I need some atheist opinions

[Minimalist]

Any serious opinions? Thanks

Do you consider their gibberish to be "serious?"

Fictional writers give their creations whatever powers they can dream up.  Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, you know.  

Before I worry at all about what "god" can do one of those clowns would have to demonstrate by providing evidence that his god (or any god) actually exists.

[Plu]

> It's impossible for free will to exist at the same time as omnipotence/omniscience.

Not true, provided the god lies.  Since we know the god of the Bible lies (he lied to Adam - "You will surely die this day") it is entirely possible that this same god could know the future, but lie to a supplicant.

Frank

But I still wouldn't be making the decisions if they're already decided for me. At best I'd have the illusion of free will.

[Jason78]

But if you intervene and show me my future, and I decide to take a different path? You'd have made the wrong prediction. You'd have to know I'd do something different from what I was shown. Which means you didn't predict the correct future. In fact, cannot predict the right future because I will take a different path just out of stubborness.

If I intervened and showed you your future and you decided to take a different path, then that would be the future that I would show you.  (possibly including having this meta-discussion while I was showing it to you).  

If I have free will, you can't tell me my future, because I can (and will) take a different path just to piss you off.

If I can see all possible futures for you, then I can see the possible future where I show you your future where you try and take a different path to just piss me off.  All of those future decisions that you will make (it doesn't matter that those decisions are now tainted by foreknowledge) will be of your own free will.

Of course, I could just lie and show you the possible future that leads you to make choices to live a better happier life.  But then are the choices you'd make in that future any more or less free?  Because you're going to make those choices anyway, even if it's just motivated by the desire to piss me off.

[Plu]

If I intervened and showed you your future and you decided to take a different path, then that would be the future that I would show you.

This is logically impossible. If you tell me I'm going to do X at time Y, then when time Y comes, I'm going to do something other than X. If you'd have told me that I was going to do this new X, then I would've done yet another X. You can't tell me my future without locking in my actions to the shown path, otherwise what you tell me will be incorrect when I decide to do something different than what you told me. It's irrelevant what X is; if you make any specific claim, then there'll be a point where I can decide to do something else.

If I can see all possible futures for you,

If you can see all possible futures, you know nothing special. It's far too much information to do anything useful with, and it doesn't help anyone. It also cannot be disproven, really. It's only a worthwhile talent if you can actually predict a specific future event, and that's only possible if the path is already locked in so it cannot change anymore.



(Although perhaps, before even getting into the whole "free will" and "predicting the future" thing, we should first figure out how time even works, and what the basic idea behind "free will", or even how "consciousness operates". It's all pretty meta now because we don't have really strong definitions.)

[Jason78]

If I intervened and showed you your future and you decided to take a different path, then that would be the future that I would show you.

This is logically impossible. If you tell me I'm going to do X at time Y, then when time Y comes, I'm going to do something other than X. If you'd have told me that I was going to do this new X, then I would've done yet another X. You can't tell me my future without locking in my actions to the shown path, otherwise what you tell me will be incorrect when I decide to do something different than what you told me. It's irrelevant what X is; if you make any specific claim, then there'll be a point where I can decide to do something else.

If I show you that you'll do X at time Y, and you decide to attempt to do something different, then wouldn't the future I'd shown you contain a you trying to do something different but ultimately having to resort to X anyway?  

If I can see all possible futures for you,

If you can see all possible futures, you know nothing special. It's far too much information to do anything useful with, and it doesn't help anyone. It also cannot be disproven, really. It's only a worthwhile talent if you can actually predict a specific future event, and that's only possible if the path is already locked in so it cannot change anymore.



(Although perhaps, before even getting into the whole "free will" and "predicting the future" thing, we should first figure out how time even works, and what the basic idea behind "free will", or even how "consciousness operates". It's all pretty meta now because we don't have really strong definitions.)

I guess impossible futures would cover the ones where you knew exactly what your future was going to be yet tried to prevent it from happening :D

[Plu]

If I show you that you'll do X at time Y, and you decide to attempt to do something different, then wouldn't the future I'd shown you contain a you trying to do something different but ultimately having to resort to X anyway?

That's requiring the past to be rewritten when I do something different. Which, as far as we know, isn't possible. The action I'm taking at point X is directly related to having received certain information when you told me my future. If you change what was said back then; I automatically take a different action in the new future.

And if I'm forced to resort to doing what you told me in the past, then apparently I don't have a choice in it, because you know it was going to happen before I was even aware a choice existed. So I don't have free will to choose.

[Jason78]

If I show you that you'll do X at time Y, and you decide to attempt to do something different, then wouldn't the future I'd shown you contain a you trying to do something different but ultimately having to resort to X anyway?

That's requiring the past to be rewritten when I do something different. Which, as far as we know, isn't possible. The action I'm taking at point X is directly related to having received certain information when you told me my future. If you change what was said back then; I automatically take a different action in the new future.

And if I'm forced to resort to doing what you told me in the past, then apparently I don't have a choice in it, because you know it was going to happen before I was even aware a choice existed. So I don't have free will to choose.

You had free will to choose what you had for breakfast this morning.  But you can't change it.  What makes you think that the future is any more malleable than the past?

[Plu]

Who says I even believe in free will? :P

I'm just saying free will isn't compatible with someone who knows everything. You cannot at the same time know everything that's going to happen and give other people the ability to choose what's going to happen.

The idea of religious free will is that I can pick my path in life. But how can I choose anything, if there's someone who already knows what's going to happen?

It's a bit like saying characters in a book have free will. The story is already written and nothing they do can change anything. They don't have free will. They just do what the great mind that knows all tells them to do. On the other hand, improvisational theater gives its characters free will, which is why nobody can predict how the show will go. But you can't have both.

[Jason78]

Who says I even believe in free will? :P

I'm just saying free will isn't compatible with someone who knows everything. You cannot at the same time know everything that's going to happen and give other people the ability to choose what's going to happen.

The idea of religious free will is that I can pick my path in life. But how can I choose anything, if there's someone who already knows what's going to happen?

It's a bit like saying characters in a book have free will. The story is already written and nothing they do can change anything. They don't have free will. They just do what the great mind that knows all tells them to do. On the other hand, improvisational theater gives its characters free will, which is why nobody can predict how the show will go. But you can't have both.

I actually agree with you.  I don't think that it's possible for someone to know everything.  Thanks to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle we know that some knowledge about reality is mutually exclusive.  Without that knowledge, someone wouldn't have a perfect view of the future, and so would be unable to predict it outside of the bounds of that certainty.

[Solitary]

God is above and beyond logic, that He does not have to play according to the human laws of logic.

That says it all. We understand logic from our experiences of reality. God is suppose to interfere with reality, in fact He made it. If this is so than He would have to obey his own laws and not have freewill, or He doesn't have the ability to interfere with reality, so it's the same as if He didn't exist.
If it is true He is beyond logic, then how could anyone know him unless they were being illogical? Any contradiction proves they both can't be true.

A square can't be a circle, A God can't be logical if He destroys His own Creations, for example. And if He isn't logical how could He decide logically who goes to heaven or hell? We all see how illogical believers can be with their actions and hypocrisies, and they hope there God will be illogical as they are so they can go to heaven even if they are sinners. Solitary

[Plu]

I wonder if the guy will come back to read all this, by the way :) It's a fun discussion but kinda futile if he doesn't show back up :P

[laocmo]

I don't know who you mean by the "guy" to come back. But I'm the original poster and I've never left. The first several answers I liked, they made sense. I'm a little lost with the last few though. I wouldn't change anything in my OP after reading all the later posts. Reading things by people who appreciate and accept logic is very refreshing after some of the nonsense I read in answer to my post to the theist groups. How they can write a thousand word answer that is basically a lot of meaningless words no doubt memorized from some book is beyond me. And stating that God is beyond and above logic is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'd tell them that, but all that would result in is 1000 more meaningless words and maybe a prayer or two for my soul's salvation.

[bada94]

I don't know who you mean by the "guy" to come back. But I'm the original poster and I've never left. The first several answers I liked, they made sense. I'm a little lost with the last few though. I wouldn't change anything in my OP after reading all the later posts. Reading things by people who appreciate and accept logic is very refreshing after some of the nonsense I read in answer to my post to the theist groups. How they can write a thousand word answer that is basically a lot of meaningless words no doubt memorized from some book is beyond me. And stating that God is beyond and above logic is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'd tell them that, but all that would result in is 1000 more meaningless words and maybe a prayer or two for my soul's salvation.

hahahahah, LMAO at the prayer thing,
they tend to do that a lot don't they xD

[Plu]

I don't know who you mean by the "guy" to come back.

I meant you, since I hadn't seen you post again I feared you might've left :) Good to hear you got some use out of our posts. And sorry if others are a bit complex, we do tend to get a little enthusiastic some times. If you want anything further elaborated, do tell.

[Karon3E]

And obviously they will come up with "god is beyond logic", because that's their default answer to anyone pointing out a situation that is clearly logically impossible. It's a cop-out non-answer.

Sure is. It's the "you just don't understand....omg....OMG you just don't 'get it'!" answer they always give and can't give any other reasonable answer after this is said.