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10-22-2002, 09:25 AM | #21 | |
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Paddy,
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Since God’s choices are logically prior to God’s free knowledge, it is not correct to say that God knows what He “will choose” prior to His choosing it. On the other hand, given that the priorities involved in the various forms of God’s knowledge are logical and not temporal, it is also consistent to say that God has always known what His choices were (or, rather, are – verb tenses get tricky when talking about a-temporal realities). Consequently, there is no inconsistency in the classical doctrine of God’s omniscience and the classical notion that God is also a free agent. God Bless, Kenny [ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p> |
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10-22-2002, 09:34 AM | #22 | |
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Jobar,
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God Bless, Kenny |
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10-22-2002, 02:52 PM | #23 | ||
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Now you’ve said that God makes a choice based on natural knowledge. That would seem to imply that there is a choosing processing going on. I’m not familiar with this concept of God’s varieties of knowledge. So I’m only going by what you’ve just posted. But this theory seems to have separated out the free knowledge (what God’s choices actually were) and then magically declared that God’s choices are not affected by this knowledge. I’m not sure why they shouldn’t be. Seems like hand waving. The only way I can imagine this is if everything—God’s choice, the result of that choice, his knowledge of that choice—comes into being simultaneously. It would be like an electrical circuit that had a feedback loop in which the electricity was switched on. There would be a kind of race condition set up. Except that in the circuit, electricity has a finite speed whereas the “God circuit” would be instantaneous. I believe this is what you refer to as a “single eternal a-temporal act”. But then there are two problems I have with this. One is that the phrase “logically prior” doesn’t really mean anything. (I’m not sure what it means in any case really) The other is that I still see this as determinism. There is only one way that things could happen. An additional problem I see is that if God’s choices affect and change the natural world, wouldn’t that then be natural knowledge? In other words, the effects of God’s choices would be part of “all possible worlds”. So what’s the criterion for separating free knowledge and natural knowledge? An ever-present danger in propositions like this is in obscuring the point via redefinitions. If assertions A and B become obviously contradictory with each other when placed side by side, there is a tendency to shift the definition of B so that A and B can cohabitate when you are talking about both of them together. But then when you talk about B alone you switch back to the original definition of B. So the result is that you can maintain contradictions in your head by mentally shifting back and forth between the two definitions of B. I think a lot of this goes on and it can become hard to root out the exact cause sometimes if the issue is sufficiently obscured. Quote:
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10-24-2002, 07:55 PM | #24 | |||||||||
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Hello Sadlewood,
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God Bless, Kenny [ October 24, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p> |
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10-25-2002, 06:33 AM | #25 |
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Kenny:
All I asserted is that is consistent to view God’s knowledge as divided into sub-categories with differing logical relations and logical priorities. I disagree. If God is omniscient, then He must be always aware of every part of His own mind. There is no way he could have knowledge divided into sub-categories. I am interested, though, in your take on determinism/free will. Looked at one way, God has total free will; change the angle a bit, and He is totally determined. I am reminded of the wave/particle duality in physics. But that is denying God's changelessness, I think- if you claim God is *not* totally determined, then you must deny omniscience; if you grant that God has no free will, then you must deny His omnipotence. There must be some sort of phase shift, of change, occurring for both omniscience and omnipotence to exist. |
10-25-2002, 07:41 AM | #26 |
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I find the term "intended" when used with God to be impossible to reconcile. At what time did he go from "undecided" to "decided" upon that decision? If he -always- "intended" on doing something, there was never a point for which the idea of forknowledge would apply in the first place. He could not ever know he was going to make a decision, since that decision would have to be in the infinity of the past.
Like it was said earlier: How surprising, God makes no sense. |
10-25-2002, 10:36 AM | #27 | |||||
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But, I think the model for the divisions within in God’s knowledge which I have described could be adapted for just about any conception of free will (and such actually occurs in the theological community). Quote:
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God Bless, Kenny [ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p> |
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10-25-2002, 10:55 AM | #28 | |||
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God Bless, Kenny [ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p> |
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10-25-2002, 11:43 AM | #29 | |
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They aren't inconsistent, necessarily. However, to claim that God is therefore omniscient implies that God therefore does not have free will, since he can never make a choice (unless you want to redefine "choice," at which point we can play a game of semantics). This in turn implies God is not omnipotent, since at least one activity (choice) is forbidden to him. Correspondingly, if God has free will, he cannot possibly omnicient. |
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10-25-2002, 11:58 AM | #30 |
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Originally posted by Kenny:
"Not at all; since omniscience strictly entails only that God knows all that there is to know." I think this is best direction for the theist to take. Am I correct, however, that you still must deny complete determinism, because to know the present state of the universe and the effects of all these states entails knowing what the next state of affairs will be? I also wonder whether God's moral perfection limits His free will. I think we can say with certainty that God will never perform an evil action. This implies to me that if we possessed omniscience, we could predict every action God takes in any situation, which doesn't seem consistent with God's free will. Further, every time God is faced with a decision, He can think to Himself "Okay, I'm morally perfect, so there's really only one thing I'm going to do in this situation." If this is so, it seems that God's free knowledge does indeed logically precede the choices themselves. This knowledge would be dependent upon the fact that God is morally perfect. The only response I can see is that for God to know He is morally perfect really just involves the fact that He knows what choices He "has" made, but I think we can analyze "morally perfect" without appealing to this sort of God-observing-His-choices. "How so, since omnipotence means that God can actualize any logically consistent state of affairs He chooses..." I'm not sure this is an adequate conception of omnipotence. I think there are logically consistent states of affairs that God is unable to actualize. Let S be the state of affairs in which someone or other learns something, and S' be the state of affairs "someone or other brings about S." I can bring about S' and S, but God can only bring about S. The reason is that if I cause myself to learn, I have brought about S' and S, but God cannot cause Himself to learn and therefore can only bring about S -- He could cause me to learn, but, e.g., He could not cause me to learn without being caused to learn by an outside force. This is a fairly crude formulation, but I think it could be expanded to be a real argument. |
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