Evangelion

Devilnaut –

Yep.

Yep. And He sees you make them before you actually make them. That’s why it’s called “foreknowledge”, remember?

Do you? Do you really? Well, God’s omniscient foreknowledge involves the exhaustive foreknowledge of everything that everybody will ever do.

Are you claiming that you have this knowledge? Remarkable! You’re all set to visit Randi and clean up that $1m!

Yep.

Because, it’s foreknowledge, not just “knowledge.”

Nope, just very difficult for our finite minds to comprehend.

*snip*

Yes it does, because that was your original claim, remember? You had claimed that free will is impossible where foreknowledge exists. Your argument was that foreknowledge precludes free will.

So the task before you is to prove a causal connexion between freedom and foreknowledge, with foreknowledge as the catalyst.

Because God’s foreknowledge automatically constitutes foreknowledge of the final decision, whatever that may be.

Evangelion

Keith –

*snip*

Fallacy of equivocation.

Kharakov

Remember how Theli brought up the difference between free choice and free will in the other thread? I'm going to try and explain it for Evangelion.

Free choice being the ability to choose between 2 things without external coercion occurring at the time of the choice.

For example: I get to pick a strawberry milkshake at McD's = free choice. Somebody holds a gun to my head and says pick chocolate: not free choice.

Free will being the state of existence in which nothing causes a being's actions.

Neither of the preceding choices involve free will because I do not control what makes me prefer strawberry over chocolate.

Even the hypothetical christian god cannot have free will- why would god want one thing over another?

If the hypothetical christian god has an initial preference deciding what it will or will not do it does not have free will. If a being makes a decision about anything it shows that the being does not have free will, because there was a preference that guided the decision.

Making a choice and having free will are not compatible. A being with a preference does not posess free will, only a being that is totally indifferent has free will and an indifferent being would not make a choice in the first place because of its indifference.

[ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: Kharakov ]</p>

Devilnaut

Evangelion:
I don't see why that is necessary. If, for instance, I have complete knowledge that you will win the lottery tomorrow, it does not follow that my knowledge was in any sense a catalyst to your winning the lottery, and I am making no such argument. The only thing that follows logically from my knowledge of your lottery win, is that I have complete knowledge of the events that will lead up to your winning of the lottery.

My argument is essentially this: if there exists an event that could (not simply just has a "chance of"; but really could) happen in a number of different ways (rendering it completely random and completely "free" of all forces), then there is no way to have knowledge of the outcome of said event before it occurs. If such (fore)knowledge were to exist, it would mean that the event has only one way of actually occuring.

I really don't see how simply stating that "but God only sees our free choices once they are freely made" avoids this.

But, to be illustrative, please try to answer this question of mine. If God knows today that you will choose shreddies over cornflakes tomorrow, is it possible for you to freely choose cornflakes?

[ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Evangelion:

"Correct. He will know what I will choose." (Emphasis original.)

Then God sees the future. If that's true, then there are true propositions about the future.

Now, consider a version of the Argument from Truth.

(1) If I will have cornflakes tomorrow, then today it is true that I will have cornflakes tomorrow.
(2) If it is true today that I will have cornflakes tomorrow, then there is no chance that I will not have cornflakes tomorrow.
(3) If there is no chance that I will not have cornflakes tomorrow, then I do not have free will.

I think you'd have to object to (3), but it seems to be true under a libertarian conception of free will. Libertarians want there to be possible worlds in which I do not choose X, but there are no possible worlds in which I do not choose X.

So are you a compatibilist then?

Philosoft

Evangelion, you seem to be an affable sort who is doing his logical best but I have a couple of quibbles:

With regard to apologetics in general, this kind of answer is becoming downright irritating. You are actually saying that something that results in a logical contradiction when analysed by human intellect is actually perfectly acceptable when you look at it from a point-of-view which humans are fundamentally unable to hold!

<strong> Well, at the very least there must be a correlation between divine foreknowledge and choice. As we know, the possible causal connections are A -&gt; B; B -&gt; A; C -&gt; A & B. Since foreknowledge 'A' by definition precedes choice 'B' temporally, it is not the case that B -&gt; A. So we are left with A -&gt; B which is self-evident causation, or C -&gt; A & B which poses an interesting case. Now, presumably, there is no external cause for God's foreknowledge. Therefore, the case is such that B is caused by either God (equivalent to causation by foreknowledge) or something external to, and uncontrolled by, God. The latter sounds like a theologically difficult position, at best.

Zadok001

This is the EXACT same argument we've seen in the other two free will threads. Evan here is arguing that free will is merely the _experience_ of choice. I choose to type this sentance, from my perspective, therefore it was a free choice.

The problem is, I was also predestined to write that sentance. I could not possibly have done otherwise. Basically, if foreknowledge exists, free choice cannot. The EXPERIENCE, or illusion, of free choice can exist - I can experience freely choosing, but I am not actually free to make the decision. The decision is fixed.

Davo

The distinction many people seem to be missing is the one between temporal priority and causal priority. We usually think of them in the same way, because in our experience, events are always caused by events prior to them in time. There's no reason for thinking that temporal priority must always correspond to causal priority, however.

In the case of foreknowledge and free will, God's foreknowledge of our decisions may come temporally before our decisions, but the freely made choices in the future are what actually cause God's knowledge of them. It's a hard concept to grasp, but there's no logical contradiction. In fact, this concept seems to logically follow from compatibilism, an entire school of thought on free will.

Evangelion

Devilnaut –

It’s necessary because your original claim is that God’s foreknowledge precludes our free will. Effectively, you have been arguing that God’s foreknowledge determines the future.

Hence your previous comments:

Now, if you want to stick with that proposal, you’ll have to demonstrate a causal connexion between freedom and foreknowledge, with foreknowledge as the catalyst.

Congratulations. You’ve just dismantled your “If it was free and independent, it could not possibly be known in advance” argument.

But I don’t see that this necessarily follows. All you’re really denying here, is the concept of foreknowledge itself. You haven’t shown why foreknowledge is incompatible with free will.

Oh, so you want to go back to the causal connexion argument again? OK, I don’t mind repeating myself.

Yes, of course it is.

As I said before:

You’ve got it backwards. By His divine foreknowledge, God knows that I will have cornflakes (or shreddies, if you prefer), because I have freely chosen to have them. The knowledge is contingent upon the choice; it’s just that he knows my choice before I do.

The only way to get around this argument is to propose that God’s foreknowledge is itself the cause of my choice. That is why, if you want to stick with that proposal, you’ll have to demonstrate a causal connexion between freedom and foreknowledge, with foreknowledge as the catalyst.

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: Evangelion ]</p>

Evangelion

Kharakov –

We live and learn.

*snip*

Yep, that’s the definition I’ve been working with. I see free choice as a logical consequence of free will.

*snip*

Yep, I’ve been working with this definition too. There’s nothing here that I disagree with.

Why not?

What’s your point? Simply asking “why”, is not the same as proving “cannot.”

Nonsense. That’s reducto ad absurdum. You’re saying that any inclination (whether hunger, thirst, or anything else) constitutes an abrogation of free will! But since any such inclination can be freely resisted, we see that humans possess both free choice and free will.