T. E. Lords

This is the basic thought process that led me to my disbelief in God. I was hoping someone could either help me clarifiy these ideas further and thus make them stronger or contradict them. I have never had any christian offer me any contradiction to this except "god didn't want us to be robotts" and "you just have to have faith." I'm sure someone out there has a better argument than that.

The premise of a being with free will being created by a being with absolute power and absolute knowledge of the future is intrinsically contradictory.

Let’s assume that God, having the power to do anything and at the same time having full knowledge of how existence will play out in its entirety creates Adam and eve and places them in the garden. Now, knowing as we do that these are the first two humans on this planet we know that they have no access to books or any other personage (other than God himself) with which to gain knowledge of their world around them. In fact they are so ignorant that they do know even know the difference between good and evil yet. They are given one command (at least that we are aware of having been recorded in Judeo Christian lore) Do not eat from the tree of knowledge.

Now, god in his (supposed) infallible wisdom chooses which information he would impart to our friends (the blank slates) Adam and Eve having full knowledge of how they would use this information and the eventual decision they would make concerning his prime directive.

So, we now understand that God had full knowledge that Adam and Eve, with the information, warnings and commands given them would in fact make the wrong decision and doom mankind to the curse of original sin.

Do I need to continue this? I think so, given the general lack of intelligence demonstrated in this thread.

Had god wanted them to make the "right" decision he would have been well with in his infinite power to provide the aforementioned blank slates all the information, warning and fear to cause them to make that decision.

Therefore all of history acts like a domino effect starting from start (god). he placed the dominos (every detail of the earth every grain of knowledge that would be imparted to Adam and eve) and set everything to fall as he had wished. So all of us, as modern decedents of Adam and eve are just pieces in a very intricate domino chain completely devoid of free will and can not be responsible for our actions. God would have had full knowledge of every event that would transpire through out history, based on the way he designed it.

Secondly how could Adam and Eve even know that their actions were evil having not eaten of the tree of good and evil? Even one argues that God told them not to and therefore they would have had to know that it was wrong one could argue that they could not have known that defying God was wrong.

So, we have to make a decision having seen the contradictions inherent in this mythos.

1) Man has no free will. Therefore, is not accountable for his actions and if we are to still believe that god is a fair god then we would not be able to judge us for something we had no control over.


2) God does not have infinite knowledge of the future and did not know how Adam and Eve would react to their situation, and made a mistake in judging which information to impart to his people; therefore he is not all powerful, he is not all knowing and is not infallible. This is in direct contradiction with everything taught about “God” in the Bible.

3) There is no God at least not in the traditional Judeo Christian sense of the idea.

SimplyAtheistic

I vote for 3.
Jake

Jobar

Welcome, T.E. Lords. We seem to be having a spate of threads about free will here lately; try reading some of 'Theology at 4 AM' or my own 'On love and justice' to see some of the answers the theists come up with.

T. E. Lords

yeah I vote for 3) as well.

Jobar, I did read through some of philosophy at four am. I was just hoping for some feed back on how I presented it. maybe some information I should include or exclude from it.

I know this is only my second post but I've been reading this for a while. Just a little too indimidated to post usually. I usually read threads after there have been 500 replies and I feel silly throwing in my 2 cents at that point.

Conchobar

We study neurochemical transmitters, synaptic density, and have shown that there are not centers of function. Functions are governed by complex circuits. What we called centers were merely electrical relay stations where neurons received signals, and passed on the signal to hundreds of thousands of neurons in other "centers" in feedback loops to be sent through other circuit systems.

Actually the complex circuits are all that we are and do, all that we feel and think. It is genetically determined what our brain structure will be including the major structure of the circuits. The only differences are the input (soft-ware) that our brain receives.

The Brain's ARAS (Ascending Reticular Activating System) determines our consciousness and our attention, activating highter diencephalic and cortical areas for more complex cognition or motor activity. In Pikaia, 550 million years ago that same structure was a purely primitive motor escape mechanism. As we added layers upon layers over the millions of years in an onion like fashion, older areas lost their function and acquired more basic activation, vegetative, and coordinative jobs for the higher brain.

The circuits especially frontal are very complex in cognition that is most advance in us and our fellow primates. We receive input. It is processed in the frontal circuits where data from association and memory areas is collected in priority to its relationship to the input. Then it goes through the frontal rational screening circuits called by many neuroscientists (the rubbish filter) that rejects irrational ideas but accepts and records rational or logical concepts. Then if a response is required, the frontal circuits collate the data (new information, memory, experiences with similar data, and associations with other data. A response is coded for expression. We come up with a protocol of action which we call a choice or decision. But is it really a decision or choice, or do our brain circuits arrive at the action in such rapid processing that we get an illusion of choice?

Conchobar

Jobar

You know, Albert Cipriani, one of our regular theistic posters, once tried to say that free will was a spiritual thing- a function of the soul, if I understood him correctly. Of course, all the skeptics pointed out that if this were true, then physical damage to the brain would not affect behaviour in the ways that we observe, and therefore if free will is real that it must be at least mediated by the brain. Are you listening, Albert? Care to comment?

I think our decision-making processes are capable of splitting our possible actions into such a finely-divided sheaf that we may say practically we have free will. I am not up on the latest neurological and psychological research on the matter, so I express this only as an opinion; Conchobar, what is your opinion on the question you ask in your final sentence?

T. E. Lords

I've spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not we have "Free Will" based on similar things that Conchobar said. While my opinion is an amateur one and I am certainly not qualified to give any kind of definitive answer to this I'm going to share anyway.

We are at least influenced and at most controlled by the events that shape who we are. From birth we are told what to think and how to act. The template for who we are to become is emplaced before we even have the ability to make what even seems like choices.

It largely depends on which definition of free we are using here. If by free you mean "not determined by anything beyond its own nature or being: choosing or capable of choosing for itself," (Merriam-Webster’s second definition) then we obviously do not have FREE will.

I don't have the information to defend my current position on this matter but I believe that we do have some form of will. We do make choices no matter how influenced they might be. They might not be choices completely devoid of outside influence but we still make them and are responsible for the consequences of those decisions be they good or bad. In the studies I’ve read about exactly what Conchobar was stating they said that there is, in all likelihood, up to a, or around a second in which our brain has made it’s decision that we are capable of refuting it and choosing another consciously. That might not be as much will as we would like but it might have to be enough.

Eric H

Hello T.E. Lords welcome.

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quote T.E. Lords The premise of a being with free will being created by a being with absolute power and absolute knowledge of the future is intrinsically contradictory.
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If a definition of God is intrinsically contradictory, then maybe it is our definition or perception that is wrong.

If, and only if God exists, then he must be more knowledgeable and more powerful then we are.

Now if this all powerful God was to create life, he would presumably have choices in how he could create.

He could retain all his power and create as an all powerful dictator might create by retaining overall control of everything, so that it would suit his purpose.

Or he could create in a democratic way and empower the life that he creates. This would then take away God’s overall control of the life he creates.

If there is a God then it seems he created us in a democratic way, and gave us the freedom to totally reject him if we wish. Or we have the freedom to worship him in any of the ways that the thousands of diverse religions worship him.

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I have the freedom to come to God in any way I choose, I can choose the things about God that suit me, which means I am likely to be wrong in many ways. That is probably why there are so many faiths.

And probably like everyone else who is free I have the freedom to kill, as long as I don't get caught.

Maybe there are rules that govern what God can create; maybe creation is a risk even for a God


peace

Eric

Wiploc

I predict that, as time passes, you will change this to, "I'm sure if someone out there had had a better argument than that, I would have heard it by now."

As to the alleged conflict between free will and foreknowledge, I don't see the problem. If god knows what I'm going to do before I do it, that doesn't mean he's causing me to choose what I do. On the contrary, it's my choosing that causes what he knows. It's the same as you knowing today what I did yesterday; your knowledge didn't influence my decision.

Now if you still see a conflict between free will and foreknowledge (and I assume you do, for on this issue people who disagree seem always to talk past each other) let me propose another move. What if we decide to call "free will" the ability to make decisions with no constraints other than god's prior knowledge? Maybe that's all we mean by free will? (I don't think I like this move myself, but I'm going to press <submit reply> before I can delete it. )
crc

Dianna

Wiploc: If god knows what I'm going to do before I do it, that doesn't mean he's causing me to choose what I do.

That's right. But it does mean that what you will do every second of every day was already determined long before you were born...because God has existed for eternity and has always known everything.

On the contrary, it's my choosing that causes what he knows.

If he knew what you would do even before you did it, at what point did you get to make a choice? If he knew what you would do long before you were even aware of the situation in question...your choice must have already been made for you somehow because God always knew it. And once that choice was made before-hand, you lost your free will to do something different.

If God doesn't know what you will do before you do it, but only knows everything that happens as it happens...he doesn't really know everything...he knows everything except the future. If there's an exception, he's not omniscient. He knows a lot, to be sure...just not the future and therefore, not everything.

What if we decide to call "free will" the ability to make decisions with no constraints other than god's prior knowledge?

We can't do that because prior knowledge means the choice has already been made. How can God know it, if the choice hasn't already been determined? Then, how can you do otherwise? How can you possibly choose not to do something that God has already seen you doing? Unless you want to say that sometimes God's prior knowledge is right and sometimes it's wrong...but then, that's not knowledge, is it?

Dianna.