Wayne Delia

Why didn't God know about that, and why didn't the serpent get banished for the same reason God banished Adam and Eve? God didn't seem to say "Behold, the serpent has become like us, knowing good and evil..." and so forth, before kicking the serpent out like He did to A&E.

The way the simplistic story is written, it seems that humans were born mortal, but eating the fruit of the Tree of Life bestowed immortality. Genesis 3:22 includes God's description of what happens when a person ate from the Tree of Life: he would live forever.

Read Genesis 3:22. It's not simply life itself, it's immortality.

There is nothing "completely logical" about the creation stories at all.

Not according to Genesis 3:22. God kicked them out because He was explicitly afraid they'd become completely like Him, already knowing good and evil, and potentially living forever.

That's "contradictory", not "complimentary". It's relatively well known that several details of Creation I conflict with the details of Creation II, mostly in terms of timing. The "five men examining an elephant, reporting different details" analogy would be wrong if applied here.

Gwah? Compare Psalm 14 to Psalm 53. It's an outright case of plagiarism.

WMD

Wayne Delia

I do. It evaluates whether free will is relevant, regardless if it is with or without the presence of omniscience. Free will is logically incompatible with omniscience, as I've shown several dozen times in the past, so the argument would be better stated "Even if free will was logically compatible with omniscience, having free will wouldn't matter."

No, that's actually fairly well established, and I am not surprised you either can't or won't understand it. Broussard's point is that people's actions would be the same regardless whether they had free will or not, given that an omniscient God exists. Since free will doesn't make a difference, it's irrelevant to any outcome. You seem to need people to fully exercise free will along with pretending God is omniscient, so that the blame for catastrophes and suffering can be redirected to humans, and away from God.

Here, you are "conveniently" omitting the detail that God's knowledge is necessarily perfectly accurate. If God's knowledge is perfectly accurate, man cannot possibly make any other choice. Thus, God's perfectly accurate knowledge removes all other choices from any logical possibility of being chosen, which refutes free will. Plugging your fingers in your ears, squeezing your eyes shut, and shouting "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA" is not really an effective rebuttal technique.

It doesn't matter what caused the choice. The problem is that no other choice is possible, because God knows with perfect accuracy what the outcome will be, and God can't be wrong. That's what removes free will from any conceivable choice opportunity.

You've been clobbered on this argument several times in other threads. Why would you consider fighting the same losing battle with no new ammunition?

Here is where Broussard's argument may apply: the "desires of man" are irrelevant. In fact, you've already been corrected on this many times in the past. People cannot always do what they desire at all. I've refuted that by stating that it is my desire to choose something God knows I won't choose. Since I can't do that, even if I know what God knows I will choose in advance, I do not have free will. There are many other instances in real life where people are compelled to do that which they do not want to do - in prison, for example, or in the armed forces. The usual bullshit response is "Well, if a person commits a crime (or enlists in the Marines), he chooses to take on all the unpleasant routines of prison (or of Basic Training boot camp)," which is a blatant lie. Given an opportunity to commit a crime, the would-be criminal does not honestly state "By committing this crime, I choose to get butt-raped every night in my prison cell by Big Bubba." Rather, the choice is driven by different desires - primarily, the desire for whatever benefit the crime affords, coupled with the desire to avoid getting caught. The criminal, however, is caught, tried, convicted, sentenced to prison, and butt-raped by Big Bubba - which, according to your line of reasoning, he must have chosen. Clearly, he hasn't chosen that, but he's coerced into doing it.

First, that's just an instance of something God allegedly knows, not an example of how it can coexist with man's free will. Second, God wouldn't have to "see" anything. He already knows it. He's known it before any of those men were born, before any men at all were born. He's OMNISCIENT, remember? And He cannot be wrong. So, in the case of those particular men, they have no choice but to be wicked. They couldn't possibly be NOT wicked, for to do so would refute God's omniscience. Without any other options logically available, there is no choice, and free will is removed entirely. Your predictable response - "But they chose to be wicked" - misses the point entirely. They couldn't possibly choose to be otherwise, so punishing them for making a coerced choice is pointless and cruel. All you're doing is reasserting a mistake that's been corrected many times.

That's just a random Bible quote, with no relevance to anything.

That, too, simply repeats a corrected error, that anyone has free will when God is assumed to exist and be omniscient. Those particular men did nothing other than what God knew they would do, and they could not possibly do otherwise.

Here, you're conceding Broussard's argument: free will would be irrelevant, even if it was logically compatible with omniscience. But the question isn't whether free will is relevant, rather, it's whether free will is in any way logically compatible with perfect omniscience. It isn't.

I desire to make a choice that God knows I won't make. You have run away from that hypothetical argument so many times, you're always leaving it on the table. ("But it's only a hypothetical" does not refute the argument.)

If God is omniscient, I cannot possibly make that choice above; if I cannot possibly make that choice, my free will is impaired (and, in fact, is totally removed, since "that choice" includes all other possible choices apart from the one God knows will be made).

You've got to bring something new to the table to refute that; otherwise, you're simply repeating your previous corrected error. Failing to understand the argument is permissible, but using your failure to understand as a basis for assuming nobody has refuted you is ridiculous.

WMD

rhutchin

I do not reject either position you state above. I rejected that portion of your argument where you failed to tie God’s omniscience to man’s action.

Given the two positions above, we can ask two questions—

1. What difference does it make whether or not you are said to have “free will�? if all choices are determined by some cause? Here, the answer is that you cannot have Libertarian Free Will. If you define “fee will�? as the ability to do that which you desire and your desire is the “cause�? of your choices, then the question is whether you are really free (as opposed to being a slave to your desires)?

2. If all choices are determined by a cause, why does it make a difference whether God is omniscient if God’s omniscience is not that cause?

Wayne Delia

Tying God's omniscience to man's action refutes free will. Broussard is doing you a favor in ignoring that connection, so that it can be pretended that God's omniscience and man's free will can co-exist. But if you go into that question any deeper (by "failing to tie God's omniscience to man's action"), you see that they are logically incompatible.

One difference is that God's omniscience logically removes any other choice alternative from the possibility of being selected. So, for God (or anyone) to assign blame for any action would be pointless. Broussard's argument jumps over that step in order to demonstrate that free will, if it could exist with God's omniscience, is irrelevant.

I'm not at all sure what you think you mean by LFW, because I think you are not at all sure what you think you mean by LFW. (No kidding.)

I haven't defined "free will" as the ability to do that which you desire. Desires are irrelevant. The operating definition of free will is the unconstrained ability to choose between two or more logically available alternatives. God's perfectly accurate foreknowledge of what the choice will be constrains the ability to choose to a single coerced option which God knows will be chosen. All other alternatives are removed from the logical possibility of being chosen. That refutes free will.

You seem to want to assign choices to desires so that you can have somebody other than God to blame for anything that goes wrong. It's pretty clear that's what your strategy is. It's refuted by my desire to do something which God knows I won't, so either my free will or God's perfect omniscience is flushed down the dumper.

If God is omniscient, no outcome other than what God knows will happen can possibly happen. The inability of people to choose other options, REGARDLESS of their desires, is what refutes free will. It's really simple, but it is taking way too long for it to sink in with you. Your common strategy here is to ignore this argument, then pretend it was never made.

WMD

Tubby Lardmore

That was precisely my thought as I read this long and interesting thread. The church I grew up in taught that while the original scriptures may have been formed by a stylus grasped by a human hand, the motion of the stylus as it formed the letters was induced directly by God, so that the sentences that were built up in that manner were just exactly what God Himself wanted them to be, free of any and all limitations within the minds of the human whose hand held the stylus.

post tenebras lux

I feel that I shouldn't have to mention this but, just in case Rhutchin has forgotten, let's be reminded that this omniscient god is The Prime Mover/First Cause. So, yeah, god is the cause that ultimately determines all choices and, as he - in his perfect omniscience - chose to create this universe rather than any other, god chose the choices.

Luxie

rhutchin

It may be true that, because God is omniscient, no outcome other than that which God knows will happen can possibly happen. So what? That does not explain the forces that cause the outcomes. Outcomes are not dependent on God being omniscient for their occurrence. Outcomes depend on causal forces (that, in turn, refute Libertarian Free Will (and require that the LFW crowd to deny that God is omniscient with regard to the future)). However, God can allow for a person to choose that which he desires (an outcome which then can be known through omniscience) and causal forces can preserve that freedom. Consequently, the presence of an omniscient being does not, by itself, make “free will�? irrelevant.

Since God did create the universe, He can be credited with making certain choices among which would be the choice to allow people to choose to do that which they desire. His omniscience would then consist of the knowledge of the choices that people would make under the circumstances in which they find themselves.

Johnny Skeptic

What about "Since God created natural disasters, and he always knows where and when they will happen, why doesn't he ever share this knowledge with humans"? True love always protects, and true love is always consistent. The God of the Bible is not like that. No human would trust another human who had the power to prevent and/or predict natural disasters and refused to do so, or a human father who refused to protect his child from danger if he was able to.

Wayne Delia

So that means that humans cannot possibly make any other choice. Being unable to make any other choice means free will is completely removed. You've really got to start paying attention.

"Forces that cause the outcomes" don't matter, when no other outcome is logically possible.

Doesn't matter, when no other outcome is even possible. If any other outcome was possible, God shares the same possibility of being wrong.

Again, you really don't seem to be sure or consistent of what you mean by Libertarian Free Will. Post your operating definition, or else stop throwing the term around.

What I desire is to choose something among the options God knows I will not choose. You have an amazing "blind spot" for that argument, as you simply cannot bring yourself to address it. If God can allow for a person to have a true choice, God cannot know what the outcome will be, so by God's own wacky-ass reasons, He disqualifies Himself from omniscience.

That's not a consequence at all. Your conclusion does not follow from your premise.

That choice, unfortunately, refutes God's own omniscience. God cannot know in advance with perfect certainty what people will choose, in order to preserve the logical availability of two or more logically available alternatives. If God knows about the outcome, then no other outcome is possible, no other choice is available, and no free will is in effect. You really need to deal with this refutation, otherwise, you will continue to appear to be stubbornly and intentionally re-asserting what has already been refuted.

And His omniscience cannot be wrong; therefore, people cannot make any other choices. With no other alternatives logically available to be chosen, no free will is in effect. This may be a milestone of sorts; it is about the fiftieth time you've been told the same thing.

WMD

Wayne Delia

The reason, obviously, is that God is existentially-challenged. Common apologetics have included the claim that humans, with finite minds, are too stupid to understand the reasons God has for anything, or that humans are too filthy and sinful to have access to that kind of information.

That much is obvious, yes. The common apologetics rely on special pleading, usually the claim that we should give God the benefit of the doubt because God is God - which pretty much begs the question.

WMD