Free will: an illusion

Because as Alex lifeson of Rush said in the song, aptly titled "Free will" Of course they even get that wrong on all the online lyrics web sites. Even the damn album cover has the lyrics wrong.And Christians think that all the words in the bible are accurate. Fat chance of that.
Even if they once were, they have (most likely) been warped and twisted beyond recognition by all the repeated re-writings and translation.Edited by PurpleYouko, : Added the words most likely so that it won't appear to be just another assertion.

Now you are getting it.
If we don't have free will (As implied by the existence of an omniscient God) then we are nothing more than characters in a great big book.
God can read it cover to cover as many times as he likes and exactly the same thing will happen each time.
Didn't you ever hear that joke about the football fan who complains to his mates that the Man united striker is an idiot because he still keeps missing that open goal in the replay?
If god is Omniscient then that's what we are. The entire universe is one dirty great replay that he can watch as many times as he likes.

Absolutely!
Finally you are getting it.
Everything is about decisions so without free will we are all pre-programmed automatons going through a meaningless series of meaningless actions. If your God knew, a thousand years ago, that I would be writing this message right now then what choice did I have. I might feel as if it is my choice but in reality it is beyond my power to be doing anything else right now. I am just an unthinking player in a big story. Doomed to do the same thing over and over each time somebody picks up the book.

Yes I am a biological machine. As such I am governed by universal laws which include things like indeterminism.
It is still hotly debatable whether the universe itself is 100% deterministic or not. If it is then we really and trully do NOT have free will since every sub-atomic particle that we are made up of is following a course of action laid down at the dawn of time.
If it is NOT deterministic then there is an inherrant randomness that may or may not be affected by our consciousnesses (whatever they are). In that case then just maybe we DO have free will.Being a machine (organic or mechanical) in no way implies lack of free will. Only existing in a fixed and 100% repeatable pattern will mean that. And the only way that can be implied is there is something or someone who is able to know all of time as your God is supposed to.He has already read the book and watched the movie so he knows exactly what each of us will be doing at any given time and place.Wonder how many times he has read the book or watched the instant replay?
Do you think he still gets pissed off when somebody makes the same mistake every time through?

No it doesn't.
There is absolutely no way that you can reach that conclusion by any valid logical process. It is simply not implied in any way shape or form. You haven't?
Then what the heck are you arguing with us about?
just remove "Omniscient" from your description of God and we have no problem. And there was me thinking we might be finally getting somewhere.
The "reasons already stated" make no sense whatsover.
They do not follow any form of logic that I can recognise.Edited by PurpleYouko, : forgot to comment on the rest of the post

Hope you aren't including little old me in that sweeping statement. After all it was you who invited me and Crevo into a discussion of this very topic.

Exactly my point. Of course there is such a thing as a discussion. It's just a scripted one in which we are all completely unaware of what we are going to say until we beleive we have made the decision to say it.
If you halt the discussion now, that is only because because the story says that is what you are going to do. you don't have a choice in the matter. Nope still don't see any.I haven't read the next few posts yet. I will do so right now

Hi Iblis.I think you are either missing or misunderstanding the point that Crevo and I are making. No problem with this part except to emphasize that we actually do not have the ability to know the final outcome until after the event. That is the crux of the argument Here is the problem. You are now bringing interference into the equation. Neither Crevo or myself have ever suggested any kind of interference. The fact is that interference would put a whole new slant on the slant on the argument and really screw it up.
My argument specifically excludes interference of any kind. It doesn't matter one iota whether I or God or some super powered Alien like Superman can do anything about it at all since any kind of interference is specifically excluded from my argument. It has absolutely nothing to do with omnipotense (the ability to do something about it) and everything about the ability to know it's gonna happen.Take your own analogy. You jump off a roof. If an omnipotent God knows you are going to do it and has always known you are going to do it then you ARE going to do it. If you were to reconsider at the last moment and not jump then that would make him wrong. An omnipotent God cannot be wrong. That is the point here. And that means that for all of eternity, you were destined to jump off that roof and there wasn't a single thing that you could ever do to change that.
God didn't make you do it or even withhold his interference to stop you doing it. He simply knew that you would do it. This point really puts the cat among the pidgeons.
Let's say that....

1. God knows you will jump off the building at 3 minutes past 7 on June 22nd 2006.
2. God decides to stop you doing so.

One of the following must be true.

1. His stopping you means that he was wrong in knowing that you would jump. Therefore he has just negated the possibility of his own omniscience.
2. The converse means that he would be unable to stop you and is therefore not omnipotent.

Omniscience and Omnipotence are, by definition, mutually exclusive.As I said above, being omnipotent means knowing all things across all time and never being wrong about the tiniest little detail.
All of our lives are like a big soap opera to an omnipotent God. he can watch them over and over and over like we can watch a video replay. And each time he watches the rerun, the same thing is gonna happen. How boring is that?

Weel there were once this couple by the name of Adam and Eve who knew God really well. They met him face to face all the time and talked with him regularly.
Now what was it that happened to them....? It slipped my mind for the moment...

We really aren't getting anywhere with this.I am looking at this as an observer. CorrectWhat do I observe?I observe someone who believes a bunch of stuff that I believe are mutually exclusive. There is no way that I can step into your position of accepting these things without undermining the reason for even taking part in this discussion.I contend that if God is Omniscient then free will is an illusion since he already knows every action that will ever be taken by any of us at any time. If I have the ability to do any single little thing or make one solitary choice that God does not already know then it is his omniscience that is the illusion.For example if I watch an episode of faulty towers, I am then omniscient about what happens in that episode. When I watch the re-run, Basil is gonna slp manuel around the head at exactly the same time for doing exactly the same stupid thing every time
There is absolutely no way that it can happen any differently. Basil has no free will in the matter.
All of eternity is like that to an Omniscient God.Does this make us unthinking automatons?
Hell yes!!!Is there any point arguing with such an automaton?
Not really. You are right about that. But what choice do we have? We are the way we are.You say. I contend that this is an incorrect assertion. It has by no means been shown that machines are incapable of beleiving. We are, in fact biological machines no matter which way we cam to be. Creator god or natural processes. We exist and we at least think that we think (if that makes sense)
Anyway that is not the major point here.I fully agree that a mindless automaton cannot trully think. It just goes through the motions but could quite well be absolutely unaware that not one thought that crosses it's mind is it's own.
That is the position that the existence of an Omniscient God inevitably leads us.The whole thing boils down to one simple premise and one simple question.The premise: An Omniscient God infallibly knows everything that has happened, is happening and will happen to every one of us at every point throughout our entire livesThe question: If said god knows, with the kind of certainty that I cannot even dream of, that on a specific day, at a specific time, I will make a specific choice to perform a specific action, ........ Is there any way that I can make a different choice than the one that he knows I will make?If you can answer that question with a simple yes or no then this discussion will be over.IF NO then.... Free will is negated. I have absolutely no real choice since despite the illusion of free will, every choice I will ever make is 100% foreknown. To all intents and purposes I am a robot.If YES then.... Omniscience is negated since me having the genuine free will meams that nobody can ever have any kind of foreknowledge of what I am going to do next.

Exactly. To God it is NOT the future. Ever tried changing the past? Can you change a decision you made last week?
I think you may be trying to say something here but I can't quite make out what.
We are not trying to set limits on God. We are trying to figure out the reality of what those limits (if any) might actually be, by the use of the application of logic. OK now I'm completely lost. Maybe it's just me but I don't have a faintest clue what you just said.Edited by PurpleYouko, : fixed formatting mistake

Interesting dilema you set there Ian.
here are my thoughts.Position 1 Then I take a look at what you say next. I did this above but this time I will try to look at in in a slightly different light. Up to this point OK. I disagree. Saying this would be the only logical conclusion of your two premises.
Your reason for saying this is. This is simply an unfounded assertion and as such is irrelevent and has no place in the argument. Just because you find it incredulous that a machine could think and recognise its own "I"ness does not make it so. (ooh I made up a new word )You then set the bounds Except that I cannot accept these things without first conceding the entire argument. As far as I am concerned either your premises are correct and you are a mindless machine or your premises are false and we all have free will (possibly but by no means certain).Now I will look at the other option you gave me. Sorry to burst your bubble but I still conclude no such thing.
If i know that the premises are correct and believe it with all my being then I am forced to conclude that I have no free will whatsoever and am indeed following a predestined path in which I happen to believe in God.I have been there for real. It is, in point of fact, the most damning peice of evidence in my decision to change those premises. They simply DO NOT WORK. It is utterly impossible to reconcile an A.K. god with free will. Then all you are really doing is abandoning the discussion since as far as Crevo and myself are concerned the very premises that you want us to "accept" for the discussion are impossible for us to accept.
The very nature of our argument rests on these premises being impossible.Could you argue your side if you had to first agree to "accept" that your premises are false?
What you ask is a little like arguing that 2 + 3 = 6 and insisting on the fact that for the duration of the discussion, it must be accepted that 3 is actually 4.
Once the premise is accepted then the argument is over.What you have to understand is that it is your premise that we are attempting to refute. How can we do that if we first accept it. It's ludicrous.Edited by PurpleYouko, : No reason given.

Right so we can just throw out a couple of contradictory premises and hand wave away all the problems it introduces.
Nice.
Obviously to you, the concept of omnipotence makes all the little problems just go away in pretty little POOFs.
To me this just deapens the underlying issue that Omnipotence and Omniscience are absolutely mutually exclusiv.If you want to just hand wave it away then fine. you just do that.
But if you want any kind of meaningfull discussion, you are gonna need to do a whole lot better otherwise we are all just wasting our time here.{ABE}PS. This site could really use a bunch of better emoticons. I had to grab this one off my own web site.Edited by PurpleYouko, : No reason given.

There isn't one jot of incredulity in my argument. Simply the logical projection of the meaning of the premises. Which, incidentally nobody has directly addressed yet. Maybe you will. It's pretty obvious why. At least to me anyway. just for you I will explain it one more time.First we have to agree on what the premises mean. Here is what they mean to me. Maybe I have this wrong and it is the sause of the contention. Maybe to you and Iano they mean something different.Omniscience: Knowing everything there is to know about everything that exists throughout all time. Knowing every event that will ever happen and at what time it will happen. Knowing the motions of every single subatomic particle throughout the entire universe and knowing exactly where it will be at any possible moment in time. This knowledge must also be 100% infallible.Would you agree?Omnipotence: The ability to do anything you like. Absolutely anything with no restrictions.Again do you agree?Well here is my problem. The ability to do absolutely anything without restriction must also include the ability to change something that happens in the universe. So what does this do to omniscience?God knows with absolute certainty that a certain particle will be in a certain spot at a certain time (and remember, he CANNOT be wrong no matter what, due to omniscience)
Then he make it go somewhere else (remember he can do anything he likes by means of his omnipotence)
Except that now his foreknowledge was wrong. the particle isn't where he knew it would be. It is somewhere else.
Since omniscience means that he cannot be wrong yet by means of his own omnipotence, he is wrong then either one or the other cannot exist.Either his knowledge is perfect and he is powerless to change what he already knows to be true or his power is perfect and he has no idea what he will do until he decides to do it.It is logically impossible for both to be true simultaineously.

Will you stop with this one already?
This is NOT a logical falacy since there is no reason whatsoever why a machine cannot ask the question. This is particularly true if you are predestined to ask the question through Gods very pre-knowledge of the event.
That they cannot is simply an unfounded and unsupported assertion on your part.
This statement is not a valid argument. No there isn't a logical falacy. If you really think there is then please explain why a machine cannot ask the questionThe situation we truly have is that you are unwilling to ask the question because to do so means that one of two possible scenarios become evident.In one you are fully able to ask the question with your own free will because God is actually NOT omniscient.
In the other you aske the question because that is what you are predestined to do. You have no free will to NOT ask it. Since you are still under the illusion of free will this presents no problems. A robot automaton could just as easily ask the question (if that is what it was programmed to do) as a free willed individual could. If the question has any inherrent meaning or not is utterly irrelevent. Funny I kinda thought that was precisely what it is about.Your premise is that God exists, God is A.K and that we have free will.My premise (for the duration of this thread) is either that

• God exists, God is NOT A.K. and that we have free will
• Or that God exists, God is A.K. and we have the "Illusion" of free will.

I am already making a pretty big concession in agreeing that God exists. You can't expect me to accept a position which I am actively trying to refute.