This point was presented in my philosophy class this semester, and I was wondering what folks thought about it.

The accepted Christian God (as well as most Gods I believe) is considered all-knowing. Do you think that an all knowing God means that you do not have free will? If you come to a situation in which you have choices x,y, and z, and God knows you will choose x (he's all knowing) then doesn't that mean you have no free will? You have no choice but to choose x? I don't like to accept the fact that i don't have free will, but it seems inevitable.

Bah.. I've been trying to make this point in another thread to Dreamwalker but he isn't around for this..


Choices are illusory. Perhaps soulmates really are.

This is the quintessential argument against free will vs. the all knowingness of God. However, if you change perception to state that this blood and bones world is an Illusion of our own creation and God sees and knows only Truth then you again have free will within this world of illusion. God being outside of the illusion will be revealed when that veil is lifted.

okay then, suppose for a second there were no omniscient gods. do you think you have free will now? :D

This is the quintessential argument against free will vs. the all knowingness of God. However, if you change perception to state that this blood and bones world is an Illusion of our own creation and God sees and knows only Truth then you again have free will within this world of illusion. God being outside of the illusion will be revealed when that veil is lifted.


You were "doomed" to write that statement and every word was predetermined before your creation. You could never have written it any other way and even if you went back in time to change the words, that too would have been predetermined.

Morbid isn't it? :cool:

okay then, suppose for a second there were no omniscient gods. do you think you have free will now? :D

Since it has also been predetermined that you would make such a statement, his response to this question is also set and as predetermined as mine is. It has also been predetermined that you the reader will read this.



The mind-boggling continues, on the next episode of...

So SouthStar,

You appear to be making the point that human freewill is impossible since you believe your god is omniscient, correct?

But a major tenet of Christianity is that humans do have freewill so that they are free to choose Jesus as their savior or reject him. However, if God has predetermined everything then he had already decided at the beginning of time who was going to be saved and who wasn’t.

That means that we can only be automatons blindly following a pre-programmed set of instructions and are merely the playthings of a monster who has arbitrarily decided to torment and torture one set of people rather than another.

Without freewill Christianity is simply a fraud. But with freewill there cannot be an omniscient god. Either way you look at this Christianity is a complete nonsense.

Kat

There is no purpose for humans to exist more specifically to be sentient if a higher power knew our every move. We should be mindless animals if this held true. I think that since we can make our own mind and are sentient we do have "true" free will.

does the fact that god knows which choice you will make mean that you have not made a choice yourself.

::i can't believe i just made that argument, i hate myself. also, [correct me if i am wrong] i think calvinism is the only one of the christian religions that subscribes to predestination per se, but i see your point in the omniscient god.::

But if a GOD can see what you will do, why wouldnt he change it? Seeing the outcome without being able to change it is kind of pointless.

what about levels of complexity? for example.. we can tell pretty well how inanimate objects behave. roll a ball down the hill, i know it will keep on rolling because the physics tells me so and i can tell the future, (well, according to Newton at least). why can we tell the future in this case? because the system we are looking at is so much simpler than we are. we can predict what animals do, which allows us to hunt them so well (we as in humanity), do they not have a free will? they are a creatures of instinct right? well, that's because our level of complexity is supposedly higher than theirs. following this type of complexity escalation, if god has a higher mental (or whatever you want to call it) complexity than us, then our behavior may be as predictable to him, as a rock rolling down the hill. he didn't push the rock, but he knows what's gonna happen...

but that is the whole point, that is how god "gave" humans free will. and what about jesus? remember that tired line, "he died for our sins?" apparently god did try to keep people from burning in hell... oh damn, this is turning into a justification for religious proselytizing. i'm done, let theists take this up. :(

yes, but not all people [or animals for that matter] react to situations similarly.

simple physics and animals have no place here.

too subjective for me antifreeze

i know not all animals act similarly, but i was just trying to give everyone a feel of what i meant. we can predict small physical phenomena easily, perhaps god can predict us just as easily.. and darktr00per, i have no idea what you mean.

Funny, I kind of know what you mean.

Now that I re-read it all

However--we are blessed with being sentient

Southstar,
I don't understand your point. You quote me,yet in the first sentence I've conceded the point of free will vs. Omniprescience then you say I'm doomed. Perhaps I wasn't clear.
Did you read on?
"However, if you change perception to state that this blood and bones world is an Illusion of our own creation and God sees and knows only Truth then you again have free will within this world of illusion. God being outside of the illusion will be revealed when that veil is lifted."
I am speaking to what is reality. I contend that this world is as the Matrix(cool movie) and the Godforce(insert name) doesn't see the matrix. Therefore freewill exists in the matrix, which God doesn't see because it is an illusion. If God is truth then only truth can be within God's mind. Our matrix-world is an illusion and God doesn't see it. Within our illusions we have freewill.

Bah.. I've been trying to make this point in another thread to Dreamwalker but he isn't around for this..


Choices are illusory. Perhaps soulmates really are.

Hey, eventually I come around to this thread. (It was started around 7 AM in my time zone...)

You want to make a point? Really, I thought you just wanted to preach to me until I agree with you. :confused:
And, I did not exactly deny that, if an omnipotent god exists there is no free will, I just doubted that any god exists.
But following your argument, it is of no consequence in what I believe since I also follow gods will. Thus there should be no need for you to try and convert me or anyone else since we were created this way and have no real choice to to anything that god does not want us to do. As a result god cannot condem me for denying him since I only deny him because he wants it this way. As I and everyone else lacks free will, every sort of discussion would also be useless since we are all guided by god. As a consequence, your argument is just as valid as mine because we all just write what god wants us to write.

Did I get this correctly SouthStar? I must have, after all, God guided my hand and thoughts, didn´t he?