Wiploc

You mean it would take a miracle?
crc

Philosoft

Sure, but doesn't this preclude a God that can take care of me - a God that can influence present events to ensure an outcome? If he doesn't know what the outcome will be, how can he influence outcomes any better than I can?

I think mathematicians and cosmologists and physicists have good theoretical reasons to think time exists. Can't say the same for God.

Ganymede

The question presupposes free will.

I prefer to ask this:

If god says "live according to my rules, and believe what I tell you to believe, even when the enquiring mind I gave you tells you that the evidence for my exsitance is insufficient" does that constitute free will, given that the result of not doing as he instructs is everlasting torment?

Sounds like duress to me.

BTW - is there any biblical support for free will? Can someone quote the chapter and verse?

Ganymede

malpensante

darth dane:
even if god is outside of time, for him to have free will depends on his possibility to change any instant in the universe, and the according adjacent instants too, in order to make the changed instant consistent with our subjective lawful flow of time, but for him to be omniscient while doing this, would require for him to know what happens both if he changes that instant and i he does't, which is equal to seeing both universes simultaneously, which applied to any choice in any instant, leads back to a god of the multiverse.

excreationist:
some of the universes might not have heavens, or earths, or hells, or any combination of having and not having the three. the fact that in multiverse jargon for an event to be possible means that it does occur in some universe within the multiverse, means that asking whether i should be judged for the deeds of my parallel-universe evil mirror self is the same as asking whether i should be punished just because i can sin. some malpensantes will be punished, and some will not, and the fact that both groups of malpensantes were the same sometime doesn't matter because the ones who don't get punished will experience heaven for eternity, starting from some time after the good and evil malpensantes were equal.

philosoft:
a multiverse god is not a mockery of christianity, but is also not for the theologically squeamish, as clifford pickover, the author from which i drew the idea, would say.
i think your question on identity of the judged one is answered in my reply to excreationist.

jobar:
your replies are beautiful, but i will ask for clarifying:
do you imply that if a multiverse god cannot be conceived, then it cannot exist?
why exactly is it that there must be universes over which a multiverse god could not have control?
why would god's visualization of the realization of every possibility in some parallel universe mean that god didn't create real free will?
on this last question, david deutsch in his book "the fabric of reality" says: i"f you have a ticket for last week's lottery, but have not yet found out whether you have won, the outcome is still open from your point of view, even though objectively it is fixed. but, subjectively or objectively you cannot change it."
the common-sense theory of free will says that last week you still had the power to change the outcome, but this is incompatible with one universe, because in it, the future is already there (at least in god's eyes), and its opennes is an illusion. but according to the multiverse view, the many possible futures are already there, and in all of them it was you who decided what to do with the ticket.

Philosoft

Okay, let's check it out.


With respect to Christianity, this does not speak very well of the motives of God. I am to understand that he values being freely loved so much that he allows for the possibility of eternal damnation. Yet a multiverse would suggest he has stacked the deck. He is taking no chances - he has statistically guaranteed that, all else equal, roughly half of the independent souls that inhabit the multiverse will "freely" choose to be in heaven. But it cuts both ways - God has guaranteed that roughly half of the independent souls will go to hell. I don't think this is acceptable to most Christians, but this is what you get when you posit a multiverse wherein all SOAs obtain, good and evil.

spurly

Why do free will and the omniscience of God have to mutually exclusive? I don't see that at all.

Can God by all knowing, and still give us a choice of whether or not we want to have a relationship with him? Yes. There is no reason why this could not be.

Does God know what we will choose? Many Christians believe he does, others do not. Neither position negates free will.

Kevin

Philosoft

It becomes a problem if it is the case that God had perfect foreknowledge at any time T prior to creating humans. If our actions were known by our creator before we were created, it appears that our "choices" are illusory because we couldn't have chosen otherwise.

If God created me with prior knowledge that I would be a lifelong atheist, it seems I am damned from the get-go.
[Johnnie Cochran] As you can see, I disagree. [/Johnnie Cochran]

spurly

Philosoft,

The foreknowledge of God does not negate our free will. Because he knows what choice we are going to make does not lead to the conclusion that he makes us make that choice. Your logic does not seem to be logical.

But you are not damned by God. If this is the case with any of us, we are damned by our own choices made of our own free will. God's foreknowledge has nothing to do with it.

Kevin

Philosoft

You don't seem to be addressing the temporal aspect at all. How can we make a free choice if, per God's plan, we must do certain things to fulfill it? It doesn't matter if I appear to have an alternate choice if, in practice, the probability of my choosing it is zero.
It seems like you are just saying things that must be true for the veracity of Christian doctrine, without regard to the implications of the simultaneous truths of the statements. It's not good enough to merely claim we have "free will." You can't answer an objection like, "Do we have free will if X obtains?" with "Yes, because we have free will."

Wiploc

It could hardly speak worse of god's motives than traditional Christianity does, which attributes all of mankind's suffering to god's attempt to glorify himself.
crc