mechanism' is deterministic. What if God created us with an ability to make genuinely free decisions. What if, as some researchers in quantum mechanics think, there is genuine randomness in the universe? Now, if you are saying that it is impossible for God to create a being with genuine free will, or to make something genuinely random, then you are denying His omnipotence. If you are denying His omnipotence, then you are denying the existence of God to start off with.
Morbert wrote: » This is why it is important to suppose a supernatural, transcendent will that isn't just a mechanisation that takes stimuli as input, and produces responses as output. Such processes can be designed to produce different responses. Their responses, in other words, are determined by the designer. A free will, on the other hand, is self-determined, producing actions not determined by any designer. I.e. God does not understand the mechanism because there is no mechanism to understand.
PDN wrote: » Not at all. Your very choice of the word 'mechanism' is deterministic. What if God created us with an ability to make genuinely free decisions. What if, as some researchers in quantum mechanics think, there is genuine randomness in the universe? Now, if you are saying that it is impossible for God to create a being with genuine free will, or to make something genuinely random, then you are denying His omnipotence. If you are denying His omnipotence, then you are denying the existence of God to start off with. Which means that your logic is now as follows:x is incompatible with y. Why? Because I'm beginning with the premises than neither x nor y exist in the first place. (where x refers to free will and y refers to the Christian concept of God as omnipotent and omniscient) If it were possible for a circle to become more circular, then that would be true of your argument here.
Morbert wrote: » Remember that we have supposed a will that is supernatural, and transcends physical law in some form or other. We aren't just a system of response caused by stimuli, but instead beings capable of self-arbitration.
Morbert wrote: » He presumably chooses to allow us to act out of his control.
PDN wrote: » But, once again, you are making the mistake of referring to an Eternal being as if he were subject to our perspective of time. There is no 'before' to God.
PDN wrote: » For God, being omniscient, does not see frame 55 after (or before) He sees frame 23. He sees them all at the same time - in Eternity.
pts wrote: » I would argue that if we make decisions there must be a way those decisions are arrived at. It isn't important if that processes is a brain or transcendent soul. If god created how we make decisions (again regardless of what this process is or what plane it exists on) then god understands it. If he created it and he understands it then we can't make decisions he did not hard code us to make. I'm not sure if you are arguing that we don't have a decision making process, that there isn't a decision making process or that god doesn't understand it.
Wicknight wrote: Yes, that is why free will doesn't exist. There is no choice, no undetermined future. The film reel/Einstein loaf that is our universe is as eternal as God is. It has always just been as it is. Not the start or the end, they can be finite just as a film can start and end 2 hours later. But the film reel itself is fixed. For free will to to exist their must be something that is undetermined and the outcome dependent on the choice the person makes. If God exists nothing is undetermined, nothing is dependent on the actions of the actors in the universe, any more than a film reel can chance depending on what happens in the frame before it. It is precisely God's eternal nature that makes this the case. Everything just is, and has always just been as it is. The film reel that is our universe has always, eternally, been the film reel that is our universe. It has never not been so, and thus has never been undetermined. Without the ability to be undetermined, to be contingent on something else, you cannot have choice.
CerebralCortex wrote: » You've lost me?
CerebralCortex wrote: » So what? That changes nothing. It's seems like you are making the mistake of limiting that which you say has not limits.
But you are also saying that he has created(he didn't really if it's random) something he can't predict has no control over, namely randomness, thus you are denying his omnipotence and omniscience. Showing that the god hypothesis is absurd.
Well I'm just supposing omniscience and omnipotence amongst other qualities as I'm told by the religious but primarily I'm told by Christians to suppose that Christianity is logical. It fails that test from a number of directions. Or should I suppose that logic has nothing to do with it.
This is getting tiring.
Morbert wrote: » To say someone does not have free will is to say their decisions are not determined by themselves. If our decisions are determined by the laws of physics, there is no free will. If our decisions are determined by an omnipotent, omniscient god, then we have no free will. Christians aren't claiming either.
Morbert wrote: » They are claiming an omnipotent God created us, but let us determine our actions. God, being omniscient, knows what those actions are, but the actions were still determined by us.
PDN wrote: » Then give us some logic to back up your position. Not bald assertions, not arguments that depend on an a priori denial of the existence of free will or of God. Some kind of rationale to support your position.
CerebralCortex wrote: » I fail to see how that is logically possible. It may be Christianly possible but that doesn't count.
CerebralCortex wrote: » I have already here,
Human behaviour is reducible to quarks.
here, here
Essentially I think it's a fallacy to attribute omniscience and omnipotence to a being and then say we're responsible for anything which Christianity certainly does. It's a paradox to me.
etc.
Just to make my argument more clear please check all the links as well.
Also are you not reading my posts because of my claims because that would save me a lot of time?
