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

[firedragon]

I can't answer the first question, because, although I sort of get what you are trying to ask, it actually poses a false dilemma. The word "subjective" contrasts with "objective", not "ontological". The answer to the second question is no. As I just wrote in my previous post, God's perception is different from ours because of his property of omniscience. Our future is unknown, and therefore undetermined. His is known to him, so his imagination is irrelevant. His future is fixed and immutable.

Obviously subjective "to you" and ontological "to God" contrasts. That's why I said "or".

Anyway mate. This kind of discussion goes nowhere. Thanks for engaging. Have a good day.

 

[Ajax]

There is no such thing as 'illusion' in this context .. either we have free-will or we don't.

We have very limited free will which is sculptured in our brains by our genes and our environment and we are free only to the extend that we love our strings. And no, it is highly unlikely that there is a God who is omniscient.
Those who make the claim for an omniscient God, have the burden of proof, and I'm afraid you don't have any.
So there is no point discussing in this thread.

 

[firedragon]

We have very limited free will which is sculptured in our brains by our genes and our environment and no, there is no God being omniscient.
Those who make the claim for an omniscient God, have the burden of proof, and I'm afraid you don't have any.

But it's you who made the claim that "there is no God being omniscient". You should be the person with the burden of proof. You are doing a burden of proof fallacy here.

 

[Ajax]

But it's you who made the claim that "there is no God being omniscient". You should be the person with the burden of proof. You are doing a burden of proof fallacy here.

It was wrongly typed..I corrected it immediately afterwards... I'm an agnostic, not atheist.

 

[firedragon]

It was wrongly typed..I corrected it immediately afterwards... I'm an agnostic, not atheist.

Everyone holds epistemic responsibility.

Cheers.

 

[Link]

More than one decision is possible, right up until a decision is made.
There can only be one outcome -- stop for the red light or run the red light -- but before I ran that red light I could have chosen to stop for the red light.

Not if the future already exists. You can only choose the one in the future that exists.

 

[Copernicus]

My point was that we have free will because of our ignorance of the future.

No .. not due to ignorance .. it is not 'the knowledge' that causes us to choose something.

Where did I say that "the knowledge" caused anything? The future options are all different imaginary outcomes of actions. See the next thing I wrote:

We imagine alternative future outcomes that our choices could make happen, but we don't know what will happen in reality.

No, but that is not the point .. as far as we are concerned, the future has not happened yet, and we have to make decisions that affect the future. They are real decisions, and they are not affected by knowledge of an agent outside of space-time continuum.
i.e we are trapped in this space-time continuum .. tick-tock

Exactly. We are in violent agreement! You seem to think I am taking issue with you on these points. Go argue with others who actually do disagree with you.

OTOH, our putative omniscient God knows exactly what will happen, so even his own future is fixed and predetermined.

..but you assume that G-d "knowing what will happen" means He can see into the future, but for G-d,
the whole series of events of mankind from beginning to end have completed .. He sees all.
..so you are looking at it in the wrong context.

Finally, we can disagree about something--the existence of any of the various Abrahamic versions of God. For that God to do anything at all, it has to exist in its own timeline. After all, any action at all is an event, which requires a point in time, even if not our time. To this "author" of our timeline, every action would be fixed, including perhaps its own knowledge of any interference in our timeline in its own timeline.

You are imagining time as something immutable, and that's the problem.
You need to consider HOW G-d knows our future. Hint: G-d has no clock on the wall

Actually, you are the believer who has to make sense of what you mean by "omniscience". I'm the skeptic saying that the descriptions I've heard and read about from believers usually suggest that God's knowledge of the future extends to his own future. So he is powerless to change his own foreknowledge without canceling out that foreknowledge. The contradictions are fairly obvious.

 

[Copernicus]

Obviously subjective "to you" and ontological "to God" contrasts. That's why I said "or".

Anyway mate. This kind of discussion goes nowhere. Thanks for engaging. Have a good day.

OK, mate. It's not obvious to me, but if just repeating your words without further explanation or elaboration seems to be the best you can do, that does leave us going nowhere.

Since I'm on holiday now, I am having some very good days. Best wishes for yours as well.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Not if the future already exists. You can only choose the one in the future that exists.

Right, and you need to think a bit more about why that is..
Is it because you are compelled to, or is it because G-d knows what we will choose of our own free-will?

You feel that you would be compelled, as you perceive a known future means that it was known BEFORE the decision was made.

..but that's just it .. as far as we are concerned, it wasn't .. we don't KNOW what is in the future..
..it is purposely hidden from us, as we are trapped in this space-time continuum.
i.e. G-d's Creation

 

[muhammad_isa]

For that God to do anything at all, it has to exist in its own timeline. After all, any action at all is an event, which requires a point in time, even if not our time. To this "author" of our timeline, every action would be fixed, including perhaps its own knowledge of any interference in our timeline in its own timeline.

No .. you are still talking about 'timelines', and still haven't explained what you mean by that..

We measure time by comparing it to motion (i.e. space)
But both time and space are part of the Creation, so it makes little sense to talk about 'timelines'.
..unless you want to explain further?

..and when you talk about events being 'fixed', you have already agreed that they were fixed
by our choices, amongst other things, so I don't see the problem.

Actually, you are the believer who has to make sense of what you mean by "omniscience". I'm the skeptic saying that the descriptions I've heard and read about from believers usually suggest that God's knowledge of the future extends to his own future. So he is powerless to change his own foreknowledge without canceling out that foreknowledge.

"cancelling out"? You mean erasing the whole history of mankind from the beginning to its end?
..oh and you can't "cancel out" an Eternal G-d.

 

[firedragon]

OK, mate. It's not obvious to me

Is it not obvious to you that subjective to you and ontological to God are two different things?

Kind of weird really. Anyway, good to know.

 

[Trailblazer]

Not if the future already exists. You can only choose the one in the future that exists.

The future does not 'already exist'. Only the present exists.
The future does not exist until it it becomes the present..

 

[firedragon]

The future does not 'already exist'. Only the present exists.
The future does not exist until it it becomes the present..

Not for God. If you read the OP you will understand.

For you, there is a present and a future. That's subjective to you as a human or any being for that matter in the universe. God transcends all of that including time. He created time, and time is as I explained in the OP, below him and has already taken place. God is not within time, he is above it.

Read the OP.

 

[Link]

The future does not 'already exist'. Only the present exists.
The future does not exist until it it becomes the present..

Yes, but in the OP, he talks about it as a different dimension. In this case, it exists, and we simply pass through it in moments. But all moments exist simultaneously.

In this case, even if knowledge of God has nothing to do with causation, there is no freewill, because we can't choose anything but the one that exists in the future at the moment of the will decision.

 

[firedragon]

In this case, even if knowledge of God has nothing to do with causation, there is no freewill, because we can't choose anything but the one that exists in the future at the moment of the will decision.

We do have free will because we will choose. FOR GOD, in his perspective, all beings have already chosen. You have not understood the OP.

 

[Link]

We do have free will because we will choose. FOR GOD, in his perspective, all beings have already chosen. You have not understood the OP.

I have understood it bro, not agreeing doesn't mean I have not understood it.

 

[Ajax]

....knowledge is not causation, thus we do have free-will. The choices are not already made for us.

We do have free will because we will choose. FOR GOD, in his perspective, all beings have already chosen.

What we all understand, is that you contradict yourself in your effort to find excuses, mate.
Cheers.

 

[firedragon]

What we all understand, is that you contradict yourself mate.
Cheers.

If you actually read instead of trying your best to misrepresent, those two statements do not contradict eachother. Read once more. Let me cut and paste from your post the two statements.

1. .knowledge is not causation, thus we do have free-will. The choices are not already made for us.
2. We do have free will because we will choose. FOR GOD, in his perspective, all beings have already chosen.

Choices are not already made for us. We make choices. For God, in his perspective, we have already chosen. Not him. He gave us free-will. He is just beyond time and space. Transcended. So he sees "our future" and our past from above simultaneously.

Read the OP.

pretty simple to understand. Mate. Ciao.

 

[Link]

If you actually read instead of trying your best to misrepresent, those two statements do not contradict eachother. Read once more. Let me cut and paste from your post the two statements.

1. .knowledge is not causation, thus we do have free-will. The choices are not already made for us.
2. We do have free will because we will choose. FOR GOD, in his perspective, all beings have already chosen.

Choices are not already made for us. We make choices. For God, in his perspective, we have already chosen. Not him. He gave us free-will. He is just beyond time and space. Transcended. So he sees "our future" and our past from above simultaneously.

Read the OP.

pretty simple to understand. Mate. Ciao.

Salam

You are trying to prove free-will is possible with knowledge of God of the future as the conclusion. You can't assert that in the premises, or it's circular.

The model of 4d you presented may or may not show that knowledge of God is causation. Let's assume it's not. The problem of free-will being an illusion has the same problem. Remove God out of the equation, say he doesn't exist but that the 4d world is real.

This still means there is no free-will, because we can only choose the one that is in the future.

 

[firedragon]

Salam

You are trying to prove free-will is possible with knowledge of God of the future as the conclusion. You can't assert that in the premises, or it's circular.

The model of 4d you presented may or may not show that knowledge of God is causation. Let's assume it's not. The problem of free-will being an illusion has the same problem. Remove God out of the equation, say he doesn't exist but that the 4d world is real.

This still means there is no free-will, because we can only choose the one that is in the future.

Cannot remove God from the equation because the topic is about God himself and freewill.

And the first premise is not free will is possible. Read the OP. Not a comment I made in reply to another person who said those two statements were contradicting. I was not making a syllogism there. Hey Link. What's wrong with you brother-man? When you are reading a comment, read what that was in response to.

Salam.