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  • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
    That statement itself is a subject of much debates these days. Nevertheless, accepting it on face value:

    I know that unless I intervene my son will play his games before he does his homework. Does that knowledge on my part in any way guide, direct, or otherwise force my son to play his games first?


    Jim
    But you don't know that Jim. You believe it based on passed experience, but you don't know. If your son has free will, he just might decide on his own some day to do his homework without your intervention. We're talking omniscience, not probability. If god actually knew, which is the claim being made, then A+E had no choice.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by JimLamebrain View Post
      ...if the future exists, then there is no free will.
      Asserted but not proven in any logical way.
      Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
      But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
      Than a fool in the eyes of God


      From "Fools Gold" by Petra

      Comment


      • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
        I love trying to talk about timelessness using time based terms. It is destined for contradiction and multiple paradoxes.

        (1) I don't think the future has to 'exist' for God to know what it 'will be'.

        (2) It might 'exist', but I tend to think the 'future' and the 'past', relative to any given 'now' are not necessarily 'fixed' things. IOW, I am not sure there is anything other than 'now', but there are a whole bunch of them.


        Jim
        Right, so do you believe that your future "nows" already exist in some sense even if the you in the "present" isn't aware of those future "nows?" If not, if the future you does not in any sense yet exist, can you think of some other way that the your future could be known? I can think of one.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Roy View Post
          I don't think you have - I think you've merely introduced unnecessary concepts that cloud the issue.

          Having thought about it last night, the core problem is this:

          1. You have a choice of actions.
          2. God knows what choice you will make before you make it.

          Can you make a choice other than that which God knows you will make?
          The point I'm trying to make is that there is a difference between 'can you' and 'will you'.

          If I have free will, the potential exists to make a different choice. God is not forcing me to make the choice I make. I can make another choice. But I won't. The way you express the problem and the solution conflate what I can chose to do with what I will chose to do. Which is where the element of provability enters. Left to my own, without outside influence, even though I can make some other choice, I won't. but if I have free will and I could know outside the system what choice I would otherwise make, I could change it. My 'chooser' is not constrained or fixed beyond with my will directs it to.

          If you can, God doesn't know what choice you will make. Contradicts #2.
          If you can't, you don't have a choice of actions. Contradicts #1.

          Since either answer leads to a contradiction, #1 and #2 are incompatible.
          I understand the logic. But, as I've already said, I think it unnecessarily couples potential and actual. free will is about potential. But free-will is not a random number generator where out comes a choice and I have no clue if or why I made it. And for all practical purposes, that is an implicit assumption about free-will in the above.


          Introduction other possible worlds, or knowledge of God's choice, or provability, or necessity, just adds complication that obscures the above.
          On the contrary, I believe it clarifies the issues and the source(s) of the the apparent contradiction.

          It's been explored in countless ways in both philosophy and fiction (see also here). Many of them cover this paradox and others.
          Indeed it has, and I am aware of many of those works and the various speculations about it


          Jim
          My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

          If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

          This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

          Comment


          • Originally posted by JimL View Post
            Right, so do you believe that your future "nows" already exist in some sense even if the you in the "present" isn't aware of those future "nows?" If not, if the future you does not in any sense yet exist, can you think of some other way that the your future could be known? I can think of one.
            I don't have a 'belief' about that JimL. My future could 'exist' in some sense - but the critical point there is what does that even mean? To exist is itself a time based construct unless the thing existing it itself eternal and unchanging (at all times) or completely outside time (whatever THAT means). We have no means of conceiving of a non-time based existence.

            Another option is that there could be many different futures that 'exist' all parallel to each other. Maybe even many different pasts relative to my current 'now' if retro-causality is a real thing. I have no way of knowing.

            What I believe JimL is that "God knows my future" is an accurate anthropomorphism of how God interacts with me in time and space, and that what that means is that in terms of how I perceive my life and the universe, when I reach what I perceive of as my future, God will be there and He will have already understood that is where I would end up.


            Jim
            Last edited by oxmixmudd; 01-11-2019, 11:59 AM.
            My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

            If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

            This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

            Comment


            • Originally posted by JimL View Post
              So, all of time exists, and all of our choices have occured, including your future choices, and yet you still think that in that scenario you also have free will? You seriously can not see the contradiction in that idea?
              All of your past choices already occurred and you can't change them, yet you believe you did them with free will.


              The future is just more past that we haven't traveled through yet.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                The point I'm trying to make is that there is a difference between 'can you' and 'will you'.

                If I have free will, the potential exists to make a different choice. God is not forcing me to make the choice I make. I can make another choice. But I won't. The way you express the problem and the solution conflate what I can chose to do with what I will chose to do. Which is where the element of provability enters. Left to my own, without outside influence, even though I can make some other choice, I won't. but if I have free will and I could know outside the system what choice I would otherwise make, I could change it. My 'chooser' is not constrained or fixed beyond with my will directs it to.
                Maybe this will help illustrate it for him. You can give JimL a jug of bleach. He can drink it of his own free will, but he will not. He will freely choose not to drink the bleach.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                  Maybe this will help illustrate it for him. You can give JimL a jug of bleach. He can drink it of his own free will, but he will not. He will freely choose not to drink the bleach.
                  I've heard some skeptics argue that you can't exercise freewill when one choice is clearly preferable to another. I'm not saying that it's a good argument, just that I've heard it. The only thing I wonder is if Jimmy is dumb enough to go there.
                  Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                  But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                  Than a fool in the eyes of God


                  From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                    I've heard some skeptics argue that you can't exercise freewill when one choice is clearly preferable to another. I'm not saying that it's a good argument, just that I've heard it. The only thing I wonder is if Jimmy is dumb enough to go there.
                    I was using an extreme example on purpose so maybe JimL would get the point. But what was I thinking?

                    The point is that he CAN drink the bleach but he WILL not. He is making the choice himself. He could conceivably drink the bleach just to prove he has free will if he wanted to. He is the one making the choice.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                      I've heard some skeptics argue that you can't exercise freewill when one choice is clearly preferable to another. I'm not saying that it's a good argument, just that I've heard it. The only thing I wonder is if Jimmy is dumb enough to go there.
                      One of the worst arguments I've ever seen was in favor of universalism. the argument was that if you do not freely choose Christ you are insane, and the legal system does not hold the insane responsible for their actions therefore they will be saved anyway.
                      "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

                      Comment


                      • The motion to remove Shahid Shafi from his position as vice chairman of the Tarrant County Republican party failed by a vote of 139-49 on Thursday night.
                        The effort was led by several county Republicans who argued that Dr Shafi was more loyal to Islam than the US.
                        I salute the Tarrant County Republican Party for re-affirming Shahid Shafi as Vice President of the county GOP. He is a good man who is doing a good job. And we should never allow religious bigotry to play any part in our politics.
                        — George P. Bush
                        ...... but most of the time we just can't help ourselves.
                        “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
                        “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
                        “not all there” - you know who you are

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                          I don't have a 'belief' about that JimL. My future could 'exist' in some sense
                          And if your future time does exist in some sense, then would you also agree that it must needs have existed since the beginning of time?

                          - but the critical point there is what does that even mean?
                          Well, it seems to be the religious argument, so I would think you had some idea of what it would mean. What it means to me is Einsteins block universe and the B-theory of time in which the whole of time exists even though somehow we only experience it in increments. In other words your history is all laid out before you, though you will only experience it incrementally. Time is naught but an illusion according to Einstein, though a very persistent one. There is no free will in that theory, and Einstein didn't believe in free will. The point is that many of you, including yourself, have argued for free will, while at the same time asserting that the future somehow exists and that god for that reason has foreknowledge of it. That's a contradiction.

                          To exist is itself a time based construct unless the thing existing it itself eternal and unchanging (at all times)
                          That would be the "block universe" which I described above. The experience of time within such an existence would be an illusion.

                          or completely outside time (whatever THAT means). We have no means of conceiving of a non-time based existence.
                          Well, I think we kind of do. It's how most people conceive of god. But regardless of being outside of time, if a being outside of time can see all of time, past, present and future, then all of time exists regardless of the timeless nature of that observer. That's what I've been trying to get across. It doesn't matter if god is outside of time, if he can see all of time from his external perch, then all of time exists, and has existed in its entirety since its creation. No free will.
                          Another option is that there could be many different futures that 'exist' all parallel to each other. Maybe even many different pasts relative to my current 'now' if retro-causality is a real thing. I have no way of knowing.
                          But again, many different futures, or different worlds doesn't change anything, there would just be many different futures or different worlds in which all of time exists. Changing the number of futures doesn't change anything, it just multiplies the same problem as I stated it above.
                          What I believe JimL is that "God knows my future" is an accurate anthropomorphism of how God interacts with me in time and space,
                          Yes, I understand what you believe. What we are trying to do is to decipher if what you believe makes sense. I think that making sense doesn't seem to matter all that much to believers.

                          and that what that means is that in terms of how I perceive my life and the universe, when I reach what I perceive of as my future, God will be there and He will have already understood that is where I would end up.
                          Well, Unless you can give a logical explanation as to exactly how god could know the future, know your future, while allowing that you, at the same time, have free will, then there is no good reason to accept, or believe that. You et al, from what I can gather from disgussing the matter with you all, believe in the co-existence of omniscience and free will simply because you want to believe it, not because you have good reason to believe it.
                          Last edited by JimL; 01-11-2019, 07:57 PM.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                            All of your past choices already occurred and you can't change them,
                            Obviously.

                            yet you believe you did them with free will.
                            Not necessarily.

                            The future is just more past that we haven't traveled through yet.
                            Well you'll have to explain what exactly you mean by that. Again, it sounds as if you think the your future exists already and that you are just determined to follow the path already laid out for you. I don't think you believe that, so you need to be clearer.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                              That statement itself is a subject of much debates these days. Nevertheless, accepting it on face value:

                              I know that unless I intervene my son will play his games before he does his homework. Does that knowledge on my part in any way guide, direct, or otherwise force my son to play his games first?
                              False equivalence! God, in his omniscience, knows that your son will play his games before doing his homework, whereas you don't know for sure. Unlike you, God has eternally known, what your son will do.
                              “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                                False equivalence! God, in his omniscience, knows that your son will play his games before doing his homework, whereas you don't know for sure. Unlike you, God has eternally known, what your son will do.
                                It is not meant to be a full equivalence. It's analogous part is to show that to know is not necessarily to cause. I believe God can allow us to freely choose and know what we will choose without that choice being forced. You seem to think God's knowing and being right about it somehow is forcing the choice. I dont believe it does. I don't see any reason the two elements of existence are necessarily related.

                                Again, correlation does not imply causation.

                                Jim
                                Last edited by oxmixmudd; 01-12-2019, 08:24 AM.
                                My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

                                If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

                                This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

                                Comment

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