stretch

Thanks for telling me what I must be thinking, it frees up time for me to do other things.

I was just trying to indicate that in a world with randomness, where everything is not pre-determined, beings who develop consciousness and are capable of making moral decisions are not necessarily constrained to making a pre-determined choice. Free will is not an 'independent' object. Your choice of words is better, as Free will would be a description of this state.

This state of free will would not be obviated by the fact that some being can observe it. (I think obviated is a real word ... what the heck, I'll go with it.)


Uh ... I think I indicated earlier that any omniscient God that is aware of the consequences of his actions is responsible for the type of world created, including the existence of evil. Responsible, in the sense that none of the evil would have existed if such a world had not been created. My position is that this doesn't preclude personal responsibility for individual decisions.

As I said I would do, I've pulled out the Clark book. It's a philosophy book not a religion book, and Clark is the editor of the journal Analysis.

Here's the basic outline of his argument:

Suppose that a 'first-causal' being (or any other being) is omniscient and threfore has foreknowledge of an action.

Clark sets up the problem along the lines,


(i) Necessarily, if this omniscient being knows you will do x, then you will do x
(ii) Necessarily, this being knows you will do x

So,
(iii)Necessarily you will do x.


(i) says that you will do x in any situation in which this being knows you will do x

(ii) says that in any possible situation, this being knows that you will do x.

(i) and (ii) imply that 'you will do x' is necessarily true.

Of course, omniscience/foreknowledge does not requre that we accept the 2nd premiss, since the omniscient being does not know falsehoods. Doing x freely will suffice.

All that omniscience says is that if you will decide to freely do something, then an omniscient being, by definition, will know it.

Nic Hautamaki

Ok, yes, all omnisciense says, on it's own, is that the being will know what you will do before you do it. If God is merely a passive observer, he is still of course morally absolved, and I suppose we can all have free will. What bothers me is that God made us, with perfect knowledge of how we will turn out, and that he has unlimited power to make us exactly how he wants us to be. Clark's argument doesn't really address that at all, unless I'm really missing something.

rainbow walking

I don't know Nic, sounds to me like a number of assumptions floating around here without justification. This whole outside of time thing sounds a bit speculative as to how that would translate into knowing or having knowledge of that which does not yet exist. If such a being were immortal that would mean he is indestructable. That is, it wouldn't be subject to the laws and properties of matter that renders everything susceptible to aging and changing of states. I guess such a being would have to be immaterial or something. But consider if it were outside of time how would it know anything? Who's ever been outside of time to tell us that sentience from that position is possible? It's only because we are a small part of the event horizon that we're able to percieve any series of events that you might use to suggest the concept of time. Hell, we don't really even know what time is.

So there's alot of speculation going here as though it were a proven fact that appears to give rational warrant to claims like responsibility for all evil falls on a gods shoulders.

This sounds like a rubber stamp to do whatever you please with no qualms since it all gets blamed on a being that may or may not exist. If such a being doesn't interfere to do anything good I sure wouldn't expect it to come along just to take the rap for my screwups...and I do screwup on occasion. I don't see any sense in blaming a god when I do something I shouldn't have and knew better than to do. I don't know of anyone who does blame a god for their personal screwups...do you? I know sometimes when bad things happen to people we love or when we suffer unjustly we tend to seek someone or something outside of ourselves to blame. That appears to be a big portion of this argument from evil.

It all sounds weird to me, and maybe I'm different, but I just can't see where our value assignment of things that happen to us should be any concern to such a being. If humans invented language and language is associated with perceptual things and we can relate sounds and symbols into a conceptual semblance of communication then we are the ones who invented all this good and evil business, so why would an immaterial indestructable being of some kind care if we deem it benevolent or not? Hell, if such being exists we better hope it's benevolent cause if it weren't we likely would be in deeper shit than we could ever imagine, saying all these nasty things about it all the time.

In my mind, if such a being exists I hope like hell he's benevolent and I would be just fine with him expressing that benevolence by just ignoring us stupid, weak little creatures here on earth and pretending we don't exist just like maybe we're pretending to know he doesn't exist. We're all a bunch of pretentious assholes. Maybe we really don't want to exist and think we'd all be better off if we didn't. Maybe this whole question of existence isn't really about a god anyway, but about us and our puny existence for a few decades if we're lucky...and that is what it amounts to...luck...only we're not sure if its good luck or bad.

Hell, we pick up the paper and read of some poor schmuck who fell asleep behind the wheel of his car and crossed the median running head on into a truck killing himself and the truck driver. This guy was so tired from working double shifts trying to keep up the payments for two households, the one he lived in and the one his ex lived in, from trying to pay for six kids by three different women...no wonder many religions have grown up around the concept of asceticism and negating desire...if this guy had negated some of that desire for... well, you see what I mean, he'd likely have been at home asleep instead of dead. No wonder religions arise with strict fundamental convictions about human behavior.

But it's all blind luck. That truck driver wasn't tired, he had only one wife and two kids and every reason to get home. I don't know Nic, you tell me what it's all about. You seem to feel you know and I sometimes feel the same way but then somebody always comes along and expresses something from a radically different direction that just blows me out of the water and there goes all my certainty I had carefully built up over a two or three week period....flush...right down the drain. Ever had that happen?

Or have you ever set out to write down a good idea or an argument and the more you wrote the deeper it got as you tried to anticipate all your opponents possible objections and before you knew it you were overwhelmed to the point you said, "Ah, to hell with it." and just tossed it aside? It just seems to me that everything is so inter-connected that you can start out thinking about toilet paper and end up talking about dishrags and can't remember how you went from one to the other but you are sure there was a connection in there somewhere.

So how do you drag your brain up out of this mess long enough to take an objective look around at things? Perhps if somebody could just show me where the periscope is I'd like to take a peek too.

I don't know Nic, do you? Here it is 5:27 A.M. Eastern standard time and I just cut a fart that stinks really bad and I'm wondering why, if a god really exists, he doesn't do something about the smell of farts cause they really aren't that pleasant to endure and wish this one would just go away because it's such a distraction to my saying all these exceptionally important things that the world just can't wait to consume. But it get's me to wondering if maybe god likes the smell of farts, maybe that's why he created us in the first place to just stink up the atmosphere with all these odors that he revels on...maybe I've never been so close to god as when I fart and that would explain why it's so easy not to feel his presence...but I wonder if such an immaterial being has the capacity to smell anything? Or to see or hear or taste or feel? I don't see how unless these percpetive qualities are not really connected to brain waves and functions at all. Maybe we just exist to whine about our existence to someone and wish like hell there was a god to clean up after us...like vacuuming out the smell of farts...and so when we do some of the really stupid things in our lives that stink very much...we have a god to blame and maybe if we really want to find out if a god exists or not we should go to the nearest waste process facility cause that would be a good place to waft up the collective odors of a large group of us at one time.... a place where everything we've consumed has found its way into a few basins of water and chemicals...all the animals and plants and additives we stuff in our faces daily and poop out our butts so that we can continue to wonder what the hell it all means...seems I remember reading that a god likes the smell of burnt animal flesh and that makes me wonder why? Come to think about it I like the smell of a good steak sizzling on the grill but not when it's burnt...I like 'em medium and now that I think about it further that's what I had for supper last night...only it didn't smell so bad going down as it does now leaking out my butt like it is.

Ah...such is the life of a mortal man...sitting here pecking away on these keys talking about nothing as if anyone gives a good dookey but that's the grand design of the cyber-world...a place where everyone gets to say something in anticipation of someone somewhere recieving it and maybe even responding...so we all get a turn to escape out of these grey prison walls of our brain states and skullcaps and be reassured there is life on the otherside and we're really not as alone as it feels locked up inside these spacesuits...

Okay...the smell has vanished but not for long.

mosaic

I've been on this site only a short time and I really like alot of what you saw rainbow but your attempts to defend theims, and the illogic of god falls into the exactly the same patterns that I hate about theism. It is an absurd nihilism and skepticism that yields nothing but the long post you wrote, blabbering endlessly about "maybes" "possibilities" not in an effort to establish that there are no definitives but instead to give credence to your absolute idea. Its a ridiculously silly paradox. From what I gather you're an athiest trying to effectively fend of theism by arguing what you feel are strong points but seriously dont you realize your arguments are exactly whats wrong with theism? You argue a bunch of nihilistic maybes and what ifs so you can support an absolute position. Its nonsensical. If you yourself cant come out of this trap, this little vision you have of athiests answering theist questions will not come to be man.

And god by definition of omniscience, would be responsible. The relgious claim that god knows everything, and god said this itself. It is everywhere. There is such thing as destiny and the end of times is written and already known. There is no ways around this beside going into absurdity, talking about things outside of time or whatever else. Coming up with whatever imaginative ideas you want about a possible state of affairs that can result in this. The moment god put Adam on earth he knew what would happen yet did it anyway.

All in all these theistic discussions are like discussions about who'd win in a fight between wolverine and spiderman. We could argue for days about it, making valid arguments even, but none of it corresponds to reality. It is purely an imaginative exercise.

rainbow walking

mosaic: I've been on this site only a short time and I really like alot of what you saw rainbow but your attempts to defend theims, and the illogic of god falls into the exactly the same patterns that I hate about theism. It is an absurd nihilism and skepticism that yields nothing but the long post you wrote, blabbering endlessly about "maybes" "possibilities" not in an effort to establish that there are no definitives but instead to give credence to your absolute idea. Its a ridiculously silly paradox. From what I gather you're an athiest trying to effectively fend of theism by arguing what you feel are strong points but seriously dont you realize your arguments are exactly whats wrong with theism? You argue a bunch of nihilistic maybes and what ifs so you can support an absolute position. Its nonsensical. If you yourself cant come out of this trap, this little vision you have of athiests answering theist questions will not come to be man.

rw: Now, now...maybe you've misinterpretated. I am rejecting all "isms" and trusting none. I am arguing both the pros and cons to establish the strengths and weaknesses of each. There is a method to my madness.

mosaic: And god by definition of omniscience, would be responsible.

rw: depends on how you define it...yes?

mosaic: The relgious claim that god knows everything, and god said this itself.

rw: Where? When? To whom?

mosaic: It is everywhere. There is such thing as destiny and the end of times is written and already known.

rw: Written by who?

mosaic: There is no ways around this beside going into absurdity, talking about things outside of time or whatever else.


rw: That outside of time business wasn't my introduction.


mosaic: Coming up with whatever imaginative ideas you want about a possible state of affairs that can result in this. The moment god put Adam on earth he knew what would happen yet did it anyway.

rw: Then you ascribe to that creation myth? I don't, so Adam is just another bible story for children.

mosaic: All in all these theistic discussions are like discussions about who'd win in a fight between wolverine and spiderman. We could argue for days about it, making valid arguments even, but none of it corresponds to reality. It is purely an imaginative exercise.

rw: Au contrare, my friend, all of man's myths and legends correspond to man's reality in many more ways than you or I can fathom. These are the granules of all our ideologies. To know and understand this will help me study the patterns and purposes...maybe even predict the some trends...who knows. I mis-trust all isms across the board. Science is the only credible aspect of humanity I still respect and that's subject to change.

mosaic

Myth obviously have a function, rainbow. It froms a conceptual framework of understanding, and communicating. They are figurative not literal however, which is why I said they dont correspond to reality, or better yet actuality. Poem convey feelings, ideas, word arrange in such a way that we gain some meaning from it. But to make a literal intepretation of a poem is to destroy it. Say, if a poet says " you are but the rhythm of my still beating heart," and some prick comes around and says "how is that possible? that doesnt make any sense. You cant be the rhytm of someone's art and r" Completely missing the point of concept, or couplet. You cannot in a literal sense be the rhtym of someone's still beating heart yet the phrase itself is metaphoric and conveys meaning. Religion, I belive self-annihaltes when peopl like William Craig waste intellectual brain space, coming up with logical arguments for the actual existence of a body of metaphors and ideas.

rainbow walking

rw: Ah, my friend, I hear what you're saying...far better than you do...and we're both saying it with words that are the wind tunnel through our imaginations from whence come all these poetries, analogies, metaphors and similes and all of the words and concepts have some basis in our percieved reality and even that is part of the paradox of living inside a periscope. You see Mosaic, these concepts when cleverly strung together and emotionally expressed have more power than you realize. They enter into our imaginations and unfold like flowers until their perfume has completely captivated our thinking processes and after awhile we begin to lose sight of what we once thought was real and start moving closer to the petals to get a better whiff of that fragrance and soon we become completely convinced that the fragrance is more real than our ability to smell it and after that we find ways to communicate how the smell of that imagined flower has made us feel so much more alive and we begin to interpret all our experiences through that fragrance such that anything that appears to endanger that interpretation becomes our enemy and we find more words to describe and demonize our enemies until we become convinced in our imaginations that our enemy is trying to trample our flower and we should probably not allow this to happen and before you know it we're all equally convinced of this until we take up our plowshares and beat them into swords to protect our imaginary flower and preserve the imaginary fragrance and...I agree with you in principle Mosaic...but you see...if you and I have different principles I can take these same metaphors and cleverly arrange them into an argument that, with sufficient evidence, begins to create doubts in your imagination as to why you really hold that principle and if you see these doubts confirmed by others all saying the same thing in different ways pretty soon you might just drop your principles because I've snuck in the front door of your imagination with cleverly framed new metaphors that have convinced you that what was once your principles are now just prejudices and we can start this dance all over again tonight under the pale moonlight where the whipp-o-wills are singing their love songs and if you happen to be in a relaxed frame of mind I might even persuade you to join me in many more things you would otherwise consider absurd...and if we sprinkle in some external pressures that also arise up from the competition between other men's imaginary sirens and also include the very real and subtle ticking of our own biological clocks before you know it you look up one day and can't remember how you got here...it all runs together so easily in the memory but you are certain that you didn't imagine any of it.

Can you remember who you were at the age of twelve and how you came to be who you are now? When you look back through the catalogue of recollections and the kaliediscope of thoughts that led you out of puberty, can you articulate how much you've lost and how much you've gained? Even as you read these words your very spacesuit is changing, shedding cells of skin and hair folicles and replenishing itself in an ever downward spiral of sequential metamorphisis until one day you'll look in the mirror and say to yourself, "Damn, I'm getting old". Even while in your imagination you recoil in horror at the thought.

mosaic: Poem convey feelings, ideas, word arrange in such a way that we gain some meaning from it. But to make a literal intepretation of a poem is to destroy it.

rw: Not so, my friend, it is to bring it to life in much the same way it brings you to awareness.

mosaic

Linguistics is really the aera I think that can clear up this mess we've gotten into. Not by making an algebra of language, losing all that is esoteric, referring to symbols tp convey actual meaning but making sure the distinction is realized. God as a concept is utilily. People dont seem to understand, or want to to admit that when early man deified winds, its made him able to act on it, by giving these things a personaility, some control was granted through rituals. I think modern man comes along from this figurative people( even if they literally believd it, I belive it is merely an early form of knowledge, we cannot cope with a nature that we cannot in anyway conceptualize) with a consciousness evovled, leading him to be more literal, and logical and using his concepts, imagination more usefully as science becomes a better tool than rituals.However, we do not recognize this change and instead interpret everything we see in the past with our mindset.

And as far the memory thing, I see no more in that than deifying childhood or ignorance because we've grown to a point where we can consciouslly recognize how much our perception changes. How much we've lost only becomes a problem because of how much we've gained, and I believe stems from a need to be rid of actuality. It fulfilling to speculate on how many things you've lost, the innocence of childhood than it is to confront the world with what you do have, and live. Nastagia leads to deification, and deification is another means of control, a concept to help us cope with an indifferent world.

Majody

No, he couldn't have created that person a different way. If he did that, then the first person he "saw" (the crack-addict) wouldn't ever happen, therefore god could not "see" the crack-addict.

Nic Hautamaki

just a slight correction Majody, I define omniscience as having knowledge not only of the real world, but all possible worlds as well, so your objection does not apply to the God I'm arguing against.