Moral choices, obviously. Aesthetic and gustatory choices don't ordinarily implicate any moral status...well, unless you like rap music or greasy, unhealthy food.Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 3:18 pmWhy do you only refer to the choice between "good" and "evil"; do we not also have the freedom to choose between things like having a hot dog or a hamburger?Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 2:32 pmNot "randomness," per se. Volition. That is, he created beings that could choose freely to do His will, or to do that which is actually contrary to what He would will for them. That's established very clearly from Genesis on forward...mankind is an entity that can choose "good" or "evil," and "knows" them both.
Sorry. It's a challenging question, and the answer requires some challenging thinking. I congratulate you on the depth of the question: but if it's a deep question, how can a superficial answer suffice?I can't unpick all that; it's beyond me, I fear.IC wrote:Again, you can check: it's impossible to make sense of that argument, actually. Unless you're more skilled than I am at creating syllogisms, you can't suddenly convert the verb "to know" into the verb "to make [happen]." They're totally separate actions.Harbal wrote:If he didn't, then he must be responsible for everything that happens, and for everything every individual ever does, because nothing could have ever been other than what it is. If he did, then how could he possibly know what is going to happen?
And you know they are. In your own life experience, knowing never makes things happen. It simply is a matter of awareness, not of the movement of mechanics. Knowing how to bake a cake never baked one.
So to get the kind of argument you want, you'd need to assume some untrue things. You'd need, first of all, the belief that the only way things operate in the universe is deterministically. Then you could deduce that God set the wheels in motion, and since after that there was nothing but the wheels turning, the universe is fatalistically predetermined.
But of course, the problem with that is that you've started by assuming the conclusion you needed in order to make the argument, not by demonstrating it in any way. And that first premise is (shall we say) very likely to be totally false -- for the very good reason that you do not experience reality as deterministic, nor do you live and act as if it's deterministic. So if we are to believe that Determinism is true, the full burden of proving it surely rests on the person who says, "I know you feel and act as if Determinism is totally false, as has every other person in human history, but I assure you it's true." We have every justification to ask for his reasons and his demonstration that we should start believing something so counterintuitive and experientially falsified.
However, if you and I can "change our minds" and believe him -- rather than, say, being merely mechanically-predetermined to do so, like dutiful little robots -- then we have just proved him wrong, not right. According to his theory, we have responded to our own biomechanics, not to the persuasive value of his argument itself; and so his argument hasn't achieved the force of truth, but merely accidentally ended up on the winning side of our biomechanics.
The upshot is that the argument for Determinism is one that there appears to be no way to win: for to win it, genuinely, by making a true argument rather than a false one, is essentially to lose the argument by showing, instead, two free individuals making their own rational choices. And according to Determinism, that ought to be impossible. Any such phenomenon as two people making a "free choice" ought to be nothing more than an odd delusion produced by the action of the biomechanics, not the product of a good argument on the minds of free individuals.
But let me make it as simple as I can. "Know" is not "make." Those are two different actions. To say that God "knows" what will happen does not even remotely imply He also has to "make" it happen.
God knows all factuals and counterfactuals of every case: that's what ominiscience implies. God knows what every choice you make will lead to. Even though you have many choices, there is no choice that you can make, among the many that you have, that God does not know the outcome of.
But He isn't making you choose, and he can deal with any of the ten or twenty things you may choose to do in a given situation. And He is not losing control of the situation if you choose option X, or Y, or Z. He even knows which you will choose (it's Z). But if you chose X or Y, He'd know that, and he'd be well aware of the outcome of those possible choices too.
That's how the Bible depicts the landscape. It may be more complex than you find easy to think about, but if you found it easy to unpack the mechanics of the universe, maybe you should run for the office of "Supreme Being" -- although I'm not hearing it's open right now, and there are apparently no term limits.