Atheists: What would be evidence of God’s existence?

[Sheldon]

No, they are not mutually exclusive because if you had chosen something different God would have KNOWN that you would choose something different.

You claimed it knew the one we would eventually choose though, so they are mutually exclusive. It doesn't matter if it knows all the possible outcomes, you are claiming that it knows beforehand which single outcome will happen, yes? If that's the case then choice is an illusion.

No, I am claiming that God ALWAYS KNEW what we were going to choose, before and after we chose it

Well there you go, any other choices must have been an illusion if that is true.

 

[Sheldon]

The whole point is that we had other choices BEFORE we made the one choice that we made.

It doesn't matter if as you claim it knew which one choice we would eventually make.

If we had made another choice God would have known that was the one choice we would make.

So it knows all the choices we can make, but not the one we will ultimately choose? Only that is not what you said?

Once we make the choice that is when what we chose has to be identical with what God knew we would choose.

So it did know beforehand which one we would choose, thus we had no choices obviously.

You seem to be claiming two mutually exclusive positions, and are offering each as true alternately, when I point out they can't both be true?

You claimed your deity knows all the choices I can make yes?

Know I am not going to make them all, only one, yes?

Does it know, beforehand, the one choice I will ultimately make, thus rendering all the others an illusion?

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: That does not mean we had no other choice. We had a choice right up until we made the choice.

Sheldon said: Yes but you claimed it knew which one we would choose before we made the choice. So the other choices would have to be an illusion.

God knew which one choice we would choose before we made the choice but there were still other choices available before we made the one choice that we made.

The choice is not inevitable until we make that choice. For example, a person might be contemplating suicide but until they actually kill themselves they can change their mind. They are nod dead until they are dead.

Trailblazer said: Explain why you think we could not have made another choice. What was preventing us from making another choice?

Sheldon said: Well this is your belief not mine, but you claimed your deity already knew the one choice we would make, and before we made it. thus the other choices you keep claiming we have couldn't be real.

The point is that BEFORE we made that choice other choices were available to us. For example, the person contemplating suicide could call the help line or call a friend instead of killing himself. Until we make that choice it was not a real choice.

God knew what choice we would make because God is all-knowing but it does not become a choice until we make it.

Whatever choice we make will be identical with the choice that God has always known we would make since God is all-knowing.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Ipso facto we would have no choice.

Yes, of course
Enjoy yourself.

 

[Sheldon]

God knew which one choice we would choose before we made the choice

The choice is not inevitable until we make that choice.

Again those are mutually exclusive claims, we can't choose if it already knows the one we will choose. We are not making all the choices only one, and if a deity existed and knew which one beforehand, we obviously didn't have any other choice.

BEFORE we made that choice other choices were available to us.

Not if a deity knew which one we are choosing, which is what you keep claiming.

God knew what choice we would make because God is all-knowing but it does not become a choice until we make it.

It can't be a choice if a deity already knows the one we will make.

Whatever choice we make will be identical with the choice that God has always known we would make

Ok, so we had no other choice then, that is axiomatic. How are you not getting this?

 

[Sheldon]

Yes, of course
Enjoy yourself.

Well that is predetermined by a deity apparently.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Well that is predetermined by a deity apparently.

That's what Calvinists believe.
However, @Trailblazer and I don't believe that.

We believe that we are responsible for choosing the path that we tread .. and the rest is up to G-d.
All things eventually return to Him.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: No, they are not mutually exclusive because if you had chosen something different God would have KNOWN that you would choose something different.

Sheldon said: You claimed it knew the one we would eventually choose though, so they are mutually exclusive. It doesn't matter if it knows all the possible outcomes, you are claiming that it knows beforehand which single outcome will happen, yes? If that's the case then choice is an illusion.

No, the choice is only mutually exclusive AFTER the choice has been made. Before the choice was made there were other choices that could have been made.

God knows beforehand which choice we will make but God has nothing to do with the choice we make. What God knows does not affect the choices we make in any way.

Trailblazer said: No, I am claiming that God ALWAYS KNEW what we were going to choose, before and after we chose it.

Sheldon said: Well there you go, any other choices must have been an illusion if that is true.

Only AFTER we made the choice are other choices unavailable to us.

BEFORE we made the choice, we had other choices available to us….

For example, the oral surgeon wants to extract all my husband’s teeth. We have to make a choice and if we choose to let him extract them then he won’t be able to go back and make another choice to keep his teeth because they will all be gone.

Right now, God knows what choice we will make because God is all-knowing, but the fact that God knows what we will choose is not the CAUSE of what we will choose. We will choose one way or the other because we have free will to choose.

 

[Sheldon]

That's what Calvinists believe.
However, @Trailblazer and I don't believe that.

So a deity doesn't know which choice I will ultimately make before I make it? Only now you are contradicting earlier claims.

 

[Sheldon]

No, the choice is only mutually exclusive AFTER the choice has been made. Before the choice was made there were other choices that could have been made.

Not if a deity knows which one we will ultimately make beforehand. Not sure why this still needs explaining?

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: The whole point is that we had other choices BEFORE we made the one choice that we made.

Sheldon said: It doesn't matter if as you claim it knew which one choice we would eventually make.

Why doesn’t it matter what other choices we could have made? Have you ever heard of regret?

Trailblazer said: If we had made another choice God would have known that was the one choice we would make.

Sheldon said: So it knows all the choices we can make, but not the one we will ultimately choose? Only that is not what you said?

God knows all the choices we can make and God knows the choice we will ultimately make.

Trailblazer said: Once we make the choice that is when what we chose has to be identical with what God knew we would choose.

Sheldon said: So it did know beforehand which one we would choose, thus we had no choices obviously.

God did know which choice we would make but that does not mean we did not have other choices we could have made. We had other choices we could have made right up until we made the choice we made.

The hundred-dollar question is why you think that God knowing beforehand which choice we would make means we could not have made another choice.

You seem to be claiming two mutually exclusive positions, and are offering each as true alternately, when I point out they can't both be true?

You claimed your deity knows all the choices I can make yes?

Know I am not going to make them all, only one, yes?

Does it know, beforehand, the one choice I will ultimately make, thus rendering all the others an illusion?

God knows beforehand, the one choice you will ultimately make. How does it render all the choices that you COULD HAVE MADE before that that illusion?

AGAIN, you will ultimately choose what God knows you will choose simply because what you will choose = what God knows you will choose since God is all-knowing, but if you had chosen something different the same would have been true. You would have chosen what God knew you would choose simply because what you would choose = what God knows you would choose since God is all-knowing.

 

[rational experiences]

Correct. And it would not be possible to know what's coming in the future were it not already written in stone.

You have defined a situation that allows you to believe both that God has omniscience including for the future, and that man has free will as well by simply saying that free will occurred during a predictable chain of events, perhaps between where the pitcher threw the ball and the batter either swung or took the pitch (no swing), where there was no freedom to choose and say that free will occurred there anyway. Those two simply aren't reconcilable, nor are you trying to explain how they can both be occurring - a known future and a free will decision occurring within it. You simply say it happened because apparently your faith has you believing both happened. Christianity requires that because it justifies its God's supernatural judgments and punishments on free will existing, and souls being held responsible for those choices.

But not in a deterministic world in which everything can be known by a good enough mind. What you have described is a world with no free will and simply said, yeah, free will happened in this human object just before it did what it was always known it would do. You're describing a deterministic world, where everything happens like a moon orbiting a planet orbiting a star in such a way that eclipses can be accurately predicted, and then declaring that the moon's path was due to free will because of a faith-based belief that it does. When it is pointed out to you that if the moon's motions were predictable, they weren't the choice of the moon, you insist that just because the moon did what it did doesn't mean it had to do that.

Well, yes it does, and that is how one knows that there are no choices possible - he can predict what will happen. This is what a deterministic world would look like - perfectly predictable in principle. Ask yourself what an indeterminate world would look like, one where the future could not even in principle, even by an omniscient God, be knowable.

What you're not recognizing here is that free will requires indeterminism, without which, it is only the illusion of free will, by which I mean the psychological experience of experiencing urges and desires that were generated neural circuits, delivered to the self, and then acted upon as if the self was the author and source of those urges rather than a passive recipient of them. Maybe the hypothalamus is telling you to seek water, so you do, and think that that is free will because you can imagine that you might not have taken that drink. You imagine that you just wanted to prove to yourself that you didn't have to choose to drink, and so didn't.

But if so, you fail to recognizer that this is just another passive act on your part, having received instructions from the cortex to not drink just yet, which was the stronger of contradictory desires, and thus prevailed as you passively were witness to two ideas that didn't come from your mind, but rather, was delivered to it, duking it out, thinking. That is what is meant by the illusion of free will - a deterministic process that feels like it starts in the head with a desire that was created like a God is said to create - ex nihilo - but was actually determined by the laws of neurology.

What you're trying to do is to merge two mutually exclusive ideas - determined and undetermined - into the same reality by fiat. If your scriptures said that somebody divine was married but was also a bachelor, I suspect you would be saying that that is possible with God, because you decide what is possible based on what you need to be possible rather than what reason allows (noncontradiction), and essentially say that that is the case, and if others say that what you claim is impossible, they're being arrogant and either obstinate or dishonest.



God predetermining the future is not a requisite for a deterministic universe, just that that future be determinable now. Man predicts eclipses, but doesn't cause them. He couldn't predict them if they weren't predetermined, or if the heavenly bodies had free will. The two are mutually exclusive. In fact, if they did have free will, that would manifest as unpredictability. The would suddenly change paths or speeds because they felt like it at that moment. That they don't is how we know that they have no free will.

Shown.

Evidence when irradiated. My brain chemistry changed.

I saw statue like human bodies held in the stone.

So I asked what caused it and were they snap frozen humans like human artefacts were?

I was told no artefacts survived as they came out of the stone planet.

The image of humans left as a memory in stone as clouds owning rain burnt as angel hair and fell burning to the ground.

How stone disappearing cooling melting changing into new dusts caused by men in science formed human statues.

Just to remind you volcanoes owned the beginning string of earths heavens forming and the same effects ended human life in sciences end.

How it was written in stone all evidence of humans future life on earth with science claiming itself God the earth.

Knew as in image feedback cooling as I was attacked ....asides from old men re manifesting in period costume I saw Michael Jackson and Elvis as constant transmitted images and also statues in image form.

How a human gets taught that science is a liar.

 

[muhammad_isa]

So a deity doesn't know which choice I will ultimately make before I make it?

You tell me?

Physics suggests that the future has already happened - BBC Reel

 

[Yerda]

What do you mean by suppose? Do you mean can I try and imagine such an entity? Why would I, since there is no objective evidence I would have to disbelieve it, and is it even a falsifiable concept?

Yeah, imagination, conception, whatever. It was just an attempt to suggest something that you maybe wouldn't find inherently objectionable. It might give you a different reference point in your disagreement with @Trailblazer.

Given free will and a disturbingly clever AI we can imagine the situation where people could be predictable in with very high accuracy. Maybe it isn't a logical contradiction for a particularly smart agent to 'know' how you'll behave and for you to have free will.

This is what I'm getting at. I'm not trying to say you that you're wrong (you might well be right on this point), but that it may be possible.

Anyway, happy jousting.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: God knew which one choice we would choose before we made the choice

The choice is not inevitable until we make that choice.

Sheldon said: Again those are mutually exclusive claims, we can't choose if it already knows the one we will choose. We are not making all the choices only one, and if a deity existed and knew which one beforehand, we obviously didn't have any other choice.

No, the fact that God knew what choice we would ultimately make does not mean that we did not have other choices BEFORE we made the choice we decided to make.

God knew what choice we would make but God’s foreknowledge did determine the choice we made. We determined what the choice would be and then we made the choice that God knew we would make.

We had a choice right up until we made the choice. The fact that God knew what choice we would make before we made it is not what caused us to make that choice. We made the choice because we have free will to choose.

Trailblazer said: BEFORE we made that choice other choices were available to us.

Sheldon said: Not if a deity knew which one we are choosing, which is what you keep claiming.

No, there were other choices we could have made BEFORE we made the choice that God knew we would make.

There is only one choice we would make but there were other choices we could have made, and if we had made one of those choices they would have been the one choice God knew we would make.

Trailblazer said: God knew what choice we would make because God is all-knowing but it does not become a choice until we make it.

Sheldon said: It can't be a choice if a deity already knows the one we will make.

It is not a choice before we make the choice. Before that e have other choices available to us. God knows the one choice we will make but God’s knowledge is not what determines what choice we will make. We determine that by choosing it with free will.

Trailblazer said: Whatever choice we make will be identical with the choice that God has always known we would make.

Sheldon said: Ok, so we had no other choice then, that is axiomatic. How are you not getting this?

No, there were other choices we could have made BEFORE we made the choice we made.

The choice we will make is the choice that God knew we would make only because God knew the choice we would make but what God knew is not what caused us to make the choice. We made the choice with free will. God knew we would make that choice we chose to make because the all-knowing God knows ALL the choices we will ever make.

 

[Tiberius]

The Bible is not proof that anything written about God in the Bible is true. That is circular reasoning. It might be true, but it could also be false.

And such logic also applies to any other holy text, correct?

 

[Tiberius]

I do not agree with that. It was just a trick question to force me to say yes or no. Please note that other people don't put up with your trick questions.

You will do what God knows you will do because God knows what you will do, but right up until the second you do it you could have chosen to do something different in which case God would have known you were going to choose to do something different.

It was not a trick question at all.

How could God tell you that I would wear the red shirt on one day, but the next day I chose to wear the blue shirt?

 

[Tiberius]

No, it's actual bloody gore. But what was lamentable for the German's later was the oppressive treaty after WW1 I was talking about.

Okay then, please tell me the actual event, complete with date.

 

[Tiberius]

God's knowledge does not set anything in stone. God's knowledge does not cause anything to happen. Only if it was predestined by God would it be set in stone.

#3132 Trailblazer, 3 minutes ago

Totally irrelevant.

If God knows today what I will do tomorrow, then I am not able to do anything other than what he has seen without making God wrong.

 

[Tiberius]

Well, unless you can show me why I'm wrong, then why should I not believe that I have the correct understanding?
This is why your understanding is wrong..

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
You have a choice of red or blue.
You can make any choice you like.
Hey presto .. it just happens to be what God knows.

..but you are saying that you haven't got a choice, because you have to pick what God knows.
That is deceitful. It is known as a modal fallacy. It confuses the scope of what is necessarily true.
"What God knows" is contingent [ dependent ].
Otherwise, one can argue that the future is set already regardless of your actions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

What don't you understand?
Why am I wrong?

..just repeating your understanding,
i.e. you haven't got a choice, because you have to pick what God knows,
is not an explanation of anything.
..and you know it, so please .. go ahead and explain..
Why am I wrong?
Tear my argument apart, line by line.

I have to show you why you are wrong?

You don't seem to understand the burden of proof. You made the claim, you have to show everyone else why it's right!