By waiting for tens of thousands of years after man first evolved then inventing Christianity in a small, backward portion of the world where it would stay pretty much inconsequential until a few hundred years later when the New Testament was finally compiled and then only really flourish a couple of hundred years after that once the common man was given access to the Bible?...he gave mankind adequate knowledge and the ability to choose to NOT rebel.
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[John F. Kennedy]
The principal value of debate lies in the development of logical thought processes, and the ability to articulate your positions publicly.
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In my opinion, your initial framework is a false assumption so naturally, reality would not fit within it.
The heart has its reason which reason does not know. - Blaise Pascal
"chewtabacachewtabacachewtabaca-spit" - Blake Shelton
Omniscience, if possesed by the creator of all things would suggest predetrmination. I tried [after you asked] to explain this in post #52.Quote by: ElusiveTruth
You say omniscience is the knowledge of everything. Wouldn't the knowledge of me going to heaven or hell be in the realm of everything? If it was, then I could in no way alter that- Thus I could not freely will to do anything other than what this entity created me for. This is, at bottom, predetermination.
I think in order to relate free will and predestination, you first have to define free will.
To me, if I am able to make the decisions that benefit me most while taking into consideration any other factors I may value, that to me is free will. Regardless of whether or not your choice was predetermined, the point is that had it not been predetermined, you still would have made the same choice.
The human brain is not infinite in it's capacity. There are certain things that illicit certain reactions in all of us, and all of these amalgamate to inform our decisions.
My position? 'Will' as a concept doesn't even exist. There are always, always mitigating factors. A smoker who quits cold turkey doesn't do so by the sheer power of his 'will', he just decided that the health benefits of quitting (for example) exceed the benefits of maintaining his habit. Yes, addiction is a real thing, but it is also taken into consideration in our decisions. The relief of a cigarette for someone who is addicted is a tangible benefit, that (if they are successful in quitting) they no longer value above the benefits of quitting.
Humans don't have will in the same way a calculator doesn't 'choose' to correctly evaluate equations to be the best calculator it can be. We are programmed to make the best decisions from our frame of reference at the time.
I'm not sure why you can't, in theory anyway, reverse the process here unless of course you just dont want to.
God only knows what you will do because he is not bound by linear time but can simple see the future and what he sees is each and every one of your free will decisions.
It's no different than the concept of human time travel to the future. As long as the traveler did not interfere and only observed, when he returned to his 'original' time he would know the future he observed. This in no way causes the traveler to be a determining factor on those future events.
The heart has its reason which reason does not know. - Blaise Pascal
"chewtabacachewtabacachewtabaca-spit" - Blake Shelton
God's very knowledge of the future makes "free-will" untrue, according to your religion.
That is simply not true. There is no way to enter an environment, without interfering in some way or another. Something as small as swatting a fly could eventually stop a world war. There is absolutely no way to "time travel" without interfering in future events.
Turning your sacred cows into steak.
"Reality is for people who can't cope with drugs" - Robin Williams
I think we're past the point of simple statements in this debate. Care to elaborate or respond to the subject matter of mine that you qouted in your 'response?'
And if that traveler were immaterial?
The heart has its reason which reason does not know. - Blaise Pascal
"chewtabacachewtabacachewtabaca-spit" - Blake Shelton
It seems what you're saying is, in spite of appearance, is that- God can know I'm going to hell- but I can still choose to go to heaven? If he was wrong about it he would not be "all" knowing. So the very premise that says I must follow a path of behaviors known to God as being right, is free will?
The correct path is a recommended one, not a required one. However, if that path is to be followed via a free-will decision, it must be followed according to the required methods.
The heart has its reason which reason does not know. - Blaise Pascal
"chewtabacachewtabacachewtabaca-spit" - Blake Shelton
OK, let me throw my hat into the ring and see if I can help you understand.
Determine does not equal knowing. Determine is predictive. If your god can only determine outcomes then it is without knowing and is merely predicting the future.
Again, this is predictive knowledge and not absolute knowledge, which is not omniscience.And by being the creator of said laws and by being the governor of the laws and behaviors he can presumably determine the causes and effects of said laws and behaviors.
The underlined above is saying that god determined everything at it's creation and therefore has absolute knowledge of all outcomes AT THE CREATION. Otherwise, your use of the underlined phrase means that god determines the outcome as it happens... in other words, he decides that you will turn left instead of right at the time it is occurring. Do you think god is making choices for you? I thought not.I will say this though. By setting the universe and everything in it in motion and by being everything in the universe, God does essentially determine everything. This is however very different from having predetermined everything. Predetermination implies having planned everything before hand which is not a necessary conclusion.
What's interesting about that statement is that you have decided to make up your own definition of Omniscience because you dislike the your inability to refute the common use. Omniscience means foreknowledge of all events past present and future.Interestingly enough... considering what I'm reading about omniscience in this thread... the God I believe is not omniscient as it is implied by many answering my question.
Let me clarify your earlier example of god simply knowing all possible choices. Let's say you are driving your car and you want to turn left. According to your premise god knows all possibilities that can occur if you turn left, not what will occur. One of the possibilities is that a train will slam into your car and kill you... How does god know that the train will hit your car unless your god can see the future? How can your god know all of the possible things that can happen when you turn left if they haven't happened yet?
The problem is that most posts here are tying omniscience with other abilities and applying the natural constraint of time on it. In post 45 I proposed a scenario where the different god-like features were completely separated from each other and I could see no reason to conclude that omniscience, without the use of other abilities or constraints of time, eliminated free will.
The Observer I noted in that post would have all knowledge. All knowledge requires the entity to not be bound by time. Humans are bound by time and so is free will--the exercise of a choice at this moment in time (the present). Free will is not a characteristic/concept that can be identified or measured or understood by an Observer because there is no present, future, or past to the observer. Omniscience is not a concept that can be measured or identified by a human because we are tethered to this moment in time.
We are incorrectly applying our limitation of time, as well as our limitation of corporeal existence, to the Observer. The Observer cannot know all by snapshot and then follow us at our perceived present moment in time. There is no "pre" for the Observer. The impotent and incorporeal Observer cannot be bound by our concept of existence because it does not "exist." The Observer cannot act and therefor cannot "determine."
If there is no "pre" for the Observer and the Observer is incapable of "determination" then there is no reason to believe an omniscient Observer creates predetermination.
I think we are incorrectly identifying omniscience as the possible nullifier of free will when it is actually time, and the concept of "outside of time," that could be the nullifier. The inexistence of time, regardless of knowledge, or Observers, or gods, is what makes us think of what "happened" as if we were somehow at the end of timelessness looking back over all the decisions that were made.
As a human, I know that I am currently making decisions and that the decisions I am about to make will become the decisions I am making and the decisions I have made. If, somehow, the concept of timelessness exists then I may come to the conclusion that I have no free will because timelessness eliminates the concept of decision. And it does--from the timeless perspective. But from my perspective, decision eliminates the concept of timelessness.
"It seems foolhardy, redolent of danger, and doomed to failure. Otherwise, I can find no fault with it." --Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)
It cannot be free if has "required methods"
Okay plain and simple, if God knows your favorite color is blue- can your favorite color be green?
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