Re:If God knows all past/present/future, How can one have free will..
« Reply #15 on: 2004-04-05 20:08:58 »
I don't see any reason to think that we have free will. But I like to think I do. It seems fairly obvious to me that we are biological machines. Machines no matter how complex, follow the laws of physics - they do not create the physics. As such, free will is an attractive illusion. Free will is necessary if you have God - otherwise one could not choose to follow Him", and gain his blessings. Yet he knows our every motivation and thought, He knows our hearts and our paths. (notice I said paths - not path). If one is a determinist, then he cannot know God - for one must choose God. A strange contradiction.
My first post This is a very interesting question to me as this question was what finally led me out of Christianity into the bright light of freethought. Whether Christians will freely admit to this or not, this question is at the heart of their religious beliefs. Christianity, as I saw it practiced and I am not aware of any changes since I was involved, is basically divided into two main camps in regards to this question of free will. The first camp, whose propenents include Augustine in his later writings, John Calvin and today the more hardline Presbyterians and Reconstructionists believe that we have no free will, all is predestined according to god's plan and that includes every single choice every individual makes. The choice to become a christian is also predestined and those who are "fortunate" enough to be given the grace to make this choice are called the "elect".
On the other side of the fence are those Christians who believe in free will, the standard bearer for them was a fellow whose name was Arminius who I believe was a contemporary of John Calvin but I am not certain. Even today these folks are referred to as Arminians. They believe that all our choices are free (how else could we be held accountable for them they would ask) and one's eternal destiny is determined by the choice one makes regarding the truth of the gospel. They will claim that they believe in the omniscience of god but when pressed to reconcile the idea of free will and god's omniscience they usually defer and chalk it up to our limited understanding of the ways of god or some such nonsense like that. The reason for this being there is no reconciliation possible in the Arminian viewpoint.
Every Christian you come across falls into either one of these two camps and whatever theology they hold to (Pentecostal, Baptist, Catholic, etc) will rest on which camp they are in. Coming from a Christian background I will tell you that if you are really interested in getting a loved one out of this mumbo-jumbo, this area (free will vs god's omniscience) is the area to focus on if you want to make any headway with them at all.
How are omniscience and free will linked in the first place?
Free Will is the ability to carry out an action. Omniscience is knowing what action will be carried out. In order for a God to have any task in removing Free Will he would have to use His Omnipotence. Knowing something does not indicate the lack of ability to perform an action...it would simply mean knowing the action that was selected.
How are omniscience and free will linked in the first place?
Free Will is the ability to carry out an action. Omniscience is knowing what action will be carried out. In order for a God to have any task in removing Free Will he would have to use His Omnipotence. Knowing something does not indicate the lack of ability to perform an action...it would simply mean knowing the action that was selected.
If I know in advance what you are going to choose, in what sense is your choice free? If you have only one option, the predestined choice, then you aren't free to choose anything else, are you? Hence, no free will.
Could it be that the universe is an infinite cycle.? What I mean is that the universe eventaully comes to an end, and that is exactly like the begining. So if that is true then the universe goes through the exact same motions again. Which we would be recreated, and given the exact same situation we would do the same action. Then it would be possible for God to know what our actions, but only after the first cycle of the created universe. So God knows what we are going to do, becasue what we did in our initial life (where we trully had free will) " echos through eternity."
If I know in advance what you are going to choose, in what sense is your choice free? If you have only one option, the predestined choice, then you aren't free to choose anything else, are you? Hence, no free will.
First shot at trying the "quote" option...we'll see if this works.
This assumes destiny exists in the sense that you can not change what is going to happen in your life...that choices are meaningless. Therefore, since I have no control over my own life, I should just sit on the couch and let a God do whatever he wants with me...surely he will force my limbs to move the way he wants them to.
In reality, we know that choices are presented to us constantly and we are free to go our own way. So destiny, in this sense, is non-existant because it opens up a Pandora's Box of "what if"s. You might just as well have limitless parallel universes.
Eliminating destiny, knowledge of future events by one being and the freedom required to carry out the actions by another are not related. There's really no good example to support this, since we're not provided with the ability to see into the future.
Ignoring destiny, I would ask what other reasoning there is to assume that an Omnipotent being removes free will.
Re:If God knows all past/present/future, How can one have free will..
« Reply #21 on: 2004-09-27 05:37:22 »
Quote:
If I know in advance what you are going to choose, in what sense is your choice free? If you have only one option, the predestined choice, then you aren't free to choose anything else, are you? Hence, no free will.
IMHO, my freedom is not causally reduced (and thus negated if it be an absolute, either-free-or-not-category) THROUGH YOUR KNOWLEDGE of how I will decide. I cannot think this through thoroughly - there is something twisted about the matter - but I feel that an omniscient being could well know how one would act without diminishing that other beings free will. cf. my next post...
Quote:
In reality, we know that choices are presented to us constantly and we are free to go our own way. So destiny, in this sense, is non-existant because it opens up a Pandora's Box of "what if"s. You might just as well have limitless parallel universes.
Well. As Dennett put it, consciousness and along with it, free will, could be explained as a "benign user illusion" - you think you have it, because evolutionarily, it proved to enhance once's scope of action etc., but actually you don't. Yet I agree that while I can think I don't have free will, I cannot help but FEEL that I do - that just shows how powerful an illusion it is. It is a prerequisite of our existence.
Re:If God knows all past/present/future, How can one have free will..
« Reply #22 on: 2004-09-27 05:39:14 »
Coincidentally (see below), I thought this topic through just a few days ago. It’s true that omniscience itself is not an argument against free will. Combined with God’s actions in the world and a few other premises, it becomes problematic. This I my take at it [please note that I had to translate it, so it might sound somewhat awkward now and then…]:
General topic: God’s actions God is supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient – humans are supposed to possess free will. Why this is a logical contradiction.
1. premise: God possesses omnipotence and omniscience and puts them to use A narrow understanding of omnipotence implies that God is able to do ANYTHING at ANY GIVEN TIME IN THE PRESENT. In this case, the following argument would be invalid, but God would thus be bound to the time-axis and he would be denied the attribute of omniscience: encompassing omnipotence – thus, a broad understanding of it – (to be able to do ANYTHING, whether in past, presence or future) can only be realised if omniscience is given, too – omnipotence and omniscience are mutually conditional: omniscience at a certain moment means, omniscience about all moments: for a certain moment is historical, omniscience thus implies present AND past: omniscience of past and present, combined with sufficient computing capacity (as implied by the attribute of omnipotence), means, to know how the FUTURE will develop on the basis of the past, because all inherent laws and all values would be known. It means to know all possibilities that can be realised on the basis of one or more actions, and thus to be able to cause through one’s action(s) any consequence.
2. premise: Humans possess free will. Free will effectively means to have true independence in one’s decisions. On this proposition the Christian ethic is founded – had humans no free will, they could not sin or do good, for all their actions would be objectively equal. There would neither be room for decisions nor any standards of action.
These premises are mutually exclusive, for if God knew anytime what effects his actions had, all his actions in regard to humans were a manipulation, even his first (say, to forbid to eat from the tree of knowledge) would take away the humans’ free will [nb, drowning Egyptians in the red sea, or the whole world in the Flood doesn’t do much good to free will either]. God would have known at that time WHATEVER WOULD HAPPEN FROM NOW ON, and any prohibition would have been a hollow phrase, for God knew the humans to hasten into their inevitable doom already, calling the results of his own actions “sin” and blaming them on the humans. (…)
Every assumption of a free will (mostly identical with the notion of a “soul“) is negated the instance the “force” which conferred it – which must be transcendent and not immanent, otherwise it would be just another environmental factor (another topic entirely) – influences the humans’ actions and thus their free will.
If God knows all past/present/future, How can one have free will?
Thinking outside the box, perhaps this is one of the brilliant unexplainable theories provided by the authors of Christian dogma to prevent denial or deconstruction. Perhaps the only true way to have free will is to not be a Christian. Perhaps this little tidbit was just added in later to seal up the cracks.
My favorite question is this: If God is perfect, how could he also be jealous?
Alright, from a normal standpoint it is pretty obvious that the contradictions that haunt the Abrahamic religions' image of god will get us nowhere, but really I dont think it is somethign to think about at all in that sense. I think people make the mistake of mixing what we cant know and what we can. Now god is infinite and human thought cannot possibly conceive of this infiniteness in its totality because the person thinking about it is finite (at least as far as what he knows is concerned, im not talking about a soul and all that). There is no point in saying that God can or cant do this or that since we are basing all of these statements on the boundaries of human logic. So since we cant thing about infinity in its totality then it is not a plausable topic in logical discussion. I.E. our logic is the same as what we can think about obviously. The answer to any question about if god can do anything or not is yes or at least might as well be since god is beyond our logic anyway. So then why are we discussing god then at all if it doesnt get us anywhere? The reaso of course is that we are discussing a god that supposedly has relationship with us and our world and is therefore in a finite form for us to speculate about. It seems like what we are actually discussing is whether or not faith isrealistic or not. You can believe in the infinite god who doesnt give a damn about our logic or you can not believe in it. Whether you believe or not is the same as whether you discuss it or not, because, as far as the infinite god goes, you dont believe in him if you are discussing him in finite terms. Now we can make the assumption that everyone on here discussing this has already rejected the traditional infinite god and is looking for a god who is somehow more personal in that he exists only within the boundaries of our logic. But this seems like a contradiction: were talking about infinite gods that exist within the boundaries of our logic. It seems like were talking ourselves into circles with this subject. Why not just give up the infinite idea all together and talk about what a god worthy of discussion really would be?
If God knows the present/past/future, according to logic you cant have free will, but the god that knows these things is not made for logic and therefore has no need of being discussed. In fact whether he exists or not is of no consequence.
I dont really understand the purpose of this subject, no offense to its creator, im just asking whether this question is truly relevant interesting though it most definitely is.
If God knows the present/past/future, according to logic you cant have free will, but the god that knows these things is not made for logic and therefore has no need of being discussed. In fact whether he exists or not is of no consequence.
if god is not made for logic then obviously he's made fur spiritual.. and if being spiritual isn't logical itself then how can u say not say that he's a good idea of discussion?
I believe we're mincing words a little here. First off i'd like us to define logic a little better. If you support the belief that every cause has its effect then surely you believe that human logic is only a product of this cause-effect relationship as is everything else in the known world. So in reality, logic is only a very large, complex form of this cause and effect. What this comes out to mean is that, if you look at a single cause and effect relationship, then you may realize it is like an extremely simple version of our logic. My point though is that logic is the same as cause and effect. The reason i wanted to make that point was to show that spiritual is much the same in that it is a complex form of cause and effect. That means that even spirituality in a human is just another physical chain of cause and effect. The truth is that spirituality IS logical (in that it is another cause-effect situation) but not in the way that you are talking about it. You are correct in stating that god is spiritual in the sense that, by spiritual, you mean those things that are beyond logic, but by your "being spiritual" is meant a different kind of spiritual: this kind of spiritual is the logic based spiritual, emotional phenomenon found in all humans. So to sum up: god IS spiritual in the sense that he is beyond logic and therefore somewhat useless in discussion as such, but spirituality itself as experienced by a human is not beyond logic, but IS logic itself. What this comes to is that human spirituality is limited to the laws of logic and/or the cause-effect rules and therefore unable to reach the god-type-spirituality because it is beyond logic. It appears that from this we can conclude that human spirituality is only an aim at experienceing the god-type-spirituality. Through religion people try to touch the infinite; that which is beyond logic, but from my point of view i doubt the possibility because of the cause and effect limitations that would not permit a person to reach the realm of the infinite. I hope everyone understand what i mean by all these confusing words and i ask their forgiveness for my own difficulty at expressing what i am trying to say (though if there is no free will then it is not my fault lol).
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This is a very interesting question to me as this question was what finally led me out of Christianity into the bright light of freethought. Whether Christians will freely admit to this or not, this question is at the heart of their religious beliefs. Christianity, as I saw it practiced and I am not aware of any changes since I was involved, is basically divided into two main camps in regards to this question of free will. The first camp, whose propenents include Augustine in his later writings, John Calvin and today the more hardline Presbyterians and Reconstructionists believe that we have no free will, all is predestined according to god's plan and that includes every single choice every individual makes. The choice to become a christian is also predestined and those who are "fortunate" enough to be given the grace to make this choice are called the "elect".
