God, Free-will, and the knowledge of God - Is his knowledge causation?

[TagliatelliMonster]

That is your belief,

No, that is the idea of the block universe that you were referring to

It's not my fault that you only wish to accept the parts that are convenient to your self-contradictory argument.

but I have shown you why this is not so .. but you dismiss it,

You have shown no such thing. You asserted it.
And you did it by assuming an idea that directly contradicts your claim.

You are a slave to your perceptions .. you just believe that 'time' is
what you perceive it to be, and nothing other.

I have no other choice

Einstein has already 'put that one to bed'

The idea you are invoking here, is an idea that explicitly states that free will is an illusion.

Btw, it is 'now' which is the illusion in the 'block universe'

"now" as in "time".

.. and that implies that past, present and future
are only a perception.

It implies that they are all fixed. Just like you require it to be.
It also implies there is no free will. But you try hard to ignore that part.

 

[muhammad_isa]

It implies that they are all fixed. Just like you require it to be.
It also implies there is no free will. But you try hard to ignore that part.

They are all "fixed" .. but you assume that they are fixed by something other than our choices,
and you would be wrong.

It is this perception that the future block is in some way different to the past block that
causes you to think that (the moving 'now').. but in reality, they are the same.

We perceive that if the block can be "filled in" (known), then that means we were forced
to choose it .. but it doesn't.
As @firedragon says, knowledge does not imply causality.

 

[Ajax]

It's not at all easy to understand, quite clearly, otherwise there wouldn't be all this confusion.
G-d "seeing the wrong future" means what, exactly?
You are anthropomorphizing G-d, by talking about Him seeing THE future, as we would see it.

Can you change what has already happened? No .. thought not .. but that does not imply that
we were not free to make choices.

Am I anthropomorphizing God? You must be joking..

It is the theists who do that and claim that God being outside of time can see simultaneously past, present and future.. like you below...

The Creator of space-time can see 'time' as we see the dimensions of space.
i.e. all at once

How exactly do you know the way God sees the future? Did he explained it to you personally?

 

[muhammad_isa]

How exactly do you know the way God sees the future? Did he explained it to you personally?

No, of course not .. I don't believe that there are loads of prophets .. one or two per era suffices.
..and we have 2 major ones today .. Jesus and Muhammad (peace be with them).

It's theoretical, derived from scientific/mathematical analysis.
If G-d created space-time continuum, then we can theorize on what that means in practice.
We also have Scriptures, of course (Bible & Qur'an).

 

[Ajax]

No, of course not .. I don't believe that there are loads of prophets .. one or two per era suffices.
..and we have 2 major ones today .. Jesus and Muhammad (peace be with them).

It's theoretical, derived from scientific/mathematical analysis.
If G-d created space-time continuum, then we can theorize on what that means in practice.
We also have Scriptures, of course (Bible & Qur'an).

No, it can not be shown by any scientific and mathematical analysis, because the main premises of the any such equation, that is, the existence of God and also his creation of space-time and omniscience, can not be proven.
Scriptures are also man written stories by unknown biased authors, not being confirmed by any other historians.

 

[Trailblazer]

Right. And what is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

Go ahead and dismiss it. Do you think I care?

Meanwhile, there still is nobody who properly addresses the point here that a universe with free will necessarily implies an uncertain future.
Nobody here properly addresses the point that a fixed future necessarily implies a completely deterministic universe, which is incompatible with the "free" part in "free will".

A universe with free will necessarily implies an uncertain future.
The future is not fixed. It is uncertain because nobody knows what they will do until they actually make a choice and do x, and then x is fixed, written on the Tablet of Fate.

God, with His all-encompassing knowledge, knows what our choices will be before they ever take place in this world.
God knows everything that is written on the Tablet of Fate.

This is a debate and discussion forum. You're supposed to address points raised and have a discussion.

I have discussed this point, over and over and over again.

 

[firedragon]

Am I anthropomorphizing God?

Absolutely. That's the only way you put God within time.

Read the OP. And understand it.

 

[firedragon]

A universe with free will necessarily implies an uncertain future.

The problem with the atheistic worldview is that it's almost unanimous with Atheist philosophers that the universe is deterministic. Some like Dennett argue that it's compatibilist. That's why they are acting just like a hardline dogmatic missionary group trained by a church to keep repeating the same doctrine no matter what is heard. But if any of these people read a true philosopher like their own venerated prophets like Dennett or Rosenberg, they will not speak like this. It's the internet Atheist who will. That's where they are getting these illogical tenets from.

 

[firedragon]

I repeat ... He can not change the future he sees, otherwise he was seeing the wrong future.

God has no future mate. Read the OP and understand it.

 

[Trailblazer]

That's exactly what it means, IF that "one outcome" can be known before the choices are made.
Because that can only be the case if the choices in question aren't actually free.

If it can be known beforehand that I will order chicken instead of steak, then I was never "free" to order steak instead.
Instead, I was actually compelled (by whatever) to order chicken. At best, I was only under the illusion that I choose that freely.

Explain how God's knowledge of what we will do in the future compels us to do anything.

You were free to order either chicken or steak.

God knows beforehand if you will order chicken instead of steak, but if you had ordered steak instead of chicken, that is what God would have known you would do.

Not if it was known beforehand what the outcome was going to be. The point. You keep missing it.
If it can be known with certainty beforehand that you will choose chicken, and if that knowledge can't be wrong, then you were never free to choose something else.

Then choosing chicken was a compulsion and the idea that you choose it freely was only an illusion.

If it can be known with certainty beforehand that you will choose chicken, and if that knowledge can't be wrong, you will choose chicken, but BEFORE you chose chicken you could have chosen steak instead, and in that case it would have been known by God that you would choose steak.

Correct.
BEFORE you make the choice, there are two POTENTIAL outcomes.
And BEFORE you make the choice, there is UNCERTAINTY which of the two POTENTIAL outcomes will become the ACTUAL outcome.

Correct.

However, if there is such a thing as "perfect foreknowledge" that it's going to be red, then BEFORE you chose, there already was only ONE possible outcome: red.
Your choice thus is no longer free. It's already determined to be red (by whatever). It has to be, otherwise it couldn't already be known that it was going to be red.

The perfect foreknowledge is of whatever you will choose.
You are free to choose a red shirt or a blue shirt.
If You had chosen a red shirt that is what God would have known you would choose.
If You had chosen a blue shirt that is what God would have known you would choose.

What God knows is contingent upon what you will choose and it is identical with what you will choose.

Either there are two possible outcomes before you chose and there is free choice
or
There is only possible outcome before you chose and there is NO free choice.

You can't have it both ways.

There are two possible outcomes before you chose and there is free choice.

If there was only on possible outcome it would not be a choice. You would be a programmed robot.

Imagine going to court and telling the judge that you don't have a choice because God knew you would murder your wife. See how that flies.

If you had chosen to murder your wife and carried that out God would has known you would choose that action because God is all-knowing.
If you had chosen not to murder your wife and carried that out God would has known you would choose that action because God is all-knowing.
It is really as simple as that.

 

[Trailblazer]

By anyone.

Th future can be known by God in a universe with free will.
I explained why and how over and over again.
Since you do not know anything about God you cannot argue about God. That's the problem.

 

[Trailblazer]

Few posts earlier you accepted that God can see the future "as if it is now", therefore he can not change it. If he supposedly changes it, which is impossible, then he did not "see" the real future, nor is omniscient.

Whatever God planned to do in our future can be altered. God can alter it, e.g. because we said a prayer entreating God to change our fate.
God has always known He would alter it because God is all-knowing. God was just waiting for us to say a prayer.

I repeat ... He can not change the future he sees, otherwise he was seeing the wrong future. How difficult is this to understand?

God is not changing the future He sees, because God sees everything simultaneously.
There is no past, present and future for God, it is all rolled into one reality.

Whatever God chooses to do is what God will see.
Whatever humans choose to do is what God will see.

Setting aside the fact that one has to prove first that there is a God, you have to prove that the Messengers are really speaking on behalf of one God out of thousands of gods. Also, even if they are truly messengers for the same God, why should one believe Jesus and not Paul (who by the way, claimed he was a messenger), or the Writings of Baha'u'llah, or Joseph Smith, or....?

Nobody can prove to you that there is a God, or that the Messengers are really speaking on behalf of one God.
That is something you have to prove to yourself, by looking at all the evidence and then making a decision about what to believe.

 

[Nakosis]

Humans have free will and the ability to choose what we will do throughout our lives, over the course of time. Whatever we end up doing will be what God knew we would do, because God is all-knowing.

Which means we couldn't do otherwise.
The position that God's foreknowledge is causal is a red herring. That position is irrelevant to the question of free will. It is a strawman argument.

Since God has foreknowledge it means our choices are already known. So the question, can we choose other than what God already knows we will choose. If the answer is no then that fits the definition of a determined reality which lacks free will.

I don't like that definition. IMO, it begs the question. However by saying you can't do something that God wouldn't know you are going to do, you're giving them there determinists exactly what they need to state free will doesn't exist.

You would have to define free will differently. And, no one says that the determinists get to decide what God meant by free will.

IMO, free will, the ability to do what you want to do. God just happens to already know what you will want.
Leave the determinists alone to go about begging the question.

 

[Copernicus]

I was agreeing with the impossibility of an omniscient God having free will, since God would know all his own future actions.

Who defines free-will that way? Do you know who? Only the dogmatic missionaries who don't know what in the world free-will even means.

What definition are you talking about? Do you see a definition of free will in the snippet that you quoted? I don't, and I wrote those words. Do you think that omniscience implies knowledge of the future? Most people seem to think that it does. If there is a God who judges people's actions and holds them responsible for those actions, how would that make any sense at all? Is it that God was hoping for some different behavior that he knew not to expect from his creations? If God were the author of creation, he could write a script in which people were better behaved, couldn't he?

I have read Dennett, and I think I understand him a lot better than you do.

Great. So where does he define free-will like you do?

Look, if you want to dispute my definition of free will, then at least quote it so that I can know what you are talking about. Dennett was a compatibilist, and he wrote more than one book on the subject. I would suggest you read Freedom Evolves for his thoughts on the subject as of 2003, as opposed to Elbow Room, which was published almost two decades earlier.

I did. It wasn't totally coherent. Nobody argues that God's omniscience is equivalent to saying that knowledge is causation, but that's your straw man caricature of people you wish to argue against.

Where did I say knowledge is causation? Causation is a placeholder mate.That's to tell you directly that no knowledge can be determination because knowledge does not cause anything by default. Not that anyone claimed knowledge is causation. It's an inevitable aspect of that bogus claim.

It's you who claims that knowledge is "no free-will". You said that above. So who did the strawman?

Read the OP again.

You were the one who created the thread title containing the question "Is his knowledge causation?" The question itself is incoherent, as you admit in your reply to me, mate. Knowledge per se doesn't cause anything. It is a state of mind, not an event. Events cause events. States do not. So read your thread title again.

 

[Copernicus]

I was agreeing with the impossibility of an omniscient God having free will, since God would know all his own future actions..

That is anthropomorphizing G-d. There is no future (as in the future as we perceive) for G-d, so..
The only way one could possibly understand, is mathematically, and not in terms of future and past.

I think that God is hopelessly and relentlessly anthropomorphized by theists, no matter how hard they try to distance themselves from it. Most people conceive of God as a being with humanlike properties--emotions, attitudes, thoughts, judgments. They pray to God in the language they understand and expect God to understand. They attribute parental attributes such as authority to God. Saying that there is some kind of mathematical description that will get you out of anthropomorphizing God doesn't really help you to distance yourself from it, as Ajax has already explained to you.

 

[Copernicus]

IMO, free will, the ability to do what you want to do. God just happens to already know what you will want.
Leave the determinists alone to go about begging the question.

That's fine, as far as you go with it. But God doesn't just "happen to already know" what people will want. God holds them responsible and accountable as if their behavior could have been different than he knew it would be. After all, besides being an outside observer of other people's behavior, he is also the creator of those people along with their subsequent actions.

 

[Trailblazer]

Which means we couldn't do otherwise.

Why would "Whatever we end up doing will be what God knew we would do, because God is all-knowing" mean that w could not do otherwise?
Simply put, whatever we choose to do from all the available options will be what God knew we would do.
We will choose to do what God knows we will choose to do because God knows what we will choose to do.
But before we chose A we could have chosen B, and in that case B will be what God knew we would choose.

Since God has foreknowledge it means our choices are already known. So the question, can we choose other than what God already knows we will choose. If the answer is no then that fits the definition of a determined reality which lacks free will.

We won't choose other than what God already knows we will choose because God knows what we will choose.
But before we chose A we could have chosen B, and in that case B will be what God knew we would choose.
Whatever we choose will be what God knows we will choose.

Note the word choose. Nothing is determined until it actually occurs. God has perfect foreknowledge so God knows what we are going to choose.

I don't like that definition. IMO, it begs the question. However by saying you can't do something that God wouldn't know you are going to do, you're giving them there determinists exactly what they need to state free will doesn't exist.

You would have to define free will differently. And, no one says that the determinists get to decide what God meant by free will.

IMO, free will, the ability to do what you want to do. God just happens to already know what you will want.
Leave the determinists alone to go about begging the question.

That's it. Free will is the ability to do what you want to do. God just happens to already know what you will want.

 

[Trailblazer]

That's fine, as far as you go with it. But God doesn't just "happen to already know" what people will want. God holds them responsible and accountable as if their behavior could have been different than he knew it would be. After all, besides being an outside observer of other people's behavior, he is also the creator of those people along with their subsequent actions.

God is the creator of those people but God does not create their subsequent actions.

 

[Nakosis]

That's fine, as far as you go with it. But God doesn't just "happen to already know" what people will want. God holds them responsible and accountable as if their behavior could have been different than he knew it would be. After all, besides being an outside observer of other people's behavior, he is also the creator of those people along with their subsequent actions.

People are choosing what they want to choose. That is the only thing necessary for free will.
Sure people make that claim that God holds people accountable for this. I don't necessarily believe that to be true.
However, if God does, one could assume that God does whatever God wants. Whether you like what God does or doesn't do is not relevant to any of this.

 

[Trailblazer]

I think that God is hopelessly and relentlessly anthropomorphized by theists, no matter how hard they try to distance themselves from it. Most people conceive of God as a being with humanlike properties--emotions, attitudes, thoughts, judgments.

I agree that God is anthropomorphized by theists, no matter how hard they try to distance themselves from it.
I believe that God has thoughts and motions, but they are nothing like human thoughts and motions because God is not a human..

My belief is as follows:

While the Baháʼí writings teach of a personal god who is a being with a personality (including the capacity to reason and to feel love), they clearly state that this does not imply a human or physical form.[2] Shoghi Effendi writes:

What is meant by personal God is a God Who is conscious of His creation, Who has a Mind, a Will, a Purpose, and not, as many scientists and materialists believe, an unconscious and determined force operating in the universe. Such conception of the Divine Being, as the Supreme and ever present Reality in the world, is not anthropomorphic, for it transcends all human limitations and forms, and does by no means attempt to define the essence of Divinity which is obviously beyond any human comprehension. To say that God is a personal Reality does not mean that He has a physical form, or does in any way resemble a human being. To entertain such belief would be sheer blasphemy.[15][16]

God in the Baháʼí Faith