This is wrong.Predeterminism would be not only you affixing a bomb to a shiny red button but you pushing the button at this time, blowing yourself up!If God KNEW that you would do this, your illusions of having a choice as to whether to push tyhe button would not matter.You would push it and could have no actual choice in the matter.It was decided long before you were ever born…long before your SPECIES was ever “created”.
THAT is the paradox.I am not sure how much simpler I can make this but trust me, you have not yet uinderstood.
The only way we can be actually making ANY choices is if our choices are determined, as well as the resulting chain of casueality at the time the choice is made.If the knowledge of our choices adn the results are already known some 25 billion years prio then the actions and choices themselves are already “done” before we ever get to that point where we think we are making a decision.
This is wrong.Predeterminism would be not only you affixing a bomb to a shiny red button but you pushing the button at this time, blowing yourself up!If God KNEW that you would do this, your illusions of having a choice as to whether to push the button would not matter.You would push it and could have no actual choice in the matter.It was decided long before you were ever born…long before your SPECIES was ever “created”.
THAT is the paradox.I am not sure how much simpler I can make this but trust me, you have not yet uinderstood.
The only way we can be actually making ANY choices is if our choices are determined, as well as the resulting chain of casueality at the time the choice is made.If the knowledge of our choices and the results are already known some 25 billion years prio then the actions and choices themselves are already “done” before we ever get to that point where we think we are making a decision.
You are getting way ahead of the class.The purpose of this thread is to point out a specific paradox that exists for a specific type of theist.Chiefly Abrahamic religionists who hold humanity accountable for evil’s existence because of their “free will” adn at the same time say that God, who interacts with adn is part of THIS universe and OUR reality knows ALL including every outcome of every action and every event to happen just as he knows events which have come to pass.
Your analogy with ‘Sim City’ is wrong as well.The playing pieces in Sim city do not make any decisions either.They are not alive.If you are saying we are all just pawns in God’s game and nothing more then fine(why would he need us to love or worship him then though?)…you still cannot hold us pawns accountable for “evil” via free will we could not have and my point remains.
The paradox still stands though:If God KNOWS that I will step off a curb and be hit by a truck exactly 5 minutes from now now then I cannot choose to not walk outside or otherwise avoid walking where I might be hit by the truck without thwarting the omniscience of God.Either he KNOWS this will happen adn it will OR the choices adn outcomes of those choices are not known until they are made and I am accountable for my decisions.
No.I think you have me mixed with someone else.I pretty much stick to the original Huxlian definition.
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You misunderstand me.It is pointless in the sense that worrying about the existence of something which can have no more impact on us than if it did not exist at all is rather pointless.If a known trait of the* Lurking Grue* is that it cannot live in a universe with our physical constraints, then it is somewhat pointless to worry about whether it is hungry for human flesh right now.
This is wrong.Atheism is no more a religion than bald is a hair color.If atheism is a religion then so are the following:
“I do not believe my mother is a vampire!”=religion
“I do not believe that John Edward is a psychic” = religion
“I do not believe that George Carlin is a god”= religion.
and so on…you will end up with millions of different religions for each individual and succede only in making “religion” a rather nebulous and undefinable term.
If he wants for something then this means he lacks something.If he lacks something then he is incomplete and if he is bound by a human constraint such as the need for human love/adoration then he is hardly perfect.
As a side note about worship:Any being deserving of being worshipped would be insulted by such behavior and to worship a being which does NOT deserve such demeans US.
Sorry but you are still trying to create a paradox that does not exist by your statement that knowing the future means there is no choice/free will. God could know the future events to happen and still allow them to happen billions of years ago. By being all knowing, He knows that when he created the universe long ago, and giving the creatures He creates free will, eventually in 2003 I will write this response. This does not take away my free will, it only re-enforces that He knows the future choices that will be made. He also knows that if He steps into this world at a certain point in time, then certain things will happen in the future.
This leads to your point about evil in the world being a creation of free will. Technically it is a creation of God, as I think you’re trying to point out, because He would know that giving us free will would bring about evil. This may merely be a consequence he foresaw and did nothing to chance. He may want to have evil in the world to give our decisions meaning. If everything was good and perfect, then free will would be meaningless since the result of the choices made would be good and perfect.
You are not understanding the paradox.Think about this real hard for a few seconds…if god KNOWS you will do THIS at THIS TIME then you could not have chosen to do THAT without thwarting God’s omniscience.Regardless of whether you had the illusion of free will or not, the point remains that you could not have decided to do anything other than what God foresaw.The larger issue here that some seem to be ignoring ois that God HIMSELF could not have EVER made a decision of ANY KIND!If he foresaw humans doing anything then there could never have been a point where he was deciding whether to create humans or not!Determinsim invalidate’s even God’s free will!
No, you are creating a logical rule that does not necessarily exist. Knowing someone’s decision before it’s made does negate the freedom of that decision, it is just a fact of knowledge of the predetermined outcome. If I allows free will to these lesser beings, then … will happen. It’s just like knowing that if I put a mouse in cage with a hungry snake that eats mice, the mouse will be eaten by the snake. My knowing the outcome of the decision does not negate my ability to make the decision.
Also, for God to truly be omnipotent, He cannot be limited to our logical constraints. I know that you have stated this cannot be because God being in our 3D world means He’s limited to our 3D laws, but your contradict yourself. In your Flatworld example of a sphere basing through a 2D world, the sphere is seen as a circle, thus interacting with the 2D world. But the sphere leaves the 2D world and still exists in its 3D world the whole time, thus not being limited to only be a circle. If God exists in a higher dimensional world, then this example leads to Him being able to pass into our 3D world, interact (being viewed as a 3D being) and leave, thus never being limited to our 3D logical constraints.
No.FOr you to be OMNISCIENT in the “snake analogy” you would have to forsee not only what would happen IF you did something(i.e. feed the mouse to the snake) but whether you did in fact feed the snake to begin with.If you saw the snake chomping down on the very mice you had in your hand, and this was indisputable knowledge on your part then you could not be making a decision about whetehr to feed the mouse to the snake or not.You either KNOW that you have done this in the future or you are able to make a decision which thwarts this omniscience.
Do you see now?You are not looking at the whole picture!It is not a matter of God being able to see what would happen IF he did this or that, it is a matter of him KNOWING what will happen…PERIOD!IF he sees human ancestors coming down from trees and walking erect adn eventually creating powerful tools and mechanisms, thenhe cannot have ever had the oppurtunity to “decide” whether to create humans or not.
Even if his omniscience was somehow limited to knowing what could happen IF he did this or that, it would still invalidate humanity’s free will.He creates humans with the full knowledge that they will do all of THIS, then we cannot decide to do otherwise without thwarting his onmniscience.
Ah but when the sphere passes through 2D world he is not a sphere!He is a circle and even if he were to tell other shapes he was a sphere, it would make no sense to them and they would recognise him only as a circle that has gone mad. Likewise, God passing through our reality would appear as just another wave of energy or an electrical storm or whatever but it would leave no supernatural impression on us.For all intents and purposes he would still not exist.
Wrong. It’s not a matter of us changing our decisions after being created. It’s that by being created with free will, He knows what decisions will be made! With the snake analogy, consider the mouse free will. If I give the snake the mouse, I know what he’ll decide to do with it. The same is with God: if He gives the beings he’s creating free will, He knows what the outcome will be – it doesn’t change our freedom to choose by having knowledge of the choice. If He wanted us to choose differently, He could change something about His creation to make it so, but He would know this at the beginning of the creation.
Actually you missed the point here. The sphere does not need to be a sphere in the 2D world, just not be limited to the rules of the 2D world. This is only proving that God does not necessarily need to be limited to the rules of the 2D world in order to interact with it. Just because in the 2D world the sphere is perceived as a circle, it does not negate that the sphere is a sphere, it only shows the 2D perspective of it. So the sphere can continue to have all of the freedom of being 3D without the constraints of the 2D logic.
Similarly, God can exist outside our 3D world with his possible extra-dimensional freedoms, but is only 3D during interactions with it. Thereby, God could have created the 3D universe with his powers and “stand” outside and perceive the consequences over time of this creation.
On the side, how do you know how an extra-dimensional being would appear to us?? Maybe you actually do know more than you’re letting on.
This point does not matter either way since He doesn’t need to leave a supernatural impression on us to exist. We’re not arguing Bible or other religious testimony of visions of God here. We’re arguing on whether or not such a being could actually exist, or the existence of free will.
’Skeptic, could you provide any cites that demonstrate that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic (which is what I assume you mean by Abrahamic) concept of God requires that God be constrained by the logic and physics of our universe?
It seems like a lot of the posters here are quite comfortable with the idea of a God who is not so limited, and I have to admit that I fall into their camp, and I consider myself a Christian. I don’t see how God could have created the universe from within the universe, so I have no problem with explaining away the paradox you’re concerned with by saying that the rules you’re relying on simply don’t apply that way to God.
Then he could not have ever made the decision to create US if he KNEW we would be making decisions.We would have to be a foregone conclusion for him to know what decisons we were going to make.I will come back to this below to better clarify.
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Yes it DOES.We cannot CHOOSE to do somethine that is different than what God KNOWS we are going to do, unless we are able to thwart his omniscience.Equating the mouse with free will in not analogous because you are getting ahead of things here.
Picture God sitting around at the dawn of time or even before that, in any case long before he decides to create humans.Somehow the future makes itself known to him and it is revealed that humans will do all of this stuff.This “stuff” is KNOWLEDGE…CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE to God.We are not talking about POTENTIAL, but CERTAINTY here(otherwise the whole discussion is moot).If it is certain that humans will do this when presented with these options, GOD himself copuld not ever have made a decision to create humans becuse if he decides NOT to create humans then that means he did NOT have CERTAIN knowledge that we would do this or that and certainly not that he would create humans.If he is having to think about what he wants to do then he does not KNOW what is going to be done and if he makes a decision and KNOWS what will result of that decision then we cannot make further decisions to result in different outcomes than he has foresaw without thwarting that knowledge!
Do you see now?That is why it is a pardox!
You are trying to avoid the paradox by jumping ahead to after he(and even WE) has already made decisions to his knowledeg of the results of descisions already made!
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Nope… sorry.This is still skipping ahead to post-decision making.No decision can be contemplated if knowledge of the outcome is already certain.To have POTENTIAL KNOWLEDGE of what may(or even what WILL) happen IF he does this or that is not that same as having CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE of what is going to happen.We ALL have potential knowledge.No divinity required.
I KNOW for a fact that if my mom decides to try and use a 3 and a quarter " floppy to transfer a 300 MB program from my PC to her PC, she will fail and IF she has decided that such a thing is even a feasible idea then she WILL be confused when the plan ultimately fails.
This does not make me omniscient.
If however I KNOW for an absolute fact that my mom IS going to do this at 3:33 pm on Tuesday in the second week, of May, in the year 2,004, then THAT would make me omniscient(if it indeed comes to pass).
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But if the denizens of 2D world have no reason to suspect that sphere is anything more than another circle, then they cannot say that spheres exist at all.
The agnostic atheist position is still the rational conclusion.
If Sphere DID infact do something which violated the physics of 2D world in a way that the only ratonal explanation was that “3d spheres exist adn are intereacting wiht out world!” then the “sphereists” would be correct and the “aspherists” would be in an untennable position.
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Then why call him God if he is indistinguishable from a madman or a gale force wind or whatever?
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And as soon as you cough up “God-world” or “God” in THIS world then you will have a leg to stand on.Until then, I rest my case.
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I don’t and never said I doid.Go back and re-read that post you were responding to here(pay special attention to the words “…or whatever”).
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He does if he wants US to know that he exists and is not just more ramblings of a madman or the whistling of the wind.
I have demonstrated that the God that I refernced in my OP could not or we could not have free will(neither could HE).
You are missing the point.“Wile E. Coyote” MAY exist(he cannot be disproven) in the Cartoon universe.We cannot make such an assertion and we do not have reason to say he DOES exist however(except as a fictional construct).
Determinism always did make the whole God thing seem a little off, once you actually understand what determinism means. I’m reluctantly a determinist. I don’t want to believe I have no free will, but I cannot deny that everything I am and do is caused.
If God knows before he creates you that you will chose to wear the red sweater instead of the green sweater on April 13, 1972 because of who you are and how you will be raised, and then he creates you, you do not have a choice about what sweater you are going to wear. You were created to wear a red sweater on April 13, 1972. If you wear the green sweater, God is fallible, because his awareness of everything, every cause in the chain that would lead you to pick the red sweater, was flawed. With an omniscient creator god, you do not have the option of choosing anything other than what he knew you would chose when he created you, ergo any free will you experience is all in your head.
This also holds for you choosing to reject Him when you’re 38, thus dooming yourself to Hell when you die in a car accident a few months later. He knew you’d do that when he created you. So if he created you to go to Hell and then sends you there like it’s your fault, he’s one twisted fella. That’s one of the many reasons I’m an atheist-leaning agnostic. An all knowing , all powerful God that sends people to Hell just doesn’t make any sense.