What causes people to choose what they choose?

[TagliatelliMonster]

My position is that there is a God and God is all-knowing, and God has known from the beginning of creation everything that will ever happen to humans. God does not exist in time as we measure it on Earth in a linear fashion, so from God's perspective everything that has ever happened and everything that is happening now and everything that will ever happen has already happened.

As I said, that doesn't make any sense to me.
In a world with free will, the future is by definition uncertain.
Throw in the random nature of genetic change as a factor of evolution and quantum-level uncertainty aspects and the result is that if you could turn back time and "reset" the world to any given point in history, that would mean that the outcome would not be the same.

If you reset the world to 200 million years ago for example, humans would not exist a second time.

If I look at my own ancestry for example... My dad's family came to Belgium in the 50s as refugees. When they were at the camp, before coming to Belgium, they had a couple of options. One of them was Canada. They came REALLY close to choosing Canada. In the end it became Belgium. I'll spare you the story as to why Belgium and not Canada as it is a loooooong story. In a nutshell, it's because the uncle ended up in London after a very long and very weird chain of events, littered with circumstantial factors and coincidences - many of which would likely not happen a second time if you can turn back time 50 years. A single one of those events turning out differently and the uncle doesn't end up in Londen - and then my dad goes to Canada and I never exist.

It's essentially the so-called butterfly effect.

There is no connection between what God knows and what happens in this world. God knows what will happen in this world because God has perfect foreknowledge but God's foreknowledge does not cause anything to happen in this world.

I didn't say anything about this god "causing" anything to happen.

For example, gravity is deterministic. While hard, it is very possible to predict exactly and with certainty the trajectory of a falling object. This is so only due to the deterministic nature of physics.
If gravity were the equivalent of "free will" however, and it could relatively randomly change directions or force or what have you, then such prediction becomes impossible.

It is not the one doing the calculation who is "causing" the trajectory of the falling object. It is the deterministic nature of gravity that allows that person to do the calculation. Big difference.

Whenever a series of events has an uncertainty factor (and in the case of free will, it most certainly does), then "knowing the future" with certainty is no longer within the realm of possibilities.

Now you can go and make up stuff about "being outside of time", but in reality that doesn't make any sense. It has no connection to reality at all. It's just your imagination trying to make sense of something nonsensical.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Well God would.

Im not saying this is logical or without issues..

No, it is not at all logical.

I can't imagine a highway cop thinking in such a way .. that God is driving all the vehicles, and individuals have no control over their vehicles .. no point in issuing licenses if that were true.

That's my complaint with philosophy .. it's arguments are often nonsensical.
..better just to say you don't believe that God can know what we will choose.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I don't know what is causing us to "choose" the one particular course of action that God has foreseen we will do..

If you don't know, you don't know
Surely, a logical person could at least make a guess?
Give us a list of possibilities?

 

[Trailblazer]

Yes I think you are right. But it is a good question to help someone see that if God is not forcing someone to act a certain way by knowing how they will act, then what does that mean.

Unfortunately, I cannot help atheists see what they cannot see, how we an have free will and an omniscient God. I think there is a mind block as some atheists have decided they know how this all works, even though they know nothing about God.

 

[Trailblazer]

As I said, that doesn't make any sense to me.
In a world with free will, the future is by definition uncertain.

Whenever a series of events has an uncertainty factor (and in the case of free will, it most certainly does), then "knowing the future" with certainty is no longer within the realm of possibilities.

That is correct. Nothing has happened until it actually happens and nobody can know what the future holds. Humans can predict certain things like weather and eclipses, but we cannot know what will happen to us individually or as a whole in the future. Moreover, no man is an island so everything that happens is connected to everything else. One man's actions can cause grief for innumerable people.

Now you can go and make up stuff about "being outside of time", but in reality that doesn't make any sense. It has no connection to reality at all. It's just your imagination trying to make sense of something nonsensical.

These are just religious beliefs and as such they can never be proven to be reality. They seem nonsensical to atheists because they do not believe God exists. However, it makes sense to believers in the omniscient God that God is outside of time and knows everything that has ever happened and everything that will ever happen in the future. However, God's perfect foreknowledge does not have any effect upon what humans choose to do in this world. How can foreknowledge of something cause something to happen? Astronomers know when in the future an eclipse is going to take place. Does that cause the eclipse to take place?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

That is correct. Nothing has happened until it actually happens and nobody can know what the future holds. Humans can predict certain things like weather and eclipses, but we cannot know what will happen to us individually or as a whole in the future. Moreover, no man is an island so everything that happens is connected to everything else. One man's actions can cause grief for innumerable people.

So you agree.... But you are contradicting your earlier statements.

These are just religious beliefs and as such they can never be proven to be reality.

Exactly. So really there's no reason to pay any attention to it.
I can make up an innumerable amount of claims that could be believed which are unfalsifiable. It's utterly meaningless.

They seem nonsensical to atheists because they do not believe God exists.

They seem nonsensical, because they are nonsensical. You just admitted such also, by saying that they are "just religious beliefs" with no evidence.

Again, I can make up an innumerable amount of such claims / beliefs and they would have the same merit.

"an undetectable dragon is going to eat you unless you wrap yourself in tinfoil".

That statement would seem non-sensical to you, right?
It has the same merit and basis as your religious claim of "god being outside of time" and whatnot.
Which is to say: no merit and no basis.

However, it makes sense to believers in the omniscient God that God is outside of time and knows everything that has ever happened and everything that will ever happen in the future.

Just like it "makes sense" to the undetectable dragon believer that you need to protect yourself from it by wrapping yourself in tinfoil.

The only reason it "makes sense", is because you start with the assumption that the belief is accurate. That is the only reason.

If I start from the assumption that undetectable unicorns exist and that they fart rainbows, it would also "make sense" to me to then say that such a unicorn farted when I observe a rainbow.

However, God's perfect foreknowledge does not have any effect upon what humans choose to do in this world.

We've been over this. How many times are you going to come back to this strawman?
I've already stated multiple times that in no way am I suggesting otherwise.

How can foreknowledge of something cause something to happen?

Ask someone who claims that.

Astronomers know when in the future an eclipse is going to take place.

Because of the deterministic forces of physics.
Now consider the part you seem to be missing: suppose the orbit of planets / moon were not a matter of deterministic forces like gravity, but rather the result of the free choice of movement from those planets. Do you think astronomers would still be able to predict an eclipse?

The answer, off course, is NO.

Because when you add "free will" as a factor, you can no longer know with certainty what the movement will be like in the future.

Does that cause the eclipse to take place?

No.

 

[Nimos]

No, it is not at all logical.

I can't imagine a highway cop thinking in such a way .. that God is driving all the vehicles, and individuals have no control over their vehicles .. no point in issuing licenses if that were true.

That's my complaint with philosophy .. it's arguments are often nonsensical.
..better just to say you don't believe that God can know what we will choose.

It's not especially illogical given the conditions that is claimed to be there. It might appear as such, because no rational explanation for these claims and how they would work have been given, as others have also pointed out.

So it doesn't really matter whether or not you can imagine a police officer thinking this way or not. Because we know that he ain't. But that is irrelevant in regards to trying to fit these claims into reality. Everyone can put forward claims, especially if these are contradictive and no requirement for explaining them is needed.

 

[ppp]

That is the same argument but moved on to another universe.

It's not a different universe. It is just what ever univer God happened to have created.

There is no contradiction if we realise that God is not forcing Bob to act in a certain way.

I don't know where you are getting "forcing" from. I neither said, nor implied force. Bob eats the sandwich that he was designed to eat. In the same what that he breathes the air he was designed to breathe, and walks on feet designed to walk. Bob is simply an object that happens to be self-aware.

All God is doing is observing which way he acts,,,,,,,,,,,,or will act.

Please don't be disingenuous.

The part that sets up a contradiction is wanting Bob to act in a different way than the way he would choose to act, so you want Bob to act in a way that goes against his free will....................and it is only then, you say, that he can show he has free will.

I expressed no wants. I simply stated the logical consequences of the universe being created by an omnipotent and omniscient being.

It is interesting to consider of course how anyone can, without being forced in any way, act against their free will.

No force required. In a universe created by an omnipotent and omniscient being there can logically be no freewill. It has nothing to do with God currently observing or forcing. This would still be the case even if God ceased to exist immediately having created the universe.

Basically it is a non sensical attempts to show God cannot be omniscient while we have free will.

At no point in this conversation have you made any logical arguments for your position. You have simply made a series of assertions.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If God always knew with 100% accuracy what the outcome, then the only possible outcome was the one that led to what God foresaw.

The problem is with the use of the word foresaw in the context of free will. You've got a group of critical thinkers saying that that position is incoherent. like the married bachelor, and another group saying that they don't see why it can't occur. One group believes that a deity can do these things anyway, because they have been taught that God is omniscient and granted man free will, therefore they can coexist, and that's the end of the analysis. The problem for the critical thinker when dealing with faith-based beliefs is that he's dealing with a faith-based confirmation bias that shows them only what they want to see. This is the basis of the idea that you can't make a man believe what he has an interest in not believing, or as Upton Sinclair famously quipped, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

To remove this inconsistency, just remove the word foresaw. Recast God as somebody who has seen the movie of our universe evolving over time and knows how it turns out, like the guy watching a recording of a sporting event that he saw live the day before. He can know with certainty what everybody will do only after it has happened.

Do you recall the other hypothetical in which a son in 1998 contacts his father in 1969 by ham radio, and tells his father, who is in a bar watching the 1969 World Series, how the game proceeds before it happens. The son is in the same position as the guy in my first hypothetical: his knowledge is not foreknowledge. It is post hoc.

But how about the son? Does he now have foreknowledge of the outcome of an event in which players have free will? This sounds like he knows what will happen before it happens in a world with free will. I say he doesn't. He doesn't know how the game he is watching in 1969 will turn out. The information he received pertained to a universe he no longer inhabits. In that universe, nobody had been told what he had been told. The universe now branches to one where once again, free will will occur at the time of action, and the game will unfold differently. Any other possibility is self-contradictory and riddled with time travel paradoxes.

Foreknowledge and free will simply can't exist together, like marriage and bachelorhood, because the two terms are mutually exclusive.

I understand that you will never accept this. No theist who believes by faith that they are both possible will. But you can probably also understand why the critical thinker who sees the incoherence of the proposition will never be moved by a believer simply repeating doctrine without reconciling the internal contradiction of the proposition.

My ability to think tangentially - to see it from God's perspective as well as from a human on earth perspective - is what allows me to understand this. Your inability to think tangentially is what has nailed you in the coffin.

Your ability is the ability to ignore the contradictions other see. One doesn't transcend reason by disregarding it just as one doesn't transcend any law by breaking it.

I've had multiple discussions with people who engage in what I call soft thinking, which is thinking that doesn't respect the rules of reason and evidence. It lacks the rigor of sound reasoning and strict empiricism, and allows for other kinds of "knowing." Of course, such people see the disciplined thinkers as too rigid. The words I've been told are myopic, materialist, and scientism - all meant in a derogatory sense. You're doing it here by framing soft thinking as tangential thinking that allows you to escape the coffin of reason.

But I ask them all as a matter of course these days just what insights this special way of knowing has gleaned for them, and why they consider them valuable, or why I might. If you guessed that they never do, you're right. Nobody can give me a reason why engaging in this soft thinking is an advantage. Sure, it will allow me to accept mutually incompatible ideas and ignore the law of contradiction, but where is the advantage there for those that do?

Is it that hard to understand that God knows what we freely choose?

It's easy to understand what the words mean. It's also not hard to understand what makes that concept incoherent if one is open-minded and proficient at reasoning. And it's easy to understand why two different standards for belief (epistemologies) generate different beliefs. Nor why each camp rejects the beliefs of the other.

 

[muhammad_isa]

So it doesn't really matter whether or not you can imagine a police officer thinking this way or not. Because we know that he ain't. But that is irrelevant in regards to trying to fit these claims into reality.

It's not irrelevant to me.
I find it nonsensical to even suggest such a thing.

Clearly, we do not have complete control over our lives .. but to suggest we could be mindless automatons .. that does not correlate with common-sense or our experience.

Of course, one could suggest that it is beyond common-sense to believe that it is possible to know what choices we will make in the future of our own free-will .. but that is another argument.
An argument that relies on our perception of time.

 

[Nimos]

It's not irrelevant to me.
I find it nonsensical to even suggest such a thing.

Clearly, we do not have complete control over our lives .. but to suggest we could be mindless automatons .. that does not correlate with common-sense or our experience.

Of course, one could suggest that it is beyond common-sense to believe that it is possible to know what choices we will make in the future of our own free-will .. but that is another argument.
An argument that relies on our perception of time.

A lot of things doesn't correlate to common sense, yet we still believe them and in many cases have been proven true. Common sense is not a good way to determine truth.

Hell, Heaven, demons, spirits, people rising from the dead, walking on water, turning water to wine etc. doesn't exactly scream common sense either. Not having free will, when even yourself believe that we are not fully free, seems to be the least issue here as I see it.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Not having free will, when even yourself believe that we are not fully free, seems to be the least issue here as I see it.

Really?
It makes sense to you that there might be 'a god' who is responsible for everything that billions of people do, and this god is just "playing with his train set"?

 

[Nimos]

Really?
It makes sense to you that there might be 'a god' who is responsible for everything that billions of people do, and this god is just "playing with his train set"?

It makes as much sense to me as those things I just mentioned. Hell for instance doesn't make sense to me, why would an all mighty God create such place just to punish "ants" basically? Why would he even care whether we behave one or the other way? Why does a God care whether a person is homosexual or not? Why would he care about the foreskin? and the list goes on and on, none of it makes sense to me.

Why did God create anything in the first place, who did he want to satisfy with such creation besides himself, when he were the only one around? And being all perfect and powerful, there ought not to be any reason to create anything, because then clearly he didn't think everything were perfect in the first place.

So people living their lives with an illusion of free will doesn't stand out as being anymore strange than any of these things.

 

[muhammad_isa]

It makes as much sense to me as those things I just mentioned...

In other words, it makes no sense to you either.

The 'other things' that you mention are not what we are discussing in this thread.
It is all about "What causes people to choose what they choose?"

Naturally, the free-will issue is not the only thing. There are also psychological issues, as well as experience and maturity .. a number of different things.

 

[Brian2]

They can come relax and clean mine anytime they want. It kills my knees kneeling down on the tiles to get the basket thingy in and out and I usually get a vertigo attack when I stand back up.

Be careful. I have often thought about falling in the pool with my wallet and phone etc
I wonder why that does not stop me from carrying them while I'm doing the pool work. (meditation)
It can be satisfying to start with a very dirty pool and end with a cleaner one,,,,,,,,,,, and I do like it when I figure out a faster way to do that.

 

[Brian2]

It's easy to understand what the words mean. It's also not hard to understand what makes that concept incoherent if one is open-minded and proficient at reasoning. And it's easy to understand why two different standards for belief (epistemologies) generate different beliefs. Nor why each camp rejects the beliefs of the other.

Do you think that God is forcing people to choose a certain thing by knowing what they will choose?

 

[Brian2]

I don't know where you are getting "forcing" from. I neither said, nor implied force. Bob eats the sandwich that he was designed to eat. In the same what that he breathes the air he was designed to breathe, and walks on feet designed to walk. Bob is simply an object that happens to be self-aware.

Bob is more than an object that happens to be self-aware. Bob is also a living object that possesses self determination or autonomy.

Please don't be disingenuous.

I was not disingenuous. God simply observes Bob, the self determining being, determine for himself.
God does not force anything, just observes something that He has known for a long time.

I expressed no wants. I simply stated the logical consequences of the universe being created by an omnipotent and omniscient being.

Yes, sorry, you did not express any wants.
What is the logical consequences however is that the omnipotent and omniscient God will know what will happen,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and if you add in that He will also know what His self determining creations will do, if He so chooses to bother, we have part of the logical consequences.

No force required. In a universe created by an omnipotent and omniscient being there can logically be no freewill. It has nothing to do with God currently observing or forcing. This would still be the case even if God ceased to exist immediately having created the universe.

And of course even if God did not create the universe, what is going to happen in the future is set and nobody can change it. That means that we cannot do anything but what the future will be.
That means that it is impossible for self determination, free will, to exist, even without the existence of a God.
Free will autonomy can be seen as a lack of cause/effect chains in the universe. Even if this universe had no cause/effect in it and God could see what was going to happen, that would mean (in your logic) that the autonomy (lack of cause/effect) has been taken away and the universe really had cause/effect all that time.
Do you see the logic? Maybe not but it is at least as logical as saying that God's knowing what we will do means that we have no free will.
No logic there at all, just an assertion based on God's knowing what will happen. But God's knowing does not change things, all it means is that God can know about them. It does not make an autonomous universe (lack of cause/effect) into a universe where there is cause/effect. It does not make an autonomous individual into someone without autonomy.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Do you think that God is forcing people to choose a certain thing by knowing what they will choose?

No. Apart from the fact that I am an atheist, if I suspend skepticism and accept provisionally that the future can be predicted perfectly, it does not mean that a deity is forcing choices. It means that there are no choices possible but one, which really isn't a choice if it's compelled.

And of course even if God did not create the universe, what is going to happen in the future is set and nobody can change it.

You don't know that. That's only true for a fully deterministic world. To say that the world is deterministic is to a deny that free will exists.

 

[Brian2]

No. Apart from the fact that I am an atheist, if I suspend skepticism and accept provisionally that the future can be predicted perfectly, it does not mean that a deity is forcing choices. It means that there are no choices possible but one, which really isn't a choice if it's compelled.

So you are saying that God's knowing what we will freely choose is actually compelling us to do it unfreely.

You don't know that. That's only true for a fully deterministic world. To say that the world is deterministic is to a deny that free will exists.

So you are saying that God could only know the future in a deterministic world and if He knew the future in a non deterministic world it would mean that the world was really deterministic.

Couldn't it mean that God is just somehow outside of time and can see what will happen in a non deterministic world just as He could see what someone with free will is going to choose?

 

[halbhh]

Just because God did not EXPECT some things that people did that does not mean God did not KNOW that they were going to do them.

God is all-knowing so that means God knows everything.

Unless God specifically choose to design nature and/or spirit (the latter of which may be 'super' natural and not subject to nature even) -- to be unpredictable. By His choice. By design, from the start.

Because He preferred it.

As seems pretty likely the case, in modern physics actually, where it looks more plausible to many physicists there may be no 'local realism' at all (what was in my view the leading realistic theory ,(deterministic) Bohmian/De Broglie Quantum Mechanical theory seems to have been shot down by experiment), and Bell Test experiments make true quantum randomness seem pretty likely, to date. In other words, we seem to be seeing a Nature that isn't deterministic, so that the future isn't set ahead of time, and is intrinsically unpredictable at least in part (so that even omniscience would not allow the future to be fully predicted....)