Big Bang

JohnnyM, to further your point, if the future is knowable (whether God knows it or not) then the future is in no way functionally different than the past... something which can be "recalled" but not changed. In fact, the argument is that there is no functional difference between the past, present or future.

In these terms, this actually gibes with relativity (both special and general) quite nicely... and actually particle physics as well. The forward progression of time is not necessary for our description of particle physics, and GR says quite clearly that time is not constant. So the question on the table is what is special about "the present" and from a physics perspective the answer is nothing at all. GR argues that the "present" is not remotely constant and is entirely dependent on individual observation frame... which is to say, my 'present' is conceivably different than any other 'present'... the reason why we don't notice really is because our proximity results in an individual frame which is virtually identical to any other on earth. That said, from a universal perspective time itself is so wonky that even the order of individual events is not absolute.
 
Fondren....i think you have entirely missed Coelacanth's point. he is responding to your last post on this issue. he is NOT saying that we have some pre life. he is responding to what you appeared to be saying earlier in this thread.
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Let me come in on this off topic argument! LOL. Let's let cooler heads prevail. We need to acknowledge a few things, I believe.

1) this is a thread in which we try our best to articulate our thoughts and argumentations, but the medium is not perfect.

2) Better argumentation doesn't mean a right position.


Ok, got those things off of my chest. Now, I am not the most articulate on hornfans. I acknowledge this. In fact, I have kept a pretty cool head lately, even about Obama. LOL.

So I want to just link an article here about what a Jesuit Priest named Luis de Molina proposed about the relationship between God's actions, God's knowledge, and the free will of humanity. It is stated much better than I could state it. Read through and give me some feedback on what you guys think.

The Link

At the bottom is reference to a few of William Lane Craig's book on the subject. I highly recommend them for any of you on here who want to know more about how God's knowledge can work together with free will.

Fondren,
One last statement. You asked why it was necessary for the Christian God to be all knowing and for humanity to have free will. It isn't so much that both are necessary, but rather that God has revealed that both of these things are true. I would agree with you that there could be a god who is not all knowing (and presumably a god who is not all good, all ect.). The real problem for Christians is that they don't have the luxury of trying to describe a god that is purely philosophical, but rather to understand a God who has revealed Himself. I hope that helps answer why some on here are trying to hard to explain why both are true.

Cheers.
 
Fondren,
The question that I immediately thought of when I read your response is how does a God who acts in time and yet exists independant even outside time, judge anything in time?
I acknowledge I have no cogent argument about this facet of God, but I don't even know how God relates to us as both already and not yet judged. If God isn't dependant on time, then He has already judged and not yet judged....
It is a quandry to be sure. Not saying I have a great answer for that.
 
I'm far from settled on the whole omniscience thing, and you guys know that my belief system is... well, unconventional.

That said, it is exceedingly hard to conceive of how a timeless entity COULD interact at all with anything. Action of any sort is meaningless outside of the context of time. Movement is distance divided by time, but if time is zero, then the result is null.

That said, the image in my mind is that God doesn't transcend time so much as our perception of it. The whole of creation is a single immutable thing and God can interact with any part of the creation. Time and space are not distinguishable, and God interacts with creation as I would with a tapestry. This view denies free will... but that is a problem that I can reconcile... in as much as I ignore it when I live my life.
 
mia, i think that my example of our world interacting with a world that is one dimension less answers your question. basically it shows how someone from a world with +1 dimensions could interact in such a way that appears paradoxical, but is not....

i would like to slightly correct Theu by saying that there really are plenty of Christians who don't actually believe in free will. he is of a tradition that strongly supports free will and believes this is what the Bible teaches (i tend to agree with him actually) but there are plenty of Christians who disagree with us.
 
oh...here is an excellent article that sort of goes through the history of this debate (it is quite a long history) and touches on Molinism as well as other solutions. very interesting. the writer of the article agrees with Coelacanth and myself, but even if you don't agree with that person, you can at least learn a ton on the issue and pick up some great history of philosophy stuff to throw out at a party (does anyone actually do that?).


www.iep.utm.edu/f/foreknow.htm


oh....and if nothing else, you will see that the question is FAR from settled and has been discussed for centuries.
 
It isn't a question of extra dimensions (unless the dimension is another time dimension). You could have 8 dimensions but without the +1 of time, you can't move... you can't even think, you simply are.
 
I'm not about to go through 12 pages of argument, so let me try this one. If it's already been tried and completely not understood, then ignore it.

mop, let's say I'm going to eat dinner soon. God knows what I'm going to eat. I am still trying to decide.

So you get to talk directly to God in a conversational format. You ask God what Huckleberry is going to eat for dinner. God tells you that Huckleberry is going to eat chicken.

Thirty minutes later back at the Huckleberry home, I am trying to decide between eating chicken or nachos for dinner. I have a choice to make. Let's examine the possibilities.

1.) I truly have a choice about what to eat for dinner and free will is a true concept. This means that I could choose nachos and GOD MIGHT BE WRONG. This nullifies the possibility of an omniscient God coexisting with free will. If God can be wrong, then He is not omniscient.

2.) I don't actually have a choice. I am going to eat chicken and God knows this. I might think I have a choice but there is no possible way I can choose chicken because God is omniscient and can never be wrong. He told you I am going to eat chicken so it must be so. Therefore I don't have a real choice and don't have free will. This also nullifies the possible coexistence of an omniscient God and free will.

Don't consider this debate as an anti-God argument. It is simply an argument that free will is not possible if determinism is reality. The omniscient God construct is simply the specific form of determinism used in this exercise.

The best argument that they are compatible in the omniscient God construct is that God is eternal and sees past, present, and future as one, so that God's knowing what I will choose is the same as knowing what I've already chosen in His reality. This effectively argues for the two concepts' coexistence in God's reality, however I don't accept that it successfully argues for their coexistence in our reality. To me, it doesn't matter if God knows that I'll eat chicken from the past, present, or future, it still means that I will choose chicken no matter what. Ergo, no free will.
 
mop - please answer this question that i posed in my last post:

answer me this...if God KNOWS that i am going to eat cheese pizza for lunch, am i capable of choosing to eat a burger? if not, does that not mean i am not free? and if so, does that not mean that God was in fact wrong?

i'm not trying to paint you in a corner or anything, but the scenario above is exactly why i cannot separate free will from an omniscient God, so i'd like to hear what you think about that situation.

if someone, anyone, knows my choice before i make it, then i'm not free to make any other choice. it does not mean that the person who knows is MAKING me make that choice, it merely means that i'm not free to make any other choice.
 
i actually think the past is a perfect example.....the past exists and we know it, but everything that happened was by free agents choosing freely..... i admit is a bit counter-intuitive, but that doesn't mean it isn't correct.....and to date, no one in this thread has been able to meet the challenges put forth by Coelacanth.
 
Huckleberry, to borrow from my earlier example. a 2 dimensional world moving forward in time is projected on a perfectly smooth wall. i am a 3 dimensional being moving forward in time at the same pace. i decide to walk up to their world and put my 5 finger tips against their smooth wall world, thereby intersecting it with 5 roughly cylindrical shapes. someone tells them that these shapes all belong to the same being (me) who has one more dimension than them. they laugh at the absurdity of such a claim as anyone knows that 5 separate spatial entities cannot possibly belong to the same person....."that is a logical impossibility!" they proclaim. yet....as we can see, they are wrong. i suggest that a similar experience would be true for a hypothetically omniscient God who interacts with our world which is trapped in time.
 
mia, ironically, you missed my point. my point is that with another dimension.....impossible things in our dimension become possible. of course i am assuming that time is one of the dimensions included......

see my recent example to Huckleberry of how an extra dimension can make something which is apparently impossible in one world become quite possible in another.
 
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