davidm

Hi, Emotional,

MWI is not solipsism, though it probably is the topic for a different thread. Yes, it is seriously considered by scientists that reality is a multiverse, and every choice you can make, you do make. The world splits at each moment into a multitude of non-interfering branches. There are essentially an infinite number of copies of you. If you don't believe this is seriously considered, just do a google for MWI. You'll get plenty of info.

As to the rest, I admit I'm perplexed. You still haven't shown me how I could chose NOT to type this reply to you, given God's foreknowledge that I will. It seems so clear that God's foreknowledge of my actions entails my actions. The solution to this riddle would be to drop God's omniscience. Why must God be omniscient, or omni anything? Why couldn't he just be very, very powerful, but not perfect?

emotional

And you still haven't convinced me why this should be so. My argument is that God's omniscience and our decisional free will are parallel lines that never meet and thus never contradict.



"God created everything, up to the last particle" is a doctrine of special creationism. I'm a theistic evolutionist, so this is what I believe God created:

Space
Time
Matter
Energy
Properties of Self-Organisation which make evolution possible

God didn't create that moment in which you are typing this message. God created the parameters that enable matter to self-organise into an entity that can type this message. The creation is fully-gifted with ability to act, whether by its own blind accord or (later) by decisional will.



I don't quite see where evidence and logic can come to aid in what is, after all, a metaphysical discussion.



So, since we agree we have decisional free will, then the point we disagree is whether there is an omniscient creator? This is an EoG topic, and I rarely venture around EoG, because I don't think I could ever prove the existence of an omniscient creator.

I do accept the truth of both points on faith. But - and this is my main issue with posters here - I don't think it is doublethink to do so. I can't understand why an omniscient creator and decisional free will contradict. Someone mentioned accepting "2+2=4" and "2+2=5" together as a dissonace; I would agree, and I would further add that the acceptance of "omniscient creator" and "decisional free will" has never struck me as such a dissonance. I just can't see any incompatibility between the two!

Mageth

Originally posted by emotional
Yes, and so? We still have the ability to make decisions.

But only the decisions as they were originally formulated in God's mind. That's not "free will".

The choices may be in God's mind, but you're still making them. These are parallel lines, because God is not bound by time, while you are.

Who's bound by time and who's not seems irrelevant. God created the particular choices we'd make; we're only able to make those particular choices which God created (and knew before he created), and are not able to make the alternative choices. God's foreknowledge is an unavoidable limit on our "free will" in any and every choice we make.

When you decide to type and post your message, do you feel you're coerced to do so? If you do not feel such a coercion, then you're not coerced, full stop.

Well, of course I don't. I lack belief in God, after all. There's no one there to coerce me.

Personally, I'm not sure if we have true free will; perhaps we do, or perhaps it's just an illusion, a construct of our mind that keeps us happy. There's no way I know of to test to see if we truly have free will.

We feel we have the ability to make decisions, therefore we have.

Umm, no. The second doesn't follow from the first. The feeling of free will could be merely an illusion, a useful illusion, perhaps.

Strictly speaking it's not even a "feeling", it's as strong a conviction as that of adding two plus two makes four.

Even being a conviction does not serve to establish that free will truly exists.

emotional

Ah, you've just given me an additional reminder of why I hate science. No thanks, I won't do a search for that, it would just cause softening of my brain all round. "The world splits at each moment into a multitude of non-interfering branches. There are essentially an infinite number of copies of you" - this is just too much of a load on my feeble brain. I believe in multiple worlds (I call them "astral planes"), but stable ones, not ones that go popping up every second. MWI would only destroy the little sense of stability I have left after all my years of reading those damned science books.

Oh, how I wish I were living in the Middle Ages, with geocentrism and special creation as stable views to console me...



I'm perplexed too. I can't see any contradiction between the parallel lines of God's omniscience and decisional free will. We are actors in a special kind of film: we have been given the stage and the apparel, but we have not been given a script to follow. Life is more like a computer simulation - like those evolutionary design computer simulations - than a play.

I'll consider it. Given that I know next to nothing about God, maybe it has merit. But since God is defined to be the creator of time, and thus transcends time, wouldn't He be omniscient by definition? It's one of the attributes that make Him God.

emotional

God did not CREATE this situation in which you type this message. He only set the parameters to enable it to happen. Your decision is in His omniscient mind, but you make the decision nonetheless.



Again, God did not create the choices. He knows them, because He knows the paths evolution will take from the beginning to the end, but He has given evolution, including our resultant free will, a free hand.



But I do believe and I don't feel coerced. How's that?



If free will is an illusion then the sun shining is an illusion as well. It isn't really shining, it's just a trick of your eyes and brain.

KidFury

Emotional,

It’s quite obvious to me that you have no idea what programming is all about.

Have you ever played a first person shooter? The computer enemies are programmed in such a way as though make it seem that they have free will. They will attack you or flee from you when they see you approaching. They will decide whether or not to pick up power ups and which path they will take to get to them.

My argument stands, we could be advanced robots.

emotional

Nice personal attack. But it's true, I'm not a programmer, never have been, tried my hand at it, haven't succeeded and never will be.

OK, so we're advanced robots... with free will programmed into our neural networks.

davidm

Emotional, I've read many of your posts, and your brain is obviously not feeble. I don't know why you put yourself down this way.

If you ever decide to look into MWI, it'd be better to type in google the string, "many worlds interpretation" You'll be inundated.

You say we haven't been given a script to follow, but don't you see that we HAVE been given the script, necessarily, by God's foreknowledge of our choices? The only difference is we are acting out a script preprogrammed into us by God's foreknowledge of what we will do. We, the actors, lacking His foreknowledge, are subjectively free but objectively puppets. Drop God's omniscience, and the quandary is resolved.

As to multiverses, the late Princeton philosopher David Lewis proposed that every conceivable way a world could be, is a way that it actually is. The physicist Max Tegmark, in a recent Scientific American article, believes there is now scientific support for this view, and he specifically mentioned Lewis. Well, this proposed multiverse necessarily includes God or Gods, in some versions, provided that they are not logically self-refuting. Lewis referred to them as "spirits and entelechies." So maybe science is destined to come to your rescue after all. dave.

emotional

Okay.



"Subjectively free but objectively puppets" - that's exactly the parallel lines I was talking about. So in God's mind we're just following a script, but we'll be damned if we apply that thought in our practical lives. Everyone would be pleading "not guilty" to their crimes.

I still, for the life of me, don't see the contradiction. God knows all our actions beforehand + we can decide upon our actions; and the contradiction is? I simply can't see it. I believe in both God's omniscience and in human decisional free will, and no logic circuits in me burn up when I contemplate the two together.

I'll make peace with science the day it proves the afterlife exists. All I care is about life after death. If there is no scientific backing for it forthcoming, I'll just have to ignore science and believe without conclusive evidence.

Mageth

Originally posted by emotional
God did not CREATE this situation in which you type this message. He only set the parameters to enable it to happen. Your decision is in His omniscient mind, but you make the decision nonetheless.

If he knew this situation would result from creation before he kicked off creation, and willingly performed the creative act, then he most certainly created this situation.

Again, God did not create the choices. He knows them, because He knows the paths evolution will take from the beginning to the end, but He has given evolution, including our resultant free will, a free hand.

The cognitive dissonance of this is mind-numbing. It's simple: if he knows the paths, those are the only possible paths. Neither you nor a process like evolution could freely "choose" a different path.

But I do believe and I don't feel coerced. How's that?

Umm, because you believe you have free will? Lacking the feeling of coercion, like "feeling" and "conviction", does nothing to establish the reality of free will.

If free will is an illusion then the sun shining is an illusion as well.

How so? Once again, the latter doesn't follow from the former.

It isn't really shining, it's just a trick of your eyes and brain.

In a sense, you're correct. The sun emits photons (and other particles); our eyes detect those photons and interpret them visually as what you refer to as "shining." Again, like "free will", our vision is a construct (or, loosely, an "illusion") generated by our eyes/brain.

Note that my arm detects the "shine" as heat rather than as a visual signal.