Kenny

Rimstlaker,

Because the fact that God knows what we are going to do does not mean that God directly determines what we are going to do. Also, if my view of time is correct, it is meaningless to say that God knows what we are going to do “before it even happens” in a temporal sense. Thus, my view of time posses no problem for freewill in that respect. I do believe, however, that God’s knowledge of what we would freely choose to do in any given situation is ontologically prior to the choices we actually make, but that only creates a problem for freewill if freewill necessitates indeterminism. I do not believe that it does, and I have already dealt with that issue in some detail <a href="http://ii-f.ws/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=000276" target="_blank">here</a> and I do not wish to repeat that discussion at the moment.

You implied that to regard the universe as a single space-time manifold was to somehow negate existence. Relativity regards the universe as a single space-time manifold.

That is incorrect. Our consciousness would not “feel its way along” as that implies the existence of some sort of meta-time in which our consciousness “moves” from one point in space-time to the other. Rather, our consciousness simply “is”, acting in each moment. Our subjective experience of passing time is just a consequence of how the various moments in space-time where our consciousness acts are related to one another causally and logically.

God Bless,
Kenny

{edited to fix link}

[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

GunnerJ

Kenny-

In reply to your comment about omniscience negating free will: That's a whole lot of hand-waving and hot air, but it means nothing. If, the moment god made the universe, he knew every detail of it, and he knew every actions anyone would take, then he is directly responsible for all the actions in the universe. I don't care how many mirrors and how much smoke you set up abnout god being outside of time; if my every action was known "before" I made them, and if god is not constrained by time, and sees every event in the universe like a 4-dimensional picture, then there is absolutely nothing I can do to negate the picture of the universe god sees. In the same way, if I look at the film reel for a movie, I am existing "outside" the movie's time, and seeing every frame of the movie's "existance." I do not know why you ignored my analogy before, I hope you will not do so again. In my observances of the film reel, I know everything about the movie; I know how it begins, who all the possible characters are, everything they do, and how it ends. Once I start the movie going, there can be nothing in it to surprise me. All the characters will act in the same way they did on the film. They can do nothing more. If god is omniscient, it is the same situation, no matter how "non-temporal" he is, unless you define "non-temporal" as unable to know anything about the creations such a being makes.

This is not what I meant to imply at all, but it is not your fault, as I did a poor job explaining my meaning. I'll leave this point moot, as I doubt I'll be able to convey my thoughts properly. The novel I linked to does a good job explainign it, but as I don't expect you to go out and buy it just because of this, I'll leave this point.

Did you not claim that you thought that your five-year-old self still "exists" in some sense? My argument is the logical conclusion of such a view. If you did not say this, than the point is moot.

Apikorus

Kenny, true enough, there are bizarre spacetimes which allow for closed timelike curves, although FRW is not one of them. (I should have said "consequences" a la HP rather than "postulates".)

It seems to me that your basic point has little to do with Christian theism per se. Your claim is that some agent was responsible for the creation of the Universe. (The agent is identified with "God".) While this is an essential part of Christian belief, it is of course essential to several non-Christian religions as well, as I expect you would agree.

"Christian theism" contains mountains of detail piled atop this bare hypothesis: the notion of a providential God, intimately concerned with the affairs of man, who inspired the writing of canonical scriptures, who impregnated Mary mother of Jesus, who in turn suffered and died for the sins of the world and who was resurrected on the third day, who would one day return to judge the world, etc.

Surely the vast bulk of Christian theism lies well beyond the scope of the present discussion. Certainly if the notion that God created the Universe could be falsified, then Christian theism would itself fall, but the same could be said for several other religious systems.

Do you believe that there are any provable inconsistencies with any extant theistic systems?

Koyaanisqatsi

What am I, chopped liver? In time?

Tercel

"There is no difference in the Lord's sight between one day and a thousand years. To him the two are the same." (2 Peter 3:8)

The Infidel Guy

Hey, My First post:

I love keeping it simple. (Maybe not to fundies though). The fundies claim that God created Time. Yet, to create the Universe, did not God move/change "in time"? Hmm..this would imply that time existed before God. If time existed before God then God becomes simply part of the Universe and not the creator of it. He reveals himself as more of an advanced alien rather than some omnipotent entity.

Might I also add. Time itself is nothing more than change. So at the moment of Creation things changed? Make you wonder, why would God change anything if he is omniscient?

A truly omnipotent and omniscient being would actually have nothing to do at all. Why even exist?

Maybe God committed suicide a long ago from a lack of stimulation. lol.

In reason,

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Kenny

Rimstalker,

Sounds like your mind is already made up. You have already dismissed the possibility that there might be a logical resolution to this apparent paradox and nothing I can say is going to change that.

If you are interested in my take on freewill and its relationship to God’s omniscience, then I strongly suggest that you take a look at the link I provided. I see no reason to repeat that discussion here.

Well, some Christian philosophers try to evade the whole freewill vs. omniscience issue by invoking the fact that God transcends time. If God transcends time, they argue, then His knowledge of what we are going to do in the future need not be something that God knows “before hand,” but something that he knows through direct perception; God doesn’t know what I going to do tomorrow before I do it, but simply “sees” from outside of time what I am doing tomorrow as I do it. I have trouble with this view, however, because it would make God’s knowledge of our actions ontologically dependent on those actions. While I certainly agree with this view in the respect that God’s knowledge of our actions does not temporally proceed our actions, I still believe that God’s knowledge of our actions ontologically proceeds them, and so invoking the fact that God transcends time does not resolve the paradox for me. Resolving the paradox, I think, takes a deeper analysis of the concept of freewill, which I give in the link I provided.

The fact that there is nothing you can do to negate the picture doesn’t mean that you are not part of the reason the picture is the way it is.

Yeah, I think that’s a decent analogy, as long as you don’t think of “playing the film” as that implies some sort “flow” of time. I wasn’t ignoring it; I thought that I had already addressed all the logical aspects of my view that related to it.

I agree, nothing “surprises” God.

In my view, its not as if the film gets “played” over and over again. The film and the characters in it simply “are.” Regardless, I do think that it is logically impossible that I could have chosen any differently than I did in any given circumstance. I do not think that this means I don’t have freewill in a meaningful sense. This is really a separate issue, however. I think that my view of time could accommodate a number of different ways of conceptualizing freewill. Again, see the link above if you’re interested in my view on the matter.

Yes, I believe that my five year old self exists along with every other point in my life. I do not believe that this implies that my consciousness “moves” passively from moment to moment in my life, however. My consciousness simply “is,” acting in each moment of my existence. It’s not as if my consciousness passed my kindergarten self to become my current self and left some sort of zombie behind, as that would imply what I have explicitly denied (that time passes in some sense). My consciousness is just as present and just as active in the moments of my kindergarten existence as it is in the moments of my college student existence. In the space-time locations that encompass my kindergarten existence, my consciousness is actively involved, making choices, having perceptions, etc. The actions of my consciousness in those locations are, in turn, influencing the actions of my consciousness in the space-time locations which encompass me writing this post; in neither set of locations is my consciousness any less present. There is no real “movement” of my consciousness from the kindergarten set of locations to the college student set of locations; only the subjective illusion (presenting itself to my conscious perceptions in the college set), resulting from the manner in which the actions of my consciousness in both sets are causally and logically related to each other, that time has passed. I’m not sure if you have really gotten past the notion that time passes in some sense and really tried to conceptualize what it would mean for everything to simply “be,” but try your best to do so. Even if you ultimately don’t agree with this view (and not all Christians would agree with it either), it is a fascinating exorcise.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ December 17, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Kenny

Whether it does or not, the question was asked within that context and the present discussion seems to continue to assume it.

True enough. Since I am a Christian, however, it is Christian theism which I will defend.

Agreed.

Yes

God Bless,
Kenny

Kenny

Koy,

I didn’t see much in your post that I hadn’t already addressed. God doesn’t “move” in and out of various moments in time. As the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, God acts in every moment, relates fully to all aspects of existence, and is fully aware of all reality such that there is no subjective passing of time from the Divine perspective. Since God acts in every moment, there is no problem with Him carrying out actions that involve a temporal sequence from our perspective.

God Bless,
Kenny

Apikorus

Kenny, could you please identify some of those inconsistent theologies and point out where they are inconsistent?

Incidentally, it is hardly clear that the notions of "ontological priority" you rely upon have meaning outside a temporal system. It also is perfectly consistent to maintain that, if indeed time has a beginning as posited by classical Big Bang cosmology, then the Universe was uncaused, or perhaps was its own cause.

Causation within relativistic physics is a rather well-defined notion. An event P is influenced ("caused") by all events within its backward light cone. The BB itself has no backward light cone, ergo it was uncaused. That an event has no cause is perhaps metaphysically troubling, but then again the beginning of time is a singular event and there's no reason to believe conventional intuition regarding causation should apply to it.

The classic example, of which I imagine you are well aware, is that of coordinatizing the sphere. At almost every point on the surface of a sphere, the vector field d / d(theta) is well-defined (sorry I don't know how to get Greek characters here nor partial derivative symbols for d). The vector field points due south (theta being the colatitude). But at the south pole there is a coordinate singularity and the vector field is undefined there. Nothing lies south of the south pole, just as the backward light cone of the BB is also the empty set. (Unlike the case of colatitude on the sphere, the singularity associated with the BB cannot be removed by a trivial smooth coordinate transformation.)

Our intuition that all events are caused might conceivably be likened to the intuition that it is always possible to travel due south. This intuition is correct almost everywhere.

Your argument here, it seems to me, can be boiled down to the following assertion: It is not logically inconsistent to hold that the Universe had a cause, although causation in this context must be understood in a extratemporal sense. The problem here is that the notion of extratemporal causation is extremely murky.

It seems to me a bit of a swindle to assert that the Universe was the product of some (ill-defined in my view) extratemporal "ontological causation" without further exploring the metaphysics of this form of causality. This is why I started to ask some simple questions regarding uniqueness and classification of such ontological agents. Your response was to duck the question and retreat to the minimal position that your only goal was to maintain the plausibility of "Christian theism". As the thoughtfulness of your posts betrays your considerable intellect, I was hoping for something more.

Incidentally, I am well aware that mathematical proofs, for example, entail atemporal chains of "causation", i.e. once a set of axioms is posited there is no temporal delay before conclusions logically drawn from them are rendered true. But, then again, mathematical theorems are not actualized in a physical sense (although they may be applicable to models of the physical world).

Perhaps the existence of God is best viewed as analogous to the role of the Axiom of Choice in set theory. Godel showed that the AC could not be disproved by the other axioms of set theory. (Indeed, in the early 1960's Paul Cohen proved that AC is independent of the other axioms of set theory.)

[ December 17, 2001: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>