In the beginning ...

[MajGenl.Meade]

FWIW Norman Geisler offers:

God does not force them to happen against our free will; rather He predetermines that they will occur through our free will. Or, to put it minimally, God does not have to make these events occur; He can see them occur—from His eternal vantage point.

A person standing on top of a building foreseeing a collision (between [Page 95] two cars that cannot see each other around the corner) does not cause the crash. Likewise, God, who can by His omniscience foresee what we will freely do, need not cause us to do it. And even if He is the ultimate cause of all things, He is not the immediate cause of them. Free moral agents are the immediate cause of all free actions. God (the primary cause) produced the fact of freedom, and free agents (secondary causes), by God’s grace, produce the acts of freedom

Further, one and the same event can be both determined and yet free with no contradiction. For example, when one watches a recording of a televised game, it is already determined; nothing can be changed. It will turn out exactly the same, score and all, no matter how many times one watches it. Yet when the game was played, each and every person played according to his or her own free will. No one was forced to do anything. Thus, one and the same events were both determined and yet free

To the objection that this is so because we are looking back on the game, the theist could reply, “God in His omniscience looks forward with an even greater certainty than we look backward.”

The God of orthodox theology is eternal, not temporal. Therefore, He does not really look forward to the future; He simply looks downward on it, since it is present to Him in His eternal now (as the great I AM of Ex. 3:14). To illustrate, a person in a cave can look out the tunnel and see only one train car going by at a time—the present one. He cannot see the one already past or the one yet to come. But the person on the top of that mountain can see all of them at the same time. Likewise, God can see past, present, and future all in His eternal present (the now). He sees the future, not because it has already occurred, but because it preexists in Him as the eternal Cause of all that was, is, and will be.

If God is eternal, there is no problem with an event being determined in advance (and, thus, not being free), for then God is actively seeing in His eternal present what we are freely doing. He is not passively seeing the future (as though He had to wait on it to occur). He is not literally foreseeing anything. It is only called foreseeing and predetermining from our standpoint in time, not from God’s vantage point in eternity.

In point of fact, God knows the future not because He is looking down or ahead; He is simply looking within Himself, for all effects preexist in their cause, and God is the Cause of all things, including the future. Hence, God is seeing them in His eternal nature, before they ever occur, with the same certainty as if they had already occurred (see Aquinas, ST, 1a.14.6–9). There is no contradiction between God’s predestination and our free will.

End of quote
And that's that. Except to say of course that man's inability to comprehend events has never to human knowledge meant that such events are not real.

To answer Sue's questions - well two anyway. Why do I need God? Without God nothing would exist and nothing could continue to exist - He is both creator and current sustainer of all things. No God = no thing.

Then I need God for my own salvation so that my eternity is not spent in the stripey hole. Why does God need me? He doesn't. He wants me - that's different. Sounds like fun eh Gob? He wants Gob and Sue 2 but that old free will thing probably kicks in just about at that point (just as He knew it would. I'm not sure about Gob; maybe God predetermined that one the old fashioned way )

Love
Meade

[Gob]

Welcome to the dark side MGM, we have cookies...

[Scooter]

A person standing on top of a building foreseeing a collision (between [Page 95] two cars that cannot see each other around the corner) does not cause the crash. Likewise, God, who can by His omniscience foresee what we will freely do, need not cause us to do it. And eve

Except that such an observer does not know with 100% certainty, as God supposedly does, whether either or both of the drivers will react in time to swerve and avoid the accident. So the analogy is useless.

Further, one and the same event can be both determined and yet free with no contradiction. For example, when one watches a recording of a televised game, it is already determined; nothing can be changed. It will turn out exactly the same, score and all, no matter how many times one watches it. Yet when the game was played, each and every person played according to his or her own free will. No one was forced to do anything. Thus, one and the same events were both determined and yet free

Except that, even this "looking backwards" does not come close to God's supposed perfect knowledge. A review of a videotape might (or might not) reveal a penalty which was committed and which might throw out what might have been the winning point of a game. A competitor who was declared the winner might subsequently fail a drug test and be disqualified, completely changing the results. Once again, any sort of analogy attempting to equate the observations of allegedly pathetic, puny, insignificant humans to God's everpresent omniscience falls flat, and fails to explain how it could coexist with human free will.

[Gob]

To answer Sue's questions - well two anyway. Why do I need God? Without God nothing would exist and nothing could continue to exist - He is both creator and current sustainer of all things. No God = no thing.

Then I need God for my own salvation so that my eternity is not spent in the stripey hole. Why does God need me? He doesn't. He wants me - that's different. Sounds like fun eh Gob? He wants Gob and Sue 2 but that old free will thing probably kicks in just about at that point (just as He knew it would. I'm not sure about Gob; maybe God predetermined that one the old fashioned way )

Love
Meade

This has so many "taken on faith" presumptions.

1. Presumption that god exists.
2. Presumption that the mix of memory, experience, sensations, and thoughts contained in the human brain somehow survives the death of the body.
3. Presumption that god created hell.
4. Presumption that a being capable of creating the universe would create insignificant creatures to (keep it company? say nice things about it? suffer? exist?)
5. Presumption that an infinite being would discriminate against an insignificant creature such as a human, dog or ant, based on the way they interpret very shoddily constructed and contradictory range of manuals.


Let's face it, god was created by man as we are scared of death. We look to the end of life with immense fear, and hope that we survive in some form. We are so egotistical that we believe we have some reason to exist. This fear has been used to give weak but intelligent men power over the population for centuries.

[Sue U]

You know, I was listening to Terry Gross's interview with Brian Greene and it occured to me that "omniscience" actually can co-exist with free will if our universe is one of an infinite number of parallel universes linked in a multiverse, where there are an infinite number of possible results (or positions) for every particle and its chain of events; thus, all possible outcomes occur in one universe or another. In this way all outcomes are "predestined" to occur somewhere, but each particle is free to find its own path through its own experience of "reality," which is actually a march of probabilities through many alternate universes on a microsecond-to-micorsecond (I mean the smallest possible unit of time, whatever the word for that is)* basis.

The theories of what a multiverse might be are, obviously, concepts that I am only beginning to be dimly aware of. But as I understand it, it seems to be the principle that makes quantum mechanics work.

ETA:

* I just found out it's called a "Planck time" unit, but you all probably knew that already.

[loCAtek]

Welcome to Buddhism;

Buddhism and quantum physics


Freiburg, Germany, March 11 — What is reality? The mindsets of the modern world provide four answers to the question and oscillate between these answers:

1. The traditional Jewish, Islamic and Christian religions speak about a creator that holds the world together. He represents the fundamental reality. If He were separated only for one moment from the world, the world would disappear immediately. The world can only exist because He is maintaining and guarding it. This mindset is so fundamental that even many modern scientists cannot deviate from it. The laws of nature and elementary particles now supersede the role of the creator.

2. René Descartes takes into consideration a second mindset where the subject or the subjective model of thought is fundamental. Everything else is nothing but derived from it.

3. According to a third holistic mindset, the fundamental reality should consist of both, subject and object. Everything should be one. Everything should be connected with everything.

4. A fourth and very modern mindset neglects reality. We could call it instrumentalism. According to this way of thinking, our concepts do not reflect a single reality in any one way. Our concepts have nothing to do with reality but only with information.

Buddhism refutes these four concepts of reality. Therefore, it confronts the reproach of nihilism. If you do not believe in a creator or in the laws of nature, or in a permanent object, or in an absolute subject, or none of it, then what do you believe?

What remains if one considers a fundamental reality? The answer is simple: it is so simple that we barely consider it being a philosophical statement: things depend on other things.

For instance, a thing is dependent on its cause. There is no effect without a cause and no cause without an effect. There is no fire without fuel, no action without an actor and vice versa. Things are dependent on other things; they are not identical with each other, nor do they break up into objective and subjective parts. This Buddhist concept of reality is often met with disapproval and is considered incomprehensible.

But there are modern modes of thought with points of contact. For instance, there is a discussion in quantum physics about fundamental reality. What is fundamental in quantum physics? Is it particles, waves, field of force, laws of nature, mindsets or information?

Quantum physics came to a result that is expressed by key words like complementarities, interaction and entanglement. According to these concepts there are no independent but complementary quantum objects; they are at the same time waves and particles. Quantum objects interact with others, and they are entangled even when separated by long distances.

Without being observed philosophically, quantum physics has created a physical concept of reality. According to that concept the fundamental reality is an interaction of systems that interact with other systems and with their own components. This physical concept of reality does not agree upon the four approaches mentioned earlier.

If the fundamental reality consists of dependent systems, then its basics can neither be independent and objective laws of nature nor independent subjective models of thought. The fundamental reality cannot be a mystic entity nor can it consist of information only.

The concepts of reality in Buddhism surprisingly parallel quantum physics.

More: http://ctkohl.googlepages.com

[Andrew D]

The issue whether God's omniscience causes the impossibility of human free will (which includes the issue whether God's knowledge causes human actions) is irrelevant. The issue whether God's knowledge is temporal, omnitemporal, atemporal, or any combination of those is also irrelevant.

The irrelevance of both points can be plainly seen if the logic at issue is put this way:

If God knows the occurrence of a thing, then the nonoccurrence of that thing is absolutely impossible. Thus, if God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X, then there is no possibility that I will not choose to do X: My not choosing to do X would be the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X, and if God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible. Free will means that it is possible for me to choose to do X, and it is possible for me not to choose to do X; that is, the occurrence of my choosing to do X is possible, and the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is also possible. If the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is impossible, then I do not have free will. If God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is impossible. Therefore, if God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X, then I do not have free will.

It does not matter whether or not God's knowledge of the occurrence of my choosing to do X is what causes me to choose to do X. If God's knowing the occurrence of my choosing to do X is the cause of my choosing to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible. And if God's knowing the occurrence of my choosing to do X is not the cause of my choosing to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible. If God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible, and the cause of that impossibility simply has nothing to do with it.

It also does not matter whether God's knowledge of the occurrence of my choosing to do X is temporal, omnitemporal, atemporal, or whatever. If God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X before I choose to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible. If God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X when I choose to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible. If God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X after I choose to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible. If God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X before and when and after I choose to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is impossible. And if God atemporally knows that the eternal state of affairs includes the occurrence of my choosing to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible.

Put the other way, if God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible, has always been absolutely impossible, and always will be absolutely impossible. The eternal state of affairs includes, has always included, and always will include both the occurrence of my choosing to do X and the absolute impossibility of the nonoccurrence of my not choosing to do X.

The implacable logic demonstrates that God's omniscience and human free will cannot coexist. If God's omniscience causes the impossibility of human free will (including if God's knowledge causes human actions), then God's omniscience and human free will cannot coexist. If God's omniscience does not cause the impossibility of human free will (including if God's knowledge does not cause human actions), then God's omniscience and human free will still cannot coexist. If God's knowledge is temporal, if God's knowledge is atemporal, if God's knowledge is omnitemporal, if God's knowledge is of the eternal state of affairs, or if God's knowledge is some combination of any or all of those -- regardless of the precise nature of God's knowledge, if God is omniscient, then human free will cannot exist.

Nothing thus far put forward in this thread refutes that logic.

[thestoat]

A person standing on top of a building foreseeing a collision (between [Page 95] two cars that cannot see each other around the corner) does not cause the crash. Likewise, God, who can by His omniscience foresee what we will freely do, need not cause us to do it

That may be true, MGM, but if I was standing on a corner and could foresee a car crash but didn't try to stop it, I would be a bit of a shit. If I foresaw great famine, suffering, wars, rapes, etc, and could do something to stop that but didn't, I'd be a really big shit. Or are you suggesting god does try to stop these things from happening but is completely useless at succeeding?

[Big RR]

Additionally Meade,you are not foreseeing the collision as a certainty, only presuming it is likely (one car could stop, the other could veer off, etc.); an omniscient (at least as omniscience is commonly understood) being would know exactly what would happen--nothing could be changed and/or left to chance. It is predestined to occur, although I would agree that the omniscient being need not have predestined it to occur. But I fail to see how I can have free will if my action is known before I choose it--I must act that way, therefore I have no free choice.

[Rick]

I am posting this as a link, reference it or don't the choice is yours...

[Andrew D]

The linked article addresses whether God has free will. That is an interesting question, but it is not the question at issue at the moment.

The linked article says that the argument which it addresses "fails because it equates the knowledge of the future with the cause of future events." Perhaps it does. But as repeatedly pointed out, the logic at issue here has nothing to do with whether God's knowledge causes the impossibility of the coexistence of human free will and God's omniscience. If God's knowledge causes that impossibility, the logic holds. If God's knowledge does not cause that impossibility, the logic also holds.

The linked article asks us to "Suppose a person knows that at 12:00 p.m. tomorrow he will choose to drink coffee instead of tea." What is the utility of supposing the existence of a person of a kind which does not exist? No one knows that he or she will choose to drink coffee instead of tea tomorrow. No human being has the power to know whether or not he or she will even be alive tomorrow.

The linked article claims that "the historicity and deity of Christ has [sic] been established as fact". If that were true, what need would there be for faith at all?

[Andrew D]

I wish that someone would present a line of reasoning which that person believes leads to the conclusion that God's omniscience and human free will can logically coexist. (A line of reasoning, of course, which the presenter of it believes to be sound.) Thus far, I have not yet seen that even attempted. One can make what one will of the apparent unwillingness of those who contend that God's omniscience and human free will can logically coexist to present a line of reasoning which they believe leads to that conclusion. To me, the obvious inference to be drawn is that they do not consider themselves capable of doing so.

[Long Run]

I wish that someone would present a line of reasoning which that person believes leads to the conclusion that God's omniscience and human free will can logically coexist.

Klondike bars were on sale. Not just any namby-pamby sale; they were like 20 cents each, every kind was the same price, including the dark chocolate and the Heath. Now that is a deal. So God knows I can't resist that kind of deal, even though I have it in me to resist. See.

[loCAtek]

The linked article claims that "the historicity and deity of Christ has [sic] been established as fact". If that were true, what need would there be for faith at all?

Because there is doubt.

[Andrew D]

Then I guess that they have not "been established as fact" after all.

[loCAtek]

Well, faith and fact are doubted at times.

[thestoat]

The linked article claims that "the historicity and deity of Christ has [sic] been established as fact"

Wow. Must be a usage of the word "fact" of which I was previously unaware

[MajGenl.Meade]

If God knows the occurrence of my choosing to do X before I choose to do X, then the nonoccurrence of my choosing to do X is absolutely impossible.

Of course but (non-calvinist hat) that's because you will choose to do X rather than Y. He knows what you will freely choose; what will happen. You don't, yet. When (in time) you are presented with choice X and Y, you will make a free choice of X (in this case). It is indeed impossible that you will not make the choice that you will make. You cannot make a different choice than the one that you do choose. What earthly difference can it make to you that God knows before you do which free choice you will make? If you knew in advance what He knew, then yes there would be a problem - you might struggle to choose Y but still end up at X and feel much as Jonah did.

Of course and (calvinist hat) you are quite correct - there is no human free will.

As to rabbit trails, humans (non calvinist hat) freely choose to screw up this world. God foresees the collision of the cars and has already done something about it. The warning is loud and clear. It's wise to pay attention. Now if you want some God who chooses for you - takes away all that free will and runs everyone as an automaton, not permitting car crashes, not permitting humans to kill each other, hurt children and so on - then worship that one. Of course that kind of god might stop us all lying, cheating, stealing, choosing sexual partners, drinking to excess, speeding, risking life and limb - what all else.

Or (calvinist hat) it's God's world and he can do whatever he wants with it. Pots don't talk back to potters. But in this case, it's not wise to give him the finger

Of course, if there is no God then all these bad things (a) still happen anyway and (b) that's that. Shame about the kiddies but hey, humans happen!

Love
Meade

PS please note I was quoting Norman Geisler who actually is a philosopher and theist. And yes, you either assume God is and argue from there or you assume God is not and argue from there. Agnostics argue from not knowing a damn thing so are discounted

[Big RR]

Meade--

It is indeed impossible that you will not make the choice that you will make.

And therein lies the problem, how can my choice be "free" if I cannot make any other choice? You ask what difference it can make to me that god already knows what choice I will make? It is precisely because then I have no choice, I am only fulfilling the destiny predestined for me. Looking at the concept of salvation as often preached/described in christianity, it would make a great deal of difference to me if I were constrained to seek salvation or to reject it. It's not a choice, it is my fulfilling what must be for me; and somehow the eternal fate of my soul and its reward or punishment are also predestined. Now this may not make a difference to you, but I see it as pretty silly--one is rewarded or punished for doing what they predestined to do since the beginning of time, but god is still just? How?

[Rick]

Inevitable outcomes have been a topic of discussion since Aristotle, I figger he wasn't the 1st.

Paul no doubt ran into this problem when he preached in Athens. I'm also pretty sure he felt a sense of loss for every person that walked away in disbelief. But he shook it off an continued with what he was doing.

Paul had no problem reconciling divine omniscience and free will, neither do I.

As for God being fact, Jesus was a REAL individual that claimed to be the human born son of God.

I have no reason to doubt his veracity.

That is faith...