Omniscience of Divine Being.

Hangdawg13 If by freewill you mean the ability to make a choice between two or more possible actions then no, since even ameoba can perform this though it is not likely they have consciousness but simply an abililty to respond to a stimulus. I am not certain of what you mean here.We cannot really see the future as that is a physical impossibility.We can remember the past imperfectly though these are probably not along the lines you were talking about. Ia magain unsure of this statement and would ask you to clarify it if you would.

It seems to me that words such as "choice" and "will" automatically imply a consciousness. Except for literary personification we do not say inanimate objects "choose" things. An ameoba cannot have freewill anymore than a rock rolling down a hill because neither is conscious. ...So I'm sticking with my assertion that consciousness is necessary for freewill since it is sort of implied by the definition.The thing that differentiates an unwilled event from a willed event is a conscious being's knowledge and desire that the being be a part of that event. A rock falling off a ledge doesn't know or care what's going on. A person BASE jumping off a ledge knows what is going on and forsees the consequences of his action as desirable. He has not altered the future reality by his decision. He has merely acknowledged and desired his place in it.Of course if that person was pushed off the ledge he is conscious that he is part of an event, but he did not desire the outcome, so we say he had no freewill in this case, or "He jumped against his will." We can see a little ways past most decisions. And what we've learned from the past helps us to know which choice we desire. Marriage is how God describes his relationship with us, so I'll use it as well. A husband and wife are said to be one in body and soul and they make lots of decisions together. If they both are conscious of a decision and forsee it's consequences and desire the same thing, then both are exercising their freewill. If neither have the same desire, but one overpowers the other, both act because they are still united, but the action is against the will of one and not the other. If God and I both share the knowledge of the consequences of a particular action, and we both act then aren't we both exercising our volition?Freewill is not the power to create or alter a reality.The reality is determined, but it is consciousness, knowledge, desire, and freedom followed by action that make that reality our own, and this is what we call freewill.I hope I made some sense.

Hi Ifen, Well, not me, but but that is the conclusion most folks come to. I agree that knowledge is insufficient for freewill, which is why I added more qualifiers in my post to Sidelined. "knowing" doesn't equal "determining" but it does equal "determined". If I know with 100% certainty that the two cars will hit before they hit, then I can say those cars are determined to hit each other. Since God is supposed to be sovereign and outside the boundaries of time, it couldn't have been determined unless he had a part in determining it. Oh I think about it alot because I sure as heck don't understand it. Read my last post to sidelined, I think I fleshed out my thoughts a bit better there. Depends on how you measure complexity. In general I'd say yes.

How does "knowing" equate to "determining"??? Say I see two cars on a collison course but that doesn't mean I can prevent the collison nor that I determined it.If god had infinite creation potential, and infinite knowlege of the future, then it would be the equivilent of placing those two cars (and indeed everything else) on the collison course and knowing what the outcome would be. So god could have prevented the accident by creating the event differently, and he determined it becuase he created it the way he did and he knew the outcome of it.

freewill implys that an individual made a choice,if people only believe that they are making a choice then free will is as I said an illusion.People can observe a UFO and believe that they saw an UFO, that doesn't mean that a spacecraft(or whatever) actually exists.If I were to make a choice, say 1 or 2, and I choose 1, then I believe that I choose 1 of my own free will. However if when god created everything and he knew the outcome of his creations, then he knew that in the universe he created that I would "choose" 1 and therefore I didn't make that choice, he did. Its an identical situation to a book character "choosing" something, hes not making the choice, the author is, but the character stilll "thinks" he is.

Hangdawg13 Given the existence of god then how can you possibly equate your knowledge of the outcome of a particular action?Indeed,if god were to,say,allow you to proceed through a green light at an intersection yet in doing so{you proceeded to drive through of your own volition} you strike a child who bolts across the street and they subsequently suffer a permanent brain injury that renders them completely dependent on others.
In this scenario you do not have full knowledge of the consequences,do you maintain that the action was freewill?

Reminds me of the culpability of the nazi commandants who were just following orders.(Not to mention other similar military situations) They were bound by duty, yet they could have appealed to a higher power.If a guy and girl got drunk,(free will) got passionate,(combo of free will and biological urge) and made a baby, would that child be a "mistake"? The two shared a knowledge of what they wanted to do. They chose to surrender common sense in the pursuit of passion.The nazi commandants chose to surrender moral conscience for the authority of the regime.This message has been edited by Phatboy, 05-09-2005 11:36 AM

Whether in obedience or in freewill rebellion, nobody has full knowledge of the consequences except God. It is enough to know obedience and trust that the motive and means justify any end that occurs.

Thanks for your reply. I know... for a while I thought this too. The more I think about it, the more I disagree with this.Why must a "choice" be possessed by only one being for it to be meaningful? This is what I was explaining with the marriage illustration. No, because a book character does not "think".

Hi Dawg,You probably have guessed that I would think "marriage" is one way some people have described how they see the relationship of God and humans. There are a lot of cultural, social, psychological basis for this. I'm not sure where you get that a man and woman can "be one in body and soul". It's a sentiment but have you any scientific basis for this? You seem to be reasoning from presciencific metaphors.I'm thinking that the notion of freewill could arise from the experience we have of conflict over decisions. This arises from the complexity of the brain and hence the complexity of brain actions.
I'll propose an issue that seems both important but neutral in the sense of hot issues of faith. It's something I'm dealing with now and that is choosing what to eat and what not to eat.Based on the information I've read and reports from my Doctor, I've decided to change my diet in a direction I believe will result in greater health. I love desserts of all sorts and liked many convenience foods but now I choose not to buy and eat ice cream and instead purchase and eat whole fresh fruits and vegetables.
I prefer the taste and pleasures and convenience of ice cream and candy to vegetables. I have internal conflicts from time to time as part of me wants a pint of ice cream and another part of me is concerned about what that will do to my blood sugar and cholestral.
I think this is an internal conflict and somehow as my complex brain weighs a lot of factors behaviours eventually emerge. Sometimes I decide to "cheat" and have some sweets but more often I resigned myself to eating a healthier food. This involves motivation and will (a subjective sense of effort).I think a major function of religion is the control of behaviour through motivation; the carrot and stick of heaven and hell. In my case instead of religion I'm citing medicine and the carrot is health and energy and the stick is heart disease and type II diabetes.This conflict does seem to depend on my being conscious, but where in this do I find a "free" will? I don't know if you will find this example interesting or useful. Let's say that I had access to omniscience. How might that change my experience of this? Would I have to engage my will? Would I feel a conflict? or would I be in complete harmony with my life as lived? Let's say I could know for certain that eating so much of certain fats would result in my having a heart attack or that I would die in a car accident and that eating ice cream would have no effect on that?lfen

They don't have to be equal. It doesn't matter if I know the exact consequences of my actions or have a general idea. As long as I want to act and know that I'm acting, then I am exercising my freewill. The action to proceed was of my own freewill, but the action of hitting the kid was not because I didn't know that I would or desire to hit him.

Hi Phatboy, I'm not intending to get into the moral responsibility here. I'm just trying to determine what is determined and who is doing the determining.

Hangdawg,Would you also accept a "what" is doing the determining? I'm thinking of some complex of neurons and information in a matrix of a larger ecosystem. I will assert that a "who" is an illusion that seems to create a separate and independent "actor" when the reality is the system is acting in a great complexity of interactions one of which we call for convenience "me or I" and another we call "you" or "he".lfen

Thanks for your reply. That's because we're discussing philosophy rather than science. Philosophy is made of metaphors, definitions, logic, and a little bit of poetry. I think I disagree for now. For example, right now I'm dead set on getting a motorcycle this summer. I experience no conflict and I still feel as though I am exercising my freewill in this decision. You can't find it unless you believe that YOU, that is your consciousness, is a real entity. I've talked about this before in other threads and I believe Kant was the first to espouse the idea that there are two realms of knowledge that cannot cross over or describe one another: the objective and subjective. You are trying to understand a subjective thing by summing its objectively scientifically understood physical components. And as you've stated if you do this there is no room for freewill. This is why I've stated before here that a pure naturalist who believes he has freewill may have a contradiction... but I feel like I'm sliding off topic now... But you don't, so I'm not sure how this helps us understand anything. This is one of those unanswerable paradoxes that doesn't have much bearing on us anyways because we can't time travel and know the future.

No. I believe that my consciousness is a reality. See last post on subjective vs objective realms of knowledge. Just because we know how this "illusion" is created doesn't make it any less real or significant, IMO. I believe subjective experience has value and that I am a being even though I understand the mindless processes that make up my mind.