I just want to sin!!!

[Sheldon]

you have claimed I have to do exactly what a deity knows beforehand that I will do, and you have stated I cannot do otherwise.

No that is your patter, not mine.

Can that choice differ in any way, from what you believe a deity knows we will choose?

How could it?

You just keep endlessly contradicting yourself.

 

[Sheldon]

It seems that you think it is clever, to suggest that "you have to do what a deity knows" ..

You said a deity knows what I will choose, and i asked you specifically if I could make a different choice to what a deity knows I will choose, and you said no. Now you're contradicting yourself, so which is it.

If a deity knows that I will choose A, and not B, can I choose B, and make what the deity knows wrong?

 

[Sheldon]

If it's like a movie we cannot choice. The characters in any story are presented with choices, but it's never actually a choice because the story is written, the ending set, and the choice always the same even after a million viewings. And that's because the choice never existed.

The More he explains it, the more obvious it is his belief would negate free will, and all our choices would be an illusion. He just keeps stating that fact over and over, then denying the rational inference, and stating the reverse.

He stated quite unequivocally when I asked him, that I could not make a choice other than his deity knows I will choose, not he is claiming the reverse is true.

 

[Sheldon]

Not at all.
It is not a Hollywood movie.

G-d did not write a story, and then film a load of puppets.
We are biological machines, that must die.

Our souls are immortal, as is G-d.
They are not part of the created universe, but our perceptions have been limited while we are here .. effectively trapped until we die.
We are being tested. There is no test without free-will.
G-d already has the results of the test, but we don't perceive it.
As far as we are concerned, we are here .. at this moment .. drawing towards death.

I have two choices A or B, and you claim your deity knows what I will choose. Now can I choose a different one and make your deity wrong?

 

[Sheldon]

I don't know how you expect me to tell you about something "out of this world", while I am trapped in it with you.

I have no expectations, you made a claim, and now tell us you can't be expected to tell us anything anything about it. I shan't even feign surprise you can't see what that infers.

 

[Sheldon]

I expect to know more when I die.
..even then, I expect to have to continue learning.

Luckily you will never realise the disappointment.

 

[Aupmanyav]

You said a deity knows what I will choose, and i asked you specifically if I could make a different choice to what a deity knows I will choose, and you said no. Now you're contradicting yourself, so which is it.

If a deity knows that I will choose A, and not B, can I choose B?

He will see you in time. You can fool @muhammad_isa, but you can't fool him.

 

[Sheldon]

if it has already happened then it cannot happen any other way. This would create an endless loop of time and space where everything happens at once. Free will cannot possibly exist because everything you will ever do is already done and you cannot actually act different.

Exactly. muhammad_isa wants to believe our objections are secular, as we don't share the belief, but the objections are rational, they have nothing to do with my atheism. The fact I don't share his belief, is entirely irrelevant to it containing a rational contradiction.

 

[Sheldon]

I believe that time is an illusion that comes about due to perception.
Specifically, that "not happened yet" is merely a perception.

We know you think this, we have acknowledged you think this, however this would negate free will and make our choices an illusion.

 

[Aupmanyav]

If a deity knows that I will choose A, and not B, can I choose B, and make what the deity knows wrong?

You may want to, but the ultimately choice that you will make, after all left and right turns, is already known to Allah. He reads you like a morning newspaper. What you will do is all there.

 

[muhammad_isa]

If a deity knows that I will choose A, and not B, can I choose B, and make what the deity knows wrong?

Why do you ask that?
Do you think that it means that you are unable to choose B if you want to?

 

[muhammad_isa]

You may want to, but the ultimately choice that you will make, after all left and right turns, is already known to Allah. He reads you like a morning newspaper. What you will do is all there.

Correct.

 

[ElishaElijah]

I have two choices A or B, and you claim your deity knows what I will choose. Now can I choose a different one and make your deity wrong?

Choose either one, since God knows the beginning and the end, can see the future, He can already see the choice you made before you made it.

 

[muhammad_isa]

We know you think this, we have acknowledged you think this, however this would negate free will and make our choices an illusion.

What kind of illusion?
A person who drives his car along the highway is not really driving it due to an agent being able to know what will happen?
Who is driving it then, do you think?

 

[muhammad_isa]

He stated quite unequivocally when I asked him, that I could not make a choice other than his deity knows I will choose..

True.
..and you imply that that means you are not free to choose.
..but it doesn't.

A person is free to choose if they are able to choose what they want to choose.
G-d knows what you will want to choose, as the future is not hidden from him.
You are the one who keeps repeating statements that you imply have obvious consequences.
Why would you do that? Is it because you think it clever to imply that we are not free to choose, when in reality we are?

We need to make a definition of free-will and stick to it. Saying that free-will is an illusion is all very well, but you need to explain how wanting to do something is only an illusion .. not merely assert it as obvious.
Magic is an illusion. It is an act of manipulating the focus of attention etc.

 

[BilliardsBall]

It is a fact the Hebrews wrote such passages about Israel and after it all happened. They cannot refer to Jesus because there was no Jesus and the Messiah was not in mind when writing them.

The Hebrews wrote passages about Israel after all the prophecies came true in 1948 AD?

Hebrew scriptures written hundreds, even a thousand years BC or more, predicted over 60 major events in MODERN Israel after WWII, incepted in 1948 AD.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The Hebrews wrote passages about Israel after all the prophecies came true in 1948 AD?

Hebrew scriptures written hundreds, even a thousand years BC or more, predicted over 60 major events in MODERN Israel after WWII, incepted in 1948 AD.

They don't predict those things.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Tell me, if it were true that the reality is that all future events have already happened, but we are living this life without realsing that,
because our perception is purposely limited to this universe, then do you still consider free-will not to be compatible?

You may have changed my mind with that. I need to ruminate on it. Maybe the two ideas - omniscience and free will - aren't incompatible after all.

To be clear, I still feel that free will may be and likely is an illusion, the idea of a will being generated in consciousness by the self unaffected by anything outside of that consciousness seems improbable, and I have a problem with deities existing outside of time. But the idea that free will, by which I mean will not the result of either external deterministic or indeterministic processes, can exist in the presence of omniscience now seems a coherent position.

Well done. I'll stop making the argument unless I find a problem with your comment. Maybe some of the other skeptics posting here can chime in. Do you find a logical defect there where I didn't?

Many Abrahamics have and do reject free will because their god is all knowing.

I haven't seen that.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You may have changed my mind with that. I need to ruminate on it. Maybe the two ideas - omniscience and free will - aren't incompatible after all.

To be clear, I still feel that free will may be and likely is an illusion, the idea of a will being generated in consciousness by the self unaffected by anything outside of that consciousness seems improbable, and I have a problem with deities existing outside of time. But the idea that free will, by which I mean will not the result of either external deterministic or indeterministic processes, can exist in the presence of omniscience now seems a coherent position.

Well done. I'll stop making the argument unless I find a problem with your comment. Maybe some of the other skeptics posting here can chime in. Do you find a logical defect there where I didn't?



I haven't seen that.

They call it predestination.

 

[muhammad_isa]

They call it predestination.

There are two main schools of thought.
One is that G-d has pre-ordained everything.
That implies that we are not free to choose and it is merely an illusion.
Calvinists fall into this category.

The other is that we are free to choose, as our destinies are not pre-ordained in the sense that we make our own destiny.

The latter is the one that is coherent imo, as a person who is pre-ordained by G-d to hell cannot be held accountable.