Freethought & Rationalism Archive

wdog · 10-10-2002, 05:14 PM

luvluv,

you keep trapping yourself in a logical inconsistency. if your future is knowable (by anyone or any being) then it is predestined, pure and simple. if the future is knowable and predestined, then we are all simple acting it out what acccording to you must have set in motion by god.

the key is knowability, i.e. is it possible to know the future. if so, then predestination simply has to follow both from logic and from physics, and we simply are powerless. the only agent responsible for it must be god

luvluv · 10-10-2002, 05:21 PM

Quote:

No. Free will means that you were not necessarily still going to eat the hamburger. It doesn’t mean that anything could happen but only one thing does. It means that anything can happen.

Free will means exactly that anything could happen but only one thing does. How could more than one thing happen? There is only going to be one future.

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:
Something either happens or it doesn't, and once it happens that's the way it happens.
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Yes, but that’s the way it happens only after it happens.

My point is that from God's point of view, He can see the future AS IF IT WERE THE PAST. He can see your future acts as history from his perspective. So you can look at his seeing your future as looking into HIS past. From His perspective, He already sees what you will do.

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Each time you utter the phrase “God thinks” you have to qualify it with the statement that God doesn’t think in the same sense that we do and we really don’t understand the nature of God’s thought. So when we said “God thinks”, we really wouldn’t know what we meant.

I think that goes without saying, wouldn't you? Most theists would tell you up front that we are not capable of understanding all of God's attributes. Is something only allowed to exist if we can understand it? With all due respect, the fact that it doesn't make sense to you is really beside the point. At the big bang the mass of the entire universe was condensed into a space with no radius. Make sense? True?

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You certainly pretend to know the nature of time yourself. I doubt you got that from the bible. It’s very convenient to use the phrase “outside of time” and push all the contradictions into obscurity. My first problem is that I don’t know how you derived that theory from the Bible.

Well, firstly, there are passages in the Bible that suggest that God exists outside of time. I'll look them up later, but the Alpha and Omega comments are a start. But at any rate there are plenty of legitimately Christian philosphies which are inherent in the Christian religion which are not explicitly spelled out in the Bible. The Trinity comes to mind. So I don't know what relavence any Biblical support would have on the matter at hand.

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It’s the same with the phrase “God wants”. If Gods wants something, does it mean that he doesn’t have something now but he would like to have it later? If God exists in all time, then all the people who have ever lived and ever will live are already in heaven and he is already being worshiped by them. So he has what he wants.

In a sense of speaking I suppose that's true, but I don't see the relevance of it. God is who He is in all times. I think when we use the phrase God wants we are describing what his will is not what he desires but lacks. God wants people to be in a relationship with Him and love Him. That is His constant, unchanging will for everyone in His creation. I think a lot of your issues are basically semantic, the same kind we get into when we try to describe what happened before time.

Quote:

In fact, how could God have created the Universe? The word “create” implies time. It should mean that there was a time when the Universe didn’t exist followed by a time when it did. And that is not only from our perspective but also from God’s. But if God is outside of time, then surely there was never a time for him in which the Universe didn’t exist. From his point of view it always existed, so he could not have created it.

The universe did begin to exist in time, because the universe exists in time. However, yes, it is true that God was/is present at both the begining and the end of the universe and everything in between while He was making it ("I am the Alpha and the Omega, the begining and the end..."). No there was not a time for him in which the universe did not exist, but that does not mean He did not create it. Besides the fact, I think we may be stretching the bounds a bit to use the phrase "there was a time for Him" when reffering to God. Time doesn't apply to Him.

Bibliophile:

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It is your action which informs His knowledge, not His knowledge that informs your actions. He sees THE future, the ONE AND ONLY future that will actually occur.
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How do you know this?

Are you under the impression that more than one future will occur? Can I both get in my car tommorow at a certain millisecond and not be in my bathtub in the same millisecond? Can science describe a scenario which provides for two simletaneously existing and distinct futures in the same universe? (And just to head this off at the pass, we're too big to be in superpositions.)

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Therefore, He would have to know what He is going to do in his own future. According to the Luvluv time theory, for God to know what He is going to do in the future, His own actions would have to inform Him.

I get this all the time, but I am not making this up. I get it from C.S. Lewis, who got it from others. William Lane Craig actually wrote a book about it, called The One Wise God (I think). I believe it has it's roots in Augustine; the notion that God lives outside of time is at least hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years old, and is one of the most basic tennets of Christian philosophy. As I said, it even has Biblical support.

At any rate, God exists in all times, so I'm not exactly sure it even applies to say that God has a future. For at every given point in the future, God is SIMELTANEOUSLY at every given point in the past. So I think your mistake is in thinking that God has anything that can be described as a future in the first place. It may be that only beings in time have futures. At any rate, God does not change, so it's kind of a moot point.

I want to clarify here that I am not advocating what I know or can prove, only trying to show that there are no contradictions in what Christians believe. If you examine Christian theology, it is possible to have an omniscient God and free will. They are not contradictions. Now, it is entirely possible that neither exists, but that's not what you asked.

K · 10-10-2002, 07:54 PM

luvluv:

Let's say that person A chooses to eat pizza for lunch tomorrow. Did God know that before He created that person?

Does God have the power to not create people? In other words, would everyone exist whether God wanted them to or not? Or does He make a decision?

If He doesn't make a decision, then He has no free will in deciding who is created and must somehow defer to a higher power.

On the other hand, if He makes a decision, then there is a theoretical person B who would have chosen a hamburger for lunch tomorrow but who doesn't exist.

Since God knew ahead of time what decisions would be made and still chose to create person A as opposed to person B, He predetermined what actions would be taken for the lunch selection tomorrow.

HRG · 10-11-2002, 02:05 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv:

No, it doesn't follow. Understand that you can now do ANYTHING that it is within your power to do. However, ultimately, you are going to actually do only a finite number of certain things by your own choice. God knows the future, and so knows the things you will do BECAUSE YOU DO THEM. His knowledge is informed by your actions. God sees YOUR future, BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DECIDED TO DO. You do not decide to do what he has seen. Epsitemeologically, you've got the whole thing backwards. Your action informs his knowledge, not the reverse.

In a certain sense, your actions predate His knowledge, however because He lives outside of time, nothing can predate his knowledge, since He has access to all times. Causally speaking, however, your actions are prior to His knowledge of them, even though He knows them before you actually do them. However, this is a function of your being limited to one dimension of time and His not being so limited.

Even if this notion of "living outside of time" made sense (which I doubt), your argument is invalid IMHO because you are certainly living in time, and it your action which is being determined.

From your PoV, God knows today inerrantly what you will be doing tomorrow. 100% correlation plus time order is equivalent to causation, thus his knowledge today causes your action tomorrow.

Regards,
HRG.

dangin · 10-11-2002, 04:49 AM

luvluv,

God has seen the future. God has seen every nano second of the future. He must have, he's god and all that.

Tell me what can be changed. if one nano second is different than what god has seen, then god fails.

You are following god's script. God created you, god created all your ancestors, god created the planet, solar system, universe. God created science, the chemistry of your brain, your physiology. God created old navy and the clothes you buy at the mall. God is responsible for every single bit of everything. Including being the author of everything you do.

You can't have it any other way or god fails.

To me that mean god fails.

Deacon · 10-11-2002, 06:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by dangin:
luvluv,

God has seen the future. God has seen every nano second of the future. He must have, he's god and all that.

Tell me what can be changed. if one nano second is different than what god has seen, then god fails.

You are following god's script. God created you, god created all your ancestors, god created the planet, solar system, universe. God created science, the chemistry of your brain, your physiology. God created old navy and the clothes you buy at the mall. God is responsible for every single bit of everything. Including being the author of everything you do.

You can't have it any other way or god fails.

To me that mean god fails.

Maybe God created the big bang and is just watching the chaos unfold...

Walter_Mitty · 10-11-2002, 06:42 AM

Dear Luvluv,

The only Bible verses that I am aware of that even come close to implying that God is �outside of time� (� Christian Apologetics) are as follows:

Quote:

2 Peter 3:8: �But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.�

Rev. 1:8 � �I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.�

As far as I know, the biblical support for God existing outside of time is pretty weak. (correct me if I�m wrong) IMO it�s a big stretch to take those verses and suggest that God operates outside of time. I think it�s much more plausible that this "outside of time" notion is a slippery tactic that is used to explain away the problems that come with omniscience and our so-called free will.

In fact, there are many more verses in the Bible that would suggest God IS NOT omniscient, which tends to make your notion of �outside of time� a moot point:

Quote:

Genesis 3:8 "And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, amongst the trees of the garden."

Genesis 4:16 "And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden."

Genesis 18:20-21 "And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and, if not, I will know."

Genesis 22:12 "For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me."

Numbers 22:9 "And God came unto Balaam, and said, What men are these with thee?"

Job 1:7, 2:2 "And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it."

Deuteronomy 8:2 "God led thee these forty years in the wilderness ... to know what what in thine heart."

Deuteronomy 13:3 "The Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God."

2 Chronicles 32:31 "God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart."

Genesis 11:5 "And the Lord came down to see the city and the town."

Hosea 8:4 "They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not."

You write:
I think that goes without saying, wouldn't you? Most theists would tell you up front that we are not capable of understanding all of God's attributes.

If that�s the case, you may be wrong about God existing outside of time.

Back to free will�

Even if your god is sitting outside of time and observing all of history, then that means that only one course of history is possible; otherwise the picture for god would keep changing and he wouldn't have perfect knowledge of what happens. This means that we are predestined without your god controlling events. This leaves us with an unintelligible god sitting by as a passive spectator. This, of course, does not absolve him of all the evils of the world IMO.

In plain english your notion does not solve the problems that come with free will and omniscience. All it does is reconciles God's foreknowledge with human free will. Basically, you�re saying God can know my choices and my choices can still be free. It does not prove from the Bible that your God actually gives us free will; it only shows that he could do it that way.

The bottom line in this entire muddle is that God operates within time when relating to us. If God simply knew our choices, your timelessness argument might work and we could still be free. But when he commands one of his prophets to write down certain future choices, he is operating within the bounds of time. He is not operating in a timeless manner. Once God's foreknowledge is written down in the Bible, the act is unavoidable.

For example: Jesus told his disciples that Judas would betray him. Judas might still be "free" in that God did not cause Judas per se, to betray Christ. But he is still "forced" to do it, since Christ had already said he would. If a choice is prophesied by your God, it means it MUST happen. This tends to poke a big hole in your notion of free will.

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: Bibliophile ]

Shadowy Man · 10-11-2002, 06:47 AM

What if God told you that you were going to eat a hamburger tomorrow instead of pizza? Do you still have a choice?

dangin · 10-11-2002, 07:41 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Deacon:


Maybe God created the big bang and is just watching the chaos unfold...

Yes, that is the unprovable prime mover, "deist" god. Not the alleged interactive, redemptive god of xianity.

Automaton · 10-11-2002, 08:59 AM

Quote:

I don't see how free will and God's knowledge of the future are incompatible.

Let's have a think about this for a second, shall we. To know something means that something is true, otherwise it is not actual knowledge. If something is true it cannot also be false, this is the law of identity. To know an event occured "tomorrow" or "at time event T", means that occuration is true, which means it could not be also false. Thus to know an event will occur negates the possibility of it not occuring. Free will requires choice, which requires a range of possibilities. Thus knowledge negates free-will.

From modal terms, if there are two possible worlds, W1 and W2, and in W1 Mary bounces a ball and in W2 she doesn't, and the difference between the actuality of W1 or W2 is a choice on behalf of Mary, what does God know about what is going to happen? W1 or W2 or both (violates law of identity) or none (means he's not omniscient)?

[ Original meaning intact, post rephrased. ]

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: Automaton ]

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10-10-2002, 05:14 PM	#31
wdog Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Ohio, USA Posts: 1,547	luvluv, you keep trapping yourself in a logical inconsistency. if your future is knowable (by anyone or any being) then it is predestined, pure and simple. if the future is knowable and predestined, then we are all simple acting it out what acccording to you must have set in motion by god. the key is knowability, i.e. is it possible to know the future. if so, then predestination simply has to follow both from logic and from physics, and we simply are powerless. the only agent responsible for it must be god

10-10-2002, 07:54 PM	#33
K Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Chicago Posts: 1,485	luvluv: Let's say that person A chooses to eat pizza for lunch tomorrow. Did God know that before He created that person? Does God have the power to not create people? In other words, would everyone exist whether God wanted them to or not? Or does He make a decision? If He doesn't make a decision, then He has no free will in deciding who is created and must somehow defer to a higher power. On the other hand, if He makes a decision, then there is a theoretical person B who would have chosen a hamburger for lunch tomorrow but who doesn't exist. Since God knew ahead of time what decisions would be made and still chose to create person A as opposed to person B, He predetermined what actions would be taken for the lunch selection tomorrow.

10-11-2002, 04:49 AM	#35
dangin Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: The Middle, Kansas Posts: 2,637	luvluv, God has seen the future. God has seen every nano second of the future. He must have, he's god and all that. Tell me what can be changed. if one nano second is different than what god has seen, then god fails. You are following god's script. God created you, god created all your ancestors, god created the planet, solar system, universe. God created science, the chemistry of your brain, your physiology. God created old navy and the clothes you buy at the mall. God is responsible for every single bit of everything. Including being the author of everything you do. You can't have it any other way or god fails. To me that mean god fails.

10-11-2002, 06:47 AM	#38
Shadowy Man Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: A Shadowy Planet Posts: 7,585	What if God told you that you were going to eat a hamburger tomorrow instead of pizza? Do you still have a choice?

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