Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
Is that a yes or a no?
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Is it possible for you to do anything that God did not already know you would do?
- Thread starter Beaudreaux
- Start date
To answer the OP question, no. Though I would phrase it differently, I believe that God knows all the things you are doing throughout time...
Storm
ThrUU the Looking Glass
According to my theology we are part of God, so no. It's rather like asking whether I'm capable of thinking without being aware of it.There are several threads going on about omniscience and free will and I have asked this question in them all. To date, no one has answered. So, I am starting a thread dedicated to the question in the hopes that someone will have the intellectual integrity to respond honestly. The question is not loaded, leading or a trick question. It is straightforward and is properly answered with a "yes" or a "no" with follow up explanation welcome. The question is:Is it possible for you to do ANYthing that God did not already know you would do?I eagerly await responses.
If you want to discuss whether God knows the future or not, that gets trickier.
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Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
What people fail to realize is that if all decisions are known ahead of time by some agency, e.g., god, then time itself is meaningless - all events have already been mapped out, so the perspective that they haven't happened yet would just be an illusion.
Whether something happened a year ago, 10 years from now, or is happening right now doesn't matter - it's all already happened in any meaningful sense. If what I was going to have for lunch today was already known by god 2000 years ago, then I had no choice in the matter at any point. It was going to happen, I couldn't make any other decision, therefore there was never any choice.
Obviously, there are those who are simply incapable of grasping simply, unavoidable logic, but there you have it.
Whether something happened a year ago, 10 years from now, or is happening right now doesn't matter - it's all already happened in any meaningful sense. If what I was going to have for lunch today was already known by god 2000 years ago, then I had no choice in the matter at any point. It was going to happen, I couldn't make any other decision, therefore there was never any choice.
Obviously, there are those who are simply incapable of grasping simply, unavoidable logic, but there you have it.
Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
Thank you for responding.
If it is not possible for you to do something that God did not already know you would do, then there can be no free will.
I capable of thinking without being aware of it.
If I'm working on some tricky problem, something that works for me a lot of the time is to just wrap my head around it so I know the question and any parameters, and then go do something else. Eventually, while my mind's on something that's completely different, a thought will pop into my head and say "oh! The answer's _____!"
Storm
ThrUU the Looking Glass
It's not a perfect analogy....
Anyway, my thoughts on the question of omniscience, foreknowledge, and free will are a bit unusual.
Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
Still waiting to hear if you are answering Yes or No....
methylatedghosts
Can't brain. Has dumb.
Really? I thought it answered it very well!
methylatedghosts
Can't brain. Has dumb.
As for my thoughts:
Short answer: yeah, god knows what you're gonna do.
Long answer: To my understanding, god would know at any given point where you make a decision, any decision, that there are many, many, many possibilities. And at the very point in time where your decision is put into action, you are not necessarily deciding between which to eliminate and which to go for, but more that you decide which to make your current reality. The other options, the other choices are still made, you just simply do not choose to make those into the reality you wish to focus on. I'm thinking that the past present and future are much less linear and much more fluid than we are able to comprehend, allowing all choices to be fully experienced as other possible "you's". As other possible realities. (Reminds me of a Pink Floyd song that starts "They flutter behind you, your possible pasts")
As far as I am able to understand "God" isn't a separate part of "us", that instead it IS us, it IS reality, and thus, can't NOT know all of the possible realities that would exist in this way. And as all these other possibilities could be experienced, it is us who chooses which to focus on and REAL-ise. It is us who choose which to make present in THIS reality.
*begins to wonder if that simply sounds like some crazy babble* 0.o
Short answer: yeah, god knows what you're gonna do.
Long answer: To my understanding, god would know at any given point where you make a decision, any decision, that there are many, many, many possibilities. And at the very point in time where your decision is put into action, you are not necessarily deciding between which to eliminate and which to go for, but more that you decide which to make your current reality. The other options, the other choices are still made, you just simply do not choose to make those into the reality you wish to focus on. I'm thinking that the past present and future are much less linear and much more fluid than we are able to comprehend, allowing all choices to be fully experienced as other possible "you's". As other possible realities. (Reminds me of a Pink Floyd song that starts "They flutter behind you, your possible pasts")
As far as I am able to understand "God" isn't a separate part of "us", that instead it IS us, it IS reality, and thus, can't NOT know all of the possible realities that would exist in this way. And as all these other possibilities could be experienced, it is us who chooses which to focus on and REAL-ise. It is us who choose which to make present in THIS reality.
*begins to wonder if that simply sounds like some crazy babble* 0.o
BucephalusBB
ABACABB
Given a god exists and he's capable of knowing, then I think he knows or can know everything.
JMorris
Democratic Socialist
under that kind of definition of god, that does make more sense
(thats not sarcasm btw)
Gharib
I want Khilafah back
There are several threads going on about omniscience and free will and I have asked this question in them all. To date, no one has answered. So, I am starting a thread dedicated to the question in the hopes that someone will have the intellectual integrity to respond honestly. The question is not loaded, leading or a trick question. It is straightforward and is properly answered with a "yes" or a "no" with follow up explanation welcome. The question is:
Is it possible for you to do ANYthing that God did not already know you would do?I eagerly await responses.
no you cannot do anything that god doesn't already know.
if that happened, then there would be no god. god sees the future and the past, if something gets past him, then he is not a god.
BucephalusBB
ABACABB
What is he then?
Gharib
I want Khilafah back
What is he then?
a non god creature who apparently isn't the supreme being in existence.
all i'm saying is that god knows our every move, he has to know that.
BucephalusBB
ABACABB
So a guy who made all the rules, free will, all life and does miracles so once in a while cannot be a God if he made free will in such a way that he cannot know the full future?
That is true from a particular perspective, one in which the past and the future ontologically and objectively exist. From the perspective where only "now" is real, it would be a struggle to make it true.
From this other perspective, what "you would do" resides in you as intention or accident. If either thing is currently residing in you, 'God' could know it. (Or, if you perfer, it could reside in you as potential.)
doppelganger
Through the Looking Glass
That's a good point. In a causal universe, complete knowledge of all movements at every level by which reality could be perceived (from the infinitesimally small to the infinitely huge) would allow one to predict with corresponding certainty what my actions will be. Certain neurons will fire in response to certain stimulus, connecting certain memories and feelings and cause me to act in one way rather than the other, even though from the perspective of my limited knowledge, i.e. not knowing all the information that actually determined or caused me to act, it might create the illusion that I had a "free will" and "chose" to act as I did.
To me, I look back and think it's "possible" that I could have acted otherwise. But is this likely only because I know so little about the movements in my brain and what caused them and cannot perceive that my actions were inexorably determined by the intricate network of causes and effects that intertwine me with the entire universe and all of the past?
In other words, in a causal universe, complete knowledge of the past IS complete knowledge of the future.
But in most theological systems, human behavior is non-causal, i.e. it is "free" such that complete knowledge of the past is still insufficient to predict it. There are social/political reasons for this view, rather than scientific ones. And the inherent contradictions are glaring (when the question is opened).
Gharib
I want Khilafah back
yep, exactly. something wrong with that?
Draka
Wonder Woman
If that is so, then god would know everything and every decision we would make in our lives before we are even born. That being the case, then he couldn't exactly punish us for anything we do since he's the one who supposedly created us in the first place. If he created, or at least allowed someone to be born, that he knew was going to murder, rape, steal, "reject god", be homosexual, commit adultery, or whatever he considers to be sins, then he is just as guilty of the sins as that person is...more so actually since he knew it was going to happen before even they did.