Omnipotence vs Free Will

[Skwim]

You've just proven you haven't the slightest grasp of the issues you pretend to deal with.

No need to be derisive, unless, that is, you have no other alternative such as explaining the difference. So if you can explain the difference I'm all ears. Otherwise I'll simply assume I put you in an uncomfortable corner and you're fighting for your forum dignity here.

What's it gonna be Dunemeister; an explanation, more mocking rhetoric, or silence? My money is on one of the last two.

 

[Skwim]

That is of course a generalisation. There are a great many religious thinkers who are willing to listen to competing ideas and grow from them. They just aren't the majority...

Well, I'll go along with "many." From my experience, the vast majority of religious believers don't give a wit what others have to say about belief, much less care about its logic. For them, simple believing rather than serious consideration is the preferred approach to their faith.

 

[Madhuri]

Well, I'll go along with "many." From my experience, the vast majority of religious believers don't give a wit what others have to say about belief, much less care about its logic. For them, simple believing rather than serious consideration is the preferred approach to their faith.

Yes, I know what you mean. It's hard for someone who has never questioned to suddenly start questioning. Even for me it was a very gradual process. But once a person begins that intellectual journey, it becomes easier to broaden the mind.
I've been involved in religious discussions for a number of years now, since I started to question my conditioned beliefs. I've come across a number of very intelligent and open minded religious people, which is why I know that your previous statement is a generalisation and not entirely correct.

The way I see it, when you look at a religious community as a whole, it seems to be as you implied: narrow minded, firm in it's ideas and dogmas. But within every community there seems to be a number of individuals who are not sheep, not simply blind followers. But they are easily overlooked due to the whole, particularly because the narrow minded ones tend to be a lot louder, a lot more passionate, often times much more aggressive. And they make a bad name for the rest of us.

 

[Evandr]

Perhaps you are making this unnecessarily complicated my friend. It has been my personal experience concerning G-d that the more I learn of G-d and Jesus the less complicated they are. I believe them to be simple to understand both in regards to their persons, their purposes and their works. It is our “human” elements that complicate everything attempting to justify our personal vein ambitions, our appetites, our passions, our desires, our wants and our personal “needs”. We even turn enlightenment of religion into a “what’s in it for me?” mentality when the first real step towards enlightenment is a denial of selfishness.

The choice of free will is really the choice of self discipline. Thus it is that the undisciplined will - can never be free but will always result in bondage. Only by disciplining our will can we eventually exercise free will. Again this is not complicated – it is really very simple. When we make it complex we lose control and understanding and become ignorant slaves to circumstance that have no free will. G-d tries to help us in our discipline by suggesting commandments – but for many – they will not consider the efforts and rigor of discipline worthy of being free.

Zadok

I agree, but sometimes, as I am quite sure you are aware, you have to spell things out for people. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is simple and we are to deny self by keeping an eye single to the glory of God but, what is the end result of success in keeping the commandments? - namely it is the glorification of God and thusly our own exaltation in His presence. That is, after all, our ultimate goal, we cannot achieve it for someone else so we must strive to achieve it for ourselves that we may be able to glorify God and provide eternal increase to one who is already at the pinicle of knowledge and glory. It is by that that we set ourselves up to be able to pass such glory to our own eternal posterity just as our Heavenly Father has passed it to us

 

[Skwim]

The way I see it, when you look at a religious community as a whole, it seems to be as you implied: narrow minded, firm in it's ideas and dogmas. But within every community there seems to be a number of individuals who are not sheep, not simply blind followers. But they are easily overlooked due to the whole, particularly because the narrow minded ones tend to be a lot louder, a lot more passionate, often times much more aggressive. And they make a bad name for the rest of us.

And such people seem to be the occasional church goer, or those whom the faithful call Christians (or whatever the faith) in name only.

 

[Madhuri]

And such people seem to be the occasional church goer, or those whom the faithful call Christians (or whatever the faith) in name only.

Hmmm, I do not think so. It really depends on the person and context. I know some really open minded people who attend the religious institution on a regular basis. I think the difference is that one person will believe everything they hear, while the other will listen and know that the preacher or even the community are merely humans and be able to take something from the experience but come away with their own understanding.

 

[Thief]

Hmmm, I do not think so. It really depends on the person and context. I know some really open minded people who attend the religious institution on a regular basis. I think the difference is that one person will believe everything they hear, while the other will listen and know that the preacher or even the community are merely humans and be able to take something from the experience but come away with their own understanding.

True.

I sat in congregation and attended religion orientated schools.
All too often, something would be taught as truth, and then when questioned....
Well.....that's just part of our faith. You have to believe it.

So here at the forum, I work to reconcile what people believe, with what ever objection may rise.
My own rebuttal, as well as rebuttals from other people.

It's proving to be a real job. Like this thread.

Even a topic that is virtually self evident will get tossed around for days....weeks.

Free will? Can't you tell when your thoughts and feelings are your own?
Somebody Else, banging around in your head?
Are you doing what Someone else told you to?
Or did some preacher put a bug in your ear?

I suppose now we will need to digress to the topic of motivation.

 

[Revoltingest]

I believe in free will, but I'm not sure I have any choice in the matter.

 

[Thief]

I believe in free will, but I'm not sure I have any choice in the matter.

Free will goes as far as the length of your arm, and your ability to shout.

Go ahead.

 

[Revoltingest]

Free will goes as far as the length of your arm, and your ability to shout.

Go ahead.

Free will is noisy!

 

[Madhuri]

Free will? Can't you tell when your thoughts and feelings are your own?
Somebody Else, banging around in your head?
Are you doing what Someone else told you to?
Or did some preacher put a bug in your ear?

Of course our thoughts and feelings are not controlled by someone else (as far as we know ) but my argument against free will deals with what actually brings us to a point where we make a particular decision. I see that every event that has ever occurred is what creates a particular result. If I decide to follow a particular career path, it is because of a whole series of events that have lead to the moment where opportunity, opinion, perspective, emotions, situation have all been determined by previous events. Do I really have a choice in the matter? On one level, yes, I am making the decision myself. But considering the history and the context built from history, would I actually make a different choice? This is what I mean about free will possibly being an illusion.

If you take it further, you can question if a person born in a third world country, where rebels are coming into your village and raping and murdering everyone, they kidnap you and brainwash you and you become a violent follower- how much free will is involved? all your emotions, thoughts, opinions, are conditioned by your experiences and those experiences are the result of the conditioning, thoughts and beliefs of those who are responsible for your situation and their whole life is the result of some other sequence of events that caused them to be who they are.

I am not the best at explaining myself, so I hope this makes even some sense. I am very happy to be contradicted, with reasonable argument, but I do think that my argument is valid and cannot so easily be dismissed because the contrary is 'self evident'.

What do you think?

 

[Willamena]

"Known" & "knowable" both share the salient characteristic of the cast-in-concrete nature of the choice made. As soon as God created the universe

Not in the English language, they don't. "Knowable" presents a possibility.

 

[Revoltingest]

Not in the English language, they don't. "Knowable" presents a possibility.

For purposes of my analysis, they have the same effect. If God knows something, then it must be. If God doesn't know something,
but could know it, then that which he could know is also fixed. It couldn't change, because if it did, then God would know conflicting
things if he looked at it at different times. So it's fixed either way.

 

[Thief]

Of course our thoughts and feelings are not controlled by someone else (as far as we know ) but my argument against free will deals with what actually brings us to a point where we make a particular decision. I see that every event that has ever occurred is what creates a particular result. If I decide to follow a particular career path, it is because of a whole series of events that have lead to the moment where opportunity, opinion, perspective, emotions, situation have all been determined by previous events. Do I really have a choice in the matter? On one level, yes, I am making the decision myself. But considering the history and the context built from history, would I actually make a different choice? This is what I mean about free will possibly being an illusion.

If you take it further, you can question if a person born in a third world country, where rebels are coming into your village and raping and murdering everyone, they kidnap you and brainwash you and you become a violent follower- how much free will is involved? all your emotions, thoughts, opinions, are conditioned by your experiences and those experiences are the result of the conditioning, thoughts and beliefs of those who are responsible for your situation and their whole life is the result of some other sequence of events that caused them to be who they are.

I am not the best at explaining myself, so I hope this makes even some sense. I am very happy to be contradicted, with reasonable argument, but I do think that my argument is valid and cannot so easily be dismissed because the contrary is 'self evident'.

What do you think?

Yeah...there's a great deal of grief in the world.
If it kicks in your front door and points a gun in your face....
Your free will has been stolen.

And history leads to current events.
Change an item now, and the change will ripple into the future.
Adam was cloned and given his twin sister for bride.
Talk about ripples!

But free will is still with us. Each one born to it.
Pray you live free.
Pray again that no one need die for your freedom.
My son now wears a uniform.
That you mention third world problems is not relevant to the topic title.
But relevant to me.

 

[Dunemeister]

For purposes of my analysis, they have the same effect. If God knows something, then it must be. If God doesn't know something,
but could know it, then that which he could know is also fixed. It couldn't change, because if it did, then God would know conflicting
things if he looked at it at different times. So it's fixed either way.

This is just a huge confusion. I'll try a tack I've tried before. Sometimes it works.

First, take God out of the picture. Let's take a statement about the future such as:

F: The Netherlands will win the World Cup in 2010.

Now, I don't know whether F is true or not. Presumably, there's a truth to the matter about who will win.The question is, what would make F true? I should think that the Netherlands winning this year's WC would make it true. (This is a controversial thesis. Many philosophers argue that propositions about the future simply cannot be true or false; only propositions about the present and the past can be true or false. I'm bracketing this argument for our purposes.)

Of course, nobody knows if F is true. We will find out when the final match is played. But if F really is true, what follows? Certainly it follows that the following proposition cannot be true:

F2: Spain will win the World Cup in 2010.

But if F is true and F2 is false (and remember, at this stage of the argument nobody knows, not even God should he exist), what else follows? Does it follow that Spain never had a chance to win? Does it follow that the Netherlands were bound to win, and the other teams needn't have bothered to compete? In other words, does (a) the truth of F determine the players' actions and choices, or do (b) the free actions and choices of the players determine the truth of F?

I think most of us would say (b), and for good reason. It just seems weird that the truth value of an abstract object like a proposition should determine what people decide and do. But it makes perfect sense that the truth of a proposition is dependent upon what people freely decide and do. This intuition is so basic and obvious that it defies argument.

My argument is that if the TRUTH of F is determined by the free actions and choices of the players (not the reverse), so is someone's knowledge of F. To illustrate, imagine a psychic knows F (and that this particular psychic's abilities are fully genuine and reliable). If the truth of F is determined by the players' actions and decisions, then so is the psychic's knowledge of F. The psychic's knowledge doesn't interfere with the players' actions and decisions; rather, the psychic knows what she knows by virtue of what the players will in fact freely do.

What's true of the psychic, who only knows a limited number of truths about the future, is true of God, who knows all truths about the future. God knows everything, but his knowledge, like the psychic's, is dependent on what people will in fact freely do. God knows what he knows because people will do what they will do; people don't do what they do because God knows what he knows.

It seems to me that the claim that omniscience entails determinism is simply a confusion. The confusion goes way back to ancient Greece where philosophers puzzled over what has come to be known as logical determinism, the view that propositions about the future have truth value, and that if there is a truth about the future, then we are not free. This, as I've argued, is a provocative and inviting argument, but hardly intuitive or even, in the final analysis, cogent.

 

[Peacewise]

Revoltingest.
Re the argument you've presented. The chooser, having made that choice of A, of which God knew about since the Big G is omnipotent, and then the chooser going back in the thought experiment choosing B instead...

Ok, you wanna play it that way (which I maintain is without the arrow of time), lets play;

The outcome of the premises of omnipotence & omniscient for God, is that God could also go back simultaneously with the chooser, who decided A but then goes back to select B instead. God knows that the chooser was instead going to select B due to God's omniscience. Further each time the chooser decided to go back and change their choice God would know this and so would be able to continuously keep track of each re-choice and hence always know what the chooser is choosing, will perhaps re-choose differently and has previously chosen or re-chosen.

Hence premises 1 and 2 do not conflict with premise 3. Therefore an omniscient and omnipotent being does not conflict with free will.

 

[Revoltingest]

This is just a huge confusion. I'll try a tack I've tried before. Sometimes it works.

First, take God out of the picture. Let's take a statement about the future such as:

F: The Netherlands will win the World Cup in 2010.

Now, I don't know whether F is true or not. Presumably, there's a truth to the matter about who will win.The question is, what would make F true? I should think that the Netherlands winning this year's WC would make it true. (This is a controversial thesis. Many philosophers argue that propositions about the future simply cannot be true or false; only propositions about the present and the past can be true or false. I'm bracketing this argument for our purposes.)

Of course, nobody knows if F is true. We will find out when the final match is played. But if F really is true, what follows? Certainly it follows that the following proposition cannot be true:

F2: Spain will win the World Cup in 2010.

But if F is true and F2 is false (and remember, at this stage of the argument nobody knows, not even God should he exist), what else follows? Does it follow that Spain never had a chance to win? Does it follow that the Netherlands were bound to win, and the other teams needn't have bothered to compete? In other words, does (a) the truth of F determine the players' actions and choices, or do (b) the free actions and choices of the players determine the truth of F?

I think most of us would say (b), and for good reason. It just seems weird that the truth value of an abstract object like a proposition should determine what people decide and do. But it makes perfect sense that the truth of a proposition is dependent upon what people freely decide and do. This intuition is so basic and obvious that it defies argument.

My argument is that if the TRUTH of F is determined by the free actions and choices of the players (not the reverse), so is someone's knowledge of F. To illustrate, imagine a psychic knows F (and that this particular psychic's abilities are fully genuine and reliable). If the truth of F is determined by the players' actions and decisions, then so is the psychic's knowledge of F. The psychic's knowledge doesn't interfere with the players' actions and decisions; rather, the psychic knows what she knows by virtue of what the players will in fact freely do.

What's true of the psychic, who only knows a limited number of truths about the future, is true of God, who knows all truths about the future. God knows everything, but his knowledge, like the psychic's, is dependent on what people will in fact freely do. God knows what he knows because people will do what they will do; people don't do what they do because God knows what he knows.

It seems to me that the claim that omniscience entails determinism is simply a confusion. The confusion goes way back to ancient Greece where philosophers puzzled over what has come to be known as logical determinism, the view that propositions about the future have truth value, and that if there is a truth about the future, then we are not free. This, as I've argued, is a provocative and inviting argument, but hardly intuitive or even, in the final analysis, cogent.

We're operating under different premises. My line of reasoning was predicated upon a few extremely sweeping assumptions, ie, an inerrant god who
can know every last detail about everything for all of time. (Your posited psychic & god differ in that they have limited knowledge of the future.)
It's not that I believe anything I said.....I'm just examining the consequences of those premises. To summarize, that which is known by God to be
true cannot be altered, lest his knowledge be less than perfect.

Personally, I don't buy the premises I assumed. My view is that things happen, & we're free to react to them. Since it's untestable, I'm neither right nor
wrong....it's just how I view it.

 

[logician]

It can easily be proven that an omniscient, omnipotent benevolent being cannot exist.

Also, a supposedly omniscient being basically is helpless, since it knows all future outcomes, it also knows its own, and thus has no free will. Therefore, true omniscience cannot exist.

 

[Revoltingest]

Revoltingest.
Re the argument you've presented. The chooser, having made that choice of A, of which God knew about since the Big G is omnipotent, and then the chooser going back in the thought experiment choosing B instead...

Ok, you wanna play it that way (which I maintain is without the arrow of time), lets play;

The outcome of the premises of omnipotence & omniscient for God, is that God could also go back simultaneously with the chooser, who decided A but then goes back to select B instead. God knows that the chooser was instead going to select B due to God's omniscience. Further each time the chooser decided to go back and change their choice God would know this and so would be able to continuously keep track of each re-choice and hence always know what the chooser is choosing, will perhaps re-choose differently and has previously chosen or re-chosen.

Hence premises 1 and 2 do not conflict with premise 3. Therefore an omniscient and omnipotent being does not conflict with free will.

I don't dispute your argument, but my thought experiment was about alternative histories, rather than a change using time travel. We assumed different premises.

I'm not arguing that we lack free will. I don't believe we lack free will...since I don't know if it exists or not. (I do feel that it exists, but I might be predestined to feel
that way.) My argument was extremely limited in that it applied only to an inerrant omniscient god.

 

[Wandered Off]

You now have fore-knowledge of when the alarm will ring. You had absolutely nothing to do with setting of the alarm, but you will know when it goes off. The fore-knowledge did not determine when the alarm would sound.

I don't think that foreknowledge causes the future. A condition for foreknowledge to be possible is that the future already exists in some form, which is the only way anyone could know it beforehand. It is that existence that hoses free will. The fact that some being could become aware of it is incidental.

Here's a thread where this came up before, in case anyone is interested: http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...would-foreknowledge-contradict-free-will.html