If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out...

[JetSetDizzy]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

This post is in regard to God's omniscience and free will. If you know the ending of a movie before you watch it, does that mean you cause the ending to occur? Could there have not been another ending for the movie, or would you have simply known that ending instead? In what way does knowledge of anything physically force action? The idea that God's knowledge negates freewill is based on the assuption that God's omniscience is enforced by action to make the predicted true. It also is grounded in the idea that God moves through time linearly like we do. If God simply experiances all of time simltaniuosly, then it would make more sense for him to know your free choice.
I'm terrible at getting points across online, so I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense.

 

[Kix]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

If we assume that God knows the future, although I'm free to choose whatever I want at any time, I change the future he has foreseen every time I change my mind. This wouldn't be omniscience anymore because all he'd know is an infinite number of possible outcomes.

We're assuming that God knows what your choice will be. Therefore if you had A and B it could only be A or B. If God knows you will freely choose A, it follows that you shall choose A, but you were to choose B then God would know that you were going to freely choose B. All that follows is that with your choice you are going to make one and it shall be the one that God predicted, but this is because this is what you will freely choose.

If you want to refute this, you have to argue that he knows in advance I will change my mind and freely choose option X, leading to the one and only future he had foreseen.
The problem is, he knows in advance what I will do, and as you said he can't know both at the same time. Suddenly I don't have a choice anymore, without proving God's vision wrong.

Change your mind? I'm just saying that out of your ability to choose one of them, you will choose one, right? From your view when you choose one you disallow the other, but that will happen in the future if it hasn't happened yet. God just knows the conclusion of your choice so the choice itself will occur and pick one, and the one you pick God will have known. There just is no constraint there, because obviously if the conclusion is to be known then it will be A or not A. Not both at once.

Either God's vision is based on our decisions, in which case we are constantly altering the future he has foreseen, or our decisions are based on the future he has foreseen, in which case we don't have a choice.
I don't see another possibility.

The possibility that you are missing is that you will freely choose something and that God knows that choice, but that you still choose it. It's still not logically inconsistent unless some force enters in making you make that choice without your will or that God's foreknowledge actually just makes you make the decision because God knows it. What we're saying is neither of them. We're saying that God knows what you will choose to do. Not God knows what you will be forced to do because God knows it.

You choice is logically prior to God's foreknowledge, but God's foreknowledge is chronologically before your choice. The knowledge is contingent on what you will choose, but the question isn't if they are logically inconsistent, but how God knows it which is just a different topic.
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This post is in regard to God's omniscience and free will. If you know the ending of a movie before you watch it, does that mean you cause the ending to occur? Could there have not been another ending for the movie, or would you have simply known that ending instead? In what way does knowledge of anything physically force action? The idea that God's knowledge negates freewill is based on the assuption that God's omniscience is enforced by action to make the predicted true. It also is grounded in the idea that God moves through time linearly like we do. If God simply experiances all of time simltaniuosly, then it would make more sense for him to know your free choice.
I'm terrible at getting points across online, so I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense.

Right, I think that there are different ways people use in attempt to explain God's omniscience and time such as Molinism, but what we're talking about assumes both omniscience and free will could exist to see if they are logically compatible, not how omniscience works.

We're assuming that our free will is causally indeterminate, so the contingency of God's propositions about the future rests on what you freely choose. How does the knowledge itself make it fated to occur? Just because it is known?

 

[Gegliosch]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

If you know the ending of a movie before you watch it, does that mean you cause the ending to occur? Could there have not been another ending for the movie, or would you have simply known that ending instead?

In your example the movie has been made before I make my predictions about it's ending. To be able to compare it to our omniscience problem you'd have to ask: If you know the ending of a movie before it is made, does that mean you cause the ending to occur?
In this case the ending just has to be the way I predicted it or I'm wrong.

Of course you have to assume, that the predicting person experiences time the same way as everybody else, as you stated correctly.

If God simply experiances all of time simltaniuosly, then it would make more sense for him to know your free choice.

This is the only way I can see omniscience and free will fit together and this is also what I meant by

If god knows the outcome of all this right now, at this moment in time, there are only 2 logical conclusions:

1. My choice is predetermined by his omniscience.
2. God doesn't experience time and exists in the presence with his knowledge from the furtherst possible time in the future, if that makes any sense.

Maybe the word conclusion is misleading. I didn't mean both options could be true at the same time, it's either one or the other. If free will exists, god can't be omniscient and experience time as we do simultaneously.

You choice is logically prior to God's foreknowledge, but God's foreknowledge is chronologically before your choice.

This is exactly what I'm trying to argue against with my poor english :D
If somebody predicts an action in the future and neither can he be wrong nor is the action in any way forced by this, the prediction can not have been chronologically made prior to the action. It is only possible if God exists in the future at the same time and therefore already saw it, in which case the prediction is no longer chronologically prior to the action.

but what we're talking about assumes both omniscience and free will could exist to see if they are logically compatible, not how omniscience works.

The result of my theory is a mixture of both. Omniscience and free will are indeed logically compatible, but only if God doesn't experience time as we do. These three options are logically related and if we were certain about two of them, the third could be determined as a result. Of course this isn't worth anything when nothing about God or fate will ever be known for sure, but I still like thinking about this stuff and that's what this thread is about.

 

[Felix007]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

Whoa, sorry for the delayed response. I got swamped with a ton of stuff to do yesterday, and I could only mess with this when I had some down time.

Your choices are not removed! You merely make a decision and God knows it, whether is be A, B, C, D, etc. Since if you can pick a certain thing in a given situation, God simply knows that choice. Obviously if you were to choose A, you cannot choose both A and not A at the same time. So because God accurately predicts what you shall pick, it does not mean you couldn't have chosen B, just that you did not, or shall not. If an infallible barometer were to exist, the weather isn't in anyway forced to be that way, just is accurately known beforehand.

What you are saying does not follow. God's understanding of the future could include our choices just that God knows will happen. They do not happen because God knows them, so what I was saying is that you were placing an utterly mysterious constraint because God's foreknowledge of a choice does not make it any less of a choice. One last thing is that when I say God's knowledge would have been different if you were to pick B instead of A, that doesn't mean that he would change his mind but just that his knowledge would have been different in the first place.

Let me give you an analogy. Suppose you know that I am omniscient, and that I am willing to offer you a choice. We have items A and B, though you are only allowed to choose one. Before you pick, I let you know that I am omniscient, and that you will pick A (assuming I am not lying/double bluffing). Because of my omniscience, if you then decide to pick B, you will have proved that I am not omniscient. However, if we assume I am, and have told you that you will, eventually, pick A, I have stripped all options to pick B.

Basically, you would be under a paradox to show that I am either not omniscient, or that you have no free will to pick B.

Well this is something that I'm currently studying that is really complicated on how God exists outside of time and perhaps stepped into time to relate to what he created. Either way what you were thinking doesn't actually follow although it does seem to make sense at first.

I was under the impression God could not cause anything if he was outside of time and space? Does causality not require time?

Also, "stepped into" time?

"Consideration" was not the best word, but it would have been better said "God knows". I don't know how God's knowledge would be arbitrary, but I also don't think you would be able to fully understand it, especially based on the limits we experience. This does not keep God from being the best explanation.

If all of God's knowledge/morality stems from his nature, what is keeping his nature from being something completely arbitrary? As in, God has the same odds of being a sadistic prick as an omnibenevolent deity. The mere fact that God is supposed to be infinitely complex and powerful prevents him from being viable due to Occam's Razor. The odds that the Universe popped into existence (which I don't even necessarily agree with) has less complex entities to entertain to be viable than an all powerful being.

I was about to delve into Christian morality, but I'll attempt to keep this a theism vs. agnostic/atheism conversation.

God has no "objective moral code" which if it did exist would be arbitrary. This leads us back to the good old Euthyphro argument and is easily gotten through by saying that what God gives as moral dictates come from God's necessary nature. This makes sense specifically for what the Christian God is supposed to be, but I don't want to get sidetrack on Christian particularism at this point.

For anyone reading, the Euthyphro argument is summed up by Socrates asking, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" Which can be translated to "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?"

Again, if God had dictated that rape and murder were cherished actions, and joy and love were vices, it would be as such, if we consider everything stems from his nature. This gives us the idea that even if his morals are not arbitrary (which they seem to be), God's nature is arbitrary and we are unable to ascertain anything different. It allows scenarios for God to be malevolent.

Well the point is that you yourself will choose what you are going to choose and that God knows it. If you choose the other choice then it is just "God knows that Felix will freely choose B" absolutely.

Went over this with the above analogy.

-snip- Dawkin's Argument

I'll leave that alone for now, and attempt to return to it later.

"Nothing existed prior to the Big Bang" seems to tell me that they do not think it existed in another form. When you say that we do not know if it is a potential infinite, that would seem to infer that it still had a finite past and thus a beginning.

I would point to the circular causality argument, and I'll tackle your objections in a second. As far as my understanding goes, the potential infinite does not need an "absolute" beginning. There is Melissos an admiral's argument (based in part on Cantor's ideas), that states that "If something exists it is eternal because nothing can be produced from nothing", though I believe Brouwer and Wittgenstein wrote refutations to his particular strand of logic.

Why would God need to begin to exist? Time doesn't exist prior to the Big Bang, so how God exists would be something entirely 'other'. The universe began to exist, based on the classic example of God, God did not begin to exist so it doesn't complicate things further. At any rate the Kalam argument is a deductive argument. The conclusion follows from the premises necessarily if they are true.

Again, the Universe as we understand it today began to exist.

The Kalaam is not necessarily true, as it states in Premise 1 that everything finite and contingent has a cause, when there are several examples of things without a first cause, such as Brownian Motion. It then follows that there may have been no inherent first cause for the Universe, though this would not outright disprove a God (at least in a deistic sense).

I don't see how this avoids an absolute beginning, is that what this is supposed to do? It seems like, even though I don't fully understand what it is totally getting at, that it still works within time. If the particle did not exist prior to the singularity then there is nothing to go back to.

Inflationary models don't seem to avoid an absolute beginning either. Vilenkin admits this even though he is for multiverse which uses inflationary models. So the problem is that none of these avoids the beginning, but multiverse attempts to explain fine tuning.

Can you expound your thoughts beyond "I don't understand this"? I don't mean to be rude, but that is all I'm getting across in this message. Circular causality does not have to explain a beginning, though it does have to tackle the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" which I believe to be a fallacious concept.

It isn't ironic that Craig uses experience for his arguments? Since when did he or other theologians deny their existence?

That is not what I was expressing at all. My comment was merely to state that I did not believe Craig to be a fundamentalist, nor did I think they denied their own existence.

It certainly doesn't make sense to deny P1, unless you are an inconsistent atheist.

Excuse me? I have already made the contention that P1 is false primarily because we do know that there are things without a first cause, and that it commits a fallacy of composition. It isn't being inconsistent at all.

What?

I originally said, "P1 also commits the fallacy of stating that a set of things inherits the characteristics of the individual parts thereof."

This can be translated to, "The set of a group of things does not necessarily inherit the traits or attributes of the existents it contains."

I believe the reasoning for that is very clear.

The reason why it isn't fallacious is because the same reason applies to both.

Ah, but I contend it is fallacious. It assumes that because the existents within the set are caused, then the set itself is caused. This is just as inherently false as assuming that because a car is composed of several light weight pieces, then the car will, overall, be lightweight.

There is a problem with this analogy. It isn't the nature of a classroom of students to be under 200 pounds, it has to do with human nature which allows for them to be more than that. That is why not all students would necessarily be under 200 pounds. There isn't a nature constraining them to it.

You are assuming that the Universe has a "nature" to be caused? What is your justifying principle, then?

He is talking about different natures entirely. I am talking about the nature of existence alone, which applies by logic to anything that exists and thus has a nature. When something does not exist and nothing puts it into existence, there is no nature for it to come into existence. This remains true for the turd spontaneously appearing in your room, the RE5 chainsaw guy and even the universe.

Nothing. Is. A. Fallacious. Concept.

The universe began to exist, it was not always there. The question is what best explains how the universe began to exist.

As I have said umpteen times, the Universe as we understand it began to exist. We do not know if it existed in a different fashion before the Big Bang.

Nothing is non-existence, simply put.

Have we ever observed nothing?

What is this guy going on about?

It's fairly simple. We have never truly perceived nothing to exist, so stating that there was originally "nothing" is likely a fallacious concept to begin with.

When the universe does not exist and begins to exist, it becomes something, but why?

I think I've addressed this entirely too many times to warrant another response to it. Basically, you are begging the question by presupposing a "creation", or that it did not always exist.

All this does is sidetrack the issue into "Why does God exists" when this argument is a very proof for God's existence! It doesn't even go anywhere or respond to the premises.

The Kalaam basically boils down to the cosmological argument, which has already been shown to be inherently flawed. The refutation explains, in detail, why certain premises are wrong and why it uses fallacious logic.

What is with this guy's logic? Who said that if something consisted of many of the same thing that it itself is one unit of the same thing of what it contains (multiples of what it is supposed to be a single unit of?) even though that makes no sense at all? Let's say there are three apples, who said that three apples is one apple? What does this even apply to? This guy needs to stop drinking. I don't even remember if he even mentioned the premises since that was such a trip.

That is not what the refutation presupposes at all. It deals with applying inherent characteristics from the individuals to the whole, not that plurality is flawed. You're attempting to bash a strawman right now.

You said give me something and I did. I also doubt refutations of TAG actually refute it given all of them that I have seen. I want to make sure you understand that it isn't a valid evidence for God's existence.

There is no refutation or argument that has no logical flaws, but Kant is an incredible philosopher, both credited with one of the best refutations to the TAG and the Ontological argument.

A chunk of the Kalaam refutation was my own work, so I'm not entirely sure why you think I'm trying not to answer anything presented.

It holds fine water as even the atheists will use multiverse theories to try to explain it away (showing that it does actually bother them). The problem is that they think they are applying to science when this isn't testable at all and it doesn't explain why we are in the position we are in. Also it does not avoid an absolute beginning as even people like Vilenkin state.

You don't need a multiverse to refute the fine tuned argument. We, over time, have adapted to exist in the form we have now. There is no evidence that the world was created specifically for us to exist in.

Your argument boils down to "If things were different, then things would be different", which is merely a tautology.

As for objective moral values, how do you explain them, and how are they not arbitrary and meaningful?

That depends. Are you asking how I explain my objective moral values, or God's moral values?

Easily because it either comes from physical necessity or it doesn't. From what I see is that cosmologists do not think that it comes from necessity. Even so, how does something without a nature just come out so well anyway? Considering how ridiculously small changes in pretty much anything would make us end up with a universe that is just helium or something, it cries out for explanation and that's why the attempt with multiverses was even brought up. What I find funny is that the fine tuning itself is not even debated by cosmologists, it's how it is best explained.

Fine tuning is still inherently flawed, and I'd love to see said cosmologists that agree with the concept. What they likely mean is that we are fine tuned to exist in the Universe, not the other way around, akin to the puddle concept.

This just shows a misunderstanding of what happens with the small changes. If the universe collapses back into a fireball we don't exist. If the universe exists only of helium and star formation never occurs we never exist in ANY form.

This is a common fine tuning misconception. No one says we are required to exist in our form, or even as forms we would acknowledge as life today.

You've delved right back into the tautology mentioned earlier.

Kh'thanks!

Mmkay?

Yet the deductive arguments don't matter even though the conclusion is unavoidable. Maybe the supernatural does have decent evidence but it just isn't what you like?

Now you're melding deductive/inductive arguments into empirical evidences, which are completely different things. Can you give me any empirical evidence that the supernatural exists?

I don't "ignore" things based on what I like or dislike. Seeking the truth, whatever it may be, comes before my own indiscretions or personal comfort.

Do properties come from nothingness?

Have we ever perceived nothing to exist? Have we ever seen nothing, to then conclude that there truly are no properties? I would contend that we have not, making it unlikely the "default" setting for the universe was nothing.

What kind of evidence do you need?

For starters, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Perhaps a prophecy from any number of religious texts that wasn't vague and was on a massive scale. Something akin to "In the continent that resides in the "lower left" hemisphere of the world, in quadrant X, there will be a massive earthquake followed by a hurricane, causing the deaths of X number of people".

Possibly God ascending from the Heavens and demonstrating his divinity by bending the natural laws that govern our world today. That could potentially be flawed, as he could merely be from the future. ""Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clark.

If God existed as claimed, he could easily have made his existence much more obvious than it is today.

Is it unreasonable to believe that something that begins to exist has a cause?

Again, Brownian Motion, Casimir effect, and Quantum Mechanics (in relation to quarks) all show things coming into existence without a prior cause.

What about everything else? Is there any good reason for believing that atheism is true?

Atheism is merely a rejection of the postulation "God exists", unless you are part of strong atheism, which I do not claim to be. As there is little to no empirical evidences for the claim, and the fact that most inductive arguments fail, atheism (or agnosticism) is the logical choice to make.

If I denied the existence of pixies, would you make me give logical arguments against the existence of pixies? Wouldn't the fact that there is no evidence for these pixies be a refutation in itself? It is much like trying to disprove a negative.

More like non-being does not become being without a cause. It makes sense on a common-sense scale, as your friend admitted, that that which begins to exist has a cause. The question is if the universe could come out of nothing by nothing, which is logically invalid, then why doesn't anything and everything anywhere do the same? Why do you never suspect it? What property causes nothing to become something out of nothing?

Then you missed the part where it was posted that common sense is very often flawed. I've already argued that the concept of "nothing" is fallacious many, many times in this thread. I'm not repeating it again.

The claim is not that something must have a cause in order to exist, but that that which begins to exist needs a cause. It seems to me like you are just like most of atheists on the internet and don't even understand these things. Your reasoning is wrong-headed.

That was polite.

Also, we have shown that this is not the case (on causality), making your first premise inherently flawed.

? More like the laws of physics began.

There is no evidence to suggest there was a time where the laws of physics did not exist, but there is evidence to say that they were different in the far reaching past, as I've said before.

Wow I'm surprised you survived through this, I've seen the bad effects of migraines. (I've never actually had one myself)

To be honest, I'm surprised I finished writing that mini-dissertation myself. It gave me something to focus on, so I could think less about my headache.

You do not need to explain an explanation in order for it to be the best explanation. That is the case is science, archeology, you name it.

That's flawed on a number of levels. We ascertain which is the "best" explanation by explaining why it is the best explanation. You cannot possibly think to say that science would equally consider Creationism on the same playing field as Evolution without empirical basis "explaining" which comes out ahead.

I don't think there is a valid argument against omnipotence either.

(1) God either can or cannot create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it.
(2) If God can create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it, then God is not omnipotent.
(3) If God cannot create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it, then God is not omnipotent.
Therefore:
(4) God is not omnipotent.
(5) If God exists then he is omnipotent.
Therefore:
(6) God does not exist.

The only way out is to argue that God is bound by logic, and thusly cannot create nor entertain paradoxes of himself. If we take that route, however, then we have problems with omniscience and omnipotence being compatible.

Does God have the omnipotence to change his omniscience? If he does, does he then show himself not to be omniscient?

Occam's Razor states not to multiply explanations past necessity, but it doesn't at all say not to explain something when it is necessary! This might be an argument for example against multiple gods or something.

Or a Triune God? *hintwinknudge*

In any case, there is no evidence that God is a logical necessity or an empirical one, which is why he is invalid when compared to Occam's Razor.

I hope you feel better man, migraines are a nightmare I'm sure! Get some rest.

Appreciate it.

The above is why I never get involved with religious threads online.

What, you don't want to type out a dissertation for the hell of it?

 

[JetSetDizzy]

If I had $1 for every time God bailed me out..

Wouldn't a vacuum be an example of nothing? An empty space that amidst all of the matter quickly fills up.
Also is Brownian motion proven causeless or is it simply not understood?