luvluv

wdog:

I don't happen to agree on that point. It seems to me that you are discussing a Newtonian absolutist view of time. But the basic lesson of relativity is that time varies depending on the observer.

You are essentially saying that there is an "absolute present" which all observers would agree upon. Relativity would seem to say that this is false. Let's just take a very simple analogy and assume that the physics in God's universe were similar to ours in terms of the constant velocity of light. Let's assume that God at the begining of our time, began moving at the speed of light relative to our motion. Would we agree about what day it was?

Or, by another analogy, if we were able to build a time machine and travel one day into the past... would you be there?

How about one day into the future? Would you be there?

So your argument in the end rests on an absolutist notion of time which may or may not actually apply. You might not be able to experience your future, but that doesn't mean that your future might not be observable to some observer.

Here is what you were essentially saying to me, by way of analogy. You were making an argument to the effect of this:

1) One of three persons in the next room is 7 feet tall.
2) Mark is in the next room.
3) Mark is 7 feet tall.

And I said something to the effect of "Wait, Mark may not be 7 feet tall. There are two other people in the room."

To which you effectively replied: "Show me the other two people in the room and prove to me that Mark isn't 7 feet tall, and I'll believe you."

But from the standpoint of debate, if I wish to disprove your argument I only have to show one of the premises is faulty. I believe I did so, by replying with several ways God could be omniscient and preserve free will.

You then tried to move the argument from a RATIONAL to an EMPIRICIST ground, and demanded that I prove that out of time existed. But like the example above, I do not have to show that out of time REALLY IS the key out of the supposed free will/ omniscience contradiction, any more than I have to demonstratively show you that someone in the room other than Mark is 7 feet tall. Regardless, the argument is not sound.

It's pretty simple. Classical apologetics states that God cannot do the logically impossible. This is why God's omnipotence cannot be disproven by logical contradictions (square-circles and the like). So, if the future is really unknowable, as you say it is, then God would not cease to be omniscient for not knowing what is intrinsically unknowable. So, He would still be omniscient: He would still know all that could possibly be known. So the kicker is, even if you're right, you're wrong. If out of time is impossible, then knowledge of the future is impossible, and so the supposed free will/omniscience problem is solved.

There is yet another out, however. Not all theists who cling to the outside of time (or eternal) view agree with molinism. They say that it is not at all a contradiction of free will or logic for a perfectly knowledgeable being to know what we will freely do. That would not make a single act compulsory or coerced. It would simply mean that an entity with enough knowledge could make 100% accurate predictions about your future actions and it does not follow from his knowledge that your actions were less free.

I think this is the type of question where sheer will comes in. If you want to believe that God knowing what you will do makes your actions not free you will, even though you cannot define how his knowledge of your actions means that you did not choose them. But if you want to believe that your actions are still free even if God knows what you will do, you can do that too. This is just like an "Are not!" "Am too!" argument that kids have. It's one where you have to agree to disagree.

Wdog, I've heard this said before and I'd like to invite you to construct a sound formal argument for the incompatibility of omniscience and free will that we can debate.


The case simply has not been made (to me at least) in explicit formal terms just why knowledge of the future would make someone's actions cease to be free. You have to demonstrate the mechanism of coercion here to make this argument.

dangin:

Actually, you exist before the list does, because God knows what YOU are going to do from knowing perfectly YOU, your make-up and your surrondings. From an epistimelogical standpoint, you and the "list" are simeltaneous.

K:

Again, there is a big difference between KNOWING something will happen and MAKING it happen. God might know from eternity that a person, given free will and opportunity, will impregnate a woman, but that doesn't mean that it is part of His will. It's pretty simple, really: to know something is not the same as to want it. Christians do not believe that God is going to get what He wants in every case when it comes to human behavior, that's the whole idea behind free will. Nevertheless, dangin, to say that God supports rape is the kind of ridiculously hyperbolic statement that makes debate over here increasingly mundane. I suppose that you value that statement for it's shock value and not for it's argumentative force, since it actually possesses the former.

God knows rape is going to happen (as do we, actually), can you show from this how this means God "supports" rape?

Mageth

I don't happen to agree on that point. It seems to me that you are discussing a Newtonian absolutist view of time. But the basic lesson of relativity is that time varies depending on the observer.

Is it not more correct to say that the experience of time varies depending on the observer?

You are essentially saying that there is an "absolute present" which all observers would agree upon. Relativity would seem to say that this is false.

If I'm traveling at the speed of light away from you (or towards you), is it not true that there is a "present" that is common to us, even though we are experiencing time differently? (Traveling at the speed of light relative to another object doesn't take one off into the "future" of the object; it causes you to experience time differently.)

If there's not, then two objects traveling at different speeds could never collide, as they would not share a "present"!

Let's just take a very simple analogy and assume that the physics in God's universe were similar to ours in terms of the constant velocity of light. Let's assume that God at the begining of our time, began moving at the speed of light relative to our motion. Would we agree about what day it was?

God would have experienced more (or fewer?) "days" as we know them, perhaps, but at this instant he would still be "here" and not at some point in what I perceive as the future, correct?

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]</p>

dangin

Because god must know who is going to be born and who isn't. If a person is going to be born of rape, god knew about it in advance. Rape is in the least acceptable to god. God still made the one crucial sperm be the one to win the race, even in rapes.

And if god knows your actions before you are born, then the list and the individual are not simultaneous. The list existed as long as god existed, and according to the age of the universe that is at least 18 billion years now.

luvluv

dangin:

Positively none of this follows simply because God knows a rape is going to occur.

It would perhaps be accurate to say that God is capable of INCORPORATING rape, or any other heinous crime into His plans BECAUSE a person may use his free will to commit such an act. Because God knows a person will commit an act, He may plan in advance to bring the best possible end out of the act. It hardly follows that God therefore SUPPORTS the rape or finds it "acceptable".

Mageth:

You're right of course I was just using the light speed comment as an analogy. I can't prove to anyone that out of time is a reality, but I was just saying that time may not be as fixed as we believe it to be. I don't happen to believe in an absolute present that all observers would agree on, regardless of the rate of their passage through time. I think it's obvious that we do, in some sense, have temporal extent in the past. That we might have it, in some sense, in the future is not terribly hard for me to believe. If a such a thing as a future exists, we, which is to say reality, is there. Either we are present in the future or there is no such thing as the future. It all makes my brain hurt and I need more study on the subject to argue specifically for the reality of the out of time view. I never really intended to, only to suggest that there was no contradiction between free will and omniscience.

dangin

So god is "incorporating" rape into his plans. Plans made millions of years before the rapist is born. Rape is a tool of god.

luvluv

This is the last I'll say on the subject, because my genuine feeling is that you are not at all sincere.

For the record, rape is not a tool of God. Repentance, forgiveness, restoration are tools of God for ANY mistake we make. The promise of God that He can make something beautiful and meaningful out of our biggest messes is God's tool, not the mess itself.

Moving on...

Given: God knows what everyone will do.

Given: Someone will commit rape.

Given: God values free will.

What should God do about the rape? Should he not allow the person to be born to commit the rape? Should He do nothing to bring anything good out of the rape? Should He not allow the woman who was raped to ever recover to be better than she was before the rape, just to avoid the implication you are drawing? Should He not allow the rapist to ever regret his action and become a better person than He was before the rape?

Should God, in fact, let every act of wrong doing cause us to die horribly painful deaths, with no possibility of ever recovering from any mistake, just so no one would accuse him of supporting our misdeeds? Should we not be allowed to learn from our mistakes, lest we come to think that God wants us to make them? Should we be allowed to learn, for instance, that touching a hot stove burns? Wouldn't that mean that God supports burning ourselves on hot stoves? Wouldn't the right thing for God to do be to allow us to repeatedly burn ourselves forever, so that He would not be "supporting" burns?

What, dangin, do you think God should do?

sandlewood

I had to duck out of this thread for a bit because of lack of time (no joke meant there ). Any response I’d make to older posts would probably be obsolete now. But in general, luvluv, you’re saying that you didn’t need to show that “outside of time” actually exists. You were only positing it as a possible way to reconcile omniscience and free will. In order to do that, you may not have to show that “outside of time” really exists, but I think you still have to make an argument that it makes sense. I’m still not convinced that it does make sense. To me, once you accept the idea of God being outside of time, you do away with the meaning of too many words and other things such that you can’t really talk about God or free will in a meaningful way anymore. What would it mean to say that God “thinks”? What would it mean to say that God “does” something? Our only understanding of those words is closely associated with time. But anyway, moving on.
This is something I don’t get. You mean God will not interfere with a person’s free will before the act, but afterward he will monkey around with the happenings of the world to make a good result of the act? To bring about a good result, he would have to change things without directly messing with anyone’s thoughts; otherwise he would be interfering in free will. So that means he would have to manipulate animals and objects. Does that mean that he physically moves things from one place to another to get us to change our thinking? And perhaps more to the point: if he can change our way of thinking indirectly, how is that really any different than changing it directly? For example, how would God bring out a good result in a rapist? Maybe he would show the rapist a fictitious scene in a dream a la A Chrismas Carol and the rapist would repent and change his rapist ways. But hasn’t God just manipulated a person’s thinking just as if he went in and directly, magically, changed that person’s thoughts? What’s the difference? (Don’t TV commercials change our free will every day by making us choose things we wouldn’t have otherwise chosen?) Why didn’t he do this before the rape instead of after? It makes no sense.
I’d be surprised if you could find a rape victim who said she was glad she got raped because it made her a better person.

K

luvluv:

This is perfectly acceptable if God is an observer. However, many Christians, feel that God is the creator (not just of the universe but of every individual - according to His plan) and sustainer of all. I realize that you didn't claim that God created each individual according to His plan. I think the fact that many, if not most Christians, have claimed it, makes it a fair target in this thread.

The shocking statement is used here to vividly demonstrate the logical results of a popularly claimed aspect of God.

Assumption:

God created every person according to His divine plan.

Observation:

Some people are created through the viscious act of rape.

Conclusion:

God must support rape since it is one method in which people are created and He created everyone according to His divine plan.


By putting it this way, there aren't too many choices.

1. God actually does support rape - a conclusion that I'm certain would revolt most Christians.

2. Nobody has actually been conceived as the result of rape. This would be really tough to buy.

3. God doen't really create everyone according to His plan. He could be an observer, but not an active creator.

I don't want to limit the options artificially, but the argument is very simple. If I've overlooked something, let me know.

luvluv

K, I think the simple fact that we have some control over our own procreation shows that God does not really "create" each one of us according to his divine plan, but, since he knows we are coming, is able to make plans that have us incorporated into them. Our free will extends into the ability to decide when and under what circumstances we will bring life into this world.

I don't really know where you get your data from, as far as what most Christians believe. I know that classical theologians and apologist have always distinguished betwen primary and ultimate causes (God) and secondary causes (parents). It has never been the claim of orthodox theology that God is directly responsible for secondary causes, that would be an obvious violation of free will.

sandlewood:

I don't think I was clear, I only meant that God COULD bring goodness out of our evil actions if we let Him. I don't believe it is automatic. But the fact is that many people need to hit rock bottom before they actually start trying to change their lives. Failing in a major way could provide the spark some folks need to start appreciating the lives they've been given and to start trying to make the best out of themselves.

Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for good for those who love God, those who are called according to his purpose. I think that means that if you are in a relationship with God and don't quit on Him, eventually He can turn even the most devestating things in your life into good ends. I am a witness to that, some of the things in my life that I thought were the worst things that could have happened to me turned out to be the best.

K

luvluv:

I believe this is the verse that is often quoted to show that God has a very detailed plan for our whole existance.

Have you really never heard Christians say that God created us all according to His plan? I've even heard people say that God decided to bring someone home and that's why they died. You and I might think these are ideas are bizarre, but I wouldn't say they are obscure Christian beliefs.