Free Will vs Determinism

[thedoc]

Your 'God' cannot escape Logic.

Why not? except in your human argument, but really there is no reason for God to be bound by human expectations or limits.

[thedoc]

If you are saying your 'God' chooses not to know then it is not omniscient is it as 'it' doesn't know something.

Being omniscient means that God can know the future not that god must know the future. Choosing not to know does not diminish God's omniscience at all, omniscience is the ability to know, there is no obligation to know, just as you are not obliged to understand this at all.

[Immanuel Can]

Some people don't understand any explanation at all.

Right. I just ignore him nowadays.

But for your interest, I'd put it this way.

Omniscience means "knowing everything beforehand," not "forcibly arranging everything beforehand."

Omnipotence means "able to do anything," not "having to do everything."

Omnipresence means "present everywhere," not "imminent in everything."

And actually, the first definition of each pair suits the Western traditions of Theism. The second (the "not this" side) actually describes the ideas about the Supreme Being held by the Eastern traditions, by Pantheists, Panentheists and Determinists of various kinds.

[Arising_uk]

Some people don't understand any explanation at all.

And some people understand and point to logical consequences, it's called Philosophy, maybe you and IC should go to a theology site instead as you are clearly not listening to my argument but just living in your little back-rubbing theist bubble.

Although IC won't be doing this as he is a born-again christian and here to proselytise the heathen.

[Arising_uk]

Why not? except in your human argument, but really there is no reason for God to be bound by human expectations or limits.

You really need to get to grips with why Logic occurs and how it applies to anything that exists, unless of course you are saying your 'God' does not exist and hence Logic does not apply to 'it', I'll go with that.

[Arising_uk]

Right. I just ignore him nowadays. ...

IC said he ignores me because I said that by the definition of a bastard his 'God' is one and he did not wish to be party to my infernal eternal punishment? Nothing about my arguments.

Omniscience means "knowing everything beforehand," not "forcibly arranging everything beforehand." ...

And my point is exactly that it does not have to be this 'God' doing it but that something has to be doing it if this 'God' is going to be omniscient otherwise there is a high chance that it won't be turning out how 'it' says it will and hence 'it' won't be omniscient. As such if 'it' is omniscient then there has to be a determiner somewhere.

Omnipotence means "able to do anything," not "having to do everything."

So IC agrees, something else is doing some of the doing.

Omnipresence means "present everywhere," not "imminent in everything."[/color]

Surely he means immanent?

[Arising_uk]

Being omniscient means that God can know the future not that god must know the future. Choosing not to know does not diminish God's omniscience at all, omniscience is the ability to know, there is no obligation to know, just as you are not obliged to understand this at all.

I see, so apparently you can use your human reasoning to know what your 'God' is up to but I can't use Logic to say what it can and cannot do, theology forum for you my son.

How do you know what 'it' knows and do you even know what to "know" means or how negation("not" to you) works? So to choose not to know something is for it to be known in the first place and since we are talking about all future actions then something is knowing this first, if you say it is not your 'God' then I'm fine with this but it means there is another omniscient knower out there, you happy with this thought? To know is to have a temporal event of knowing and with respect to your omniscient 'God' if it has this event then for it to be infallibly true nothing must change, how is this occurring or happening? The whole point is that if it is possible for there to be omniscience then it is pretty much impossible for it not to be a deterministic universe as if it isn't then right after your 'god' says it knows things could be different and so it did not know. If you say ah! but 'God' knows when you change your mind then there is always going to be a cut-off point between 'it' knowing and the action and right after that point things could change so it didn't know. At least that's how I'm understanding it when it comes to there actually being an event where this 'God' is supposed to know in an omnisicient way and so far no-one has addressed this issue yet. I'm hoping davidm will as I expect neither of you two to get this issue, correction, I expect IC to get it but he'll ignore it as he does with anything that might obstruct his mission.

[davidm]

Omniscience and free will are not just compatible, it is logically necessary they be so -- as I explained upthread.

Suggest you carefully reread and think about it,

I have and so far I have a big problem in that you do not address the temporal factor in all this. When does this OA know what it is supposed to know? Because when it does then the future must be fixed for it to become true and that means no more freewill and no accidental events and this means to me a determining agent(DA) somewhere in the mix.

What you overlook is that it doesn’t matter if the future is fixed. Of course it is fixed, if an OA knows in advance what will happen. But as a matter of logic, fixity is not necessity.

In the case of humans, what “fixes” the future (and the past and the present) with regard to what we do, are our free choices. If I freely do x, and some OA knows this even before I do it, so what? What this OA foreknows, is entirely dependent on what I will do.

[thedoc]

Omniscience means "knowing everything beforehand," not "forcibly arranging everything beforehand." ...

And my point is exactly that it does not have to be this 'God' doing it but that something has to be doing it if this 'God' is going to be omniscient otherwise there is a high chance that it won't be turning out how 'it' says it will and hence 'it' won't be omniscient. As such if 'it' is omniscient then there has to be a determiner somewhere.

Omnipotence means "able to do anything," not "having to do everything."

So IC agrees, something else is doing some of the doing.

No this is incorrect, when you start a row of Domino's you don't need to push each one (unless they are too far apart) you push the first one and each will topple the next in turn. That is why God doesn't need to micro-manage everything and there doesn't need to be another agent for things to happen. It sounds like you are claiming that for anything to happen, God or some other agent has to make it happen. That is just silly, sometimes things just happen without intervention. God doesn't cause each little thing, but God was the original cause of every chain of events.

[Arising_uk]

No this is incorrect, when you start a row of Domino's you don't need to push each one (unless they are too far apart) you push the first one and each will topple the next in turn. That is why God doesn't need to micro-manage everything and there doesn't need to be another agent for things to happen. It sounds like you are claiming that for anything to happen, God or some other agent has to make it happen. That is just silly, sometimes things just happen without intervention. God doesn't cause each little thing, but God was the original cause of every chain of events.

Er!? This chain of dominoes is exactly Determinism.

[Arising_uk]

What you overlook is that it doesn’t matter if the future is fixed. Of course it is fixed, if an OA knows in advance what will happen. But as a matter of logic, fixity is not necessity.

But it is if this OA states beforehand what is going to happen?

In the case of humans, what “fixes” the future (and the past and the present) with regard to what we do, are our free choices. If I freely do x, and some OA knows this even before I do it, so what? What this OA foreknows, is entirely dependent on what I will do.

And yet you can't do anything different otherwise it can't 'foreknow' it at any time beforehand?

[davidm]

What you overlook is that it doesn’t matter if the future is fixed. Of course it is fixed, if an OA knows in advance what will happen. But as a matter of logic, fixity is not necessity.

But it is if this OA states beforehand what is going to happen?

You're asking what would happen if the OA tapped me on my shoulder and told me that he knew what I was about to do, and then told me what that thing was, and I decided to do differently? Is that your question?

And yet you can't do anything different otherwise it can't 'foreknow' it at any time beforehand?

I can do x or y. If I do x OA will foreknow x. If I do y, OA will foreknow y instead. But I am free to do x or y.

I went over the modal logic of this in some detail upthread.

[Arising_uk]

You're asking what would happen if the OA tapped me on my shoulder and told me that he knew what I was about to do, and then told me what that thing was, and I decided to do differently? Is that your question? ...

No, I'm asking you that if the OA told me what you were going to do how would it be possible for you to do it differently?

I can do x or y. If I do x OA will foreknow x. If I do y, OA will foreknow y instead. But I am free to do x or y.

I went over the modal logic of this in some detail upthread.

What do you actually mean by this 'foreknow'?

[davidm]

You're asking what would happen if the OA tapped me on my shoulder and told me that he knew what I was about to do, and then told me what that thing was, and I decided to do differently? Is that your question? ...

No, I'm asking you that if the OA told me what you were going to do how would it be possible for you to do it differently?

This makes no sense. Why would it matter if the OA told me what someone else was going to do?

You have a much more powerful case if you asked as I indicated: Suppose an OA told me what he infallibly predicted that I was going to do, and then I decided to do differently. But it's impossible that I should do differently, given that the OA is infallible. Therefore (it seems to follow) I must do what the OA predicts, even if I try to do otherwise. That would destroy my whole argument. Wouldn't you care to follow this much more promising line of argument instead?

[davidm]

You're asking what would happen if the OA tapped me on my shoulder and told me that he knew what I was about to do, and then told me what that thing was, and I decided to do differently? Is that your question? ...

No, I'm asking you that if the OA told me what you were going to do how would it be possible for you to do it differently?

This makes no sense. Why would it matter if the OA told me what someone else was going to do?

You have a much more powerful case if you asked as I indicated: Suppose an OA told me what he infallibly predicted that I was going to do, and then I decided to do differently. But it's impossible that I should do differently, given that the OA is infallible. Therefore (it seems to follow) I must do what the OA predicts, even if I try to do otherwise. That would destroy my whole argument. Wouldn't you care to follow this much more promising line of attack instead?