wdog

oh, and I meant to ask you.

your implies that at the moment god created the universe he had foreknowledge of the the fall from the garden, as well as the flood of noah. if he knew that he had made a mistake, why continue with it? why act surprised when people did not meet his expectations as before the flood? why allow this universe to exist with all its imperfections (sin) and suffering if he knew it all in advance of the creation? It makes no logical sense

wdog

more... sorry man, just can't resist

let me grant you all you say just for the sake of argument.

there then is a point that has been brought up in other threads, which would bother me if I were you. assume that continue living my as is so that I will end up in hell for being a nonbeliever. god is somewhere watching me go to hell right now, before I actually realize it in my time. if he really loves me, just how can he sit back and let that happen? it is certainly within his power to prevent that. if I had foreknowledge that someone I loved was going to make a choice that would harm them seriously and permanently, you better believe that I would intervene. i would intervene so much to prevent it that they might not like me for it. why do i display more compassion than your god?

second though, there we hit upon the paradox again. If I am able to intervene and change what I saw was going to happen to them, then I really wouldn't have had foreknowledge since I should have also saw my intervention as well and never had seen the tragedy. If I am not allowed to intervene, then I have no free will, and I certainly am not god.

Evil Milkman

If this god knows what you are going to do an eternity before it happened, you have no choice in the matter! You only think you can freely choose.

Free will and predestination are incompatible and wholly bogus.

People need to take responsibility for their own actions. No daddy in the sky is watching you take a crap.

Automaton

If there is only one possible world, then all things are modally necessary, and you have just refuted your own point. Free-will requires choice over a range of possiblities, if things could not have been any other way, then you had no choice in the matter, QED.

luvluv

K:

It's just that I get the feeling that some folks on this board are belittling the argument because they think it's entirely my little idea. It's not.


Bibliophile:

This argument has nothing to do with whether or not God exists. It has to do with whether omniscience and free will can co-exist in the same state of affairs. For the record, many theists do not hold this view and hold that God does not know the future (it's called open theism, look it up). There are versions of Christianity which do not hold any of these propositions and yet remain in tact. I don't happen to hold any of them but they are entirely plausible and consistent. They hold that the future is unknowable, and God by not knowing the unknowable is not any less omniscient, since to know the unknowable is a contradiction, and theists hold that God cannot do the self-contradictory (The whole God cannot make square circles thing). I could just as easily have contested this notion of omniscience vs free will with this defense and probably avoided a lot of unnecessary conversation, but since I do not hold this view it seemed to me kind of dishonest. Nevertheless, this question really has nothing to do with the existence of even the Christian God, since many Christians have constructed theologies which do not adhere to it. I'm here not defending theism nor even Christianity, but the particular school of Christianity I support. Even if I am wrong, there are schools of Christianity against which this particular argument does not obtain, so if it is attempted as an atheological proof, it needs a lot of support.

You said it was incomprehensible for me to assert that God has any property, and you are correct. You are correct to dismiss any theory that I invent about God, but if it is a statement that I have reason to believe God made about himself, I have every right to support it as being true. I said that I believe scripture is ONE WAY of apprehending the truth that is only accurate if it is balanced against the other two ways. I never said it didn't matter. If a proposition has the support of personal revelation, corporate revelation, AND scriptural revelation, then I have the right to believe it is true. I know for a fact that two of the three categories of verification support this theory, though I cannot claim to have any personal verification that this is true. But two out of three is more than enough for me to take it seriously.

There is no reason to assume that. FUNCTIONALLY speaking, it makes sense to refer to God as sitting at the end of history and looking back since, while it will not provide an accurate description of His temporal location (since He is actually present in all times) it is an accurate description of His knowledge: He has knowledge of all times as if they are past, though He resides in every moment from the begining to the end of history simeltaneously. Bringing God into a "past" is a category mistake and is furthermore begging the question.


wdog, I could go point by point and refute most of your statements, but you would just restate them and then decide you don't believe in them, which again I am emphatically stating IS YOUR RIGHT. You would be completely justified in not BELIEVING that God lives outside of time.

But you cannot PROVE that God cannot live outside of time, because to do that you would have to prove that the laws that apply to observers of our universe, like the H.U.P., apply to people observing our universe from another universe, using means that we are not aware of. You can't do that. You would further have to prove that these limitations, like the H.U.P., would apply to an Omnipotent Agent. You can't do that. So you are welcome to DISBELIEVE the out of time hypothesis until the cows come home, but that will be your choice, not the inevitable dictate of logic. The argument for the impossibility for the co-existence of free will and omniscience, as it has been construed, may seem persuasive, like the cosmological or teleological arguments, but is in the end, unsound, like the cosmological and telelogical arguments.

wdog:

This is entirely the point. What difference does his knowledge of physics make to the question at hand if you cannot prove that the laws of physics apply to Omnipotent Observers outside of our known universe? Any application of physics to the problem would beg the question.

Please explain to me why I should assume that Omnipotence and Omniscience is limited to knowing the future by our equations. Even better, explain this given that I already said that God knows the future BY OBSERVING IT as if it were the past, and so would have no problem knowing the weather at all. This is turning into an incredibly time-consuming exercise in question begging. I am telling you God exists in a place outside the universe. You are telling me that he can't because that would violate certain principles of this universe. I am asking you to explain why principles of this universe would have to apply to other universes, and you are attempting to do that by simply ASSUMING that the principles of this universe apply to other universes. This will get you no where at all.\

Even the many universe hypothesis and Lee Smolin's (? was it him) cosmological evolution scenario PRESUPPOSES that laws in other universes would be different from ours. So even in scientific appeals to other universes they acknolwedge that there is no reason to believe that physical laws would be identical in other universes.

As I said above, this is an accurate representation of the position of his KNOWLEDGE, but not of his actual position, which is everywhere and everywhen.

You are assuming that the laws of quantum mechanics apply to observers beyond this universe. You cannot prove that. You are also assuming that the laws of quantum mechanics apply to OMNIPOTENT OBSERVERS living outside this universe. You cannot prove that, either.

I'll say it again for EVERYBODY: I am not trying to prove to you that any of these things actually are the way I am attempting to explain them. It is not necessary that I do. My intent here is to show that the argument that free will and omniscience are incompatible to be unsound, because I can think of a way in which the two conditions could be resolved that lack any internal contradictions. So as an atheological argument, the free will/omniscience approach is unsuccesful. That is all I'm trying to say. Believe it, don't believe it. That much is up to you.

[ October 13, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

wdog

but luvluv, noboby can prove anything about what is outside this universe, we have no idea what it is like or even what it means, or have any access to it whatsoever. In you own words, you can't do that. You and Craig want to have it both ways, you seem to want to say that understanding of god transcends physics and us mere mortals, but then you turn right around and claim you understand some of the physics of god with this out of time deal. I was going to say that to you, but we were talking on other tangents. It is you and craig who are claiming to understand the physics of what is outside this universe, that is why I don't take craig seriously, he doesn't even have a comprehenision of the physics of this universe let alone what is outside this universe.

I said nothing about what is outside this universe, my comments were all confined to what must be observed of this universe (causuality, unpredictability, nonlinearity...). Someone who is outside this universe looking in is not changing the rules of this one, just observing. I am simply making comments on what they must observe. You and craig on the other hand have a lot of work to do, you have not established any of the physics of this out of time thing.

I don't have to prove anything luvluv, I am not the one with the extraordinary claim. When i bring up the H.U.P. it is the job of you and craig to show exactly how it relates to an external-to-the-universe observer. It is like any new idea you might present luvluv, it is up to you to defend it, not up to me to justify my reservations.

Omnipotent is an absolute term of human invention that has no meaning whatsoever. Absolutes were thrown out of physics long ago.


Again you misunderstand, I didn't say that HUP applies to some external creature, I am claiming that it applies to what it is observing.

sure, but they never do what you and craig are doing- claim to know what they are.

no I didn't, see above. and you cannot prove anything about what is outside this universe

again no i didn't, and you have not established any of the physics of an omnipotent oberver, well, you can't because the very term omnipotent is not part of physics as we know it. you will have to develope a whole new physics.

luvluv, i mean no disrespect, but i can't believe that paragraph comes from a thinking person.

take it a little at a time

ok, you are backing off from your out of time idea. wise move since you haven't developed it enough. Then you claim it is not necessary to prove it- well I differ with you there. All physical theories need to be 'proven' to be acceptable, or else any yahoo can come up with any idea (as long as it is consistent) and claim equal footing with something like quantum mechanics say.

next...

that really blows me away luvluv, you just above admitted that your idea of out of time has not been formally justified. Next you just sort of say "oh well, doesn't matter" since as long as one can come up with an idea, ANY UNJUSTIFIED IDEA that seems to lack internal contradictions (although all us of have given you many, like can god intervene in his own fixed 'movie'), that claims to do an end around omniscience/free will then that is all that is required to solve the problem.

well luvluv, there have been examples of self consistent theories of physics in the past that have just simply proven wrong. in fact I think it may not be too hard for a good theoretician to come up with a good self consistent set of rules for some imaginary universe. that doesn't make it correct. anyway, your out of time arguments have not addressed many of the contradictions brought up here, I am waiting for your resolution on the intervention problem.

Devilnaut

K:

I disagree. The HUP only states that 100% accurate measurement of quanta is impossible because on this scale measurements themselves begin to interfere with the data. How does this imply non-causality?

wdog

that is right devilnaut, HUP does not violate causuality.

aslo more on this choose to believe thing luvluv. You stated that we can choose to believe or not choose to believe you. That is how how a theist acts, not how a person like me acts.

I don't simply choose my beliefs according to what feels good, I PROVISIONALLY ACCEPT certain ideas if they can be justified to me as valid. I don't have faith in science, I simply accept it as it has been shown to be an accurate tool in describing the world around us. I will not accept string theory until the theorists can tie their nice matehmatics to something that we can measure predicted uniquely by theory.

It is not a matter of me simply choosing to believe out of time, it is a matter of you folks justifying to me that I should accept it.

K

Heisenberg asserted that position and momentum are not just unobservable when Planck lengths are involved. He stated that they actually have no meaning in this quantum arena. To many, including Bohr and Heisenberg, this meant that there was no causality on the quantum scale. However, it doesn't eliminate causality of a probabilistic nature on the macroscopic scale.

dangin

Hold on, let's grant luvluv a god out of time scenario.

That means that god is sitting in his lazyboy with the entirety of reality both spatially and cronologically sitting in a terrariam on his shelf.

This means that god can view any point of it he wants, and it is no sweat for him to view the first moment of reality as much as he wants. While sitting with reality paused at it's first moment, he knows everything that will ever happen, just like when he sits at the last moment, (at a table at the restaurant at the end of the universe) and knows everything that has happened. His knowledge must be identical in both views.

The fact that your actions exist before you do(as they must, wherever the omniscient god exists)means that someone or something created that set of actions. And you don't exist yet so it can't have been you who created them.

Also, what this means is that even if you have the choices of a lifetime, and god only records what you do, he knows whether you are damned or saved before you are born, and nothing you can do can alter that reality. Thus the game is rigged, jesus allegedly came for everyone(OK, jesus came for the jews, paul let everyone in the club) yet some people do not have a chance at redemption. This is not free will.