I just want to sin!!!

[BilliardsBall]

For any number of reasons, from counteracting the misinformation given by many religions, to learning about the range of human belief, to simply enjoying philosophical debate, as well as many others.

It's not a waste if you are enjoying it.

The misinformation given by many religions or ALL religions? You think ZERO religions are valid, yes?

I spend ZERO times on forums advocating a Flat Earth or that Middle Earth is reality.

 

[BilliardsBall]

The question makes no sense, it seems you think scepticism is a barrier to open minded scrutiny of ideas and beliefs , I suspect that is where you are going wrong. Also as has been explained many times, religions and theism exert a lot of influence on the world, and not all of it is innocuous, since atheists and sceptics must share the planet with theists and religions, it behoves us to understand them and what they believe as much as we can.

It seems to me a public debate forum is the perfect place for this.

You don't debate, though. That is, you don't respond to questions or resolutions. You mainly use one-liners that sum as "You have no place in this discussion."

I seek debate with atheists but not your trite debate.

 

[muhammad_isa]

To restore coherence to the faith-based position, it either has to jettison free will or a deity that can know all. It is logically possible that one has no free will - just the illusion of free will, that the future is entirely determined by physical processes, and is thus calculable before it occurs. It is also logically possible that some of it is uncaused by external physical constraints, and thus free will is possible. But not both. Free will is the wild card that makes the next moment after its expression unpredictable.

Do you see how this is a rebuttal to your claim that free will and omniscience are incompatible?

No, I don't see how that is a rebuttal.

You talk about "an illusion of free-will".
Either we choose something because we want to, or we don't.

You appear to be arguing that it is impossible for G-d to know the future, because if He did, free-will would just be an illusion.
WRONG!

G-d sees everything from a different perspective [ frame of reference ].
He sees everything as if it has already happened .. just like we see the past.

You are making the mistake of imagining that time is absolute, and that what we perceive about past & future is somehow universal.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Then give an example. Except you can't. Nostradamus is vague and non-specific and just like the Bible people have read the same "prophecy" into multiple events.

"Persia will, tonight, invade Babylon's capital and overthrow it, absorbing it."

"Israel will become a Jewish nation after X years [1948 AD in our calendar." "Immediately after their re-formation Israel, surrounded by enemies, will be attacked, and utterly and consistently defeat them, holding the land."

"The Messiah will be betrayed by a close associate on the cheek with a kiss. He will be killed alongside criminals though innocent, and be with a rich man in His tomb. After He dies, He will have many children. His name will be used as a curse though He is blessed of God. He will be born in Bethlehem, of the line of King David, uniquely of a woman. He will descend to the bowels of Earth, liberate the righteous dead, resurrect them and bring them to Paradise."

Etc. hundreds of Messianic prophecies...

 

[SkepticThinker]

The misinformation given by many religions or ALL religions? You think ZERO religions are valid, yes?

I spend ZERO times on forums advocating a Flat Earth or that Middle Earth is reality.

Good for you?

 

[leroy]

I don't know what my "acausation is simply wrong" means
My comment was, "Have you noticed that nobody but Abrahamic theists makes that argument?

.

and my reply was that Aristotle and B-theorist also make this argument.

so I proved that not only theist with abrahamic religions make this argumnet

Or are you talking about exclusively about this forum?

The claim that was made is that if the outcome of a situation can be predicted before it occurs, there is no choice being made by the conscious agent. Would you address that and not make comments like that one that do not address the claim? It's not about that foreordained knowledge being the cause. It's not even that such knowledge exists, but rather, what the implications of it existing are for free will.

Well the problem is that you are the one who is making the claim therefore you are th eone who has the burden proof,

I don’t see how someone else ability to predict my choices, somehow affect my ability to make free choices…………and you are supposed to provide an argument such that the conclusion –(free will + knowledge) are logically impossible

 

[leroy]

Believing this ressurection story to be true on faith, a given, is not a basis for an argument. You don't have an argument, what you have is a faith belief, and I believe that you believe this ressurection story to be true, so there is no argument here to be made. I came here for an argument and all you have is faith, no reasoning, just faith. Very dissapointing.

@Sheldon made a similar claim

Your inability to read is perplexing . the claim was that even if you show that omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive chistiany would not be falsified…………….Christianly is grounded on the resurrection _(and the existence of an Abrahamic God) ……….omniscient and free will are Jesus secondary doctrines.


The claim that you are suppose to refute (assuming that you disagree) is that Christianity is grounded on the resurrection,

 

[muhammad_isa]

That is my point, free will is grounded on common sense, intuition and the absurdity of a world without free will.

So unless someone provides conclusive evidence against free will, we have enough reasons to accept the truth of free will.

OK

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I don't see how that is a rebuttal.

My comment was, "To restore coherence to the faith-based position, it either has to jettison free will or a deity that can know all. It is logically possible that one has no free will - just the illusion of free will, that the future is entirely determined by physical processes, and is thus calculable before it occurs. It is also logically possible that some of it is uncaused by external physical constraints, and thus free will is possible. But not both. Free will is the wild card that makes the next moment after its expression unpredictable."

It directly contradicts your position that free will and a predictable universe can coexist in a way that they cannot both be correct. And it explains why your position is incoherent. A predictable universe is deterministic. That's what deterministic means - the past compels the future. The last moment forces this one. A universe with free will is occasionally indeterministic. When free will is expressed, nothing caused that. Nothing constrained it.

These are mutually exclusive ideas. They can't both be true about the same universe at the same time. Both things cannot happen in the same universe. If there is indeterminism anywhere, then there is not strict determinism. Quantum science allows for some processes including neural processes presumably to possess an element of indeterminacy. One can conceive of such a process - perhaps the spontaneous appearance of a particle that projects into the scale of unaided perception, except instead of being manifest as a cat living or dying once looked at, it manifests as the selection of a hot dog or hamburger. If so, that universe is not perfectly predictable, and thus omniscience logically impossible.

Just as an aside, what I described may be uncaused, but that's not enough to make it free will. The self didn't actually make a choice. An indeterministic process compelled it.

It's interesting how any amount of indeterminacy added to an otherwise deterministic process make the process indeterministic to at least a small degree, and thus predictions are inherently probabilistic and future events not perfectly determinable. This is the same as is the case with adding any amount of faith to an otherwise rigorously logical argument makes invalidates its conclusions, as when somebody is adding numbers purely according to the rules of reason and then violates them in the smallest possible way - say by using 2+2=5 just once out of millions of simple additions done properly - the answer (sum) will be wrong.

You talk about "an illusion of free-will". Either we choose something because we want to, or we don't.

What you're ignoring is that merely having a desire and acting to fulfill it is how both free will and the illusion of free will would feel. You cannot decide if you have free will rather than the mere illusion of it by repeating that experience. However many times you choose either a hot dog or a hamburger, there is no test to show whether it could have been any other way. Simply feeling like one could have chosen otherwise is not enough.

There's a major barrier to deciding the question of whether the choice was compelled or not if gut feeling is not enough. Assuming that we never learn how to predict the future ourselves some day, which will settle the issue by ruling out free will, what test can we devise that will turn out one way if will is actually free, but another if it is not and merely feels uncompelled? I can conceive of only one, and it's not possible to do without being able to go back in time. What less would answer that question but to return to exactly the same moment and see whether the choice is different this time?

Notice also that if that could and did happen, the chooser would be entering a different universe than the one he entered the last time. In this one, he chooses the hotdog instead of the hamburger, and the butterfly effect ensues. Who knows how different the hot dog universe will be from the hamburger universe about five days after the choice?

You appear to be arguing that it is impossible for G-d to know the future, because if He did, free-will would just be an illusion.
WRONG! G-d sees everything from a different perspective [ frame of reference ]. He sees everything as if it has already happened .. just like we see the past. You are making the mistake of imagining that time is absolute, and that what we perceive about past & future is somehow universal.

I don't believe in God, I don't say that it is impossible to see the future, and I don't know what you mean by absolute time or which of my words caused you to say what you did. I need you to be more explicit. What do you mean by absolute time, what do you think I believe that caused you to refer to it, and why is that incorrect in your opinion?

What I say is that if perfect knowledge of the future is known or knowable in advance, then there is no free will. You have never explained why you think that that is wrong, just that you do think it's wrong, and what you think is right instead. And it's not different from what was rebutted. It's just bare claims that God does this anyway. Where's the counterargument (rebuttal) to the argument that that is logically impossible? I don't see one. And so, we're stuck. No further progress is possible unless arguments are addressed rigorously. All that is left for us to do is for you to keep claiming what you believe by faith, others to explain why that's impossible, you to reassert your claim, others to tell you using the same unanswered argument why that's impossible, you merely rejecting the argument without rebuttal again and claiming that a god could do these things rather than explain why it's not impossible, etc.. This is like a vinyl record that skips. It never make forward progress to the end, because that would require a rigorous adherence to the groove.

and my reply was that Aristotle and B-theorist also make this argument. so I proved that not only theist with abrahamic religions make this argumnet Or are you talking about exclusively about this forum?

Yes, the latter. I was ambiguous in my use of word "nobody." I meant nobody here.

The point is still true in the larger world, and wouldn't be worth making if that weren't the case - if this were merely a local phenomenon found only on RF - but the separation not as perfect as it has been on this thread.

You did give a good rebuttal to my point if one assumes nobody in the world or history rather than nobody on RF.

Well the problem is that you are the one who is making the claim therefore you are the one who has the burden proof,

Yes, but proving is a cooperative effort. It's a form of dialectic, the cooperative effort between two or more skilled critical thinkers to use those methods to decide what is true and to resolve differences. That just isn't going to happen when the would-be student is a faith-based thinker. There is no burden of proof when there is no possibility of proof even with what would be a compelling argument to a critical thinker. The critical thinker sees his job as to evaluate the argument for soundness, and to be convinced by sound arguments. The faith-based thinker sees his job as defending the faith-based belief. There is no hope of proving anything to a person with a stake in not believing, so no burden of proof there.

I don’t see how someone else ability to predict my choices, somehow affect my ability to make free choices

It doesn't. His ability to predict your choices perfectly every time means that your choices aren't free. That's what I've said, which is different from your paraphrasing of it. If your choices were not free, and somebody discovered how to calculate what they would be in advance, that would demonstrate that the choices were not free, but unlike what you wrote, that knowledge would not affect your ability to express your will and continue to enjoy the illusion of free will.

And I understand why you continue to reject this idea. It's not because the claim is isn't correct. It's because you need it to be incorrect. I'm not trying to change your mind. I consider that impossible. I'm just trying to correct your characterization of what I have written.

you are supposed to provide an argument such that the conclusion –(free will + knowledge) are logically impossible

I did that. It was a variation of the married bachelor argument. Free will and foreknowledge of future events, which represent indeterminism and determinism respectively, are mutually exclusive and thus impossible to both be the case at the same time in the same way that one cannot be married and a bachelor at the same time not because it is illegal or a bad decision, but because it's impossible, and thus not an option. Neither is the indeterministic yes deterministic universe, or the perfect yet imperfect deity that regrets its choices. None of those things exist because none can.

free will is grounded on common sense, intuition and the absurdity of a world without free will.

You've also described how it feels to live in a world with just the illusion of free will. Your intuitions are not enough to determine which it is.

 

[leroy]

.






It doesn't. His ability to predict your choices perfectly every time means that your choices aren't free
]

.
The problem is that you are making a big and unjustified leap……………..if you know a person you can predict his future choices / but this person still has the ability to choose between more than 1 option.

These are not mutually exclusive or at least you haven shown them to be.

Yes, but proving is a cooperative effort. It's a form of dialectic, the cooperative effort between two or more skilled critical thinkers to use those methods to decide what is true and to resolve differences. That just isn't going to happen when the would-be student is a faith-based thinker. There is no burden of proof when there is no possibility of proof even with what would be a compelling argument to a critical thinker. The critical thinker sees his job as to evaluate the argument for soundness, and to be convinced by sound arguments. The faith-based thinker sees his job as defending the faith-based belief. There is no hope of proving anything to a person with a stake in not believing, so no burden of proof there.

That is an unfair accusation, I´ve said in previous post that both free will and a “all knowing God” are secondary doctrines , I can give up any of them and still be a Christian., Christianity is grounded on the resurrection, not on free will not on the “all knowing God”

 

[muhammad_isa]

My comment was, "To restore coherence to the faith-based position, it either has to jettison free will or a deity that can know all. It is logically possible that one has no free will - just the illusion of free will, that the future is entirely determined by physical processes, and is thus calculable before it occurs. It is also logically possible that some of it is uncaused by external physical constraints, and thus free will is possible. But not both. Free will is the wild card that makes the next moment after its expression unpredictable."

I can read thankyou. Do you want me to reply to every single word???

"To restore coherence to the faith-based position"..
It's not about faith .. it's about illogical argument.

it either has to jettison free will or a deity that can know all.
No, it doesn't

It is logically possible that one has no free will - just the illusion of free will.
Meaningless .. either one can do what they want or they can't.

that the future is entirely determined by physical processes, and is thus calculable before it occurs
I'm not discussing about electrons in brains.
etc. etc.

If there is indeterminism anywhere, then there is not strict determinism. Quantum science allows for some processes including neural processes presumably to possess an element of indeterminacy. One can conceive of such a process - perhaps the spontaneous appearance of a particle that projects into the scale of unaided perception, except instead of being manifest as a cat living or dying once looked at, it manifests as the selection of a hot dog or hamburger. If so, that universe is not perfectly predictable, and thus omniscience logically impossible.

You merely philosophise about whether events are "truly random" or pseudo random. It makes no odds as far as I can see. An agent that knows something about the future is not CAUSING those events .. anymore than me knowing what happened yesterday caused them.

Just as an aside, what I described may be uncaused, but that's not enough to make it free will. The self didn't actually make a choice. An indeterministic process compelled it.

Now you are philosophising about whether what a law court would determine as being free-will is not free-will.
That will get us nowhere.
If you want to claim that free-will does not exist, regardless of whether an agent knows the future, then just say so.

It's interesting how any amount of indeterminacy added to an otherwise deterministic process make the process indeterministic to at least a small degree, and thus predictions are inherently probabilistic and future events not perfectly determinable. This is the same as is the case with adding any amount of faith to an otherwise rigorously logical argument makes invalidates its conclusions, as when somebody is adding numbers purely according to the rules of reason and then violates them in the smallest possible way - say by using 2+2=5 just once out of millions of simple additions done properly - the answer (sum) will be wrong.

It's interesting to know lots of things.
However, mumbling on about how irrational believers can be doesn't teach us anything new.

What you're ignoring is that merely having a desire and acting to fulfill it is how both free will and the illusion of free will would feel..

Oh please .. tell it to the judge.

What do you mean by absolute time, what do you think I believe that caused you to refer to it, and why is that incorrect in your opinion?

Do you feel that the perception of time in our universe is somehow universal, as to regards what we consider to be "now".
Can you imagine a scenario in which our "now" was another's yesterday?

What I say is that if perfect knowledge of the future is known or knowable in advance, then there is no free will.

I know you say that.
Do you also say that if I know something that you did yesterday, then you could not have had free-will when you did it?
No, I doubt it. That is because you perceive time events as being either past or future, and feel that time is definitive .. a feeling that events can only be realised after they happen.
It is all about perception.
I think perhaps you need to go into "warp speed" .. you might change your mind .. ask Scotty

Where's the counterargument (rebuttal) to the argument that that is logically impossible? I don't see one.

The way that you want free-will to mean, the whole argument becomes nonsensical and pointless.

I have no intention of proving whether people only appear to be wanting to choose something. To me, it is philosophical gobbldigook.
Either we want to do something, or we don't. That is the basis on how I understand free-will. The common legal definition.

All that is left for us to do is for you to keep claiming what you believe by faith, others to explain why that's impossible.

It is not impossible, unless you want to insist on your airy-fairy definition of free-will .. a definition of free-will that law courts won't accept.
Either we are able to choose freely or we are not.
It is an entirely separate issue whether it is possible for an agent to know what we choose.
It makes no difference to the argument whatsoever.
The suggestion that we are forced to choose something because it is known is wrong. It is our perception of time which makes us think that. We say "it hasn't happened yet".
That is what confuses the mind into thinking that something sinister is going on.

We don't think that about the past. We treat it differently.
..but it really isn't .. it is a series of events.
As Einstein says, "now" is only an illusion, albeit a persistent one.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

"Persia will, tonight, invade Babylon's capital and overthrow it, absorbing it."

"Israel will become a Jewish nation after X years [1948 AD in our calendar." "Immediately after their re-formation Israel, surrounded by enemies, will be attacked, and utterly and consistently defeat them, holding the land."

"The Messiah will be betrayed by a close associate on the cheek with a kiss. He will be killed alongside criminals though innocent, and be with a rich man in His tomb. After He dies, He will have many children. His name will be used as a curse though He is blessed of God. He will be born in Bethlehem, of the line of King David, uniquely of a woman. He will descend to the bowels of Earth, liberate the righteous dead, resurrect them and bring them to Paradise."

Etc. hundreds of Messianic prophecies...

Most of those are about Israel, not the Messiah. And how easy for NT "prophecy" to be fulfilled and accurate when it was written decades after the fact.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

.
The problem is that you are making a big and unjustified leap……………..if you know a person you can predict his future choices / but this person still has the ability to choose between more than 1 option.

These are not mutually exclusive or at least you haven shown them to be.




That is an unfair accusation, I´ve said in previous post that both free will and a “all knowing God” are secondary doctrines , I can give up any of them and still be a Christian., Christianity is grounded on the resurrection, not on free will not on the “all knowing God”

Predictions aren't the same as knowing. A meteorologist predicts the weather. An electrician knows what will happen when a circuit becomes live.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

His ability to predict your choices perfectly every time means that your choices aren't free.

The problem is that you are making a big and unjustified leap……………..if you know a person you can predict his future choices / but this person still has the ability to choose between more than 1 option. These are not mutually exclusive or at least you haven shown them to be.

I don't know what you mean by "if you know a person you can predict his future choices." Does that mean what it appears to mean - that if I am familiar with somebody, I can predict what he'll say or do better than I could before I knew him based on his previous actions? If so, that's not relevant. I'm talking about determinacy, not statistical likelihood based on extrapolation of prior events.

And no, if one can predict apparent choices in advanced, they were compelled by the present. These are not choices in the sense that free will implies - choices that could have been otherwise under identical circumstances. I don't know how to explain that any better. It seems self-evident to me. What does it look like when we know that an apparent choice was compelled?

I tried an analogy with an inanimate object a few days ago that was confusing, but I'll try again. The traffic light just turned green. We know that no mind or free will in the traffic light was involved there. Was a choice made in the sense of free will, or was that change at that time in that manner specified and thus not really a choice if it couldn't have gone any other way? No.

Now we add consciousness and the sense of free will to the light. It's aware of its electronic instructions, and it experiences them as desires. The mechanism trips to change the light, the light experiences the urge to change, then does. From it's perspective, it had free will. From ours, it is only the illusion of free will. We know this because the change was accurately predicted, as will all of the other changes as it predictably changed from red to green for thirty seconds, then amber for four, then red for thirty seconds, then repeat the cycle. The happy light thanks it's maker for free will as it goes on having intuitions of wanting to change and then doing so according to an algorithm. The choices are all determined, not freely made, and we know this because they are predictable. Do I need to elaborate on that? Can you imagine such a thought experiment, and how it might produce a light given consciousness and desires that believes it has free will when it does not, and why it is necessary that its behavior be recognized as determinate if one can determine it?

Now let's give it bona fide free will. Remove the computer that determines the light's color at any given moment, and give the bulbs free will. They still have a power source, but nothing determining when they would change or to what other color. They have free will. Whatever they choose, it could have been otherwise. This will yield an unpredictable light pattern, and not just unpredictable because the technology doesn't yet exist to predict it, but because the choices were not constrained by anything.

This is the argument that determinacy, or the ability to predict the future, rules out indeterminate processes, since these are by definition not predictable. To rebut it, I believe you need to do more than just say that God can do this anyway

I can read thankyou. Do you want me to reply to every single word???

"To restore coherence to the faith-based position"..
It's not about faith .. it's about illogical argument.

it either has to jettison free will or a deity that can know all.
No, it doesn't

It is logically possible that one has no free will - just the illusion of free will.
Meaningless .. either one can do what they want or they can't.

that the future is entirely determined by physical processes, and is thus calculable before it occurs
I'm not discussing about electrons in brains.
etc. etc.

No, I wanted you to rebut it.

Yes, it is an illogical proposition, and it is believed by faith. That's not rebuttal. "No it doesn't" is also not a rebuttal. The third comment is correct, not meaningless even if you claim it, and doesn't address the issue of whether free will and omniscience are compatible - much less rebut it. Of course it's logically possible that the illusion of free will exists but not free will. Nor was I talking about electrons in brains. None of your response explained why it is possible to have a perfect knowledge of the future in a world with free will. You just keep asserting it without rebutting the rebuttal to the claim. That's not debate. That's being stuck in a discussion in which we don't have both member attempting rebuttal, but instead relying on simple disagreement and repetition of points already rebutted.

My argument, if valid, makes yours wrong. If mine is right, yours must be wrong. You don't have a valid argument that makes mine wrong, just dissent and a repeat of assertions already rebutted by valid arguments themselves not rebutted.

An agent that knows something about the future is not CAUSING those events

Not always, correct. But of course, I didn't claim otherwise.

You've said this before. I still fail to see the relevance. My argument doesn't depend on that being the case or not, just that if the future is knowable, it is determined by physical reality. Whether the cause is a god or the laws of physics or something else, the fact remains that if it is predictable, then the future is determined and free will, or the sense that the choice could have been otherwise, is an illusion.

Now you are philosophising about whether what a law court would determine as being free-will is not free-will.

No, I'm not. I have no idea why you think so.

But since you broached the subject, let's say a few words about free will in the legal system. The interest there is similar to religion's interest there. Both systems are punitive in nature. To put someone in prison as a punishment and to consider that a just reason to do so is to buy into the Abrahamic principle of retribution for sin. Enlightened penal system don't think in those terms. They think in terms of removing a danger from the street, of providing incentive to obey the law for everybody, and maybe someday, to rehabilitate. It's exactly the same attitude as one would take to a alligator in the lake. You attempt to remove a public danger and prevent future alligators from appearing there, but even if one kills the beast, it is not retributional. It's not an act motivated by moral outrage as it is in the religious model.

If you want to claim that free-will does not exist, regardless of whether an agent knows the future, then just say so.

No. I didn't say that and didn't want to. What I said is that if the future is perfectly knowable in advance, then there is no free will, just the illusion of free will. I have had to repeat this a half dozen times to two of you now. Can we just focus on those words and not what you'd like to change them to? You seem to want to comment on what I don't say. I don't say that an agent that knows the future is necessarily the cause of that future, and I don't say that free will does not exist, just that it is incompatible with omniscience, and that if one exists, the other doesn't. I'm losing hope that you will ever address that with a rebuttal - a specific explanation of what is the logical error you see (hopefully you see one if you're rejecting the claim), and why you consider it a fallacy.

Do you feel that the perception of time in our universe is somehow universal, as to regards what we consider to be "now".
Can you imagine a scenario in which our "now" was another's yesterday?

I understand that time is relative, that "now" can mean different things to different observers in different frames of reference. I suspect that your interest in this is to somehow restore free will to a determinate universe with this. If so, please explain how that fact can translate to free will and omniscience being compatible. I'm already granting a god the freedom to move from past to future and back, and to see all of time past and future laid out. It doesn't resolve the issue.

Do you also say that if I know something that you did yesterday, then you could not have had free-will when you did it?

No. If free will exists and I have it rather than just the illusion of free will, then I could have made a free will choice yesterday that I remember today.

The way that you want free-will to mean, the whole argument becomes nonsensical and pointless.

No, it doesn't, certainly not before you demonstrate that convincingly. Your ad lapidem fallacy is what is nonsensical and pointless, as are all logical fallacies.

The suggestion that we are forced to choose something because it is known is wrong. It is our perception of time which makes us think that. We say "it hasn't happened yet". That is what confuses the mind into thinking that something sinister is going on.

Still not a rebuttal. My argument is not wrong because you declare it so. If it wrong, you'll need to show where and how. Your comment about the perception of time doesn't explain how I am wrong or how you are correct. Once again, if you want to be believed, you'll need to show I am wrong and that you are correct. I can't say this often enough that merely disagreeing is not rebutting, even if other words follow making more unsupported claims or flawed arguments. None of that has any persuasive power in dialectic, which is why we haven't got past the point we started - you making unsupported claims or logical errors followed by a valid argument in rebuttal, and that's the end of it except to repeat the cycle. There is no breaking out of it until we BOTH rebut one another.

I've come to this point with several RF theists in the past few months in various discussions where I end up begging the theist to address the arguments made, and it not only never happens, in many cases, there is no evidence that the request was even read much less understood. It happened on this thread recently with a poster who likes to demean atheists. I rebutted him and got another round of insults, but not an answer to my rebuttal, or even a mention of it. Then he disappeared from the discussion.

What I'm dying to know, but can't know without his cooperation and input, which as you see is not forthcoming, is whether he just doesn't understand what is being asked of him, whether he understands but lacks the skills to cooperate and doesn't want to say so or demonstrate so, or that he understands what is requested, could give it, but choses not to. It seems like it has to be one of those three in his case and any other case where the request is not just denied, but ignored. It's not nearly that bad here with you, but you and I make no more forward progress than I did with the other poster.

I see you and Leroy as trying to cooperate with what is asked for, but being unable to give it. I think that neither of you knows what a rebuttal looks like, so you give what you have instead. It's a good faith effort, but won't permit dialectic.

And how did sinister get into this discussion?

 

[lukethethird]

@Sheldon made a similar claim

Your inability to read is perplexing . the claim was that even if you show that omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive chistiany would not be falsified…………….Christianly is grounded on the resurrection _(and the existence of an Abrahamic God) ……….omniscient and free will are Jesus secondary doctrines.


The claim that you are suppose to refute (assuming that you disagree) is that Christianity is grounded on the resurrection,

The ressurection is just an unsupported belief held on by faith.

 

[muhammad_isa]

No, I wanted you to rebut it.
...
Of course it's logically possible that the illusion of free will exists but not free will.

That is hardly the issue here .. whether it is logically possible.

YOU: You are happy that free-will is not an illusion unless the future is known in advance

You are the one that makes this claim, yet all you tell us is that free-will must be an illusion if the future is known.

This is simply incorrect. The only "proof" that you give is that if the future is known then it is obvious that it is determined and therefore no free-will .. yet you don't tell us what it is determined by.

My argument, if valid, makes yours wrong.

Your argument is invalid. It depends on free-will being "illusionary", which cannot be proved.

It is your claim that free-will is illusionary, dependent on somebody knowing what somebody knows about the future.
You cannot prove that. You are assuming it.
Your assumption is wrong.
Your assumption implies that somebody who drives a car down the highway is no longer driving it, if somebody knows what will happen tomorrow. It is philosophical gobledigook.

Once again, if you want to be believed, you'll need to show I am wrong and that you are correct.

I have .. and all you can come up with is the concept of "illusionary free-will".
I'm not interested. It's bunkum.
If you are free to choose, then you have free-will .. full stop!

 

[leroy]

The ressurection is just an unsupported belief held on by faith.

Maybe, but that is irrelevant for the comments that you replied

 

[Polymath257]

True, in the sense of "before" in our frame of reference.
Knowing something about the future, and actually setting the future are two different concepts.
In other words, you are assuming that time is an absolute phenomena, and our perception of "before it has happened" has a universal meaning. It doesn't.

The notion of a past light cone is absolute. And that is all that is required for what I said.

Was the past determined?
I say yes .. even if the future cannot be known.
If it wasn't determined, we would not be able to remember it.

Much of the past is not remembered.

It is determined if it is not known as well.
You suggest that it could be a lot of different outcomes if it is unknown. If it is known, then it can only be one.
In reality it CAN only be one regardless. It is just that you don't know what it is.

Which would mean that the choice is not free. it is determined.

I happen to disagree that it is all determined, though. The physics suggests otherwise quite strongly.

ME

: If you want to claim that somebody who drives a car down the road is not really making decisions. then who/what is?
YOU: In a deterministic universe, there are no free decisions. There is only pre-programming.

A non-answer.

It is determined by whatever makes the universe deterministic.

No. You are assuming that something that is determined in our frame of reference, cannot be known by another.

While intuition from our perception might suggest that, it cannot be proved that our frame of reference is somehow "universal".

it isn't required that our specific frame of reference is universal. it is enough that the past light cone is universal.

 

[ppp]

The notion of a past light cone is absolute. And that is all that is required for what I said.

Does he understand what a light cone is?

Which would mean that the choice is not free. it is determined.

I happen to disagree that it is all determined, though. The physics suggests otherwise quite strongly.

I realize that you are not saying that it is, but do you think that the indeterminacy of the universe can be a foundation for free will? I don't see how it could be, but maybe you have thought of something?

 

[muhammad_isa]

The notion of a past light cone is absolute. And that is all that is required for what I said.

Oh no. That concept is internal to the universe.
I am not suggesting that "the agent" is observing from within the universe.
..perhaps the word "universal" is not the correct expression.
Nevertheless, it does throw some question as to the concept of "now".

Which would mean that the choice is not free. it is determined.

A meaningless statement unless you explain to us what determines it.
You are implying that it is "that which is known about the future" that determines it.
I strongly object. I say that you are making incorrect assumptions about the nature of time. You assume that if future events are known, then that is what determines them.
I, on the other hand, claim that they are determined by our choices.

It is determined by whatever makes the universe deterministic.

..and why can't that be our choices?
..saying that if the future is known, then our choices don't determine the future is just an assertion.

it isn't required that our specific frame of reference is universal. it is enough that the past light cone is universal.

Light cones don't come into it. G-d is not part of the universe.
He is the owner of time & space.