Jamie_L

Alright, but getting back to my original question:

What are the implications of this for free will? Clearly under this model, God does not create us at any discreet time. In fact, we are not entities as we perceive ourselves: rather each person is the sum of all their actions for all the time they exist. So, as I said, it would appear to me that God creates all of our actions when he creates us. Where, then, is there room for free will?

Jamie

One-eyed Jack

Luvluv, you wrote: "I don't know how you can divorce knowledge from modes of perception."

I don't understand how your post addresses my point that in the standard Christian mythos God knows and has known for all time everything that was, is, and ever shall be. His knowledge is eternal and perfect. God's perception is not within time, eh? He cannot "discover" or "change"--He is indeed eternal and changeless, outside time.

Sure that raises problems with quantum indeterminacy and freewill and divine mercy and the Problem of Evil and whatnot. That's because theism is at its foundation non-scientific and irrational: see J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism and some other excellent philosophical works. If you try to make the Christian God logically consistent and rational, you have to discard some of the Christian doctrine. I just don't think there's any way around it.

Theli

Luvluv...

So god's knowledge of a future event is false until that event happens. If it isn't than the choice was already made before you were born.

No you couldn't have. There was no way in hell that you would be able to not buy the DVD (if there was an omniscient being).
The events that are going to happen hasn't happened yet. If they had, then your observations of them would also have elapsed. Your consciousness isn't the only thing that flows through the line, you know.

"Could have" have already happened. You need to use "Can be" instead. But "can be" deals with a possibility with several outcomes. If something would know the outcome, then all along there was only one possibility.

"Can be". Still we are not refering to an already elapsed event, but a future possible event.
Future, not past.

I never said that. But god can not have knowledge of our future, if there are several possibilities of it's outcome.

Once again, for something to observe something that will happen the chain of events (cause-effect) must already have elapsed.

luvluv

OEJ:

I am addressing how he knows. You seem to suggest that He knows independantly of Temporal Omnipresence. I am saying that probably isn't possible and it is contradictory. He knows BECAUSE he sees; he sees BECAUSE we do. Our choices are what inform his T.O., but because He has always been able to see our actions, He has always known what they will be.

Theli:

What does "until" mean to a being who lives outside of time? The event is already happening to him, and was always visible to him. That statement reflects linear time.

I could have, but what God would have always been seeing would have been different.

THe events that are going to happen are visible to God.

In what way does God's observation of me restrict my choice? Can you explain the mechanism by which someone observing someone making a choice determines that choice?

There were other possibilites, but only one happened and God only saw the one that happens. But explain to me why that means I could not have made a different choice? It would only mean that God would have been seeing me make that choice throughout eternity.

Linear thinking.

Again, cause-effect do not work simply in non-linear time. They are often simeltaneous. One of the participants in this scenario, the observer, is not bound by cause and effect. He can see everything that is happening to the observed at once.

I really have never, ever been able to understand this argument. Can someone explain to me how God's knowledge of the choices that you will make, freely, and without coercion are somehow not free because he knows you are going to make him.

You are essentially saying you are not free unless you can do something that you are not going to do. What does that even mean? Explain it to me, please.

Sharath

In other words, God doesn't "know" that I will purchase a DVD player in two weeks. He is already "there" two weeks from now, watching me make a free-will decision to purchase a DVD player at the "same time" that He is right now watching me wrestle with whether or not I will buy a DVD player.
Cool. Let us take the above statement of urs as a given. Right. Now, but don't u honestly see a contradiction? According to ur assertion that God is present at all times at all places, He is already there two weeks from now watching u make a 'free will' decision. But then, doesn't it follow that He is also actually 'there' two months from now watching u watching a movie on ur dvd player? Doesn't it follow that He is actually 'there' a year from now, watching u making a decision to sell it? And since he had already watched u enjoying a movie on the dvd player, is it possible for u to not watch the movie on that particular day? If it is, u r contradicting God. If it isn't, well, let's face it, u r contradicting urself. Ouch! I certainly see we are running around in circles. Well, I will be waitig for your reply. Hope to hear from you soon.

Theli

luvluv...

I don't know, what does "exist" mean outside of time?

So he doesn't exist, but he is going to exist? As everything has already happened, when he "observe" it, then the universe aswell as us are in the past.
BTW, how can something be "visible" to him? What excacly is he observing?
How can he observe, when observation is an action (a change), and he is timeless (changeless)?
Something that is not of our time cannot be said to exist. It cannot interact with our spacetime, as that would force it down into it. It cannot observe anything in our spacetime, as that would require something from our universe to suddenly "jump out" of our time.

We do have linear time. That is what we observe. Day by day, minute by minute. The events follow a line, aswell as our obervations.

So his knowledge would infact change after you bought/or didn't buy the DVD?
If it was always the same then it was not your choice, it had already been destined.
Lets test another example.
Tomorrow, when you crawl out of your bed, and put on your socks. Will you put on the left first, or the right?
Does god know what choice you'll make?
Can you do different?

Once again, how can they be visible to god?

I've already answered this before.

I've answered this too. God's knowledge doesn't force you by itself. But for something to be able to know your future actions, they must be fixed. That is what's forcing you.
Not that a certain being possess that knowledge, but that it can be possessed.

E = Future event.
A&B = 2 possible outcomes of that event.
P = A or B.
God knows E = A.
Now comes the question... is E = B possible?

If E is possibly B then god's knowledge is possibly wrong. (E = A or B).
If E is not possibly B then there were only one possibility all along. (E = A).

I just did, above.

What eternity?
Wasn't god outside of time?

As oppose to fairy thinking?
Are you saying that in our world there is no past, present or future?

Once again, how can he do that?
If he observes light, then he observes an effect from an energysource. He doesn't oberve the energysource (nor the objects the light bounces of).
And also, explain how something can be "not bound by cause-effect" and what relevance that has. If he observes something then the observation is an effect.
He cannot oberve any future events as those doesn't exist. They don't exist in our spacetime, and they certainly doesn't exist for something outside of it.

No, I'm not saying that. I am only free if my choices are made while I observe them. BTW, you haven't answered that yet.
How can my choices/actions already have been made and known, but by observations of them isn't.

Jamie_L

luvluv:

My point (which is a bit different from Theli's) is not that God observing us dictates our choice. My original point is that god "knew" what our choices would be when he when he first created us. In fact, in crafting every part of us, he makes everything about us that determines our choices. He makes everything outside us that influences our choices. Our chioces are dictated by his actions, and he knows all the consequences of his actions. How can he give us free will unless he makes all these things at random?

If I carve a rabit out of soap, I must carve every aspect of it. Once I have carved it, it has only the aspects I gave it. How could I have allowed the rabbit to create itself? This is effectively the position God is in. He creates everything about us. So how does he let us create ourselves?

Jamie

Theli

Jamie_L...

Apperantly you didn't read any of my posts. Luluv has got this idea that I think god's knowledge forces us to act according to it.
But that is not what I meant.
If our future actions can be known, then we have no choice.
Come to think of it, it's irrelavent if something possesses that knowledge or not. The important thing is if such knowledge exists/can exist.

Jamie_L

Hold your horses. I read your posts. Though my clumsy wording implied you agreed with luvluv's assessment, that was not my intent. I was trying to state my disagreement with luvluv's assessment while simultaneously pointing out that you and I were arguing slightly different things.

Absolutely. Actually, even if their is no god at all, certain concepts of time essentially preclude true free will (though not the perception of free will).

Jamie

luvluv

I just flat out dont get this. Why? Why is it that if someone has seen our choices that they are not actually our choices?

Can someone spell this out. I just do not get it. God can see me making a decision but it is ME making a decision.

Let me put it like this way. God is observing us now. God is also observing us at every possible moment in history in exactly the way he is observing us now. So if His ability to percieve us doing actions we have not yet done somehow limits us in the future, it should also limit us right now. His observation of us, right now, was at some point in our time Him percieving what was to us, at that time, a future event.

Can you explain how God's observation of you, right now, limits what you can do? How does the fact that God is now observing you limit your ability to choose? If it does not limit your ability at this present, how does it limit your ablitity at a present moment which will not occur until tommorow? Or next year? Or twenty years from now?

(You guys keep talking about how God "knows" but I am arguing that God sees, and as much as He knows, He knows BECAUSE he sees.)