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Author | Topic: Fate or Freewill? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
:æ:  Suspended Member (Idle past 7213 days) Posts: 423 Joined: |
Mr Jack writes:
It means we no longer have the free will to determine the past. When the events that are now in our past were in our future, they were undetermined, and so we had the free will to act upon the available possible futures.
The past is determined, does that mean we had no free will in the past? Knowing the future merely means that god knows what choice we will make...
Knowing the future inerrantly means that God knows what path we must take. If one cannot choose an alternative path, then s/he does not have free will. Perhaps we mean different things by "free will"?
...that doesn't imply that we didn't make the choice of our own freewill.
If it is impossible for God's knowledge to be in error, then no alternatives exist to that which God knows. If I have no alternatives, then I don't have free will.
In order not to have freewill we would have to be co-erced into making the choice by things beyond our control, determinism does not imply this.
Yes, it does. "Control" means that the decider affects the future by his/her choice. If the future is set, then there is no choice since a choice of only one possible outcome is not a choice at all.
In fact, god knowing the future doesn't imply determinism either...
How can God know the future without first determining what that future is? I don't see how the future can be known and indeterminate at the same time.
...anymore than someone having a time machine does.
I don't see how this is relevant. Can you clarify?
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Knowing the future inerrantly means that God knows what path we must take. If one cannot choose an alternative path, then s/he does not have free will. Perhaps we mean different things by "free will"? By free will I mean that our actions are ultimately determined by ourselves. Alternatives do not come into it. Derivations of free will based on alternatives are Philosophically thorny - how can we know whether or not there was an alternative? If we would choose the same alternative if the same events were run again is it really an alternative? etc.
How can God know the future without first determining what that future is? I don't see how the future can be known and indeterminate at the same time. Why cannot we determine the future and god simply know what we will do?
I don't see how this is relevant. Can you clarify? Imagine I have a time machine and travel ten years into the future, I now know what will happen in that time (or a small subset thereof) does this mean than everyone at the time I travelled from now no longer has freewill?
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Stephen ben Yeshua Inactive Member |
tgrmst,
When I roll a die, I know that I will get one of six faces showing, but I don't know which one. Similarly, God knows all the outcomes of our choices, but He doesn't know which one we will make. That's how we have limited free will. God didn't know what Adam and Eve would do in the Garden, and was deeply grieved by their choice. But He knew what they might do, and had a plan by which it could be redeemed. Anyone who has been a parent, with band-aids in the medicine chest knows about this. The PEAR Laboratory at Princeton has exhaustively demonstrated the effect of free will on objects, including random radioactive decay. You can, by making choices, definately change the future. Because many of the choices you make, and many more that you refuse to make, result in terror and horror all over the world, you deserve a lot of punishment. These evil choices are mostly made in ignorance, but "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and the choice to stay ignorant, to "ignore" the evidence available to you, is the choice that brings severe judgement down on you, or down on Yeshua or Jesus, if you accept His suffering on your behalf. Jehovah, in the bible, has set out before men seven things to choose, or not: Life or Death, Truth or Lie, Law or Lawlessness, Service to God or Service to Some Idol, Fearing God or Not Fearing God, Favor among Men or Riches, a Good Name or Political Power. The choice is made by testimony, Saying "I choose ..." whatever you are ready to accept responsibility for. To choose to not choose brings down the well-deserved wrath of God. Change the future for good. Or take the blame for the evil that comes instead.
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DC85 Member Posts: 876 From: Richmond, Virginia USA Joined: |
what I find bizare is many Christens claim we have free will but claim things "were meant to be" Does that make sense to you?
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Chris Inactive Member |
quote:Let's think that the story is not about God, but you with time machine and Bob. Whether what Bob will say, you can just use the time machine to go to the future and see what he will choose for his drink. Bob still has his free will, but his free will is useless for you because you have time machine. For Bob..he can change his mind 1000 times but you can just use your time machine. quote:I think if God didn't put them in the garden for the first place, there would be no free will for Adam & Eve. And maybe also to let us know the story about original sin and how the world changed.
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Asgara Member (Idle past 2331 days) Posts: 1783 From: Wisconsin, USA Joined: |
You can't use an analogy of regular people. If god is omniscient and omnipotent then free will can not exist.
Bob, with his time machine, is NOT omni anything. Asgara "Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"
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TechnoCore Inactive Member |
quote: Are you serious ?Who did make you ? God. What did he give you ? Free will. What does he know? Everything that will happen. So.. He knows all your actions before you've done them, and he CREATED you. Then every action you will ever make is just directly dependant on what what he created initially. So creating you, in the way you are, he already made all the choices you will ever make. For you. That, is NOT free will.
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
I have to say, I'm with Mr Jack on this one, although I've completely revised my thinking on this in the last few years.
What got me thinking was whether there was any difference between "free-will" and what I suppose you would call the illusion of free will. Do we really need an external observer looking back at our actions at some point in the future to tell us whether we have free will or not? I'm not going to get into a full and complete definition of free will, as that's too difficult, but let's pretend that you have 2 identical universes (Universe A and Universe B), except for the fact that Universe A contains one omniscient being, who keeps herself hidden. If you were to meet your doppelganger in the other Universe, would there be any point in trying to determine which of you actually had free will, and which of you merely had the illusion of free will? Or do we keep the word "freewill" to mean some fancy hi-falutin' idealistic notion that can never be measured or even discussed meaningfully? Now, don't get me wrong, there is a problem with free will and omniscience if the omniscient being comes into contact with an individual (as in Newcomb's paradox), but I don't see any paradox as long as the ominscient being never meets an individual and tells them what they're about to do. Artistic originality, on the other hand, is a real problem in a Universe with an omniscient being... difficult to believe God wouldn't have sat down (with a toke?) to chill out listening to an Orbital album before setting about making the Universe and mankind and stuff...which kinda means that music (and by extension all other creative art) is discovered rather than created. PE
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Angeldust Inactive Member |
but I don't see any paradox as long as the ominscient being never meets an individual and tells them what they're about to do. Out of curiosity than do you think that Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians who believe that God still talks to his people prophetically today be in a paradox if they believe in free will? Can we entertain that question as a "What if" without going into whether Prophecy today is true or not? I mean, most prophecy isn't like "Your going to go to the mall today and a little old lady with a shopping cart is going to run you over." Perhaps part of the reason that it isn't that specific is because God is not playing with our free will. It's just a thought.
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
Out of curiosity than do you think that Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians who believe that God still talks to his people prophetically today be in a paradox if they believe in free will? Can we entertain that question as a "What if" without going into whether Prophecy today is true or not? Is this a bit like asking "ah, but what really happens when you find the town where the barber shaves everyone who don't shave themselves? Who really does shave the barber?" I'm afraid I know next to nothing about Pentecostal or Charismatic Christians and their particular flavour of belief. If we had an omniscient being who interacted with humans and told them stuff like "I know that you're about to freely choose A out of choices A,B or C in the next ten seconds or so", then yes, I do think this pretty much dispels any notion of free-will in my limited understanding of the word. Like you say though, not many faiths have God acting like that, all the prophecies I know of tend to be along along the lines of "and ye this great happening shall come to pass and there will be much smiting..." which doesn't really affect free-will at all, as far as I can see, so I agree with you there. Having said all that, I don't have a very firm grasp of whatever free will is, which is why I'm loathe to attempt to define it. I mean, how far down the food chain does free-will stop (I assume plants don't have free will but, say, cattle do)? Do ants have free will? And what of the effects of advertising and propaganda on our free will? Does it affect free will at all? And what about the recent experiments which show a surge in brain activity before a conscious free-will decision is made - who or what is making the surge in brain activity happen? I don't know the answers to these questions but they lead me to think that free will is one of those concepts like "time", "life" or "consciousness", which seem trivial to use (in everyday terms) but are in fact, incredibly slippery to define. I do know that any definition of free will that makes sense to me, also allows for an omniscient being (as long as they never tell you what you're about to choose). PE
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TechnoCore Inactive Member |
quote: Not for me no, thats true. I agree with you on that. But it does make God a quite horrible chap doesn't it? He creates me into a beeing who he knows will make the choice of not beliving in him, and therefore I'll be sent to hell for eternal suffering. Thats sadistic. Or how else could it be interpreted?
quote: Haven't thought about that But unless you belive there is a ultimate beauty, in a way like Platon's real world, then beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No? Which then again is up to free will... or whatever...
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V-Bird Member (Idle past 5613 days) Posts: 211 From: Great Britain Joined: |
If you read my post in 'Time machine' you will realise that as time is extant [we live moment by moment] simple logic concludes that as there really is no 'future' there can be no blind fate. [pre-destiny]
However, because we are creatures of habit and we rely on structure to ease the mass of information we take in thru our senses we can to some extent sway the events that in time we will pass through, to many this will seem like 'fate', but it is not it really is just free will constrained by our own freely acted upon will.
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