Theli

Tronvillain...

This doesn't make too much sense. How would you know the exact outcome (in the present) when you alter the past, if the events between the point of intervention and the present aren't "replayed"?

An intervention in the past would not just affect the present but the whole timeframe between the point of intervention and the present.

Excacly.

"External to time"?

Does god have time or doesn't he?

My question still stands, does god have time?

Ok...

That is NOT free will. What about his parents?
They had no choice but to have him. They had to meet.
And what about his grandparents? Same story for them...
And their parents?
The line of ancestors would draw back in time as long as there has been organisms capable to reproduce.
All because of god, and his desire to speak to a certain person.

Then my free will just flies out the window, doesn't it?
And what about the driver of the car, where's his choice?
When you think about it, this is just 3 days forward in time, what if it was 3000 years? 30.000 years? How many people's free will would have to be sacrificed in order for the prophecy to become true?

Do you mean that I would try to get run over, because I subconsciously wanted it to be true?
Why would he telling me about my future result in his prophecy becoming true?

[ April 13, 2002: Message edited by: Theli ]</p>

tronvillain

Theli:
It is logically possible for all of the events between the point of intervention and the present to simply shift rather than being replayed. How do you know the outcome in the present? Go look.

Given your explanation of time as a linear dimension in which the present moves, God would be independent of time but subject to meta-time. Keep in mind that I do not think God exists and that this is all just a thought experiment.

If free will can be said to exist, that is free will. Proponents of free will are often confused about what they want from free will, often claiming that it means "the freedom to choose otherwise" without attaching the vital "under other conditions." Without that point free will becomes absurd as choices are completely without explanation, apparently random, while with that point free will becomes compatible with determinism.

None. The prophecy will have taken their free will into account.

No, I do not mean thtat you would try to get run over because you subconsciously wanted it to be true. I mean that being told that you are going to be run over may result in you makes choices that eventually result in you being run over. If you had not been told that you would be run over, you might have made different choices and not been run over as a result.

Theli

What about the people who live between the point of god's intervention and the present? Of course their actions aswell as reactions to the change made by god must be "replayed".

If god would suddenly (the present is 2001 A.D) send a huge plauge on humanrace year 500 A.D that wipes out a 3rd of mankind, that action would have titanic impact on how our reality looks like the year 2001. Think that you are in a skyscraper. God suddenly get's the crazy idea to send his plauge on the people 1500 years ago killing a 3rd of them.
The scyscraper was created by descendants of the people that now died 5000 years ago. What happens to you?

If the change was instant, the skyscraper would dissapear underneith you and you would fall to your death.
But if time (history) were to replay after the point where god interviened you would never had been in the skyscraper to begin with. It never existed. Your entire life would have been replayed, but you would not know about it.

How do you propose that he would be independent of time?
Is there any duration between his actions?
Does his actions occur in an order or are they simultainious?

Their actions would be guided by god's will, not their own. I wouldn't call that free will.

I would say that these conditions are so extreme that the people who are bound by this prophecy are not in the liberty of even wanting what they want (?!?!) (sounded abit weird, sorry).
But they act more like they have been programmed.
The conditions can be compared with trying to make a choice of life or death after getting your head blown off.

This can mean 4 things.

1. The prophecy is completely dependent on the people involved to make the choices required for the prophecy to come true, meaning that the prophecy has an insignificant chance of coming true and is nothing but a wild guess.

2. The prophecy can only become true if everyone involved wants it to become true, and tries their best to make it so.

3. The outcome of the prophecy is undetermined, and the prophecy doesn't exist. Or the prophecy is extremely vague.

4. The people involved has been pre-programed to make the decisions neccessary for the prophecy to become true, they are living zombies incapable of making their own decisions. Chaos doesn't exist.

Isn't that the same thing?

If someone told me that I would be run over 3 days from now, I would have stayed off the road. Especeally on that day. I don't think I would be extra drawn to the road just because someone told me I would be run over.

Thanks for answering

tronvillain

Theli:
Using "of course" seems to imply that you think that it is logically necessary, which it is not. You have specified that the present is moving in time (a hypothesis I consider completely unjustified), which makes the past a static object. All that would be involved would be a shift from one static object to another. While it is possible that the present would be reset, it is not necessary.

Now as for your skyscraper, nothing about an instant change implies that the skyscraper would dissapear underneath me. In fact, the idea is ridiculous, since my existence at that point in time is as dependent on a given history as the existence of the skyscraper. From the perspective of a given person, there would be no difference between an instantaneous shift and a replay.

God would be independent of time in the sense that time would be percieved as a spatial dimension. Since you have specified a moving present a meta-time exists, which could mean that there would be meta-duration between his actions and that they occur in an order.

In what sense would they be guided by God's will? You are implying that people would be puppets, but since they would be making rational choices based on their interests, that would not appear to be the case.

There is nothing at all extreme about those conditions. A prophecy does not detract from free will in the slightest - it merely states what the end result of free will is going to be. If you wish to say that this means people will "act like they have been programmed" fine, but there is no apparent alternative except the introduction of a random element, which does not appear to improve matters.

Ah you are one of those people who wishes to find free will in randomness. A random element may exist, but it is not apparent why probablistic determinism should be considered more desirable than strict determinism.

Anyway, you are missing the obvious:

5. The prophecy is completely dependent on the people involved making the choices required for the prophecy to come true, which they will.

While this may superficially resemble number four, it is not, since it depends on people making their own decisions. Of course, people making their own decisions does not depend on the existence of a random element, though it may involve one.

No, trying to get run over because you subconsciously want the prophecy to be true is not the same thing as the decisions you make after being told the prophecy eventually resulting in you being run over. They are potentially the same thing, but the latter encompasses many other possibilities.

You might not be extra drawn to the road, but your effort to stay off the road might be precisely what result in you ending up on the road to be hit. Have you never seen this plot on television or read it in a book?

Theli

I thought you went along with that idea. If not, then could you explain your idea of what time is?

That's what I meant by "replayed". All events/actions would have to be replayed from the point of god's intervention in the past. Including yours.

I didn't mean our universe's time. I meant, does god have time of his own?

But that would be like letting a computer choose a random number between 0 and 10 and then predict that the result will be 6. Where the computer must always choose 6, because of your prediction. Now, can you call that number a random choice?
I wouldn't say no, the computer could only choose one single set number, just as people who are involved in a prophecy only have one choice/action to choose from.

A kind of mix between 1 and 4.
The problem here still stands, if someone would hear a prophecy involving them it would be easy for them to break it.

I would say it involves some sort of random element. I mean, if you were a certain situation 2 times in a row will you act excacly the same both times?

Ok, that was just silly. If I try to walk to the right I walk to the left.
If I try to jump, I'll duck.
Let's see, if I was hiding under my bed that whole day, how would that get me run over by a car on the road?

Yes, perhaps on a sitcom.

tronvillain

I went along with the idea of a moving present for the sake of your argument, not because I consider it accurate. As far as I can tell, the simplest explanation of time is that it is static, with no unique present.

Now, back to your argument about a moving present. If an event at some point in the past is changed, there are at least two possibilities: the present is reset to that point and resumes moving forward in time, or the present is not reset and all events between that point and the present shift according to the changes. From the perspective of an observer within meta-time, these would be extremely different events.

Now, as I have pointed out before, I believe that God does not exist. There are God concepts in which God exists within our time, exists within a time of its own, or outside all time, but only some of these involve a moving present. The concepts under which God exists outside all time would make God a static object which could not be described as having actions or making choices with reference to any time frame, though it might appear as if it was from within a given time frame.

Say you write a computer program to select the larger number when it is presented with two numbers. If I present it with the numbers 7 and 10, I predict it will choose the number 10. Does my prediction force the program to choose the number 10? No, it simply does because that is the way it is written. Of course, that assumes that the program is well written - it may not be, in which case I might predict that it will incorrectly choose the number 7. Does my prediction force the program to choose the number 7? No, it simply does because that is the way it is written. Would its choice be improved if a random element was inserted? Well, it would make it less predictable, but it would make it worse at choosing the correct number.

Now, compare this to the human will. At a high level of description, we make decisions based on reasons. Unless we wish to propose that at some level there is no reason for a given decision, there is no room for a random element and our actions are in principle predictable. After all, we make crude predictions about the actions of others all the time, but perfect prediction escapes us as, apparently due to a lack of information and computational ability. It may be that even given perfect information and computational ability, our actions are not perfectly predictable due to the presence of some random elements. Does this make our actions more free? No. It makes them less predictable (probability would be substituted for certainty) but it does not directly make them any better. Humans seem to want their actions to not be predictable, probably because being predictable leaves one open to manipulation.

You proposed the existence of a random element since someone would not necessarily act the same when in a certain situation twice in a row. While a random element may exist, the best explanation appears to be that the person is not exactly the same - they have after all experienced the same situation before, which was not a state they were in when they first experienced the situation.

Finally, we have prophecies, which are essentially predictions. Will being told a prophecy invalidate it? Perhaps. It all depends on whether the prophecy takes into account being told about it or not. The prediction "You will be hit by a car tommorow" may invalidate itself by causing you to act in such a way that you are not hit by the car, but on the other hand it may in fact cause you to act in such a way that you are hit by the car. This may or may not involve conscious or unconscious motivations on your part, but it probably won't. An example of a causal chain in which the prophecy results in itself being fulfilled: you are told you will be hit by a car tommorow, you go hide under your bed, an electrical problem causes your house to catch fire, you are driven outside where you are hit by a car. If you hadn't been hold you would be hit by a car, you wouldn't have been in your house when the fire started and so wouldn't have been hit by the car.

Theli

Tronvillian...
You just turned my example upside-down. My example didn't involve any logic or calculations when choosing number.
Now, I'm not really sure how a computer chooses a random number, if it's really a subject to chaos. But I choosed that example assuming that the number from the users viewpoint is unpredictable.
The computer chooses a random number (X) between 0-9. Let's as an example say the result is X=6. If the "present" is moving forward in time the value 6 was created at the point in time when the computer choosed it. If time was static and future was predictable the value 6 was created at the creation of the universe. Then I wonder, was that number random?
If it was not, but was a result of other factors, wich also was result of prior causes leading back to big bang itself. Then how was the first event created that caused X to become 6?
Searching backwards in time you must finally reach a point where no laws or set values exists. Also known as the point of singularity, wich is the definition of unpredictability.
The same problem applies to god, if god's choice of creating the universe and it's design was not random, where did the values that caused his universe's design come from?

Even now, unpredictability reign on atomic level. Turbulence is a good example of this, aswell as movement of heated particles in gasform.
The uncertanty principle in Quantum Physics as another sign of the unpredictable behaviour of particles/waves.
And as for unpredictability in human nature, here's a good article I found.
<a href="http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/EncyHumBehav.html" target="_blank">Variability in Brain Function and Behavior</a>
It seems that human aswell as animal behaviour is indeed unpredictable.


That all depends. A program that makes logic calculations sometimes need random numbers to operate.

Even vauge predictions can be avioded if the person wich the prediction is dependent on knows of the prediction.

Not entirely, how do you choose one red ball over another red ball?

Of course our actions aren't completely random (that wouldn't make sense), but unpredictability and random choices are factors to consider.
It's not as simple as only random or logic choices.

It's sooooo typical me to not read ahead before replying, you seem to agree at a certain level. And here I am, going on an on about unpredictability.

That's a good question. Of course, if our logic was perfect and not "flawed" by abstract or unpredictable thinking our actions would be much more precise and logic, but I wonder if we would help us... That's a good question.
I think that random choices are imperitive.

Then they haven't thought about the mind's inner unpredictability. And about being open for mindcontrol, lacking logic and knowledge would probably be (and is) a larger factor.
But as for controlling every single electrical impulse in the brain, I would think it would be easier to create a whole new brain from scratch.

Yes, memory is a large factor. I forgot that. If someone says hello to you, you might respond by saying hello back. If that person says hello to you 10 times in a row your response will most definatly change after awhile. What if the person says hello to you 1000 times in a row, will your response follow a certain unchangable pattern? When he has reached 510 "hello"s, is the number 511 "hello"s a variable that would change your response?

Yes, but my actions might also cause me not to be able to get out of the house alive or taking the backdoor. If the prophecy has an uncertainty, a "maybe" in it, then how can it be a prophecy?
A problem here is the more precise the prophecy is being told to me the smaller chance it has becoming true. If the prophet told me about my house burning down caused by an electrical problem (wich then would cause me to be run over by a specific car) that would make it even easier for me to aviod his prophecy coming true.
And if my own actions weren't a factor that could aviod his prophecy, then why should his actions be?
And ofcourse I could do something even more radical, I could set the house on fire myself, burning me to ashes. Or take a boat and sail out on a lake and stay there the whole 3rd day.

Kenny

For anyone who might be interested, this subject was already discussed in considerable detail here:

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000009" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000009</a>

God Bless,
Kenny

GPLindsey

I had a posting on a similar topic awhile back. My argument was that--if God thinks--he falls within the constraints of time. Time is merely the ordering of events, and thoughts can be events. If God's Great Plan is his creation, then there had to be a point in time in God's Mind when it did not exist, because something cannot be both created and to have existed eternally. God therefore deliberated, came up with the Plan, and then instituted the Creation. These three separate events would exist in God's mind linearly, so he could not logically avoid thinking about things in terms of before/after various events. If he thinks, he also cannot be all-knowing, because he cannot think up the Plan and already know what the Plan is at the same time.

To say God is all-knowing and is outside time presents other predicaments to a Christian. If he is all-knowing and has existed eternally, then his Plan has existed eternally fully formed in his mind. This means the Plan is no longer his creation since it never had a point of creation. An all-knowing God outside of time is also incapable of taking any action or thinking any thought that he did not already foresee. He therefore does not have free will in any sense to change the course of events, since all events are foretold in the Plan that has existed eternally in his Mind.

The only way out of this mess? Atheism!!

Theli

GpLindsey...
Hehe... I never heard that one before, good thinking.

Also, his plan had to be just as random and undetermined as any other explaination of the universe's creation.

Where did his idea about creating stars come from?
He had no notion of what a star was, since no stars had existed before he had created them.
So his idea/design of a star would had to be random.
Or if the design of stars was evolved from the universe's 'design' then god is not necessary for stars to exist.
And if someone says that god designed the universe, then that design must have been random aswell, since there were no universes like this one before he created it.
And if there were, then god is not necessary for a universe to be created either.


Well... I think that wraps it up then.