Who's teaching? The literal word of the bible? Do you go to church? What kind of church?

 

Few things would make me happier than having the whole world redefine the word and admit that the current definition is wrong or does not provide enough flexibility.  I would love for a seed of fallibility to be planted in just about every religion to be openly accepted by the organizations themselves so that the word can be redefined

Once again you're getting into the idea that god actually interferes with the pre-destination which is something I've intentionally avoided.  As for the soliders...Do they really have choice? They have the choice to do exactly what god has already seen and no other choice.  Even if they made the choice they are making the choice that is already written for them.

Of course I'm focusing on the traditional meaning of the word.

 

I mean who is doing the teaching.  Specifically who is the teacher? And if it's not a person but the bible itself do you mean word for word the exact meaning of the words or your interpretation of the words of the bible? The literal meaning, or your own meaning to what is said? 

I appreciate what you're suggesting but to say that someone is affected in spirit to achieve some ultimate goal then it does affect the very core of that person and does affect their everyday decisions including their bathroom breaks and meals. That kind of predestination if it's subtle and not direct but him pulling the strings has to have an affect on every part of a persons life not just a specific thing when we're talking about a fundamentally gigantic thing like pushing war on a number of countries.  Having a to achieve a goal like that to meet the predestination of your spirit would surely require some affect on every part of a persons life.

 

I'm not asking the question out of curiosity for my own self, I am asking because I am curious how people resolve it and continue to believe in a faith with the consideration of pre-destination.  I am personally very content that my future is not written but do I want to invoke the thought in other people that by believing in an ominscient god that they are subscribing and believing in predestination.  And I'm curious how that impacts them and their thinking and their approach to life.

So my thirst for answers in this regard will never be quenched because there will always be more people and I find learning about why people believe the things they do fascinating.  And I find peoples reactions to thinking about things that they hadn't previously considered to be immensly interesting.

And no, I don't believe that there's a non-natural explaination for my desires.  Someone could cause me to consider something by something they've said, or recollecting a memory but I don't believe it plausable that a supernatural being injected a desire in me.

The problem with the link you posted is that it is based on faith in the first place.  It's justifying actions by a being that I have no belief in so it's hard to accept the arguments when they are based on defying natural laws that I don't accept can be broken.

So the article has no impact on me personally.

As for the various faithful views of the situation that he discusses I do find them mildly interesting though obvious and I much prefer the personal elaborations since he doesn't really go into detail on how people resolve it.

The note about suicide being the only argument for people who have hope but  an unkonwn future I think is misleading.  There are many people that feel the future is unknown including atheists and I don't think you'll find higher depression or suicide rates in that group.

Thanks for the post truth.

I want to note, even though I am using God as my basis I believe that the same problem exists in pre-destination even if it were to be a human that had the capability...or a mouse for that matter

Agreed so far ... if this God knows everything then it would, by definition, know your future decisions.

Perhaps ... that depends  on the perspective you choose to view this from.

The question you need to ask is whether you are free to choose something other than what God knows you will choose.  That's the way to word the question.  If the answer is yes, then God is not omniscient.  If the answer is no, then ... well ... you don't have free will in the sense that you both seem to be using the term.  I highlight this because there is more than one view as to what makes a decision "free", and therefore what ultimately makes a person responsible for that decision.

But who makes the decision?  If it is you who makes it, then isn't that decision yours?  And if that decision is yours, then aren't you responsible for it?

LOL ... yes, I can see why.  "Accepting Jesus" does not guarantee that you will be able to comprehend omniscience and free will coexisting.  There are many people I know who have "accepted Jesus", and can't put these two things together.

Ah, there's the rub.  I would argue that when you make a decision, that decision does affect the future.  That is, the future becomes what it does, in part, based on your decision.  But of course, your decision was even known in advance, so from that perspective you simply did what you were going to do.  Mind-boggling, no?

Actually, omniscience (specifically foreknowledge) is sufficient to bring this problem to the surface - one not need adventure into determinism, unless one wants to!

Um ... no.  Actually, this is demonstrably false.  There is more than one actual conception of free will, at least one of which is not contradictory to the idea of omniscience.

The "compatibilist" view of the will, which states one is "free" if and only if they wanted to do what they did, is entirely compatible with not only omniscience, but determinsm as well.  This viewpoint says there is only one requirement for a will to be "free", and that is that persons are able to do what they desire.  Whether what they desire has been determined (either directly or indirectly) matters not in this view of the will.

I must say, I find it interesting that you get to determine what the word "knowledge" means for the sake of this discussion, Vorax.   

You may choose, I suppose, to use any definition of the term you wish, but the term has typically encompassed the following three components at a minumum:

1) Belief

2) Truth

3) Justification

Facts are not knowledge.  Facts are facts regardless of whether someone believes them to be true or not.  Facts are facts regardless of whether someone has a reason to believe they are true.  But facts are always true.  If it isn't true, it isn't a fact.

Now, you may feel free to toss back at me the very argument I leveled against you, that *I* appear to be defining what the word "truth" is going to me, and that's fine.  At least I feel I am in a position to provide a good reason for believing my definition is true

I do agree with your conclusion, but not with the way in which you arrived there.

I still take issue with your use of the word "facts" here.

Hold on there just a minute!

What exactly is a "choice" to you?

You might be able to make an argument that Jane does not have free will, but how can you justify your statement that Jane does not "choose" unless you are simply assuming at the start that a choice is not a choice unless it is "free"?

If Jane is presented with an apple and an orange, and Jane chooses the orange, then Jane (by definition) made a choice.  To try and say her choice was only illusary because it was predetermined begs the question.  You need to demonstrate that a choice can only be a "choice" if it is not ultimately already determined if you want to use that as a premise to your argument

And here you beg the question.

Your stated reason for why Jane's choices are not real but illusory is "because her actions are entirely deterministic".

But you see, that is simply question-begging.  The question at hand is, after all, whether a pre-determined choice is really a choice.

What makes an individual "free" in your mind, and more importantly why?

 

No, not necessarily.  The problem with common Christian belief is not the way in which they describe God's omniscience, but the way in which they describe man's "free will".  That is the point where the contradiction arises.

But alas, that only means that certain conceptions of "free will" result in this contradiction - not all of them.

{fixed}

Nobody here has stopped to define the term "free will" in any coherent manner. When you say something is "free" you are also implying it is free from something. What is that something the will is free from? Emotions? No. Choose to not be angry at someone who sexually molested your child. Sensory experiences? No. Choose to not feel pain when I kick you in the groin. External causation? No. Again, groin kick. Internal causation (mechanisms of the brain)? No. Suck down several shots of Tequila and choose to be sober. Limitations? No. If we try to go beyond those limitations, we make ourselves ill (as Darwin's declining health proved). Time flow? No. What in the world is it free from?

 

If there was ever a sure way to become a millionaire, it would be this:  If you could hypnotise me, or whatever, so that I could watch my favourite movies all over again for the first time.  I'd pay GOOD MONEY for that.

 

But that aside...

Didja ever watch a movie - more than once?

 The first time - you are a man.  The second time, you are like "god."

Does your foreknowledge of the events coming change, at all, how the writer/director might have written the script?

 Does your foreknowledge work backward through time such that the director never had the chance to make Gollum die in the first installation?

Does your foreknowledge of current events mean that Peter Jackson (or Tolky) NEVER had even the mere  option of writing the story with a different outcome?

Does your foreknowledge of coming events mean that the past events must have, necessarily, developed the way they did?

because you know that the ring of power is destroyed in the end, does that mean the writer simply could not have written otherwise?

All this assumes that you are an independent, outside, viewer of the events that you see unfolding.

 

 

What if that wasn't true?

 

 

 

I find this whole thing fascinating. It seems to me that your whole argument is that our perception of freewill is what is the problem here. You agreed that our actions are pre-determined but still feel that is free will?

Your entire argument seems to be on the definition of the word but agreeing for all intesive purposes with the argument itself if we were to agree to terminology.

To me 'free' implies true choice. Not only the ability to choose to my knowledge, but the true alternative. That the future is not set, that the future can not be known because any choice I am to make is not yet known. That is, in a simplistic sense, is what I would classify as free.

 

I'm not exactly sure what you're suggesting here.  If you're suggesting that god is an entity that is outside watching along like we are a movie that he has seen before, then I would say that we don't have the ability to alter the script.

And the simple concept remains that god himself is considered character in the script so he is not strictly an outsider looking in on a movie he's seen before.

I"m pretty sure I've said this before, but a pre-scripted life removes the concept of free-will because it implies that our choices are known before we make them...regardless of who ultimatly made the choice initially. 

 

Her options are limited only by what her perception of her options are.

 

Hmmmmn.....

 

You would think a good number of convicted felons might have kept themselves out of prison if this were true.

And I wonder how different my perception of tunelling myself through the ground might be from the reality of such a thing? 

So, as long as I haven't "written off" some option in my peon head, it remains absolutely true until then?

 

Curiouser and curiouser...... 

 

 

True that is an option? Sure.  Just because an option is an option that doesn't mean it's a good option or a viable option.  It may take three lifetimes to accomplish but that makes it no less of an option, just not as good of one.

Like I said, the viability does not impact whether it is an option.

My point simply being that the available options are going to change based on the different ways of perceiving the same situation.

 

This assumes that God is actually able to "feel", which leads us to another question: How does God feel?

Being able to "feel" indicates a "feeling mechanism", which indicates a material existence. A material existence would be a limited one.

Actually, his merely being a possessor of information---infinite or finite in amount---points to the same conclusion.

I'm obviously banking off the "God is immaterial" paradox, which is discussed in other topics, but I think it's an important point.

That's a terrible analogy, but it does go with the arbitrary violation of the concept of omniscience and omnipotence that the kludge of "free-will" rationalizes. Here we paint a deity that has lapses of his omniscience, that tosses up his hands at his creation and says, "My bad." Or maybe he says, "Your bad," in that senile, passive-aggressive way of his. However, it's hard to imagine that an analogy that relies on both time and space, where we have to imagine both a future not foreseen simultaneously with past with all possibilities, and a physical dimension being obscured, has any comparability to omniscient perception. Again, tremendously flawed and anthropocentric analogy. A better analogy would be me stabbing Apotheon in the eye with a dowel, and saying, "I don't know what's happening on that end because I'm holding on to this end." Past, future, and physical dimensions would be experienced simultaneously to a being knowing all, so god must have some hardcore mental defects.

 God exists in absolute time and looks down. He sees everything at once. Seeing future events does not violate free-will, and I proved it from the analogy. The analogy is good. But as I said before, no analogy is perfect.

Being omnipotent and omniscient, one would simultaneously know all possible permutations of reality; there would be no functional difference between knowledge and action because no action would produce new knowledge. This makes the huge assumption that there's a context for such a being to exist within, and an environment of some sort to interact with. If, on the other hand, the deity is ex nihilo, it not only knows everything, and can do anything, but would have to do absolutely everything deliberately because there would be no external principles to take hold. In either case, if all is known simultaneously, it is known what any possible decision regarding an action (like creation) would result in. Such a being would know, without having to go through the process of contemplation, that if it were to create x, that y and z would be the result. Actually doing so would produce nothing new. You god would be an apathetic, nihilistic space booger.

If your god isn't omnipotent and omniscient, that's another story. It's still a children's story, from the bronze age, but another story nonetheless. 

 

Yes, they were unrealized, but when we built them, we built them to achieve a certain end.

The proposed God, however, is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.

Therefore, there would be no reason for god to create anything (thinking about it from an engineering point of view, for example) because God would have nothing to accomplish. The creation of the universe could not possibly help him in any way.

 

Re: Apotheon:

Let's try this one out:

Have you ever noticed that any apologist explanation for some incoherent or self-contradicting aspect of God often resorts to analogy? I am very anti-analogical explanation, and one of the major reasons is as follows.

God cannot be explained without analogy. That's the basic gist of it. Any attempt to explain God will have to make use of human language, which is a human invention, invented by humans with the sole purpose of explaining material, human things or material, human experiences. Even abstract words like "suffering", "movement", and "art" require some kind of material, human-world constituents for us to understand them. Why? Because we made them up. They are "about" we humans.

So how can we talk about God? If he is so completely different from humans in every way, how can we describe him using words with completely human meanings? Trying to use them on "God" completely empties them of their human usage, rendering them absolutely meaningless to our minds. Saying that "God is wise" would be on the same level as saying "Snarfblatt is Zaklerm". What does it mean? You have no idea!

This is obvious in the fact that most god-defenders can't say what god IS. They can only say what god IS NOT. Observe the following words often attributed to god:

Infinite (God is NOT finite)

Ineffable (God can NOT be described)

Immaterial (God is NOT material)

Omniscient (God has knowledge that is NOT limited)

Omnipotent (God has power that is NOT limited)

Omnipresent (God's presence is NOT limited)

And so on, and so forth. If we remove the "infinite" aspect from the last three on the list, we have the only thing close to a positive claim about god being made: he's present, he's powerful, and he's knowledgeable. (Which, by the way, do not say what he IS, they only state what he DOES).

But, again, these are all words with anthropocentric roots, so how do we know what they mean when we apply them to God? Is God just a series of things that man is also capable of, but only magnified so that he's greater in degree rather than kind? Does that mean that anything that's greater than us in degree is worthy of the "God" title?

Predicted Response: "God is the GREATEST of ANYTHING". This is just another way of wording his "infinite" state or "infinite" capacities. You're either saying what God is not, or else you're saying "God is real times infinity!" which is an argument I stopped using in third grade.

There is nothing you could possibly say or know about him.