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Castaa
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 Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:31 pm Post subject: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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I'm never understood how the concepts of God (omniscience) and free individual choice aren't mutually exclusive. Even a compatiblist argument ends to an unsatisfactory conclusion for me because all events leading up a choice were coerced by a God of this definition.
Advanced apologies for starting another determinism/free will thread. 
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baddogma
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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Casta, you have to learn to compartmentalize before you can get it.
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Philosophos
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:58 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| Castaa wrote: | | I'm never understood how the concepts of God (omniscience) and free individual choice aren't mutually exclusive. Even a compatiblist argument ends to an unsatisfactory conclusion for me because all events leading up a choice were coerced by a God of this definition. |
Because a free will means that choices are acausal, and typical Christians who believe in free will and an omniscient God claim that he doesn't cause our choices.
Does he know what we're going to do? Yes. But explicitly because he created us with free will, he is not responsible for our choices.
God is as responsible for our choices as an astronomer is for Neptune's orbit: even though each can predict future actions, they didn't cause those actions to occur.
Of course, there are other ways around this, such as open theism of embrasing determinism.
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kmisho
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 1:02 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| Philosophos wrote: | | Castaa wrote: | | I'm never understood how the concepts of God (omniscience) and free individual choice aren't mutually exclusive. Even a compatiblist argument ends to an unsatisfactory conclusion for me because all events leading up a choice were coerced by a God of this definition. |
Because a free will means that choices are acausal, and typical Christians who believe in free will and an omniscient God claim that he doesn't cause our choices.
Does he know what we're going to do? Yes. But explicitly because he created us with free will, he is not responsible for our choices.
God is as responsible for our choices as an astronomer is for Neptune's orbit: even though each can predict future actions, they didn't cause those actions to occur.
Of course, there are other ways around this, such as open theism of embrasing determinism. |
But as you know this is not satisfactory because we remain slaves to god's prior knowledge. God's "brain" is the cause.
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Philosophos
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 1:04 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| kmisho wrote: | | But as you know this is not satisfactory because we remain slaves to god's prior knowledge. God's "brain" is the cause. |
Huh? No. No I don't know that.
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kmisho
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 1:07 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| Philosophos wrote: | | kmisho wrote: | | But as you know this is not satisfactory because we remain slaves to god's prior knowledge. God's "brain" is the cause. |
Huh? No. No I don't know that. |
No problem. It's god's fault, not yours.
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K Michau
Now this religion happens to prevail/Until by that one it is overthrown/Because men dare not live with men alone/But always with another fairy tale.
al-Ma'arri, Syrian Poet, died 1057
You deny the existence of 999 alleged Gods. I merely deny one more - yours.
John MacKinnon Robertson, "Godism" 1896
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Leszek
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:47 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| Philosophos wrote: | | God is as responsible for our choices as an astronomer is for Neptune's orbit: even though each can predict future actions, they didn't cause those actions to occur. |
This is a bad analogy. The astronomer didn't put Neptune in its orbit himself! God did just that, with full knowledge of what would happen if he made it that way.
I would say if God put made Neptune and put it in its orbit with the properties it has with the foreknowledge that it would quickly spiral into the sun, he is most certainly responsible for that.
Just my two cents.
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hillbillyatheist
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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neptune has a predictable orbit because of the laws of nature in place. neptune WILL do what is expected.
we humans are the same. its how you know if you do X your friend will get mad at you.
no choice is its own cause, but is the result of your nature and environment.
I touch woman's boob.
woman slaps me.
why is this predictable?
if we truly had freewill then you could not possibly predict what someone would do.
every choice would be as random as rolling dice. |
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Philosophos
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| Leszek wrote: | | Philosophos wrote: | | God is as responsible for our choices as an astronomer is for Neptune's orbit: even though each can predict future actions, they didn't cause those actions to occur. |
This is a bad analogy. The astronomer didn't put Neptune in its orbit himself! God did just that, with full knowledge of what would happen if he made it that way. |
This is little more than contradicting what I claimed without any backing.
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Philosophos
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:57 pm Post subject: |
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| hillbillyatheist wrote: | if we truly had freewill then you could not possibly predict what someone would do.
every choice would be as random as rolling dice. |
Right. I think the better attack for any free will arguments is the fact that libertarian free will is nonsense. But those arguments are a little sophisticated.
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Leszek
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:58 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| Philosophos wrote: | | Leszek wrote: | | Philosophos wrote: | | God is as responsible for our choices as an astronomer is for Neptune's orbit: even though each can predict future actions, they didn't cause those actions to occur. |
This is a bad analogy. The astronomer didn't put Neptune in its orbit himself! God did just that, with full knowledge of what would happen if he made it that way. |
This is little more than contradicting what I claimed without any backing. |
I think it is a bad analogy, and I explained why. What backing do you want?
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Philosophos
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 3:02 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| Leszek wrote: | | I think it is a bad analogy, and I explained why. What backing do you want? |
Meh. None really, as I don't really care about the argument.
But a sufficiently backed argument would demonstrate how it's a logical necessity that a creator god with foreknowledge cannot but help to determine the actions of the beings he creates.
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Leszek
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject: Re: Omniscient Foreknowledge and Individual Free Will |
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| Philosophos wrote: | | Leszek wrote: | | I think it is a bad analogy, and I explained why. What backing do you want? |
Meh. None really, as I don't really care about the argument.
But a sufficiently backed argument would demonstrate how it's a logical necessity that a creator god with foreknowledge cannot but help to determine the actions of the beings he creates. |
Fair enough.
But I was just pointing out that the analogy is bad. I offered some counter examples but I am not in the mood for going down that road right now either.
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Mr_C
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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It's funny...
I was at church yesterday and the pastor was talking about Matthew 4:1-11 which you all know from memory no doubt is the Temptation of Christ.
During the sermon, he broke out a new word on my ass that I had never heard before and ascribed it to God. It was like "omniscient" but the prefix was different. He said that it meant that God not only knew all past and future events, but he knew all possible events as well. Anybody? Anybody? Moving on then...
Anyway, I was reminded of the very conundrum mentioned in the OP. If Jesus is God, why would Satan even bother to tempt Him? Furthermore, as a consequence of God creating Satan, he would have known that Satan would attempt to tempt Him in the desert, as well as the outcome of said temptation. WTF? How is the fact that Jesus didn't turn rocks into bread supposed to impress me?
This is also the passage where Satan takes Jesus up to a "very high mountain" to show him all the nations on the earth 
I loved watching him try and explain that away. "You see, it was supernatural, and the book of Luke says it was 'in a moment in time', and...stuff". I wanted to ask him why he wasn't taking that particular verse literally, and if he had considered that the implications of doing so would mean that he should believe the earth is flat. But that would have been rude.
Sorry about the scattered thoughts. Back to work I go. |
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