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  • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
    "inevitable": Our choices are our choices. If I know you will eat chocolate if it is given to you, I'm not making you eat chocolate, you are. I just happen to know you like chocolate and will eat it if someone gives it to you.
    Certainly, you are not being made to eat the chocolate but the omniscient God has known eternally whether or not you will.

    Free will is not compromised if I or anyone else knows what you will do. Again, you have this 'random number generator' philosophy around what free-will is. That is NOT what it is. free-will just means I get to choose. That choice will be based on what I value and who I am. It doesn't mean I'm going to randomly decide something that goes against everything I believe in.
    You will have the illusion of free choice but what you will choose has been known by God since before you even existed. God has always known what you will choose.
    “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 Sparko View Post
      Your past choices were inevitable from your current point of view. Because if they were different you would remember them being different and then those choices would be the "inevitable" ones. Yet your past inevitable choices were done freely.
      When were my choices done freely if God in his eternal omniscient has known, since before I existed, what those “choices” would be?
      “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 Ignorant Roy View Post
        Apparently that possibility didn't occur to you, even though you've mentioned it several times yourself.
        So... have you figured out why this statement is self-contradictory?

        I mean, it's pretty obvious, but still...
        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 Tassman View Post
          Certainly, you are not being made to eat the chocolate but the omniscient God has known eternally whether or not you will.



          You will have the illusion of free choice but what you will choose has been known by God since before you even existed. God has always known what you will choose.
          Yes God knows what we will do. No, our free choice is not an illusion.

          The idea that the only way God can know what you or I will do is to make is do it is not valid. The idea my 'choice' is stolen/hampered/fixed by the fact God knows what it will be I also see as a logical mistake that arises primarily from a conflation of knowledge and cause. What I see happening is people saying well if God knows what you will do and he can't be wrong, doesn't that mean you can't make a different choice? And the answer there is no, that is not what that means. "You can make a different choice, but you won't" is the more correct way of looking at it. As I pointed out several times, if you could somehow change then environment of the choice so that you would have a reason to make a different choice, you could and possibly would make a different choice. But unless you could somehow hide that from God, he would have already known about it and his foreknowledge would reflect that instead of the other.

          But I also think, as I've said before as well, that 'knowledge' is an anthropomorphism. And I'm not sure the way we are trying to directly map that to how God interacts with the universe makes sense. And we need to understand that as an anthropomorphism, some of our reasoning about it is tainted by the necessary simplification that represents. And one should certainly understand that any logical contradictions or paradoxes we run into may very well just be artifacts of that self-same simplification.

          We know better that to reason absolutely about what God can or can't do based on other sorts of anthropomorphism, like God 'seeing' us, or God 'speaking' or God 'walking in the Garden' etc. But somehow with God's 'knowledge' or His relationship to time we think it's ok to reason about Him as if He has the same sorts of limitations we do. Probably because with knowledge and His relationship to time we don't really have the intellectual tools (yet?) that will allow us to reason outside the implications of the anthropomorphism successfully.


          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 Tassman View Post
            When were my choices done freely if God in his eternal omniscient has known, since before I existed, what those “choices” would be?
            All your choices were done 'freely'. It just so happens that for a being capable of knowing all about you and all about the circumstances in which you made the choice, it's trivial for Him to know what you would do.

            Again - free will to choose does not mean your choices in a given environment or set of moral constraints will be unpredictable. It just means that you are allowed to decide whatever you want to decide about that without God forcing you to make a specific choice 'against your will'. Free will means that if you know what the future will be, you can decide to change it. The future that would result from how you are now can be changed if you decide to be different. And God will not force you to stay as you are if you decide you want to change.

            There are examples of God telling people what their future will be unless they change. God knows their future without change. God knows their future with change. Does God giving them free-will to chose if they will change undermine God's infallibility? Does two potential futures existing up until the moment of choice make God somehow not omniscient?





            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 Tassman View Post
              When were my choices done freely if God in his eternal omniscient has known, since before I existed, what those “choices” would be?
              He knows because that is what you freely chose to do.

              again, logically and mathmatically it is no different than you knowing what you chose to do in the past.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                All your choices were done 'freely'. It just so happens that for a being capable of knowing all about you and all about the circumstances in which you made the choice, it's trivial for Him to know what you would do.
                The reason a creator would know all about you, and all about the circumstances in which you make your choices, is because he would be the cause of you and the cause of the circumstances in which you make those choices.
                Again - free will to choose does not mean your choices in a given environment or set of moral constraints will be unpredictable.
                Predictability is not the issue.

                It just means that you are allowed to decide whatever you want to decide about that without God forcing you to make a specific choice 'against your will'.
                Except for the obvious logical fact that an agent has no ability to change that which existed as knowledge since before said agent even existed. That the agents future existed as knowledge prior to his existence is evidence that the cause of that agents future is the creator of the agent.

                Free will means that if you know what the future will be, you can decide to change it.
                And yet it is logically impossible to change that which is eternally known.
                The future that would result from how you are now can be changed if you decide to be different. And God will not force you to stay as you are if you decide you want to change.
                Wrong. You would have nothing to do with choosing anything if your future was fixed as knowledge prior to you even existing.
                There are examples of God telling people what their future will be unless they change. God knows their future without change. God knows their future with change. Does God giving them free-will to chose if they will change undermine God's infallibility? Does two potential futures existing up until the moment of choice make God somehow not omniscient?
                Seriously Jim, you are fighting an impossible battle. You can't do an end run around logic.
                Last edited by JimL; 01-17-2019, 10:02 AM.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                  He knows because that is what you freely chose to do.

                  again, logically and mathmatically it is no different than you knowing what you chose to do in the past.
                  Wrong, it is completely different being that the past has already occured, the future has not.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by JimL View Post
                    Wrong, it is completely different being that the past has already occured, the future has not.
                    How do you know?

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by JimL View Post
                      The reason a creator would know all about you, and all about the circumstances in which you make your choices, is because he would be the cause of you and the cause of the circumstances in which you make those choices.

                      Predictability is not the issue.


                      Except for the obvious logical fact that an agent has no ability to change that which existed as knowledge since before said agent even existed. That the agents future existed as knowledge prior to his existence is evidence that the cause of that agents future is the creator of the agent.


                      And yet it is logically impossible to change that which is eternally known.

                      Wrong. You would have nothing to do with choosing anything if your future was fixed as knowledge prior to you even existing.

                      Seriously Jim, you are fighting an impossible battle. You can't do an end run around logic.
                      Logic alone is no guarantee of correctness. Anyone versed in mathematics or philosophy knows this.

                      Logic applied to presumption based in ignorance has no more authority than the meaningless babble of a baby.

                      Jim
                      Last edited by oxmixmudd; 01-17-2019, 10:59 PM.
                      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 Sparko View Post
                        He knows because that is what you freely chose to do.

                        again, logically and mathmatically it is no different than you knowing what you chose to do in the past.
                        When did I "freely choose" given that the omniscient deity has known for all eternity, before I even existed, what I would choose?
                        “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 Mountain Man View Post
                          Apparently that possibility didn't occur to you, even though you've mentioned it several times yourself.
                          So... have you figured out why this statement is self-contradictory?

                          I mean, it's pretty obvious, but still...
                          That's your devastating rebuttal? It's got nothing whatsoever to do with the actual discussion.

                          And you can't even get that right. That statement isn't self-contradictory unless you make the unwarranted, unnecessary and incorrect assumption that both clauses refer to the same time. They don't: "Apparently that possibility didn't occur to you [while writing this post], even though you've mentioned it several times yourself [in previous posts]."

                          Since you've stopped even attempting to defend your faulty 'logic', reverting to imagined 'gotchas' instead, I'll conclude you can't.
                          Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                          MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                          MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                          seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                            The idea that the only way God can know what you or I will do is to make is do it is not valid. The idea my 'choice' is stolen/hampered/fixed by the fact God knows what it will be I also see as a logical mistake that arises primarily from a conflation of knowledge and cause. What I see happening is people saying well if God knows what you will do and he can't be wrong, doesn't that mean you can't make a different choice? And the answer there is no, that is not what that means. "You can make a different choice, but you won't" is the more correct way of looking at it.
                            That doesn't work, Jim.

                            If you can make a different choice, then God can be wrong.
                            If God can't be wrong, then you can't make a different choice.

                            It doesn't matter if you never do make a different choice, the suggestion that you could leads to a suggestion that God could be wrong.
                            Unless you concede that God can be wrong, your argument fails.
                            Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                            MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                            MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                            seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Ignorant Roy View Post
                              That's your devastating rebuttal?
                              I think the fact that you hilariously contradicted yourself in the very same sentence is pretty devastating.

                              Originally posted by Ignorant Roy View Post
                              And you can't even get that right. That statement isn't self-contradictory unless you make the unwarranted, unnecessary and incorrect assumption that both clauses refer to the same time. They don't: "Apparently that possibility didn't occur to you [while writing this post], even though you've mentioned it several times yourself [in previous posts]."
                              Nice try, but that doesn't save you from the self-contradiction.

                              Originally posted by Ignorant Roy View Post
                              Since you've stopped even attempting to defend your faulty 'logic', reverting to imagined 'gotchas' instead, I'll conclude you can't.
                              That's an incorrect conclusion. For one thing, you haven't shown my logic to be faulty. You keep monkeying up the premises in order to force a contradiction instead of dealing with my argument as written, which is to say that you've been tilting at straw men, and then you fell flat on your face with a blatant self-contradiction in the process.
                              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 Ignorant Roy View Post
                                If you can make a different choice, then God can be wrong.
                                If God can't be wrong, then you can't make a different choice.
                                It's very simple:

                                I can make whatever choice I want, and God knows whatever choice I will make.
                                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

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