Determinism, Compatibilsm, Free Will, Ex Nihilo

[Psychic Missile]

The personality/character of an individual is the greatest impact. One person in a certain situation will do something entirely different than another person who is in that exact same situation.

The problem with Ex Nihilo is that God ultimately is responsible for creating the personality/character AND the environment. That is absolute control!

-7up

What makes you think God didn't leave personalty/character and environment mostly if not entirely to natural processes? Is Deism out of the picture for this discussion?

[seven7up]

What makes you think God didn't leave personalty/character and environment mostly if not entirely to natural processes?

If God is truly omnipotent and omniscient , and if God created all things "out of nothing" (purely from God's own mind), then he knows how any minor tweak in nature/environment would affect the outcome of any particular individual. If God is creating Ex Nihilo, God still controls everything.

-7up

[JimL]

The dice are truly random. They are "free" to randomly roll any number on any roll.

The path is NOT determined by the roller.

What you are suggesting is that there are no physics involved in the process, or that god doesn't "know" the physics. Not that it would matter that god doesn't "know" the physics involved since whether he knows the physics or not the the path the dice will follow is determined by the throw, not random.

I am not saying that free will is the same as randomness. The analogy is simply meant to demonstrate that foreknowledge, in and of itself is not causative. Foreknowledge, in and of itself, does not cause any particular combination to be rolled.

Okay, so you don't believe that god has foreknowledge of the outcomes of his creations, nevertheless, he would still be the cause of those outcomes. There is no free will built into that system therefore the responsibility for evil would still be gods, not his creations.

Now, If God knows before hand what combination will be rolled AND God can decide which dice to create out of nothing (and which ones not to create), then that does determine outcomes.

See above. Doesn't matter if god is a dumbell, the outcomes would still be determined by him.

[Bill the Cat]

Occasionalism is ridiculous. Why are you advocating occasionalism (applied to human minds)?

It's not ridiculous. From a theistic standpoint, it makes the most sense. That it doesn't play well with naturalism is not my problem.

By the way, your blueprint analogy is a false analogy

Which I readily admit, as with the painter analogy. That's why they are analogies, not exegesis.

since the relationship between:

1: a human's will (or more precisely: certain human mental states instantiated by their human brain)

and:

2: the reality that will causally effects (ex: human behavior)

is not the same as the relationship between:

3: a blueprint

and:

4: a house

For example, the relationship between 3 and 4 is one of representation or description/depiction; that is: the blueprint describes/depicts/represents what the house is or will be.

Just as, from God's perspective of exhaustively knowing everything that will ever happen, His knowledge of our decisions describes exactly how He temporally creates us.

This is not the same as causing the house to be a certain way.

If the foreman is bound to follow the blueprint exactly, as God is bound by His foreknowledge exactly, the blueprints direct the foreman on exactly how to "cause" the house.

The blueprint need not cause the house to be a certain way, anymore than my map of America has to cause America to be a certain shape.

Considering the US preceded the map of it, that analogy is false. Blueprints are not made after the house is built.

This contrasts with the relationship between 1 and 2, since the relationship between 1 and 2 is a causal relationship; that is: a human's will causes reality to be a certain way.

And that reality is known by God, therefore He creates reality to facilitate those choices that the human wills. God doesn't force the human to will something, He simply makes it solely possible for the human to will what He knew they would will.

For example, my will can cause me to move certain objects around in my room, via my signals sent to my arms from my brain.

And God, foreknowing that you would do so, created you, the objects, and the room just as He foreknew it would happen. Had He foreknew you would also move a leg lamp, He would have created that exact leg lamp in that precise location for you to move it. But because He foreknew you would not have one, He did not create a specific leg lamp for you to move.

Once that point is made clear, then it's evident that in your analogy, a human's will is not necessarily analagous to a blueprint. Instead, the human's will is analogous to the builder, since the human's will causally affects reality (ex: causing me to move objects around in my room), just as the builder causally affects reality by building a house.

But YOU were caused by God. The material to make the room and stuff was caused by God at the exact time it was needed. The material to build your house was caused by God. And the circumstances that resulted in you moving things around were all created by God precisely to allow you to do exactly what you did.

You mistakenly seem to think otherwise, since you seem to think that:

5: if God made humans, then it is God who is really causally influencing reality, not humans

This is a just a specific instance of the general principle:

6: If X causes Y to exist, then X is the real causal factor, while Y has no genuine causal effects

Principle 6 makes no sense. For example, by the logic of this principle, the Earth has no causal effects, since the Earth was caused to exist by something else. But of course this is absurd, since we have evidence of the Earth's causal effects (ex: Earth's gravitational effects of the movement of neraby objects).

You and I are using the term "cause" in a different manner, I think. I am referring to creating, not influencing. God created the physical laws when He created matter, including gravity. God set the laws in place where, when the proper conditions are met, gravity affects other things.

And principle 6 is just as absurd when it's applied to humans. For example: my parents caused my exist.

No they didn't. They met the necessary conditions for you to grow and develop according to the laws God set up. HE caused you to exist. And for precisely the reason that He knew they would make you.

Yet it would be absurd to claim that my parents are the real causal factor for all I do, while I'm not a genuine cause of anything. After all, there are plenty of things I can do in reality, regardless of whether my parents still even exist or not.

But if God "ceased to exist" exist (which is a logical impossibility since He is necessary in a theistic framework), so would you.

Yet principle 6 implies otherwise. So principle 6 makes no sense. A parallel problem arises for your claim: humans can causally affect reality, regardless of whether or not God made humans. And the causally effects of humans should not be attributed to God, unless you want to claim that God is the real cause for all immoral actions that humans do, while humans are not the real cause. And at that point, you really couldn't hold human's responsible for their behavior, now could you?

Well, as I said, you are using "causal" as meaning to make something happen, while I am using it as "cause to exist".

[Bill the Cat]

No, sorry Bill, but that just doesn't make sense. God does not know what the painting "is going" to look like" because god knows, as you put it, like an idea in his mind, what the painting looks like eternally.

Sure it does. God knows every point in our time/space perfectly. He doesn't learn or discover because He already knows.

So, if the idea of creation exists in the mind of god eternally, exists as his own eternal idea, before he transforms that idea into a temporal reality, then the only one that could possibly be responsible for that eternal ideas transformation into a temporal reality is the creator himself.

Not if the idea MUST be adhered to. Changing any single iota of that knowledge is both a violation of free will and a logical contradiction. God can not perfectly know something and then "unknow" it.

Like your painter analogy, if the painter has the idea of the painting in his mind, and then he paints a picture to the exact detail of his idea, who is responsible for the details, the paint?

Which is why I said it was a bad analogy. But it illustrated one of the points I was making, that God already knows what the "end product" will look like when it is completed in our time/space. As I boiled it down for 7up, that's the only way He can accurately tell what will happen in the future.

Doesn't matter. If the idea of creation is itself eternal, then the idea wasn't created, and the temporal or created version of that eternal idea is just a copy of the eternal idea itself.

Ideas aren't physical things, so they can't be "created" the way we talk about the creation of the universe. So, calling the physical thing a "copy" of an idea isn't quite the right way of looking at it. In a way, the idea is actually the "copy" of the physical thing, as it is less a prior idea than it is a "memory" of something already seen.

But the blue print, gods eternal idea of us does exist eternally. Are you free to change that once god creates you from that blue print?

that's an awkward way of stating it. Can you change something you have already done? Can you change what you ate yesterday? Well, to God, there is no such thing as "tomorrow", so whatever you choose to eat tomorrow, God will created exactly that, and the circumstances necessary for you to attain it and consume it. Suggesting you can "change" something that hasn't come into existence yet is just a clunky way of stating it.

If your choices are known eternally, and you are a temporal being created in accordance with that eternal knowledge, then you are an automaton.

No you aren't. An automaton does not tell its creator what program to run. We, by our choices, provide God with the knowledge of what to create to make them happen.

Yes, well perhaps the idea of an eternal god that knows but isn't the cause of the temporal future is the thing that is confusing you.

The idea that God can know the future without it even existing yet is what I consider 7up's religion's fatal flaw. And it is HIS theory, and Mormonism by proxy, that brought me to this thread. When God is relegated to "just one of us humans" who just happens to be a little bit further evolved, then the whole thing falls apart when we look at things like prophecy, omnipotence, and foreknowledge.

[Carrikature]

It's not ridiculous. From a theistic standpoint, it makes the most sense. That it doesn't play well with naturalism is not my problem.



Which I readily admit, as with the painter analogy. That's why they are analogies, not exegesis.



Just as, from God's perspective of exhaustively knowing everything that will ever happen, His knowledge of our decisions describes exactly how He temporally creates us.



If the foreman is bound to follow the blueprint exactly, as God is bound by His foreknowledge exactly, the blueprints direct the foreman on exactly how to "cause" the house.



Considering the US preceded the map of it, that analogy is false. Blueprints are not made after the house is built.



And that reality is known by God, therefore He creates reality to facilitate those choices that the human wills. God doesn't force the human to will something, He simply makes it solely possible for the human to will what He knew they would will.



And God, foreknowing that you would do so, created you, the objects, and the room just as He foreknew it would happen. Had He foreknew you would also move a leg lamp, He would have created that exact leg lamp in that precise location for you to move it. But because He foreknew you would not have one, He did not create a specific leg lamp for you to move.



But YOU were caused by God. The material to make the room and stuff was caused by God at the exact time it was needed. The material to build your house was caused by God. And the circumstances that resulted in you moving things around were all created by God precisely to allow you to do exactly what you did.



You and I are using the term "cause" in a different manner, I think. I am referring to creating, not influencing. God created the physical laws when He created matter, including gravity. God set the laws in place where, when the proper conditions are met, gravity affects other things.



No they didn't. They met the necessary conditions for you to grow and develop according to the laws God set up. HE caused you to exist. And for precisely the reason that He knew they would make you.



But if God "ceased to exist" exist (which is a logical impossibility since He is necessary in a theistic framework), so would you.



Well, as I said, you are using "causal" as meaning to make something happen, while I am using it as "cause to exist".

Sure it does. God knows every point in our time/space perfectly. He doesn't learn or discover because He already knows.



Not if the idea MUST be adhered to. Changing any single iota of that knowledge is both a violation of free will and a logical contradiction. God can not perfectly know something and then "unknow" it.



Which is why I said it was a bad analogy. But it illustrated one of the points I was making, that God already knows what the "end product" will look like when it is completed in our time/space. As I boiled it down for 7up, that's the only way He can accurately tell what will happen in the future.




Ideas aren't physical things, so they can't be "created" the way we talk about the creation of the universe. So, calling the physical thing a "copy" of an idea isn't quite the right way of looking at it. In a way, the idea is actually the "copy" of the physical thing, as it is less a prior idea than it is a "memory" of something already seen.





that's an awkward way of stating it. Can you change something you have already done? Can you change what you ate yesterday? Well, to God, there is no such thing as "tomorrow", so whatever you choose to eat tomorrow, God will created exactly that, and the circumstances necessary for you to attain it and consume it. Suggesting you can "change" something that hasn't come into existence yet is just a clunky way of stating it.





No you aren't. An automaton does not tell its creator what program to run. We, by our choices, provide God with the knowledge of what to create to make them happen.




The idea that God can know the future without it even existing yet is what I consider 7up's religion's fatal flaw. And it is HIS theory, and Mormonism by proxy, that brought me to this thread. When God is relegated to "just one of us humans" who just happens to be a little bit further evolved, then the whole thing falls apart when we look at things like prophecy, omnipotence, and foreknowledge.

This is an interesting take on things, but I don't see how it's anything more than completely ad hoc. God creating the things to allow us to will what he already knows we are going to will is a neat contortion, but it has no basis in anything. You still have to deal with moral responsibility. You're basically arguing that all actions/effects are by-proxy caused by God.

[Psychic Missile]

If God is truly omnipotent and omniscient , and if God created all things "out of nothing" (purely from God's own mind), then he knows how any minor tweak in nature/environment would affect the outcome of any particular individual. If God is creating Ex Nihilo, God still controls everything.

-7up

So you're still making the assumption that an entity with the capability of knowing everything would choose to know everything. What's the point of existence for such a being? Any goal it would have could be achieved in less than a second. Even if its goal was to bring forth humanity out of love, as is often claimed, any involvement could be set ahead of time with interference being "pre-recorded". It makes much more sense to me that an immortal, all-powerful being would live for the infinite novelty it was capable of.

[Bill the Cat]

This is an interesting take on things, but I don't see how it's anything more than completely ad hoc.

It makes the most sense out of balancing omniscience and free will

God creating the things to allow us to will what he already knows we are going to will is a neat contortion, but it has no basis in anything.

Sure it does. It answers the harder questions of how God can righteously judge those He created.

You still have to deal with moral responsibility. You're basically arguing that all actions/effects are by-proxy caused by God.

Not any more than a criminal can blame their parents for having them. Ultimately, man must answer for his free will decisions. That God didn't violate their free will by changing things is clear evidence that He is not culpable, even by proxy.

[Carrikature]

It makes the most sense out of balancing omniscience and free will

To you, maybe. To me it looks like mental gymnastics.

Sure it does. It answers the harder questions of how God can righteously judge those He created.

That it provides an answer doesn't mean it has a basis. I can come up with all sorts of answers that have zero basis. Philosophy is fun like that.

Not any more than a criminal can blame their parents for having them. Ultimately, man must answer for his free will decisions. That God didn't violate their free will by changing things is clear evidence that He is not culpable, even by proxy.

That's a non sequitur. It's not clear evidence of anything except you just denying culpability.

[Bill the Cat]

To you, maybe. To me it looks like mental gymnastics.

Meh. It reconciles my questions, so I am good. I don't see any other explanation working.

That it provides an answer doesn't mean it has a basis. I can come up with all sorts of answers that have zero basis. Philosophy is fun like that.

Agreed. But the other presented alternatives have severe flaws that mine doesn't suffer from AFAICT.

That's a non sequitur. It's not clear evidence of anything except you just denying culpability.

I disagree. But I've made all of the points I wish to make, and I am satisfied that my explanation answers the most questions of any competing suggestions.

[jordanriver]

If God knows Jichard's personality so well, that God knows what he is going to do in any given situation, and God sees that Jichard is a "bad egg" so to speak, who will not believe in God, then God can simply not decide to create Jichard in the first place.

-7up

how does God know Jichard's personality if Jichard never existed?

[JimL]

Sure it does. God knows every point in our time/space perfectly. He doesn't learn or discover because He already knows.

Yes, and according to you, he knows it eternally even before he creates the temporal copy of it? So in what sense are you, the temporal copy of gods eternal idea of you, the cause of your own actions? And please don't just assert free will, unless you can logically explain how free will comports with that argument.

Not if the idea MUST be adhered to. Changing any single iota of that knowledge is both a violation of free will and a logical contradiction. God can not perfectly know something and then "unknow" it.

How can they change that which is eternal? Sorry Bill, but you are not making a single iota of sense.

Which is why I said it was a bad analogy. But it illustrated one of the points I was making, that God already knows what the "end product" will look like when it is completed in our time/space. As I boiled it down for 7up, that's the only way He can accurately tell what will happen in the future.

Of course god knows, he's known it from eternity, which means that it is deterministic and that he is the cause. You can't describe a deterministic system and then incorporate free will. Your argument is self contradicting.

Ideas aren't physical things, so they can't be "created" the way we talk about the creation of the universe. So, calling the physical thing a "copy" of an idea isn't quite the right way of looking at it. In a way, the idea is actually the "copy" of the physical thing, as it is less a prior idea than it is a "memory" of something already seen.

Again thats totally illogical Bill. What came first, the eternal idea or the temporal copy?

that's an awkward way of stating it. Can you change something you have already done? Can you change what you ate yesterday? Well, to God, there is no such thing as "tomorrow", so whatever you choose to eat tomorrow, God will created exactly that, and the circumstances necessary for you to attain it and consume it. Suggesting you can "change" something that hasn't come into existence yet is just a clunky way of stating it.

Are you free to change gods eternal idea of your temporal existence, or are you bound by it. Bill, you are putting the cart before the horse so to speak. Your entire life, according to your argument, existed as an idea in gods mind before you even existed. If that were true, then you have no free will, you are just fulfilling the role you've been created for. God didn't get the eternal idea of you and your life from watching you, because you didn't yet exist.

No you aren't. An automaton does not tell its creator what program to run. We, by our choices, provide God with the knowledge of what to create to make them happen.

And how do you provide god with that knowledge when he already possesses it eternally before you even exist? I know that you are trying hard to justify omniscience of the creator and free will in the created, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You need to go back to the drawing board.

The idea that God can know the future without it even existing yet is what I consider 7up's religion's fatal flaw.

Your flaw is just as illogical as 7up's in that you think that your entire life span exists in the mind of your creator before you actually exist, before he actually creates you, and that you still somehow have free will.

And it is HIS theory, and Mormonism by proxy, that brought me to this thread. When God is relegated to "just one of us humans" who just happens to be a little bit further evolved, then the whole thing falls apart when we look at things like prophecy, omnipotence, and foreknowledge.

Whatever you think of Mormonism is irrelevant, your own argument needs to make sense. It doesn't.

[bling]

Then really you are saying that God's time is different than the time that we experience, but that isn't "outside of time altogether".

He is outside of our time.

It isn't necessary to be "uncreated" to be righteous. See my comment about God creating beings with the "communicable attributes of godliness". See also the quote by Blake Ostler in a previous post.

Are you saying that it is impossible for a created being to have godly love? I can quote some scriptures for you that say that we can and will.

If anyone could have had it from the first (their creation) than Adam and Eve would have had it. It by definition of Godly type Love that a being could not be created with this Love. Mature adults can obtain this Love and thus have it, but I do not find where people were born with this Love or even how that would be possible, so please give me your scripture?
All Christian have this Love since they accepted the gift.

Are you saying that God's love, which is instinctive, is just robotic?

Who is holding the shotgun at God? When instinctive and genuine love are inherent in an individual, that does not mean that it is forced.

-7up

[seven7up]

What you are suggesting is that there are no physics involved in the process, or that god doesn't "know" the physics. Not that it would matter that god doesn't "know" the physics involved since whether he knows the physics or not the the path the dice will follow is determined by the throw, not random.

I am saying that the example of dice is not meant to address anything about "How God rolls the dice". God is not even rolling the dice in this example. The dice are "rolling themselves so to speak". The example simply has the dice being truly random.

Then you can make the parallel, "Even IF each person had true free will, a God creating Ex Nihilo still determines outcomes, because God can decide which persons to create (or not create) out of infinite possible possibilities.

Okay, so you don't believe that god has foreknowledge of the outcomes of his creations, nevertheless, he would still be the cause of those outcomes. There is no free will built into that system therefore the responsibility for evil would still be gods, not his creations.

I am saying that Ex Nihilo places the responsibility onto God, not foreknowledge.

See above. Doesn't matter if god is a dumbell, the outcomes would still be determined by him.

Well, I think you are referring to my second argument. This is where I was telling Bill that God creating ex nihilo determines outcomes because the created characteristics of each individual (characteristics that God created from God's own mind) will lead an individual in a specific path to a certain outcome.

-7up

[seven7up]

The idea that God can know the future without it even existing yet is what I consider 7up's religion's fatal flaw. And it is HIS theory, and Mormonism by proxy, that brought me to this thread. When God is relegated to "just one of us humans" who just happens to be a little bit further evolved, then the whole thing falls apart when we look at things like prophecy, omnipotence, and foreknowledge.

I never said I know what kind of foreknowledge God has.

People can believe in God having perfect foreknowledge without God having total control of outcomes. As long as God isn't creating Ex Nihilo, God isn't determining outcomes, because with creation Ex Materia, God is doing the "best possible with what God has to work with", which is eternally-existing non-divine entities.

-7up