Predestination

[!Fluffy!]

Ok I can accept our point about God laying outside the bounds of space or time and so not bound by any particular causality. Given that god knows what will happen does that mean we are predestined? I think it does not.

my point exactly.

God knows what will hapen but we are still free actors.

yup.

Those who go to heaven are saved because of their faith.

hmm. is it possible to be saved, then to have faith? For example.

Let's say someone of zero faith driven by angst, despair and shame, attempts suicide by drowning in a fast moving river. s/he sincerely believes in and looks forward to nothing but oblivion. However miraculously, s/he is yanked from the precipice at the last moment. Later, s/he tells friends that it all had something to do with a tree, a rock, the moon, a revelation of overwhelming unconditional love, something s/he had never experienced, along with the certain knowledge that a "person" of supernatural origin was communicating or behind it all or, as s/he put it "it knew everything about me, but loved me anyway".

Assuming this person is non-delusional what are we to think? After this experience, s/he begins a 10 yr exploration of every known religious personage "to find out who that was at the river". having rejected Christianity for its hypocrisy and judgmentalism which, s/he believes was the root cause of all the bad feelings leading to suicide, Jesus is not under consideration. Until....

one day, yet another "jesus freak" comes along pushing just a little too hard. "this is garbage" s/he says. "listen to this crap" and s/he starts reading the red words in the little new testament, out loud in a mocking sing-song voice.

suddenly s/he realizes: that's HIS voice! that's the one who Saved me! to this day s/he says "he saved me in every way possible years ago, i never doubted that. he was there all along, waiting for me to catch up. there was no question of faith, it was just a matter of being able to recognize the One i had faith in".

Had they not had faith they would not have gone to heaven. God being omnicient knew what they would do but did not make them do it.

Yes, and by the same reasoning, he saw those others who rejected him, but did not make them do it.

(God's existence outside of space and time rasies the question of if he is outside of good or evil. Can God do wrong? But that is for another post.)

Maybe Job addresses this a little but I agree, best left for another thread.

 

[Wandered Off]

If my future can be seen, am I free? Of course.

I just don't get how "knowing/seeing" = "forcing".
Being able to see the future isn't the same as making it happen, is it?

I don't think the argument is that the "knowledge causes the events". That's kind of backward. The reason you aren't free if your future can be seen is that it already exists.

If the ending can be known, then you can't change it. Being unable to change the ending is incompatible with free will.

God's foreknowledge, if you believe in it, would be the effect of the existence of your future, not the cause, IMO.

Here's a thread where some of us argued about that...

Would foreknowledge contradict free will?

One of way out of that mess is something gmelrod mentioned above, which I also posed in the other thread: What if God knew exactly what the outcome of every possible choice would be but not which one you will choose?

Disclaimer: I'm not sure I believe in omniscience anyway, but it's fun to ponder.

 

[logician]

I think the idea of predestination is silly, as scientific evidence does not support it (chaos theory) and random events, and the fact that free will is negated. Observable evidence suggest there is no god, and we live in a universe where chaotic events control our future.

 

[CRB]

I think the idea of predestination is silly, as scientific evidence does not support it (chaos theory) and random events, and the fact that free will is negated. Observable evidence suggest there is no god, and we live in a universe where chaotic events control our future.

That's a matter seriously debated even outside of the question of faith. It's the competition between materialist determinism, that the universe runs like clockwork in a predictable manner vs. chaos theory and whether something truely random can really exist. Richard Dawkins, no small voice, is strong on the materialist determinism side. Even outside of theology it's not considered a matter to be taken lightly.

 

[logician]

That's a matter seriously debated even outside of the question of faith. It's the competition between materialist determinism, that the universe runs like clockwork in a predictable manner vs. chaos theory and whether something truely random can really exist. Richard Dawkins, no small voice, is strong on the materialist determinism side. Even outside of theology it's not considered a matter to be taken lightly.

Let us say that a random event is an outcome that could not be predicted with certainty. With that assumption, our whole lives, the weather, etc. etc. are essentially random, as none of us can predict with certainty what will happen to us tommorrow, or even 5 minutes into the future. WHen you think about it, the chances of you being born depended upon your father meeting your mother, their parents meeting, and on back in time - all random events that could easily have been altered by a myriad of cirumstances - some big(deaths, disease) and some trivial(missed catching a train). Predestination cannot be possible in such a world as ours, where the butterfly effect can easily come into play.

 

[gmelrod]

Let us say that a random event is an outcome that could not be predicted with certainty. With that assumption, our whole lives, the weather, etc. etc. are essentially random, as none of us can predict with certainty what will happen to us tommorrow, or even 5 minutes into the future. WHen you think about it, the chances of you being born depended upon your father meeting your mother, their parents meeting, and on back in time - all random events that could easily have been altered by a myriad of cirumstances - some big(deaths, disease) and some trivial(missed catching a train). Predestination cannot be possible in such a world as ours, where the butterfly effect can easily come into play.

But the definition of random is not "cannot be predicted." Random mean "without a definite cause" Somthing that is truly random just happens but could have happened diffrently. Are there truly random events? Is there anything that happens that does not have a cause? When we flip a coin, a classic "random" event, we do not know what side will land up. But the movement of the coin is regulated by specific factor, the force of the flip, the weight of the coin, the humidity of the air. With all the relevant data it is possible to completly describe the movement of the coin. The butterfly effect only applies to predictability. All events are predictable if all causes are known. The problem is that we as humans are finite and cannot know all causes. But just because we do not know a cause does not mean it does not exist.

Now it is true that at the quantum level there are events that seem to be random. The location of electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom. But electrons do follow certain levels of probability. When considered en mass these probable actions approach certainty to an infinity small level. Groupings of atoms the size of objects in our world behave with such certainty that they are eminetly predictable. So rather than quantum effects propagating through the butterfly effect to effect events on a macroscopic level they are instead crushed under the weight of probable actions.

Understanding randomness in its correct sense can we say that there is any random event above the molecular level? I do not think so.

 

[gmelrod]

hmm. is it possible to be saved, then to have faith? For example.

Let's say someone of zero faith driven by angst, despair and shame, attempts suicide by drowning in a fast moving river. s/he sincerely believes in and looks forward to nothing but oblivion. However miraculously, s/he is yanked from the precipice at the last moment. Later, s/he tells friends that it all had something to do with a tree, a rock, the moon, a revelation of overwhelming unconditional love, something s/he had never experienced, along with the certain knowledge that a "person" of supernatural origin was communicating or behind it all or, as s/he put it "it knew everything about me, but loved me anyway".

Assuming this person is non-delusional what are we to think? After this experience, s/he begins a 10 yr exploration of every known religious personage "to find out who that was at the river". having rejected Christianity for its hypocrisy and judgmentalism which, s/he believes was the root cause of all the bad feelings leading to suicide, Jesus is not under consideration. Until....

one day, yet another "jesus freak" comes along pushing just a little too hard. "this is garbage" s/he says. "listen to this crap" and s/he starts reading the red words in the little new testament, out loud in a mocking sing-song voice.

suddenly s/he realizes: that's HIS voice! that's the one who Saved me! to this day s/he says "he saved me in every way possible years ago, i never doubted that. he was there all along, waiting for me to catch up. there was no question of faith, it was just a matter of being able to recognize the One i had faith in".

I agree with you here, though I would ush it even further. Is the important part to have faith in the identity of Jesus/God as the source of goodness and salvation. Or does a person who believes the power of unconditional love and makes the conscious free attempt to live their lives by that principle as a sign of their faith have a shot at salvation? I think since Jesus is the lable for a devine person who was also describe as a principle of love people who follow that love follow Jesus. It is a matter of Identity.

If John believes in the saving power of unconditional love
If Jesus defined himself as the embodyment of unconditional love
Then John belives in Jesus.

It is a vaild syllogism. I think it is also a true one.

 

[logician]

But the definition of random is not "cannot be predicted." Random mean "without a definite cause" Somthing that is truly random just happens but could have happened diffrently. Are there truly random events? Is there anything that happens that does not have a cause? When we flip a coin, a classic "random" event, we do not know what side will land up. But the movement of the coin is regulated by specific factor, the force of the flip, the weight of the coin, the humidity of the air. With all the relevant data it is possible to completly describe the movement of the coin. The butterfly effect only applies to predictability. All events are predictable if all causes are known. The problem is that we as humans are finite and cannot know all causes. But just because we do not know a cause does not mean it does not exist.

Now it is true that at the quantum level there are events that seem to be random. The location of electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom. But electrons do follow certain levels of probability. When considered en mass these probable actions approach certainty to an infinity small level. Groupings of atoms the size of objects in our world behave with such certainty that they are eminetly predictable. So rather than quantum effects propagating through the butterfly effect to effect events on a macroscopic level they are instead crushed under the weight of probable actions.

Understanding randomness in its correct sense can we say that there is any random event above the molecular level? I do not think so.

The problem with this it that to accurately model all outomes in the universe would require a model bigger than the universe itself, even modeling "simple" things like the weather is incredibly complex and cannot be done accurately past a week. So if we "theoretically" live in a world that can be predicted with some model, in practicality our world is random, and we can never predict what's going to happen in our lives with certainty into the future.

 

[gmelrod]

The problem with this it that to accurately model all outomes in the universe would require a model bigger than the universe itself, even modeling "simple" things like the weather is incredibly complex and cannot be done accurately past a week. So if we "theoretically" live in a world that can be predicted with some model, in practicality our world is random, and we can never predict what's going to happen in our lives with certainty into the future.

It is true that absolute prediction is not practicly possible and that events in the world seem to be random but this does not refute the idea that events which appear random have definite causes. You are using random to mean events that cannot be predicted but then argue that becuase we cannot predict them they have no causes. That simply does not follow.

 

[CRB]

Let us say that a random event is an outcome that could not be predicted with certainty. With that assumption, our whole lives, the weather, etc. etc. are essentially random, as none of us can predict with certainty what will happen to us tommorrow, or even 5 minutes into the future. WHen you think about it, the chances of you being born depended upon your father meeting your mother, their parents meeting, and on back in time - all random events that could easily have been altered by a myriad of cirumstances - some big(deaths, disease) and some trivial(missed catching a train). Predestination cannot be possible in such a world as ours, where the butterfly effect can easily come into play.

The question is not whether we now could make the prediciton but whether the events themselves are definable as being by nature predictable. It's an ontological question of the greatest seriousness.

 

[Willamena]

The question is not whether we now could make the prediciton but whether the events themselves are definable as being by nature predictable. It's an ontological question of the greatest seriousness.

Or the greatest silliness, depending on how you look at it.

 

[Sonic247]

The important thing to remember is that either way it doesn't take away from the resoponsibilty of what we are doing now. Because you can't just go out to a strip club and say "oh well there was no way to avoid it." This isn't a subject worth spending too much time time on- you can be up all night. (I personally think he does know what will happen.)

 

[logician]

It is true that absolute prediction is not practicly possible and that events in the world seem to be random but this does not refute the idea that events which appear random have definite causes. You are using random to mean events that cannot be predicted but then argue that becuase we cannot predict them they have no causes. That simply does not follow.

Nowhere did I say events have no causes, it's just that predicting when and where these causes will occur cannot be done with certainty.