I just want to sin!!!

[Polymath257]

He does, but you don't believe it.
The reason that He knows, is because the space-time continuum is His creation, and He is not subject to time and space as we perceive it.

So everything that happens is *his* choice, not ours. OUR choice is not free even if his is.

 

[muhammad_isa]

No, I am not ignoring what you are saying. i am disagreeing with it. There is a difference.

If the choice is determined, either prior in time, OR outside of time, then the choice is not free. It could not have been any other way.

It could have been another way.
If one is free to choose something, then they are free to choose something.
Knowing what the choice is due to an agent perceiving time differently, does not imply that your choice is not free. It is about perception of time. That is what the confusion is all about, it would seem.

if I could look from outside of time and know what the choice is, then the choice is determined and NOT free..

Yes, I've already agree that it is determined. It is determined by your choice.
The only reason that you see free-will being violated is because of the ability to know.
In the case of being outside of time, G-d can see all events simultaneously.
He doesn't coerce anybody to "want" just because He sees it.

For the choice to be free, there has to be more than one possible future and which one actually happens cannot be known independently of that choice.

..and that is your intuitive perception.

However, it is mistaken.
You really have to show us what actually determines the future if it is not us.
Remember .. G-d sees it .. He doesn't make it happen .. He doesn't make any decisions. He does not drive the car down the road.

 

[muhammad_isa]

So everything that happens is *his* choice, not ours..

No, it isn't.
An agent who sees all of time like we perceive space, just "sees it".
The agent does not have to be "making it all happen".

I am well aware that if time is absolute and it was impossible to know what happens tomorrow, because we have not yet made a free choice .. then you must be right. There is no doubt in my mind.

 

[Polymath257]

No, it isn't.
An agent who sees all of time like we perceive space, just "sees it".
The agent does not have to be "making it all happen".

If it can be 'seen', it is determined. And if it is determined, it is not free.

I am well aware that if time is absolute and it was impossible to know what happens tomorrow, because we have not yet made a free choice .. then you must be right. There is no doubt in my mind.

I don't think that the phrase 'time is absolute' means what you think it does. The non-absoluteness of time has NOTHING to do with 'seeing' from outside of the universe. it has to deal with the differences between inertial frames of reference.

 

[Sheldon]

It was not determined "before" you wanted it, as far as G-d is concerned.
Before & prior are perceptions that we have about time.
You ignore all my statements about this.

Our perception has no relevance, this is what you have consistently failed to grasp. Let's try again then

You have two choices. lets call them A or B. You claim, it is known beforehand by a deity which one you will choose (let's say) A. Ipso fact you cannot choose B, and thus have no choice. This couldn't be any simpler.

How can I change from what a deity already knows I will choose? That would make the deity wrong.

 

[Sheldon]

No it would not negate free-will. I have explained to you why, but you prefer to ignore it.
..just as @Polymath257 is ignoring it.

Your explanation doesn't help the paradox in your assertion, and no one has ignored it, it just doesn't help. I suspect because you are parroting ideas you were indoctrinated into, but don't understand rationally.

If a deity knows beforehand that I will choose A, then obviously I have only that choice, even if there were a limitless number of alternatives. Or I could choose differently, and then that deity would have been wrong, or a deity does not know what I will choose.

Your unevidenced assumptions about how you believe a deity can do this, are completely irrelevant to that fact.

 

[Sheldon]

He does, but you don't believe it.

Oh good grief, once and for all it doesn't matter that you believe it, or that I don't believe it, we can deal with it as a hypothetical, and it still fails, as it violates the law of non contradiction.

The reason that He knows, is because the space-time continuum is His creation, and He is not subject to time and space as we perceive it.

Still irrelevant to the contradiction in your claim, no matter how often you fail to understand this.


However you assume this can happen is irrelevant, as what I and others are trying and failing to explain to you, is the contradiction innate in your claim.

It doesn't matter how you believe a deity can know what we will do, before we do it, it is axiomatic that I don't believe that, but what we are addressing is that IF any deity knows what I will choose, before I choose it, then all other choices are an illusion. Good grief I could have explained to an apple by now.

 

[Sheldon]

And that only makes it worse. You ignore what I have said about this.

HE just keep blindly and relentlessly circling back to what he believes and why he believes it, but ignoring the contradiction others are pointing in the belief.

1. He claims a deity knows the choice I will make, before I makes it. Let's label this choice X.
2. The deity cannot be wrong.
3. Thus I can only ever choose what the deity knows I will choose = X.
4. Ipso facto I can make no other choices.

 

[muhammad_isa]

If it can be 'seen', it is determined. And if it is determined, it is not free.

That is patently untrue.
One can appreciate that from considering the simple case of special relativity. Time dilation does not effect their cause.

I don't think that the phrase 'time is absolute' means what you think it does. The non-absoluteness of time has NOTHING to do with 'seeing' from outside of the universe. it has to deal with the differences between inertial frames of reference.

Who cares? I don't.
I don't profess to know exactly how G-d has created the universe in which we live.
I just believe that He sees all, and has given us free-will.
I know you can't prove it is not possible.

You can't tell us who is really driving a car down the road due to the future being known.
All you can do is just keep repeating something that is intuitive, but wrong.
Knowing something due to varying perception of time does not imply causality.
..just because our perception of time is present, past and future does not mean that it is merely an illusion.
Einstein believed that, and so do I.

 

[Sheldon]

There is no doubt in my mind.

Now that seems true, sadly this is a major flaw in your reasoning.

Even were we to accept your belief is correct, for the sake of argument. Now a deity knows what I will do before I do it, it cannot be wrong, and I cannot choose other than what it knows. Ipso facto I have no choice at all. It doesn't matter how you arrived at your belief / claim, why can't you grasp this simple fact?

 

[muhammad_isa]

If a deity knows beforehand that I will choose A, then obviously I have only that choice, even if there were a limitless number of alternatives. Or I could choose differently, and then that deity would have been wrong, or a deity does not know what I will choose.

Utter nonsense!
You are completely free to choose whatever you like.
The only reason that you will choose A is due to the condition that G-d can't be wrong .. and not as you imply, because you are forced to.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

do you think that the indeterminacy of the universe can be a foundation for free will?

You didn't ask me, but I'll chime in. No. Free will as the theist conceives it is determined by the self and nothing else. Giving man a mechanism that generates will by indeterminate processes as uncaused quantum fluctuations does not permit free will, but random will not freely chosen.

The problem with free will is that the more one thinks about it, the more one realizes that since all mental processes are derived from physical processes, the mind cannot be the source of anything including will. The will must be the result of determinate physical processes or random indeterminate ones, neither of which allows that self to simply choose what to want.

My point was that even if you show that free will and "all knowing" are logically incompatible, that wouldn't be a big problem for Christianity because these are secondary doctrines. (Unlike the resurrection which is the corner strone of Christianity)

You don't think that showing that omniscience and free will can't coexist is a problem for Christianity? I disagree. So do most Abraham theists, apparently, given how they insist that the two are compatible.

You assume that something that "hasn't happened yet" cannot be known, unless it is determined by some mystical force.

No. It can be determined by something quite apparent and not mysterious.

Also, nobody is making that assumption. The time and location of an eclipse can be predicted with certainty before it has happened.

What is actually said is that if will is free, then what it chooses is unknown until the choice is made. You have never rebutted this, merely disagreed and repeated that free will is predictable, sometimes throwing in something about God being the author of time or tense is an illusion. How do either of those rebut the idea that free will and omniscience are incompatible? They don't.

You don't believe that there could exist an agent whose perception sees all i.e. omniscient

That's not part of the argument. That's part of the next step of the argument for you. At this point, you're merely claiming that omniscience and free will are compatible. You haven't established that either exist or are possible. There are very strong arguments that the universe is not completely predictable, and there are strong arguments that will is not free. But at this point, the argument is that even if either or both are possible, they can't both be actual.

You cannot show that our choices don't determine the future, you only assume it due to your perception of the nature of time.

You cannot show that they are actual choices in the sense that the self could have chosen otherwise. This is an insurmountable problem for you, because both a universe with free will and one with only the illusion of free will look exactly the same and are thus indistinguishable.

You just can't accept that it is possible to know, and that free-will isn't affected.

Why should he? Reason tells him (and about a half dozen other critical thinkers that have weighed in) that the two ideas are incompatible in the same way that married and bachelor are. And you have offered no reason to think otherwise. As I indicated, you have never rebutted the claim, just dismissed it. A rebuttal is an explanation why the claim cannot be correct. A rebuttal identifies an error of fact or reasoning that makes the claim an unsound conclusion. Your claim that the two are compatible was rebutted in the same way that a claim that a married bachelor exists would rebutted.

Your response to that argument has been to ignore it except to disagree and maybe say something that doesn't rebut the claim. So why should he or anybody else accept your unsupported opinion or reject their own logically valid conclusions?

I asked earlier if the fact that all of the critical thinkers arguing here are of the same opinion, and all of the theists are also of the same opinion, but an opposite one, does that mean anything to you? It does to me. What can constrain thought and cause people to hold the same opinion? Two things: reason properly applied, and doctrine accepted on faith. Since the two sides disagree, they can't both be reasoning well. Either one or both are both constrained by faith in dogma, by which I mean arbitrary doctrine believed uncritically.

The critical thinker's "dogma," the rules of sound argumentation, is not arbitrary. As long as his thinking conforms to reason, he will arrive at the same conclusions as anybody using reason properly.

The theists dogma is derived from nothing. It's created from imagination. And as long as some central authority is able to maintain control over the official dogma, the adherents will conform to it. Once that's removed, and denominations are free to start creating dogma, they begin branching apart. Why? Because the dogma is just invented, not derived or discovered. This is why there are over 40,000 denominations of Christianity alone, but just one periodic table of the elements.

As far as I know, only the Abrahamic religions teach that there exists an omniscient deity who has granted man free will. The reasons for this have been given. For a god that knows what you will do before you do it to be just in punishing for those choices the way it does is to insist that the punishment was deserved because the sinner was its sole source of that choice. I can see having both of doctrines before realizing that they are incompatible. It just wasn't thought through until skilled critical thinkers and skeptics revealed the inconsistency.

So what's a believer to do? What choice does he have if he is to continue believing the doctrine but simply keep insisting that omniscience and free will can coexist, ever unable to rebut the rebuttal to that. Why? Because he has painted himself into defending an illogical doctrine.

This isn't the only example of that. The Bible also says that God is perfect, and that he makes mistakes that he regrets and tries to correct. Good luck trying to defend that. You could try what you're doing here and just simply assert that it's not impossible to be both perfect and imperfect, and maybe offer something about how God exists out of time, also an incoherent proposition for exactly the same reason as the omniscience / free will, bachelor / married, and perfect / imperfect are incoherent - they violate the law of noncontradiction.

The word exist means exist in time. To exist means to occupy a series of consecutive instants during which time the existent can act. Does your god exist now? Did it yesterday? Will it tomorrow? Was it able to interact with other existent things like you and me yesterday? Will it be able to interact with us tomorrow? If you answered yes, then you are saying that your god exists in time. To not exist in time is to be nonexistent.

You say that a choice that we haven't yet made cannot be known. If it is known, then we are automatons.

Correct.

This appears to be a sticking point for theists. They don't want to be automatons (they generally say robots), just like they don't want to be descendants of ancestral apes. And being faith-based thinkers, what they want to be true or false becomes that to them not through reason or experience, but by suspending them and believing anyway.

Discussions like these have caused me to realize that we probably are automatons. Our conscious experiences are the result of processes outside of our control, and free will is an illusion. Here's the thing: I'm OK with that. If that's the case, it's always been the case, and only discovering so at this late date just means that I was fooled by the illusion of free. I liken it to somehow discovering one day that the world isn't really there.

What then? Do you panic? Maybe at first, but eventually you realize that it's always been that way, that the idea of an external reality similar to the one I previously thought I was sensing was always an illusion. What you do then is go on living as you always have. If the rules of experience haven't changed, your strategy for navigating experience doesn't change. What worked and what didn't work before still work or not work. You know for a fact that if what appears to be your finger appears to enter an illusory flame, that you'll experience the pain of a burning finger even knowing that neither exist outside of your mind.

You really mirror what Einstein said "People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion" ..and you stubbornly stick to the illusion, do you not?

LOL.

I'm guessing that you see this as rebuttal. It's not. There is nothing in those words that allows for free will to coexist with omniscience. There is nothing there contradicting what you reject or supporting what you believe. There is nothing there to support the idea of omniscience and free will coexisting or contradicting the claim that they cannot. And there never has been in these pages.

You are completely free to choose whatever you like.

So you say. But as I've indicated, it may be otherwise. You have no way to determine if you are correct or not. Who is at risk of being taken in by a stubbornly persistent illusion now?

 

[Polymath257]

That is patently untrue.
One can appreciate that from considering the simple case of special relativity. Time dilation does not effect their cause.

So? All causes are still in the past light cone.

And I don't see the relevance to what I said: if it can be 'seen', it is determined.

Who cares? I don't.
I don't profess to know exactly how G-d has created the universe in which we live.
I just believe that He sees all, and has given us free-will.
I know you can't prove it is not possible.

YOU are the one that keeps bringing up 'absolute time' without explaining what relevance it has to the topic.

You can't tell us who is really driving a car down the road due to the future being known.
All you can do is just keep repeating something that is intuitive, but wrong.
Knowing something due to varying perception of time does not imply causality.

I did not say that the knowledge was the cause. But being able to have knowledge means it could not be any way else and that means the choice was not free.

..just because our perception of time is present, past and future does not mean that it is merely an illusion.
Einstein believed that, and so do I.

Once again, how is that even remotely relevant to the question of free will?

 

[muhammad_isa]

It doesn't matter how you believe a deity can know what we will do, before we do it, it is axiomatic that I don't believe that, but what we are addressing is that IF any deity knows what I will choose, before I choose it..

If it doesn't matter how a deity can know, then why do you use the phrase "before I choose it".
Please do not use 'before' or 'after' when you construct your argument about what you choose, if it doesn't matter how G-d knows.
It does matter. It is all about our perception of what the consequence of "before" means to us .. not to G-d.

 

[Sheldon]

If a deity knows beforehand that I will choose A, then obviously I have only that choice, even if there were a limitless number of alternatives. Or I could choose differently, and then that deity would have been wrong, or a deity does not know what I will choose.

Your unevidenced assumptions about how you believe a deity can do this, are completely irrelevant to that fact.

Utter nonsense!

No it isn't, but since all you have offered is hand waving we can't examine why you think so?

You are completely free to choose whatever you like.

How can I make a choice that differs from the one you claim a deity knows I will make? Care to explain that without simply repeating how you believe it know this?

The only reason that you will choose A is due to the condition that G-d can't be wrong .. and not as you imply, because you are forced to.

If your deity knows before hand that i will choose A, and it cannot be wrong, then you have just demonstrated I have no other choice, as choosing other than A, would make that deity wrong, in your scenario. Again you have failed to address that rational contradiction.

 

[muhammad_isa]

What is actually said is that if will is free, then what it chooses is unknown until the choice is made..

First of all, I find your post rather long, which I find hard to read and answer to.

Yes, the choice is unknown to us, as we perceive time as in past, present and future.
However, Einstein showed that it is only a perception, or illusion if you will.

Discussions like these have caused me to realize that we probably are automatons..

That is an entirely different argument. One that I don't wish to discuss right now.
Human law considers free-will as a valid concept, as do I.

 

[muhammad_isa]

If your deity knows before hand that i will choose A, and it cannot be wrong, then you have just demonstrated I have no other choice, as choosing other than A, would make that deity wrong, in your scenario..

No. If you had wanted to choose other than A, you would have done so.
In my book, that is free-will.
In your book, it seems to be what you call "illusionary free-will".
..which is something I don't agree with.

 

[Sheldon]

If it doesn't matter how a deity can know, then why do you use the phrase "before I choose it".

Obviously because that is the reality of my existence.

Please do not use 'before' or 'after' when you construct your argument about what you choose, if it doesn't matter how G-d knows.

Don't be silly how else are we supposed to discuss our reality other than from a linear time reference, what we are discussing are the hypothetical consequences of your unevidenced claim a deity knows what we will do before we do it, those are your own words in previous posts.

It does matter. It is all about our perception of what the consequence of "before" means to us .. not to G-d.

And the reality we perceive is a temporal universe, and linear timeframe.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I did not say that the knowledge was the cause. But being able to have knowledge means it could not be any way else and that means the choice was not free.

..but it doesn't though. You just claim that it means the choice is not free.
If the knowledge is not the cause, and our choice is not the cause, then what is??
I say we are free to choose what we like. The fact that it appears as if "we have no choice" is not coming from logical argument, but an intuitive feeling that something known "before" we choose means we are compelled to do it .. which we are not.

Simply, whatever the future is .. known or unknown .. we will choose that because we want to.

 

[muhammad_isa]

And the reality we perceive is a temporal universe, and linear timeframe.

..and why has it taken so many posts for you to admit that that is why you claim that free-will is violated?