Lovers of Logic and Judgers of Debate, Help me out!

Great Debates
1

Okay. I’m singularly failing to explain something to someone, and so I need some help. Keeping in mind Cromwell’s plea, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you might be mistaken,” I freely admit I may have the wrong end of the stick here, but I don’t think I do.

This is an offshoot of a thread here. Don’t panic! This is not a theology debate! It is purely a question of logic.

For those who do not wish to wade through the thread (and, really, who would?), here is the question:

An omnipotent being (let’s call her, oh, the great and powerful Betty) creates only people who believe in her. No other people are created, because the GAPB knows who will believe and who won’t, and she only creates believers. Not surprisingly, those people all “choose” to believe in the GAPB.

I have endeavored to explain, ad nauseam, why people created to believe in the GAPB, and for whom such believe is a prerequisite for their existence, do not really “choose” to believe in her. Why not?

  1. Because true choice implies at least two options, either of which may be picked by the chooser.

  2. But if your very existence is premised on doing A and not B, then you don’t have a choice about doing A, because you could never do B, because if you did B you wouldn’t exist in the first place.

  3. Which of course takes us back to #1, because if you can never under any conceivable circumstances do one of the two options, then you definitionally do not have “choice.”

In response to this, NIGHTIME asserts that there is no difference between these two:

A. A world in which Person 1 (Xavier) chooses to do A (believe),a nd Person 2 (Yolanda) chooses not to do A, and both exist, and

B. A world in which Xavier “chooses” to do A (because only believers exist), and Yolanda just doesn’t exist.

The flaw there, of course, is that it ignores the very part that is absolutely crucial – the qualifier that in World A, the GAPB does not “pre-screen” for belief, so to speak, and both believers and nonbelievers exist, and one could choose to be either, while in World B, only believers exist in the first place, so one could not ever be other than a believer. No, NIGHTIME insists these two worlds are “exactly the same.” Why, you ask? Don’t ask me why. How the hell should I know? Go review the thread, and if you can figure out why, come back and explain it to me.

Because I refuse to see the brilliance of NIGHTIME’s position and concede the idiocy of my own, I am now being accused of “adandoning logic and reason.”

Now, I freely admit I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But the point under dispute doesn’t even seem that complex to me. And yet I apparently lack the language skills to make myself understood. So I appeal to you, ye Great Debaters: Please make a ruling regarding which of us is wrong, and take a shot at explaining to the wrong party, be it NIGHTIME or me, why we are wrong. If it ends up that it’s me, I promise to humbly take my spanking and thank you for it.

Thank you for your time.

2

Jodi, you have fought well, my child. Now it is time for you to rest.

I’ve had a run-in with nighttime before, and he/she came across as a poor and deeply annoying debater, and a lousy logician. (Course, I could just be annoyed by the fact that he/she simply disappeared after I had proved my point, without a “ahh, I see. My bad.” Nah, I’m sticking with poor debater/lousy logician. :D)

I’ve been following this debate - well actually the two different debates going on in the same thread, and you won both of them quite a ways back. The fact that nighttime refuses to concede doesn’t mean you are wrong. Actually, it is really strong evidence that you are right.

Sua

3

I have been in Nighttime’s place in this debate before at least once, with Libertarian, and I think with you before as well, Jodi. I made similar insistences regarding choice and causality. Having seen it from outside, though, I don’t think there’s any doubt that you are correct in that thread.

4

If it is possible to not believe in the GAPB, than logically one or more of the following must be TRUE:

-GAPB DID NOT create everyone pre-disposed to believe in her.
-GAPD DID create everyone pre-disposed to believe in her AND she allowed them the ability to choose not to believe
-There is no GAPB

The following must be FALSE:
-GAPB created everyone pre-disposed to believe in her and did not give them the ability to change their belief.

5

Hey, Jodi. I’m not an expert on logic, and have not been following that particular thread, but it seems pretty obvious to me that the two worlds are quite different in that in world B there is no possibility of Yolanda existing. Your “pre-screening.”

IIRC, the technical term for not recognizing such a distinction is committing the fallacy of boogerheadedness.

6

I think Nightime imagines that he can “choose” to travel faster than light, or to chill his beer below 0 Kelvin. He just doesn’t happen to “choose” to do so.

There is no “choice” if you can only do one thing (and not not do that thing). There is no “free will” to make choices without some choice to be made.

7

ISTM that Nighttime is arguing that predestination does not negate free will, because predestination follows logically from the premise of an omnipresent omniscient creator. N’s thesis is that, since (as (s)he believes) it is not impossible for God to have created only those predestined to ultimately believe while at the same time assuring their free will, then it must not be free will which explains why not all people are Christians, but some other, more valuable aspect of mortal existence.

Your argument, I think, is that if God decided to create only those predestined to ultimately believe (or uncreate the ultimate nonbelievers), then that would constitute compulsion through universal circumstance, which would be a denial of free will. And therefore, that the possible ultimate existence of non-believers is a necessary consequence of free will. (Please forgive me if I’ve stated that inaccurately, Jodi; I’m just trying to understand your argument.)

Honestly, I can’t see any major flaws in either point of view; rather I see a fundamental disagreement between two sound arguments. Nighttime’s p.o.v., I think, is more of a positive assertion, while yours seems to be based on a negative (compulsory non-existence of non-believers = compulsory belief), but they are equally well supported logically.

I’d call it a draw, I think, but then again, I may not have caught the “no difference between those worlds” comment. If that’s accurate, then consider it a win for you on points. :slight_smile:

8

I don’t want to get caught between you two, but…

I think this one is up to Betty and whether or not you believe free will is possible. If you believe that free will could happen, then she could make a being that made a choice.

Think about what an omnipotent being that creates the universe, though. Betty has already decided all of your choices for you just by creating you in the world that you’re in. Betty knows that if you see the chocolate bar, you will eat it, and decides to put the chocolate bar there anyway. She doesn’t have to not create you to make sure you eat the chocolate bar. The instance of making only people that make one “choice” is trivial considering all of the other ways that an omnipotent creator would control us. Do we have a choice of whether or not we were born? Can we choose whether or not we’re significantly retarded? Can we choose whether or not we can teleport into other universes?

This is essentially just a free will/determinism debate. If you don’t believe in free will you are right, otherwise (assuming Betty has given free will) you are not.

9

I am reading everything, but only responding when I have questions (thus far). Thanks to everyone for their responses.

First, predesination obviously does negate free will. Here I am drawing an important distinction between foreknowledge – God, who knows all and sees all, knows what you, by the exercise of your free will, will choose to do, but does not make you do it – and predestination – God or fate setting out your path for you, leaving you no real choice but to follow it. If you are predestined to do something, you have no choice but to do it. If you could choose not to do it, it is not predestined that it will be done. You cannot escape your fate – if you believe in fate. Again, this is the important difference from merely knowing something will happen, and making it happen.

Second, predestination does not logically follow from an all-knowing, all-powerful Betty. Just because Betty can do something, doesn’t mean she has to do it. This, by the way, is an argument already hashed out at length in the other thread, if it interests you.

PERSPECTIVE, with respect, the question is not whether free will is possible. The question assumes that it is. The question is whether free will is possible when it is decided for you – before your birth (which is to say, predestined) – what you will do.

MSMITH, in my hypothetical, it is not possible to not believe in Betty. Could you recast your chain of reasoning in those terms? Because I’m having trouble parsing it out in its current form.

10

The first of those was directed at XENOPHON.

11

I’m not so sure it’s obvious. As perspective succinctly puts it, if TGAPB created everything, exists everwhere and everywhen, then the fact that she’s all powerful is irrelevant; she’s already decided all of your choices simply by placing you within her creation.

This is why I see your debate with Nighttime as a fundamental but insoluble disagreement. N’s GAPBeing “sees” everything as already happened at the moment of creation of that everything. J’s GAPBetty creates and then “sees” everything.

Difference of opinion.

12

That is well put, xenophon41. It seems we have to agree on what constitutes a “choice” before we can agree on whether choices are possible.

Can you choose to travel faster than the speed of light? (I would like to see you demonstrate it :).)

Can we agree that in a universe whose physical laws do not permit faster than light travel, noone can choose to travel faster than light?

What if we are instead in a universe without such a prohibition, but the Great and Powerful Betty has merely created people who will never make the choice to travel faster than light.

In both universes, it is not possible for anyone (save perhaps Betty) to travel faster than light. How then are we to distinguish the universes?

13

Well, if you put it that way, you’ve eliminated free will from the outset, things are “decided for you”.

Let’s try this scenario though:

  1. Betty creates people with free will
  2. all of these people choose to believe in Betty
    There you have it plain and simple, they chose to believe in Betty. Don’t get hung up on what (or who) Betty didn’t create, that was always her choice not matter what.

If Betty made people that didn’t believe in her, how would that magically give free will to those who did?

14

Yeah, but you couldn’t see me cuz I’d be moving to fast. :wink:

15

XENO –

Why does that follow? Why does knowing what you will do equate to making you do it? And even if that does follow, doesn’t it lead one to conclude that no free will exists, ever, under any circumstances? Recall that NIGHTIME is arguing that even if one is predestined to do a thing, one still has free will. You appear to be arguing that none of us predestined or not, ever have free will.

But N’s Betty does more than merely see the situation (foreknowledge); she then orders the situation so that only those doing one thing (and not the other) exist (predestination). In other words, from a starting point of total potential, Betty chooses to create only believers. Those believers have no choice but to believe. Your argument, extended, appears to be that none of us have any choice but to do what God has already “seen” us doing, and that may be philosophically correct if the fatalism argument is taken to its logical conclusion. But it doesn’t support NIGHTIME’s position, which is the opposite – i.e., free will still exists to choose B over A, even if Betty creates only people who will choose A.

16

PERSPECTIVE –

Okay.

The may choose to believe or not to believe.

They have exercised their free will to do so. This does not implicate the question of whether they have free will; you have indicated that they do.

The question is not whether Betty has choice – she’s the Great And Powerful Betty! Of course she does! The question is whether the people she creates have choice. You have posited in your hypothetical that they do – removing entirely the question of whether or not they do. They do. We know they do. You said so. You left out the crucial (free-will-removing) point that Betty is not conditioning anyone’s existence on believing.

Wait a minute – do the believers have free will, or not? Because you just said the believers have it, and now you’re saying they don’t.

17

Okay, NEWTON, I think I see your point, and XENO’s (though, frankly, I still don’t see NIGHTIME’s). This is cross-posted from the other thread:

I see your point, DAVID, and it is the same as NEWTON made in the linked thread here. It is also, I think, what XENO is getting at (also in that thread), which I responded to as theorizing no choice at all.

I think clearly we could think we have free will but actually not have it: through predestination. NIGHTIME’s universe where everyone “chooses” to believe (except that they’re not choosing, of course, because they’re built to do it) would be a perfect example of people thinking they had free will but really not. Similarly, if you have an overwhelming desire to stay home, which you don’t identify as agraphobia, you might think you merely “choose” to stay home. But do you? And by extension, that does beg the question of how, under a universe where everything, past and present, is assumably known, could free will ever exist? And perhaps the answer is that it doesn’t. Not even when it seems that it does.

But that, in turn, defies everything we know about conscious volition on a human scale. So perhaps the answer is to recognize that “free will” as a concept may only be discussed in a rational world, where time spools out in a line and it is not possible to know everything at once? Because, really, how can we speak about making a “choice” if we can’t speak of the time before the choice was made (potential) and after the choice was made (decision)?

18

Jodi:

I see you have added “because only believers exist.” Why would Xavier make the decision for a different reason in B than in A? If Xavier A believes in god because he thinks he saw a miracle then Xavier B believes in god because he thinks he saw a miracle. There is no reason to decide that they had different reasons, because they are the same person.

If this is actually what you thought I said, and you are not just trying to make me look crazy, then I am sorry I wasn’t more clear. Obviously the worlds are different. I said that Person A in world 1 is no different than Person A in world 2. I asked you to explain what was different about them, and instead of answering you said that one was only created because they would eventually believe. How do you know both weren’t created because they would eventually believe? And what does that have to do with the actual person? You still haven’t explained the difference between the two Person A’s. There was no need to make Person A in world 2 predisposed to anything, because their choices are already known.

I never said the worlds were not different. I said that the people on each world had free will. Because each person in world B has an EXACT duplicate in world A. Why would you say that the world A version has free will, but his world B duplicate does not?

Exactly. A lot of what we do in our current world is based on the details of our creation. We could be extremely smart, or not, we could be born into a rich family, or not. There are countless things that affect our choices. Therefore, IMO, the non-existence of nonbelievers is insignificant in comparison to all these other things, and therefore does not constitute compulsion. Also, remember that any given time there are in fact nonbelievers who have not yet found god. That makes the difference in the worlds even more insignificant, to the extent that I cannot imagine calling it compulsion. However, if you believe that difference does constitute compulsion, we will just have to agree to disagree.

To reiterate: the only difference in the worlds is that one does not contain people who will always be nonbelievers. People who will eventually believe are unchanged. There is no difference in the people, but yes, the worlds are different. I believe it is a comparatively insignificant difference, not enough to constitute compulsion.

Very well put. I believe god knows all before it is even created. I see now that if god must first create something, and then see everything about it, then my argument probably fails.

Just in case anybody doesn’t want to check the other thread, here is my actual argument:

“Think about this situation from god’s point of view. He is in the future, and sees which people choose to believe in him, and which people do not. We all agree they made those choices on their own. Now he gathers all the people who chose not to believe in him, and makes them cease to exist. Do the other people retroactively lose their free will? What if he makes them never have existed? Again, do the rest of the people retroactively lose their free will? Now, why did god actually have to make these people in the first place? Wouldn’t he already know that they would not believe in him? And what does any of this have to do with the individual free will of the people who did choose to believe in him?”

19

—1. Because true choice implies at least two options, either of which may be picked by the chooser.—

This is a highly confusing expression: “true” choice.

Let’s say that I am given the option of either A or B. I choose A, because it is my nature to choose A. I fail to see why this is not still a “true choice” in every meaningful sense of the word. Nothing about the situation presented to me forced me to choose A or B. A different person with a different disposition could have chosen B.

I don’t see what sense it makes to say that I could not have chosen B, and thus did not have a free choice. If so, what is meant by “choice”? What the heck is going on that makes choices? Vauge references to a thing called “Free Will” will not suffice to resolve the matter.
Something in my particular nature (as opposed to the nature of another person) determined whether I chose A or B: if not how could it rightly be called “my” choice in the first place? What decided the matter if not my particular inclinations? I was free (not compelled by anything external to myself) to choose B if I wanted. But it was not in me to want it.
As “I” is being used as shorthand for a PARTICULAR person with a particular nature and inclinations, insofar as I can rightly be said to have contributed to the choicemaking, it could well be said that “I” is shorthand for “a being who, when given a choice between A and B, will choose A.”

When you posit that “Betty creates people with free will” the only meaningful part of that sentance I can extract is “Betty creates people.” Saying that they also have “free will” tells me nothing more about the nature of the people than not stating it, because I have no idea what the implications of “free will” could possibly be. Indeed, it does not tell me anything about what SORT of people Betty has created. When they all choose to believe in Betty, I will, whether they were said to have free will or not, still state simply that they must have all been the sort of people who, given the choice, would have chosen to believe in Betty. Since Betty created them, and, I’m assuming either created every aspect of them or left some aspects up to chance, and the chances all came down in the lucky way. Either way, Betty, knowing every element of their being, shouldn’t be at all surprised that they all choose to believe.

20

ahem

http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/foldop/foldoc.cgi?compatibilism