If that’s true, Lib, how do you reconcile that with free will?
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Even if we assume that randomness does not exist, Tracer’s argument shows that small unavoidable uncertainty in the measurement of initial conditions will, given time, lead to totally unpredictable results. (Note that this uncertainty is not related to the uncertainty principle). So determinism yields behavior that cannot be distinguished from randomness.
OTOH, random behavior of,say, gas molecules in a soap bubble always makes the bubble a sphere. So randomness can yield determinism.
In QM, however, there is a fundamental uncertainty. Bell’s theorem shows that if there are “hidden variables” (AKA objective reality) then there is information transmitted faster than light. FTL information transfer violates local causality. Objective reality and local causality have, until QM, always been assumed in physics. Neither principle can be given up lightly. But one must be denied. Objective reality was sacrificed so that local causality could be kept. The randomness in QM is essential to the theory.
Virtually yours,
DrMatrix
Wally:
Reconciliation implies a conflict. What conflict do you see?
The conflict between an all-knowing being and the concept of free will.
I have never been able to understand how both ideas can be true at the same time.
You can’t beat a theist that easy Wally. They can both be true at the same time because God is omnipotent and he can make them so! If you don’t understand how, its because God transcends logic, along with space-time and everything else that exists! In other words, “everything I say about god is right until the end of time amen”.
Wasn’t it Einstein who didn’t want to believe QM because “God doesn’t play dice with the Universe” or something along those lines. If I were God I might enjoy playing dice, what else is there to do?
Genesis seems to imply that God lives at the intersection of Chaos and Order.
Wally:
I still don’t get it. How does His knowing what you did affect what you will decide?
God cannot do anything that is logically impossible, i.e., contradictory. For a fuller discussion of this, see Evidence for God.
frolix8:
That’s a pretty thought.
frolix8 wrote:
In other words, God lives nowhere?
(Sheesh. Even a beginning Dungeons & Dragons player knows that “lawful” and “chaotic” are opposite alignments.)
Here we go again, assigning attributes to an omnipotent being.
If God knows what I’m going to decide, then the decision has been made. I can do nothing but make that decision and no other.
If God can see the future, then the future exists. If the future exists, where is the free will? It’s a done thing.
This is truly a paradox, and no amount of mental contortionism will sweep it under the rug.
If I could get around this, it would certainly cause me to question my agnostic stance.
It’s my humble opinion that those who do not see a logical conflict here have not examined it with a critical eye.
Instead of trying to resolve this conundrum, we try to repair it by saying God does this, He can’t do that, and He operates this way.
And when we come to a wall, there’s always, “God works in mysterious ways.”
Lib, please don’t assume that because I didn’t post in the Evidence for God thread, I didn’t read it.
And your implication that the answer lies in that thread is simply ludicrous,
frolix8 wondered:
To which his good friend Niels Bohr supposedly replied “Albert! Stop telling God what to do!”
Wally:
It looks like this discussion is spread out over three different threads now: here, “Evidence for God”, and “Is God omniscient, or do you have free will”.
From that thread: “What is logically impossible are contradictions — It is easy to misinterpret this as some kind of limitation on God, particularly if you reverse the cause and say that God cannot do so-and-so because it is a contradiction, when in fact, so-and-so is a contradiction because it contradicts the nature of God. God is not limited because contradictions don’t exist; but rather, contradictions don’t exist because God doesn’t allow them.”
That comment both follows and precedes other comments on the same topic. You might find the argument made to be ludicrous, but saying that the argument isn’t there is, well, ludicrous.
[sigh]
It isn’t (just) that He knows what you are going to decide, but rather, that He knows what you have already decided. He is an eternal Being, and for Him, this is all finished. Now, if He imposed His will on you, then you could say that you have no choices, but in matters concerning your moral choices, your will trumps His.
Talk about assigning attributes to an omnipotent being! You speak of God seeing the future in the manner that a fortune teller sees it — a sort of special insight into what might otherwise be hidden to Him. The future is finished. It’s over. All events in space-time, from the beginning, through the entire evolution, to the last remnant of kinetic energy — all of that happened in the same instant in the context of God’s eternity.
That is true only if you think God is made of hydrogen, i.e., is temporal.
You need only open your mind a bit more to see it, Wally. Think of it as a thought experiment. Look at the context of the alleged paradox. You’ve done the thought experiments, I’m sure, where you try to think how the Flatlanders see the introduction of a sphere into their world as nothing more than a circle which only presents its outside, and not its inside, to them. Go the other way with it now. Think how a hyperdimensional being sees all dimensions, including time, at once, inside and out.
God doesn’t know the decisions you make because He can see the future, but rather because He can see the past — when you made them. All of it occurred, from His perspective, instantaneously.
You know that I have never done that. Yes, He works in mysterious ways, but mysteries are meant to be solved. And this one is solved fairly easily with just a bit of reasonable imagination.
It simply is not solved at all, Lib. It doesn’t matter how God is aware of all of space-time, he is. He chooses to create a universe for which he already knows the outcome - since he can create it any way he chooses he dictates the entire path that universe will follow. All that you are is created by Him as He sees fit - how can it be otherwise?
Cooper, you’re missing the point here, IMHO. You have freedom to choose what you choose. What Cooper ends up wanting to do is what Cooper opts to do (taking into account rational judgment that may postpone or omit satisfaction of a want for legal, moral, or prudential reasons – “wanting to do” in the integrated-ego sense, not in the id sense). God notes that choice, freely made, in his master plan, and works from it. To assert otherwise is to suggest that, since I can post what I choose (within prudential limits; I ought not, tho I can, make a blatant attack on Glitch, ask the “gry” question, etc.), David B., Ed, Jenny, et al. have no control over the board.
That’s the point I’ve been making in all the other threads where this is being discussed. The will of the God we worship is that you believe in Him. The fact that you don’t believe in Him is proof enough that your will trumps His.
Can it be that there is a confusion between knowledge and volition?
No Lib, I don’t believe in God because he doesn’t exist. Its not proof of anything. You’re putting the cart before the horse.
Its obvious you refuse to understand why someone cannot create themself, and we really have hijacked this thread anyway, so I suggest we stop. At least here.
To get back on topic: Is there a difference between random and chaotic?
Tracer - Can you give me a reference for those arguments of Godel’s you mentioned? That sounds really interesting.
Wally - if God is outside of time, ‘going to’, ‘will make’, etc. are meaningless, as applied to God. Given this assumption, God knows every decision we make when we make it, since he’s at all times at once.
Hence no implication of predestination, as I interpret it. (Forgot the punch line.)
Buses stop at bus stations; trains stop at train stations.
There’s a work station on my desk.