If God is omniscient, meaning he has perfect knowledge of all things past, present, and future and nothing he knows can be false then how can free will exist?
This is what made me begin to question christianity and I've yet to hear a satisfactory christian answer to it (though I'm open to the possibility that there is one). The ones I've heard are:
>God knowing doesn't force you to make any choices, you're still the one doing it
Doesn't it? If God's knowledge can't be false then I can't possibly do anything that would prove god wrong. It doesn't matter that the actions are being done by my will and not God's because the conditions are such that no other actions could possibly have been taken.
>God is outside of time so he can observe the entirety of it without predetermining anything
This still has the same problem, *how* God knows doesn't really have any bearing on it.
>Free will is just the capacity to choose to follow God or not, it's not about specific worldly actions
This also doesn't make a difference, he already knows if I'm ultimately going to choose to follow him or not, I can't prove that knowledge wrong.
Free will exists and God predestined it to
Then how can God be omniscient if omniscience contradicts free will?
How does omniscience contradict free will?
I explained it in the OP post.
If God knows everything I'll ever do and God can't be wrong then I have no choice but to do what God knows I'll do.
Yes your decision is set in stone, and it is also real, genuine and therefore, free
I still disagree but this is the best answer I've heard so far.
it is not free if it is predetermined. That's the opposite of free will.
>it is not free if it is predetermined. That's the opposite of free will.
Here's a sketch of the doctrine of Molinism, which addresses itself to this specific issue:
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/molinism-and-free-will
What do you mean by free, do you mean that your will is an absolute? No your will is not an absolute, but who ever said the future had to be a wide open unknown for your will to be authentic and real? Where did that enter the game? If the future is wide open or if it is certain as the past, how does that make any difference as to what is going on when you make a choice? You still aren't an automaton, and therefore your will is free in the sense it is real.
God is a fairytale, little one.
>I know with absolute certainty that the train will arrive at 8:30
>Therefore, I am the conductor
This is the response I always get even though it's not what I'm saying.
I'm not saying that God is actively controlling my actions, just that by virtue of God knowing what they'll be I have no other choice.
If I were capable of knowing with infallible certainty that the train would arrive at 8:30 then it wouldn't matter if I was the conductor or not, no other outcome would be possible regardless of my input.
>If God knows everything I'll ever do and God can't be wrong then I have no choice but to do what God knows I'll do.
I can predict with 100% accuracy events that have occurred in the past.
No other outcome is possible because it already happened.
So if free will exists, according to your logic, once you commit an act of your own free will, you retroactively didn't have the free will to decide anything else?
>So if free will exists, according to your logic, once you commit an act of your own free will, you retroactively didn't have the free will to decide anything else?
We have free will because the future hasn't happened yet. The nature of time is that the present changes and the past doesn't. The past can't be effected by our present knowledge because at the time the past stopped changing the present hadn't happened yet.
>We have free will because the future hasn't happened.
That doesn't make any sense.
If the future had already happened then we wouldn't be able to change it any more than we can change the past. God knowing the future is essentially the same as the future having already happened.
What do you want me to do? Just stop having questions and accept christianity despite not being able to truly believe in it?
If the only way to make sense of it is divine revelation then it's not my fault that God hasn't decided to reveal these things to me.
>If the future had already happened then we wouldn't be able to change it any more than we can change the past.
The future has already happened and you can't change it.
>So if free will exists, according to your logic, once you commit an act of your own free will, you retroactively didn't have the free will to decide anything else?
Are you suggesting you can will the past to change? moron.
>Reading comprehension level: 0
>gets btfo
>has no argument
typical moron theist
>>I know with absolute certainty that the train will arrive at 8:30
Except you don’t. You can’t see the future. You’re just going by an estimation.
What is I'm a time traveler?
God is the code which governs the Universe; apparent in absolutely everything, and the force which drives entropy.
We have free will in the same way a ball in a roulette wheel operates; we exist on the edge of time and computation and something in the soul injects randomness to the framework in which we operate.
God cannot know our future as it is not yet computed. He can not look back and judge anything, as there is no central memory base of the universe. The only evidence is the present, and the only goal is to move forward and grow.
>If God's knowledge can't be false then I can't possibly do anything that would prove god wrong.
Knowledge doesn't bind you.
>conditions are such that no other actions could possibly have been taken.
Yes it could. And God would know it if it were. Knowledge doesn't bind you.
>he already knows if I'm ultimately going to choose to follow him or not, I can't prove that knowledge wrong.
Knowledge doesn't bind you.
I feel like your key premise is that knowledge binds you. It doesn't. A thought experiment should clear this up:
1/ Imagine a truly free person, God is out of the picture, nobody knows anything
2/ The person chooses what color they like
3/ You rewind time by 5 seconds
4/ Same thing happens. The exact same thing....
5/ ... except to you the person becomes bound by your knowledge. Because you think knowledge is binding. Whereas in fact it doesn't affect the person in the slightest. They were as free before as they are now.
I admit it is very counter-intuitive to reconcile freedom with knowledge. But the premise of your problem doesn't hold water. Knowledge doesn't affect you.
are such that no other actions could possibly have been taken.
>Yes it could. And God would know it if it were.
How could it? If I did something other than what God knew I would he would still already know that that was what I was actually going to do all along.
>1/ Imagine a truly free person, God is out of the picture, nobody knows anything
>2/ The person chooses what color they like
>3/ You rewind time by 5 seconds
>4/ Same thing happens. The exact same thing....
>5/ ... except to you the person becomes bound by your knowledge. Because you think knowledge is binding. Whereas in fact it doesn't affect the person in the slightest. They were as free before as they are now.
A truly free person would be capable of giving two different answers. If they weren't bound by my prior knowledge of what their answer would be then they would have to be able to prove my prediction wrong. The problem is that God can't be proven wrong.
>If I did something other than what God knew
Then God didn't actually "know" in the first place and your premise is debunked. Not because God bound you, but because you describing the situation describe it in contradictory ways.
>A truly free person would be capable of giving two different answers.
Ah, the libertarian idea of "freedom", am I right? Why would a free person give different answers when the person is exactly the same and the its based on exactly them?
>The problem is that God can't be proven wrong.
Nobody who truly "knows" (Justified True Belief) can be objectively proven wrong. Doesn't mean their knowledge affects you in any way.
>Then God didn't actually "know" in the first place and your premise is debunked. Not because God bound you, but because you describing the situation describe it in contradictory ways.
Yeah that was the point.
>Ah, the libertarian idea of "freedom", am I right? Why would a free person give different answers when the person is exactly the same and the its based on exactly them?
It's extremely unlikely that they would, there are lots of things that we're technically capable of doing but wouldn't. The fact that there's nothing stopping them from giving a different answer, even if they wouldn't, is what makes it free. Absolute knowledge of the future would stop us from doing anything contrary to that knowledge.
>>your premise is debunked.
>Yeah that was the point.
Your point probably wasn't that your problem is debunked. I invite you to reconsider your understanding of the greentext.
As to the rest, I now understand your position and objection much better, thanks. You insist that an element of randomness is the "freedom" component, hence any knowledge either can't exist or must be limiting the randomness.
I think it's not a completely unpopular idea of "freedom" and you're of course entitled to see it that way, but then you're left with this conundrum that the rest of us don't really have because to us randomness isn't freedom. Expressing our true nature is freedom. And knowledge of our nature (and hence our choices) is not an obstacle because we don't need it to be objectively unpredictable/random.
What I said was
>If I did something other than what God knew I would he would still already know that that was what I was actually going to do all along.
the point was that it's illogical, I can't do something that's not what God knows I'd do because he'd know anyway.
>You insist that an element of randomness is the "freedom" component, hence any knowledge either can't exist or must be limiting the randomness.
I view freedom as the capacity to choose our actions (obviously there are limitations because of causality and the fact that there are things we're just not capable of). Absolute knowledge of the future removes that capacity because no other actions could be taken, in that scenario what we perceive as free will would just be an illusion based on our ignorance of the future.
Then there's no free will.
>I can't do something that's not what God knows I'd do because he'd know anyway.
>>> in other words:
>>> knowledge about an action must be true
>>> justified true belief about an action must be true
>>> true belief must be true
>>> truth must be true
There's nothing illogical about this. The only obstacle is that you seem to require a bit of randomness for freedom to exist, which obstructs any existence of justified true belief about your actions. God's knowledge about your actions is illogical because you don't believe there can be any knowledge of truly free actions. You require an element of unpreictability and randomness. Right?
>I view freedom as the capacity to choose our actions
Same! But I don't see the necessity for what you expressed below:
>>>>A truly free person would be capable of giving two different answers [when rewinding time]
A free person can be expected to choose the same thing one million times out of a million time rewinds, all things equal. Furthermore, it could actually be expected to choose the same thing even if you change the situation slightly! Freedom is not in unpredictability, but in not being affected.
>free will would just be an illusion based on our ignorance of the future.
If I myself know my future decision, it is not actually free?
>God's knowledge about your actions is illogical because you don't believe there can be any knowledge of truly free actions. You require an element of unpreictability and randomness. Right?
It requires unpredictability, not necessarily randomness (not necessarily total unpredictability either, even humans can predict things pretty well under the right circumstances) unless by randomness you just mean the possibility of other things happening, then yes.
>A free person can be expected to choose the same thing one million times out of a million time rewinds, all things equal. Furthermore, it could actually be expected to choose the same thing even if you change the situation slightly! Freedom is not in unpredictability, but in not being affected.
This is a good point. I think it's consistent with my position though, even if the person gave the same answer a million times they're free as long as nothing is stopping them from being able to give a different one. The question then is whether or not absolute knowledge of the future stops you from making a different choice, which I'm not convinced it doesn't.
>If I myself know my future decision, it is not actually free?
You're a human and don't have perfect knowledge of the future. You knowing your future decision is basically just the same as making the choice sooner rather than later and you're able to change your mind up to the point that you act on it.
>It requires unpredictability, not necessarily randomness
I use them synonymously. Ok good to be clear on this point!
>they're free as long as nothing is stopping them from being able to give a different one
They are stopping themselves. When I am free, the fact that [ I am me ] prevents me from choosing anything else besides what truly conforms to my nature. The question "what if I chose different" in a person with free will is identical to "what if I were someone else". That is the "free will" that religions present - expressing your nature unaffected by outside stimuli. Not "expressing your nature unpredictably in general".
>You knowing your future decision is basically just the same as making the choice sooner
This more or less confirms what I thought - even you knowing yourself perfectly is a limitiation to freedom as you define it.
Going back to your question in the OP:
>>> If God is omniscient, meaning he has perfect knowledge of all things past, present, and future and nothing he knows can be false then how can free will exist?
Free will as you yourself define it can't. Religions mean something else when they say "free will".
>They are stopping themselves. When I am free, the fact that [ I am me ] prevents me from choosing anything else besides what truly conforms to my nature. The question "what if I chose different" in a person with free will is identical to "what if I were someone else". That is the "free will" that religions present - expressing your nature unaffected by outside stimuli. Not "expressing your nature unpredictably in general".
A person can still potentially do multiple things that are in accordance with their nature. Sure there are limitations on what we're capable of and any choice we make prevents us from making any of the alternatives to that choice but the important part is that more than one thing is possible.
To address the elephant in the room, the problem isn't so much whether we're free or not but rather the consequences (according to christianity) of being free. If our choice is ultimately between heaven and hell and God's omniscience makes us incapable of any choice other than the one he knows we'll make that has some troubling implications.
>A person can still potentially do multiple things that are in accordance with their nature.
Their nature would have to be fragmented in some way. They would not be free, they would be sick.
>If our choice is ultimately between heaven and hell and God's omniscience makes us incapable of any choice
According to your definition of the word "free". It's troubling because you're trying to adapt an idea while not adapting the building blocks of the idea - traditional definitions of free choice.
If God knows before he even creates them that someone will go to hell, why does he create them?
>That is the modal fallacy. So, arguments like this are just demonstrably incorrect.
Can you explain this? I'm not familiar with the term.
>If God knows before he even creates them that someone will go to hell, why does he create them?
It's good to have lived.
not having lived + no eternal torture > having lived + eternal torture
I really don't see how hell is a justifiable concept.
> comparing nonexistence to existence
Invalid.
>I really don't see how hell is a justifiable concept.
God is good -> separation from him is negative
your immortal soul chooses separation from God -> it lives in the negative place
It's extremely straightforward when you boil it down. Doesn't mean it's true or that its premises should be believed from the get-go, but as a concept it's logically and morally coherent.
Nobody would choose to go to hell though, if given perfect knowledge that you will absolutely be given infinite torment if you do x y z, practically any human would choose the option that is not eternal torment.
However, we are not given perfect knowledge. The very people who are sent to eternal torment do not believe or understand that x y z will cause eternal torment. For them, hell is compulsory, like a squirrel running under a car.
>Nobody would choose to go to hell though
Like nobody chooses smoking? Like Christians who are convinced of hell to their very core never sin? Please.
>we are not given perfect knowledge
We never are. Doesn't lift responsibility from all our actions.
>Hell being eternal doesn't make sense
It is eternal because your soul is immortal and because after death there is no capacity for change.
>Infinite suffering is needless
Agreed. Let's not choose it.
>God wouldn't allow needless suffering
God would allow perfect freedom. Freedom means you can decide to reject him forever.
>Like nobody chooses smoking?
Smoking is a benign vice with ordinary, mortal consequences, not eternal torment.
>Like Christians who are convinced of hell to their very core never sin?
Presumably, if they are convinced that something they did is sin, they ask forgiveness, as per their theology. I don't think any Christian absolutely believing they will go to hell if they dont would avoid asking forgiveness.
>We never are. Doesn't lift responsibility from all our actions.
When the responsibility for your actions that you do not believe are wrong, under your imperfect knowledge, is eternal torment, one calls into question the moral character of this God. We have circled back to the original quandry on this topic
>>Like nobody chooses smoking?
>Smoking is a benign vice with ordinary, mortal consequences, not eternal torment.
I didn't claim smoking is eternal. I called out your naive premise that people don't choose things they know to be bad. They do. Every single day.
>If they are convinced that something they did is sin, they ask forgiveness
I know. I didn't claim they stay in sin. I was calling out your naive premise that people don't choose things they know to be bad. They do. Every single day. Even when they believe the punishment may very well be eternal.
>your imperfect knowledge
All our knowledge is imperfect. Not an excuse.
>Why not?
That's supposedly the hades physics don't ask me.
>Why does rejecting God necessitate infinite suffering?
Because God is goodness. Rejecting goodness leaves you with misery.
Then Christian free will is determinism lmao
Not the same anon but if you want to go into neurobiology of it the idea that starting smoking is a choice might become a bit less clear than you think. The amount of receptors responsible for happiness differs from person to person, people with lees of them have it harder to get stimulated and more likely to turn to drugs. And this is just one factor that controls our behaviour out of thousand.
>Addiction decreases choice.
Sure, that's why we see people addicted to worldly pleasures as lacking free will in the first place. But however impaired some people's choosing apparatus can be, the choice was there at some point and they chose something that they know causes death.
>given the choice, people would never choose eternal torment
Judging from how people give in to activities with percieved finite AND infinite torment as a consequence, that premise is false.
>you're a frickin sociopath
uwu I just don't have perfect knowledge why do you hold me accountable?
There is no such thing as a human with perfect knowledge. You're special pleading for a standard that is applied nowhere else. And God didn't mislead anyone, he was pretty clear.
It does and it's determinism apparently.
Why do humans not have perfect knowledge exactly is the question I'm making. Why are we forced to make choices based on imperfect knowledge to begin with? And no, he was not clear, he put what he meant in an ancient book prone to interpretation where laws are mixed with prose and poetry and told us to figure it out.
And my argument was not that addiction diminished free will. What I said is that even whether you will get into an addiction and start taking any kind of drug is at least partially determined by the biochemistry of your brain and its needs.
Because we are finite. Perfect knowledge isn't.
You don't need perfect knowledge. You need appropriate knowledge. And you have that. If not, ask away.
>Bible isn't clear on choices leading to hell
It's very clear on this point. You bought the "Bible can't be made sense of" meme as a convenience.
>whether you will get into an addiction and start taking any kind of drug is at least partially determined by the biochemistry of your brain and its needs.
I know.
>I cannot think of a single human who would give in to actions that they for certain know will cause eternal torment.
>ask forgiveness
Ask Christians who've blasphemed against the spirit then.
>I would not hold you accountable to the level of infinite torment.
You're special pleading. Either don't hold me accountable because my knowledge is never perfect or do.
Why are we finite exactly? Once again there is no particular reason for why God would create us that way. He is omnipotent and this problem could have avoided.
If we were infinite and perfect we would be God.
Why aren't we? Why do we have to suffer for the case of some personal growth when God is already perfect? And having perfect knowledge doesn't necessiate all the qualities of God, hell it doesn't even mean haviig omniscience. Not only that, but there is already possibility of us being perfect beings that do not need to suffer or do evil: it's called heaven, why couldn't we have been created in this form.
>Inb4 Adam and Eve
Apparently that wasn't it because for some reason you cannot commit a sin while in heaven.
>Why aren't we God?
We wouldn't be creation then. It's like asking "why do we see light but not darkness", that's what the words mean, my friend.
>prefect knowledge
>not omniscience
Yes it is, perfect knowledge of one thing must be perfectly clear in how it relates to every other knowledge.
>there is already possibility of us being perfect beings that do not need to suffer or do evil
Nobody said you need to suffer or do evil. We were offered a way to just be in the garden.
>for some reason you cannot commit a sin while in heaven
Paradise and heaven are slightly things but ok.
At the end of the day asking why God made us finite is like asking why God made water wet. No idea. In many ways it's inconvenient. But to judge it is simply invalid. Wait for the weekly Problem of Evil thread to see volumes about why.
>We wouldn't be creation then.
Why? Can't God create another being like him? Is he not omnipotent?
>Yes it is, perfect knowledge of one thing must be perfectly clear in how it relates to every other knowledge.
Lets assume that every human regardless of biology or any details about them knows that 2+2=4. You can be a braindead moron and still have this knowledge. Is that omniscience?
>Nobody said you need to suffer or do evil. We were offered a way to just be in the garden.
Junko Furuta would like to talk to you as would cancer victims.
>
At the end of the day asking why God made us finite is like asking why God made water wet. No idea. In many ways it's inconvenient. But to judge it is simply invalid. Wait for the weekly Problem of Evil thread to see volumes about why.
This is the problem of evil and the problem comes exactly from the fact that you cannot explain it. We have unavoidable suffering that happens in a world created by a supposedly all-good being. And your response is to shrug your shoulders.
>Why? Can't God create another being like him? Is he not omnipotent?
"rock so heavy he can't lift it" type question. You're asking for him to create the uncreated. If your question is a logical contradiction, don't expect the answer to be anything less.
>2+2=4
In what sense is this perfect knowledge, friend? Do you by "perfect" just mean "ok"? lol
>Junko Furuta would like to talk to you as would cancer victims.
Junko is an example par excellence of someone who did not have to suffer like this. You are proving my point.
>you cannot explain it
Sure! I will not be able to explain everything ever. Still, to judge it as though you did have all relevant information is invalid.
>Sorry I don't know all the lore of your special interest religion
You mean the most common belief on the planet today? It's fine, there's still time to learn.
>imaginary perfect knowledge
>but just for this one case
Sure. Not special pleading at all.
Take care!
>You mean the most common belief on the planet today? It's fine, there's still time to learn.
Even from a simple google search multiple sources have stated it is not possible for a Christian to blaspheme the holy spirit as doing so disqualifies you as one. moron. Make an argument, I'm not doing background research for your idiotic assertions anymore.
>Take care!
Ah, I see you're backing out now, likely because your faith in a deity that would consign people to eternal torment has been shaken, and you dislike that fact. Many such cases!
And yet she did for no fault of her own due to lack of perfect knowledge.
>Rock that God cannot move type of question
Let me give you another one then in the same vein "Is God subservient to the law of logic?" If so, who established them or what?
>Still, to judge it as though you did have all relevant information is invalid.
I can judge things on the basis of whether they contradict themselves or not.
I can believe in a God existing, but not a Christian God.
> i can believe in fruit but not peaches.
>False equivalence
Your mother must be very happy that your brain damage has healed enough for you to post this. Don't leave any drool on the keyboard.
Im not equivicating anything, I'm just laughing at the absurdity. Quit projecting, anon.
If a god creates a god it is still creation.
The god we have now was created then destroyed the first god.
>Ask Christians who've blasphemed against the spirit then.
I'm not familiar with this and I doubt they genuinely believe in Christianity if they commit that sin. Sorry I don't know all the lore of your special interest religion
>You're special pleading. Either don't hold me accountable because my knowledge is never perfect or do.
No, it is not special pleading. "Wow, you think a kid deserves a conversation for stealing candy and not burning in eternal hellfire? Special pleading!"
Going to have to agree with the other anon you are simply a fool.
>Judging from how people give in to activities with percieved finite AND infinite torment as a consequence, that premise is false.
I cannot think of a single human who would give in to actions that they for certain know will cause eternal torment. For the Christian, they believe they need to ask forgiveness to avoid this, and do so. For the atheist, they don't believe any particular action at all matters on that front.
>uwu I just don't have perfect knowledge why do you hold me accountable?
I would not hold you accountable to the level of infinite torment. I would want you to be instructed on why you are wrong if you are to exist in eternity.
When it comes to the temporal plane, however, I do judge you to be a psychotic butthole who should be separated from society.
I agree with your moral disgust but the thing is I doubt that the anon is psychotic, he is probably just moronic.
>I called out your naive premise that people don't choose things they know to be bad. They do. Every single day.
No, my premise is that, given the choice, people would never choose eternal torment. You then brought up smoking as if the possibility of lung cancer is comparable to perfect and eternal suffering.
>All our knowledge is imperfect. Not an excuse
Then you're a fricking sociopath. "People with imperfect knowledge who are unaware they are walking into eternal torment have NO EXCUSES" OK psycho.
It's immoral for God to mislead humans on the nature of reality and make them make choices (thought they don't really lmao) based on imperfect knowledge to begin with.
Your contemplations are predetermined and cannot change, they are essentially worthless. Omniscience of God requires that all your thoughts are known, and the fact that he created the world means they were chosen consciously. You are only contemplating it because God wanted you to have those thoughts.
>Your contemplations are predetermined and cannot change, they are essentially worthless. Omniscience of God requires that all your thoughts are known, and the fact that he created the world means they were chosen consciously. You are only contemplating it because God wanted you to have those thoughts.
That doesn't change the fact that as a material being these contemplations are important to undertake. Axiomatically I define somebody who considers the moral character of their actions better than someone who does not because you have the capability to do so.
And they are meaningless in the grand scale of things, because whether you are a person who considers the moral character of your actions or not is also solely decided by God. Omniscience, omnipotence and his active involvement in the world makes God the only possible active actor, as I said, you are not an actor yourself just the result of his actions. This is pressupposed by the fact that he is omniscient and creates you with omniscient knowledge of what you will do.
>And they are meaningless in the grand scale of things, because whether you are a person who considers the moral character of your actions or not is also solely decided by God.
No, they are not meaningless, because communicating these concepts and talking to others *can* spur them to contemplate and do good things. You can certainly make an argument that the culpability of any person for their actions is questionable, but I still consider someone who is attempting to act in good ways better, or more correct, than a nihilist.
>No, they are not meaningless, because communicating these concepts and talking to others *can* spur them to contemplate and do good things.
Which only happens if God has already preplanned it, otherwise that person is fricked.
The personal responsibility is my entire point, because in a world with a God as defined by Christianity, personal responsibility CANNOT exist and God is acting inherently immoral, contradicting the rules that he himself set up.
>You can certainly make an argument that the culpability of any person for their actions is questionable, but I still consider someone who is attempting to act in good ways better, or more correct, than a nihilist.
Your personal opinion on this matter does not pertain to this entire discussion my dude.
>Your personal opinion on this matter does not pertain to this entire discussion my dude
You asked why the illusion of choice is distinct from the necessity of an event and I answered. Because it instructs you to consider those choices, it is important. This is intuitive to most peoples moral character: You should, ideally, think about what is right or wrong.
What I'm arguing is not whether it is morally correct to think about your choices, this is completely and utterly obvious and I'm just a bit baffled that you bring it to the table when this is not what the discussion was ever about.
>Then Christian free will is determinism lmao
Or free will doesn't actually exist.
Defiling one of god's creations intentionally is sin. Smoking is a sin.
>It is eternal because your soul is immortal and because after death there is no capacity for change.
Why not?
>God would allow perfect freedom. Freedom means you can decide to reject him forever.
Why does rejecting God necessitate infinite suffering?
your conscience tells you otherwise.
God's judgement is not a clear cut "believe me or you're out".
He is a just judge. take someone who never heard of the Gospel:
if they were a good person, helping others, his judgement will be much more favourable than to a man who, feeling bad through his conscience, does evil for perosnal gain. Romans 2:15. we exist with an innate notion of what is good.
there are some who even posit there eill be atheists who still end up in heaven, out of being good (like an example from a preacher, a man told him "if God exists, may He bless you") and religiously legalistic men who only nominally call themselves Christians to feel superior, out of pride, who will end up kept out.
>your conscience tells you otherwise.
No... my conscience tells me that a God that would condemn any human, imperfect in their knowledge, to eternal torment, is an immoral character
>there are some who even posit there eill be atheists who still end up in heaven, out of being good (like an example from a preacher, a man told him "if God exists, may He bless you") and religiously legalistic men who only nominally call themselves Christians to feel superior, out of pride, who will end up kept out.
And yet my conscience tells me that the latter, prideful people, are not deserving of eternal torment. What they deserve is instruction.
If my pathetic little human conscience is more merciful than your god, what does that say about them?
>> comparing nonexistence to existence
>Invalid.
Fair.
>your immortal soul chooses separation from God -> it lives in the negative place
It's extremely straightforward when you boil it down. Doesn't mean it's true or that its premises should be believed from the get-go, but as a concept it's logically and morally coherent.
Hell being eternal doesn't make sense. Infinite suffering is needless and a just God wouldn't allow needless suffering. I get the idea of suffering that seems needless on earth having an unknown purpose in heaven, that's fine, but that doesn't apply to the suffering in hell since hell is inescapable and eternal and the suffering there just exists for its own sake.
But he made you knowing you would end up in hell, that is in itself immoral. Your "God" is a frickin douchebag.
>Can you explain this? I'm not familiar with the term.
Modality is the philosophical term for possibility and necessity. So, an argument commits the modal fallacy when it involves an invalid inference about something's possibility or necessity. Such an argument might take the following form:
1. Necessarily, if P then Q.
2. P.
3. Necessarily, Q.
This is a fallacious argument. You are only allowed to conclude that Q is the case, but not that it's necessarily the case. Now, this exact fallacious argument form is instantiated by the standard argument that free will is incompatible with divine foreknowledge. That argument goes:
1. Necessarily, if God knows that you will do X, then you will do X.
2. God knows that you will do X.
3. Necessarily, you will do X.
This argument is invalid because it commits the fallacy shown above. You are only allowed to conclude that you will do X, but not that you will necessarily do X. So, this argument fails to show that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with free will in the sense of the ability to do otherwise.
This might just be because I'm a big stupid doodoo brain moron but I fail to see why God knowing I'll do x doesn't necessitate me doing x.
It seems to me like if God always knows what I'll do then I'll always do what God knows, what are the alternatives?
>if God always knows what I'll do then I'll always do what God knows
If God always knows what you will do, then you will always do what God knows you will do, but you can't infer that it's necessarily true that you will do that. There are other possible worlds in which you do different things, and in those worlds, the content of God's foreknowledge is different.
If there is ONE God, as is the christian belief, then there wouldn't be other possible worlds. The only possible world would be the one which God knows to be true. If God's foreknowledge is absolute and incapable of being untrue then a world that contradicts that foreknowledge wouldn't be possible.
That doesn't follow at all. You're just doing the modal fallacy again.
1. If god knows what you will do x, it cant fail to happen.
2. God knows you will do X
3. X cant fail to happen
The reason your asinine argument is incoherent, Christcuck, is because it is intuitively understandable that omniscence creates predestination
If "X can't fail to happen" means "necessarily X will happen", then your argument just commits the modal fallacy as well. If "X can't fail to happen" just means "X will happen", then there's no incompatibility with free will at all.
The reason lots of people have the intuition that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with free will is just because lots of people haven't studied modal logic. It's as simple as that, and you don't have to be a Christian to see what's wrong with the argument. If you read atheist philosophers, you will not find very many of them who endorse the kind of argument you are making.
If X will happen, there is no possibility you could choose any other option. You are stuck with X and the illusion of being able to choose Y
what's the difference between saying "x will happen" and "necessarily x will happen"?
I don't understand why the argument is fallacious. >God knowing I'll do x means I'll do x but God Knowing I'll do x doesn *necessarily* mean I'll do x
I don't see a meaningful difference.
If something is necessarily the case, then it's the case in all possible worlds, not merely the actual world. The argument is fallacious because the mere fact that God knows you will do X in the actual world tells you nothing about whether you do X in all possible worlds. So, it tells you nothing about whether you have the ability to do otherwise.
God's absolute knowledge of what the actual world will be makes it the only possible world. How can another world be possible if God knows it to be untrue?
also see
>God's absolute knowledge of what the actual world will be makes it the only possible world. How can another world be possible if God knows it to be untrue?
Because 'If God knows that X will happen, then X will happen' does not entail that 'Necessarily, X will happen'. I'm not sure what you don't understand.
I don't understand how "x will happen" and "necessarily x will happen" are meaningfully different in this context. If the absolute knowledge of a the supreme arbiter of truth doesn't necessitate something being true then what does?
God always knows what you will do, but you did it out of your own choice.
just because the teacher knows what alternative you'll mark on a question, doesn't mean you were bound to mark it.
It wasn'tt really my choice, since everything in the universe and it's fututre were determined at creation. Implying that man can act against that set future undermines God's all-powerfulness
>God always knows what you will do, but you did it out of your own choice.
you guys keep parroting this as if it made sense.
He created you knowing everything you would ever do. When someone is evil, he created it.
Are you using "necessary" in a special way?
Within the context of the premises, Q is necessary. Is it a fallacy because we assume that there is more to the world than the premises?
If you've made a rule that Q must follow P (necessarily) then when P happens, Q must follow (necessarily) because that's the rule you made. What am I missing?
I'm using 'necessary' the way analytic philosophers standardly define it. Something is necessary if it is the case in all possible worlds.
It is fallacious to conclude that Q is necessarily true just because P is the case, and in all possible worlds where P is true, Q is true as well. There might be possible worlds in which P is false, and in those worlds Q may be false.
The fact that God consciously creates the world means that it is necessarily the only possible world or even, the only RELEVANT world.
The fact that you could chose a different action in a different world doesn't change the fact that in this world you physically cannot take it, and it presents a moral problem if your action is morally evil.
So then what was the point in making a premise that says "Necessarily if P, then Q"?
Necessarily means it's true in all possible worlds, no?
1. In all possible worlds, if P, then Q.
2. P
How is Q not true in all possible worlds?
>How is Q not true in all possible worlds?
Because P might not be true in all possible worlds. The inference that Q is necessary is only valid if you specify that P is necessary as well.
Again, why do other worlds matter? God knows what I'll do in this world therefor I'll do what god knows I'll do in this world. It doesn't matter what God knows about other worlds because I'm not in any of those worlds. This argument really doesn't do anything to prove that free will is compatible with omniscience.
>It doesn't matter what God knows about other worlds because I'm not in any of those worlds
Well, you are in a bunch of other possible worlds, unless you think that it's impossible for your life to have gone any differently. Obviously, theists who are libertarians about free will aren't going to think that it's impossible, so they're going to think that the content of other possible worlds is relevant. On the standard libertarian view, you only have free will if it's possible for you to do otherwise than you actually do.
>you are in a bunch of other possible worlds
Not him but can you quote in your israeli book where rabbi Yeshua says this? You are clearly making your own mental gymnastics, lmao.
>Well, you are in a bunch of other possible worlds, unless you think that it's impossible for your life to have gone any differently.
That's the core of the issue, the presence of an omniscient God makes it impossible for my life to have gone any differently. The two ideas are incompatible.
>That's the core of the issue, the presence of an omniscient God makes it impossible for my life to have gone any differently. The two ideas are incompatible.
People in this thread keep claiming that, but I've yet to see an argument for that claim which doesn't demonstrably commit the modal fallacy or display some basic misunderstanding of the philosophical terms involved in the discussion.
I will repeat it one more time.
1. God as due to omniscience knows every detail of every possible world.
2. He played an active part in creation, he did creation.
3. Due to him being omniscient, he was aware of every single detail that the creation of the world would cause.
4. This means he CHOSE a particular world consciously
5. Which means that no other world is possible as it would contradict god's prediction of the world.
That argument is just invalid. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
It doesnt matter if other worlds are possibilities because those possibilities are illusory. This calls into question your culpability
>It doesnt matter if other worlds are possibilities because those possibilities are illusory.
I mean, you might believe that, but you haven't given the rest of us any reason to think that.
In terms of culpability for one's actions on an objective, eternal scale, why wouldn't you think that the illusion of choice is relevant?
No one here has given a valid argument for why omniscience entails that choice is an illusion.
Because even though you can make a choice other than the one you're destined for, you won't. It's a mirage. This is the buddhist understanding.
Okay let me rephrase it so your autistic pedantic brain can comprehend.
1. Speculation about other realities matters only if humans are personal actors that can make choices.
2. Humans are only personal actors if they necessarily have a possibility of choice between different worlds even if they choose only one.
3. God is omniscient
4. God's prediction of the world he creates necessarily cannot be wrong
5. God is an active creator of the world.
6. If God is omniscient and creates the world then he knows every single detail about it.
7. God created the world
8. Because he is omniscient and created the world that he predicted every single thing about, his predictions about his world necessarily cannot be wrong.
9. Therefore humans cannot choose between possible worlds.
10. Therefore humans are not personal actors.
Your argument was perfectly comprehensible before. Now I just have no idea what you're trying to say. What exactly does it mean for humans to 'choose between possible worlds'?
Choose between different possibilities is what I meant.
But it just doesn't follow from any of your premises that humans cannot choose between different possibilities.
Infinite universes, like in that Reddit show.
> Because he is omniscient and created the world that he predicted every single thing about
You're making this weird assumption that God is playing an active part in every single worldly variable because he has chosen to create this specific world. That isn't necessarily the case.
He logically has to because he is omniscient. That means that he knows of every single variable prior to creation.
They cannot because they aren't personal agents, they are merely the effects of God's personal agency, due to the fact that his prediction of God cannot be contradicted.
>They cannot because they aren't personal agents, they are merely the effects of God's personal agency, due to the fact that his prediction of God cannot be contradicted
This is pretty much what both st. Paul and st. Augustine believed, so yes. Here's your answer, OP.
Well then free will is a lie because we aren't personal agents. It doesn't matter.
Yes.
>if God does not agree with my theological suppositions, he is not God
what. all it means is that he doesn't fit your definition. it's not YOUR god
>c'mon man let me play with God
>no he's miiiiine
> now, now kids you must share god.
Frickin kek
>no he's miiiiine
sums up Abrahamist sects pretty well
>Isn't neccessarily the case
All evidence and logic behind the existence of an omnipotent god does, though.
You don't have free will. You are a determined event, nothing you do is chosen.
Feel like maybe giving up on this psychotic religion?
You have yet to demonstrate why your extremely pedantic distinction between something being "true" and "necessarily true" has any bearing on the actual point of the argument.
Not the anon but the distinction is as follows:
Let's assume that there is no God.
If you are a German before WW2 you could say
"Hitler is a complete moron and his party will destroy Germany" which is true, but it isn't necessarily true, there is the possibility however unlikely that the Nazi party will fix Germanic autism. But since Hitler is an individual actor he could have chosen different choices, like not having an idiotic ideology, but he didn't and wouldn't because he was a moron.
In the same vein the argument is that God knows what we will do but this isn't the only possibility. Technically he just knows what will happen but doesn't cut off the rest or the posibilities.The problem is that this would only matter if God was a passive observer and not an active actor who caused the chain of events to unfold.
Thank you, this is a much better explanation.
However, the Nazi example is from the perspective of a non-omniscient human who's limited by ignorance of the future. If something's a matter of absolute certainty like it is with God then this argument doesn't work. I don't see how you could justify God knowing something not making whatever is known necessarily true.
>Technically he just knows what will happen but doesn't cut off the rest or the posibilities
The knowing is what cuts off the rest of the possibilities.
I would say that the cutting of possibilities is from God creating the world but you could argue that observing this possibility that we have is cutting it off.
I'd say free will is incompatible with omniscience for both reasons.
I think it being because of the knowledge itself is s slightly better argument though because it doesn't require God to be the creator of everything, the existence of any omniscient being invalidates free will.
If existence sprang spontaneously from non-existence, and within this existence sprang an omniscient but not omnipotent being, why would this being's knowledge of the future preclude free will? To me, it's the omnipotent part that does it. It's the part where the being created all of existence with perfect knowledge of all events at all times that precludes actual free will. Merely knowing for certain that something will happen doesn't necessarily mean that the event was not the product of free choice. The being who did not create all of existence had no say in the choice, only knowledge.
>why would this being's knowledge of the future preclude free will?
the existence of a single 'the' future is what precludes it. if the future is fixed (which is necessary for it to be knowable for god), then time is a movie and we don't have choices.
This being I'm talking about isn't omnipotent. In fact, let's say it's completely impotent. It just floats in space and knows everything.
The future may be fixed in a way, but it's "free" choices that fleshed out parts of it. The limited beings making these choices feel like they are 100% free. There is no "higher" consciousness controlling events.
we are talking about the christian god. the christian god is omnipotent, since he created everything and therefore there's nothing that pre-existed him and could have carried any sort of limitation on his power. being omnipotent, he is also omniscient, if not from the start, then after he wants himself to become so (omnipotent, remember?)
tldr, we are not interested discussing your headcanon. we are discussing the christian god as believed in by the flock.
Ok, but then I started discussing something else to illustrate that maybe it's the omnipotence that precludes free will, not necessarily mere omniscience.
>If existence sprang spontaneously from non-existence, and within this existence sprang an omniscient but not omnipotent being, why would this being's knowledge of the future preclude free will?
For the same reason that God's knowledge does, if it knows the future and is incapable of being wrong then the future can only be one thing.
Just because the future is set in stone doesn't mean the choices weren't made freely. Maybe I'm going into semantics here, I don't know.
Take some truly random event, like a single photon striking a detector after passing through a double slit It is not possible to predict (using physics) where the photon will strike. You can only calculate the probability that it will strike a certain location. An omniscient being would know where the photon will strike. That doesn't mean the event wasn't random.
>Just because the future is set in stone doesn't mean the choices weren't made freely.
It does as far as what "free will" means
>Maybe I'm going into semantics here, I don't know.
You are.
>An omniscient being would know where the photon will strike. That doesn't mean the event wasn't random.
It does, it's not possible for it to strike in any place other than the one where the omniscient being knows it will.
Then in reality there is no such thing as an omniscient being. The exact location of the photon detection is truly random. There is no mechanism by which someone could ever know exactly where the photon will strike, only a spectrum of probabilities. If you rewind the tape of time and play the scene over again, it will land in a different spot (within the area of non-zero probability).
As much as I respect analytical philosophers you fricks miss the forest. It's not that your argument is logically inconsistent, it's that it is not relevant. You are not an actor, God is.
>rabbi Yeshua
Frick off, you aren't welcome here you stupid moron.
Rabbi Yeshua never said you were in multiple worlds, stop making headcanon, dumb christcuck.
I am not even a christcuck, and I'm arguing against the guy you were arguing against. I just hate you buzzword throwing morons and want you off my board.
I see. They need to pick a different word. It's confusing. Because I read the problem like this.
1. Necessarily, if P is true then Q is true.
2. P is true.
3. Because P is true, based on rule 1, it is necessary for Q to be true to satisfy the conditions of the rule set in 1.
For me, these logic things are all self-contained. The conclusions are only based on the premises as stated. But now I'll be able to recognize what they mean by necessary.
Ok.
If God cannot be wrong and knows which world is true then the world that God Knows is true is the only possible world.
God's knowledge, then, is true in all possible worlds(this one), meaning that I must necessarily do what God Knows I'm going to do.
If you are arguing:
1. Necessarily, if God knows that X is true, then X is true.
2. God knows that this world is true.
3. Necessarily, this world is true.
Then this argument, too, clearly commits the modal fallacy.
There is a world in which God does not know something? If God is omniscient, he must know what is true in all worlds. Necessity is baked into the word God (assuming omniscience).
God has absolute knowledge of all possible worlds, if he didn't he wouldn't be omniscient. By definition everything God knows is necessarily true because that's what omniscience means.
>By definition everything God knows is necessarily true because that's what omniscience means.
No, that's not what it means.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/omniscience/#DefiOmni
Your source is not recognized as valid. Try again. Dogma supercedes your shitty article.
You are not recognized as valid.
According to your "God" I am. Or is he wrong?
I will say this again, this problem DOES NOT APPLY. Because God knows all of the possibilities with all of the details of those possibilities, by creation of the world, humans and their conditions he has to consciously choose what will happen.
You're thinking of humans as independent actors that can make any choices and God is just a passive observer but that is NOT TRUE.
One of the premises is that God plays an active role as the creator of the world,this changes humans from independent actors to simply effects of what he has done.
>being a paid establishment shill means I am le smart
>Why would a free person give different answers when the person is exactly the same and the its based on exactly them?
This is determinism.
You are caught up in thinking about free will as though it were a materialist phenomenon, a kind of calculus problem, which you have roughly solved by considering what seem to you to be the relevant variables.
But God is not only omniscient, but all-powerful. Free will is a gift of God, but no simple gift, and certainly not a material gift, or a thing that can be analytically examined through a materialistic mindset.
Free will is a mystery, in the theological sense, in the same way that the Incarnation and the Trinity are theological mysteries. With a theological mystery being a truth that human beings cannot discover except from revelation and that, even after revelation, exceeds their comprehension.
Such is free will: from a human perspective it is impossible, but it is not impossible for God. Again, it is a gift, from God to us. It is indeed one of the constitutive aspects of the human person by which we are "made in the image and likeness of God," Genesis 1:27.
>Free will is a mystery, in the theological sense, in the same way that the Incarnation and the Trinity are theological mysteries. With a theological mystery being a truth that human beings cannot discover except from revelation and that, even after revelation, exceeds their comprehension.
I hear this a lot from christians and it really doesn't make sense to me. You're starting with the presupposition that these things are true and then claiming that they can only be known through revelation and any rational analysis is missing the point. How is this supposed to convince me? God hasn't revealed anything to me and just taking other people's word for it isn't enough for me so what am I supposed to do?
>How is this supposed to convince me? God hasn't revealed anything to me and just taking other people's word for it isn't enough for me so what am I supposed to do?
Well, I think we're dealing with two separate issues here. The first issue, which I addressed in my post, is how free will can be consistent with an omniscient God.
But the more basic and fundamental issue, as you rightly note, is the existence of God, or not.
Now, people come to belief in God in different ways. Quite often, it is through an overwhelming perception that the orderliness and evident design of the universe, and of humans and animals, could hardly have come about by chance, or as the end result of a primeval explosion (explosions generally result in disorder, not order). For instance, a man named Whittaker Chambers, a convinced atheist who was once quite famous as a Soviet spy, found himself coming to belief through an epiphany he experienced while holding his infant daughter at night:
>My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear -- those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: "No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature... They could have been created only by immense design.
It is hard to address this sort of thing without having a conversation. But I can tell you what worked for me, and that is to pray. Pray to the God who may or may not exist. Ask for the gift of faith, of belief. Ask that you might see -- for that is what faith is analogous to.
In my own case, it took a few years for that prayer to be answered. But in retrospect, that time was like a very gradual dawning of light upon a darkened landscape -- what was impenetrable and indistinct became illumined, and I could see.
Trust that God is good.
Conversion stories can be helpful, as guides of a sort. Here is one, about how the actor Alec Guinness came to faith: https://desuarchive.org/his/thread/14432034/#14432797
I believe that *a* god exists, I'm simply not capable of belief in the christian God. I was raised catholic and I've asked, even begged God for the gift of faith many times but I never received it. My belief in the christian God was never motivated by his grace, only the fear of hell despite my pleading with him for that not to be the case. When I tell this to christians the usual response was that it was some failure on my part, that I didn't really try but I know I did.
I started critically examining the christian conception of God because I thought that surely if it's true (and I wanted it to be true) then my questions would lead me to that truth but so far I haven't found that it hold up to scrutiny. I don't know what I can do but look for truth elsewhere.
>I didn't really try but I know I did.
But what you describe is praying for God make it so that you don't have to try.
I didn't ask him to make it so I didn't have to try, just to give me any amount of faith, any amount of hope, any amount of peace that would somewhat alleviate my fear of hell so that I could believe in him for the right reasons, but I didn't receive any.
>why not? try and list the "breaking points" for you faith.
The question I posed in the OP as well as other questions that I haven't had satisfactory answers to like:
>if God is perfect and therefor not capable of doing anything imperfectly how could he have created imperfect beings that would disobey him like Adam and Satan?
>why does God create people knowing that they'll go to hell?
>how can there be one God in three persons?
>why is hell eternal?
>how can anything be substantially separate from God if he's the source of all things?
>how do we know the bible is true?
>how do we know that there's only one god?
As well as several emotional things, though those are completely secondary to my philosophical and experiential problems.
>just to give me any amount of faith
I still think this doesn't exactly constitute trying to believe, but trying to be handed belief. But that is alright. Everyone has a different path I suppose.
What was I *supposed* to do then? I'd been taught that I should pray for faith and that faith can only be received through God's grace. I was sincerely asking God to show me the way. At my lowest and most hopeless points I begged God with all my hearth to give me anything, any sign that he really was there, really loved me and wanted my soul to be saved but it didn't happen. What did I not do that I should have?
>I'd been taught that I should pray for faith
Fair enough.
>What was I *supposed* to do then?
Address the things that bother you. Hell seems unfair? Seek explanation why it's just. God seems hidden? Read what happened when he wasn't. Gospels contradict? Check out how much divergence usual testimonies have. Of course some questions are more delicate and difficult than others, but I can't say I've found many things that bothered me that didn't have a satisfying answer in the end.
I understand the heartbreak of begging God and not receiving. Every Christian does. But faith doesn't just fall from the tree all at once, it must ripen gradually. Again, I don't judge you, I was just not clear on our definitions of "trying". I understand you now.
another anon adding on, the Gospels don't contradict.
and, seconding this advice
>address the things that bother you
most of the questions here
you can find an answer to quite quickly. one of them i even didn't know myself, and quickly found a response.
well, in order:
because He gave those beings free will. the possibility for evil is necessary for choice to exist (not evil itself, the possibility; were they all obedient, it'd be perfect).
https://www.gotquestions.org/God-create-doomed-people.html
He created us to enjoy and rejoice in His presence. it's not on Him that some *choose* not to. God still tries to bring them back. they choose that end, which is not what God wanted for them. God lets them, however, because they chose it themselves, and He gave us that freedom of agency.
take yourself as an example, why do you still feel something, and question it to try to come back?
flesh out that question a bit more, i don't get your question on the Trinity.
why wouldn't it be? we are bound to go to eternity, you can choose where to spend it: with God, or locking yourself in a place hidden from Him.
it's not wholly separate; you're away from the grace, mercy, and love of God. the rest, that sustains your existence, (which you cannot refuse, unlike those three) still stands.
several archeological findings, all prophecies in it coming true, and all such things. for example the fall of the Temple, which modern day "academics" try to date to after the fall because "God couldn't have foretold something."
and, for its authenticity, the oldest manuscripts found are perfectly the same as our contemporary copies.
because God told us so in His Word, the Bible.
i recommend giving C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity a read, will clear up a lot of things.
>because He gave those beings free will. the possibility for evil is necessary for choice to exist (not evil itself, the possibility; were they all obedient, it'd be perfect).
>He created us to enjoy and rejoice in His presence. it's not on Him that some *choose* not to. God still tries to bring them back. they choose that end, which is not what God wanted for them. God lets them, however, because they chose it themselves, and He gave us that freedom of agency.
>take yourself as an example, why do you still feel something, and question it to try to come back?
These are contradicted by the OP question, which I still feel like the only satisfactory answer to is that the christian idea of God is wrong.
>flesh out that question a bit more, i don't get your question on the Trinity.
It simply doesn't make sense and any attempt at making sense of it is a heresy. If God is three persons then God cannot be one being and vice versa.
>why wouldn't it be? ...
Hell is often framed as a punishment, an endless punishment serves no purpose.
Addressing the things that bother me has thus far led me to the conclusion that christianity isn't true and that I should seek alternatives.
and now you turn to an aggressive demeanor. i'll go out on a limb and say you're debating in bad faith.
i doubt you've truly addressed them. i could find a clear answer to all of your questions simply by copy pasting them into a search. and i literally did so with one i didn't know.
drop your pride, thinking you're more just, knowledgeable, or wiser than God.
"He doesn't conform to my imperfect conscience, how can He be perfect?"
you said yourself we aren't perfect. how can you hope to understand perfection, or, worse yet, hold it to your wrong standards?
if you are truly searching for truth, go search and study.
>and now you turn to an aggressive demeanor. i'll go out on a limb and say you're debating in bad faith.
I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. I was just stating what I honestly think, it wasn't meant as an attack.
>i doubt you've truly addressed them. i could find a clear answer to all of your questions simply by copy pasting them into a search. and i literally did so with one i didn't know.
I made this thread and have been discussing just one of these issues for four hours. I am in the process of addressing them, just because I'm coming to different conclusions than you at the moment doesn't mean I'm not honestly trying my best. Seriously considering whether or not your premise is wrong is part of being intellectually honest.
>drop your pride, thinking you're more just, knowledgeable, or wiser than God.
>"He doesn't conform to my imperfect conscience, how can He be perfect?"
>you said yourself we aren't perfect. how can you hope to understand perfection, or, worse yet, hold it to your wrong standards?
As I've said, I haven't received any divine revelation, I'm only able to understand God through the word of other fallible, imperfect human beings. I'm not taking the existence of God as described in the bible as a given because I don't have a good reason to. My own imperfect reason is all I have to go on.
Please don't assume my intentions.
Your passive aggressive demeanor is debating in bad faith.
He made them knowing everything they would ever do. He created said evil. God is evil.
why not? try and list the "breaking points" for you faith.
for my tip, read the Bible and study it deeply; commentaries and explanations for passages, the original languages and everything.
don't blind yourself by going in biased with concepts like the "historical Jesus" or such atheistic traps. read the Bible for what it is, the word of God.
then, after you truly read it like that, try to challenge your beliefs. search high and wide for any criticism that holds up.
you will realize all of them are strawmen.
and as a little something, also look at apologetics and theology.
I'm the anon who linked the Alec Guinness story. Like you, I was raised Catholic, then lost my faith. Like you, I never became a full-on atheist.
It's frustrating when it seems like God doesn't seem to answer or perhaps even hear our prayers. I am all too familiar with this experience. I know it provides but scant comfort, but I would encourage patience -- and indeed even to pray to God for the grace to be patient.
>I started critically examining the christian conception of God ... I haven't found that it hold up to scrutiny.
Eventually when, some years after my loss of faith, I again began to examine the Christian claim, I came across an argument that I found quite persuasive -- that is, the case for the Resurrection as based on the historical evidence.
This case is made out in two short books which, I think, complement each other. I highly recommend them both.
The better written of the two is Michael Green, Was Jesus Said He Was? It's out of print, but there are inexpensive used copies on Amazon and elsewhere.
The more detailed exposition of the evidence is made in Josh McDowell, More than a Carpenter.
Both books are quite good. Now, there are books that set out essentially the same argument in greater length and detail, if you were interested. The most notable of these, the big kahuna, is N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. An accessible and well-done video treatment is given in this series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ErnJF_nwBk&list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TUYymBPce08oyuhnHLLkR_B, with episode #2 being the core and key episode.
I would also encourage you to read a couple of books of conversion stories, in particular, the aforementioned Surprised by Truth.
Also: Spiritual Journeys, edited by Robert Baram. Unfortunately out of print, but once again inexpensive used copies are available at Amazon* and elsewhere.
*https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Journeys-Robert-Baram/dp/0819868760/
Give Jesus another chance. Blessings, anon.
Historical evidence does not prove philosophical claims. Let's assume that the historical evidence is true, this does not prove the entire bible. Gnostics for example might be right and they have a far more consistent belief system.
Are you the OP?
No.
>Let's assume that the historical evidence is true, this does not prove the entire bible.
I agree, but if one is persuaded that the Resurrection actually took place, Jesus's claim to be Savior is immensely strengthened -- but so too, in turn, is the ground on which that claim substantially rests, that is, the Old Testament, perhaps not in its entirety, but in some significant part at least.
>Gnostics for example might be right and they have a far more consistent belief system.
I'm not quite sure what aspect of gnostic belief you're referring to, but I will say there's always more than one way to interpret a given piece of evidence.
To one person, Nicole Simpson blood spatters on the carpet in OJ's house is conclusive evidence that OJ murdered Nicole.
To another person, the blood spatters are conclusive evidence that a corrupt police department planted the alleged blood evidence. (We may presume that the jury that found OJ not guilty reached this latter conclusion.)
What a fricking cringe post.
>Such is free will: from a human perspective it is impossible
you should have stopped here. this is all we claim and yet christians engage in neckbreaking mental gymnastics to deny it.
of course I don't think there's a god or a divine point of view or anything like that, but that's a different matter. all I want to hear that free will vs. predestination, the trinity etc. don't make sense. if you ever used the term 'it doesn't make sense' for anything at all, you have no right to quantify these cases with but muh gawd. a human logic viewpoint is what we assume when we say it does not make sense.
>rational
>rational
>questioning God
Christianity is a mystic path, not a philosophy. All heresies start with lack of love breeding disobedience breeding questions. Life is too short for heresy.
Brainwashed.
Your will is free from god's knowledge. Your free will has an effect on god's knowledge, but god's knowledge has no effect on your free will. It is a matter of causal relations. God's knowledge is caused by your free will.
A coder wrote a program that works exactly as the coder intended. You can't blame the code for doing what it was mean to do.
God is the coder and we are the program.
Your almost right but a few things to help you for next time. God isn't a he or a she or a being. God is like the sun or like light or energy or something like that. It's not a conscious being making anything do anything, nor does it know anything, it just is. It's called source and aliens an ghosts have told mediums in books and videos that there is more than one source but that everything in this universe comes from the same source. Freewill is the options to pick from the different plans you make. When we're planning our lives we don't have a set path, we give ourselves options. Instead of oe set path we give ourselves a set of paths to pick from in life. Your life plan looks like a tree when you make it. You start out being born at the root then each freewill decision leads to a different branch and a different outcome. We usually get our spirit guides mixed up with what we think is god. Like we'll have a near death experience and someone will show up talking to you floating in space an you'll come back like I met god!!! When it was just your guide. God doesn't talk to people and work with individuals because its not a being or a person. Your guide is always with you. Every one reading this has a spirit guide in their vicinity caring for them. After you finish your reincarnation cycle you become a guide. So you have to come here and learn to be human before you can be a guide or someone else's guardian angel an help them be human. The student can't teach the teacher you have to learn first.
Cite sources.
prescience does not equal predestination.
Just because He knows your choice doesn't mean you didn't make it yourself, freely and fully by your own will.
He made you knowing exactly what you'd do.
Christianity refutes free will
Congrats. God isn't real.
it's real it just isn't what we've been forced to think it is, the god we worship is a god made by man in mans image.
>>gets btfo
>>has no argument
>typical moron theist
>Doesn't it? If God's knowledge can't be false then I can't possibly do anything that would prove god wrong. It doesn't matter that the actions are being done by my will and not God's because the conditions are such that no other actions could possibly have been taken.
It's right that nothing you could do could prove God's foreknowledge wrong, but that doesn't entail that you never have the ability to do anything other than what you actually do. 'Necessarily, if God knows that x will happen, then x will happen' does not entail 'Necessarily, x will happen'. That is the modal fallacy. So, arguments like this are just demonstrably incorrect.
God knows at all times all possible options and choices and can therefore see all the alternate universes, he knows all possible things you can do and did do but he leaves it up to you to enact one in this world, that's the free will.
Our ability to reason and consider things is but a sliver of the divine within that is supposed to guide us along the path of choices that are the best for us, the struggle you go through in this life is the divine being tempered by the hardship and experience of the material realm before it can return to God, improved with lived experience.
>God knows at all times all possible options and choices and can therefore see all the alternate universes, he knows all possible things you can do and did do but he leaves it up to you to enact one in this world, that's the free will.
But he still knows which of those options I'll go with.
It doesn't matter because you already have made that choice and it's opposite in a parallel world, and he knows about both forks. It's simply a case of this world leaving it open ended as to which choice is ultimately manifested, but for God everything has already happened.
It's the final sorting and manifestation of free will that matters for your soul, not whether God knows because he already knew, which allows him to give you the choices in the first place.
You're presupposing parallel worlds.
It doesn't matter either way though since I am in this world and God has absolute knowledge of what I'll do in this world. His knowledge of any other worlds has no bearing on it because I'm not in those worlds.
Your Schrodinger's free will doesn't fricking work. If only one of those options are manifested among many forks, then you either don't have the option to choose which one gets manifested or God already knows which one you did manifest which gives us no actual difference.
It does make free will completely meaningless to begin with. There is no factual distinction between "necessarily X will happen" and "X will happen" in this particular case. God isn't an outside observer but the creator of the world, the fact that he created it means that he had to choose the form the world will take. Seeing that it has been said that the universe follows his plan, as well as that he is the one who set the events, "X will happen" becomes the same as "necessarily X will happen".
If God is omnipotent, he could have chosen to create a completely different type of universe which doesn't have the problem of this one.
That is pushing God completely out of the realm of what is quaintifiable in any way or even subject to logical argument.
>there is no factual distinction between "necessarily X will happen" and "X will happen" in this particular case
I agree with you that determinism is true but I also disagree that there is no factual distinction. In the latter case, I argue that, as a moral character, the illusions of choices you are presented with are important to contemplate on.
>illusion of choice.
So you admit it?
>I'm going to create a universe where bad thing happens
>[bad thing happens]
>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
It's even worse than that.
>I'm going to create an universe where people do bad things
>WHY ARE YOU DOING A BAD THING?! I'M GOING TO THROW YOU INTO ETERNAL BAD PLACE.
it's even worser than that
God chose to do this, despite being a perfect and self-sufficient being!
was he irrational?
If we assign any verb to God other than "to be", he cant be all powerful. Human verbs like "choose" mean imperfection existed prior to that point, showing that there had been a lapse in God's judgement.
Not to mention that assigning human verbs to God is just worshipping a Zeus tier sky father archetype character from a polytheist pantheon.
More importantly, if God created the world with the knowledge of how much evil it will cause, doesn't it mean that he is morally responsible for that evil as well? If I kill a man by pushing a button that blows up a bus I'm still responsible, why is God not morally responsible for all the evil that happened when he knew about it beforehand and still decided to put it into motion?
This reads like you look at God as a sky father archetype, not an all powerful being. "Creation" = something was uncreated before that point = imperfection had existed within God's infinite existence.
Is it evil if a cell mutates? If an atom causes a reaction? That's all human actions are in their relevant systems; levels of chaos which drive things forward, our moral systems are just frameworks which stop said chaos imploding on itself.
Because the facts of the world, and the biblical texts do not fit with the idea of an all powerful, all knowing, all-good being.
We're not discussing the idea of any God, that cannot be proven or disproven. We are talking about Christian God who is inconsistent with its own portrayal.
OP btfo christcucks and now they use some mental gymnastics to cope. OP should ask to christcucks what is their definition of not having a free will and the smart ones will not answer and the dumb ones will start saying things that will prove OP right.
>Doesn't it?
No.
Knowing how a person's story ends doesn't deprive them of agency. In fact, your individual choices are precisely the reason why God can determine how you are going to act.
God is essentially the inverse of Roko's Basilisk. Rather than coercing you through divine punishment, he's letting you suffer on your own terms because he already knows your true nature. Whether or not you're willing to fall into his arms is entirely your decision, despite already knowing what you will choose.
>I've yet to hear a satisfactory christian answer to it
What did he have to say about it?
Roughly this
Calvinism deals with the paradox of omniscience but not with the moral quandries it poses.
Did OP ask for the moral quandaries?
OP here, I did bring those up elsewhere in the thread.
If there's no choice, there's also no morality by proxy, so you can't accuse God of being moral or immoral.
God is the only one who can make choices due to his status as the first mover.
*only mover
Then why does God hold us to a moral standard that we're not capable of choosing to obey or disobey?
It's not a moral standard of behavior, just a preview of who is and isn't predestined for salvation.
Then what reason does God have to create people who won't be saved?
Because he could.
god can only have reasons if he decides to have them. otherwise everything he does is done for its own sake, not in order to achieve something else, which he could achieve directly by snapping his fingers, amirite?
So what the frick is the point of anything?
if there's a god? probably nothing. but I don't think there is a god. I am just playing the devil's supercalvinist advocate in these threads.
Fair.
There isn't.
Welcome to nihilism. Don't park there too long, anon.
Don't listen to this guy. Go read any existentialist philosopher and make your own. Or just read Camus and learn to enjoy the struggle itself.
Either one works.
Nihilism is existential philosophy you fricking smoothbrain.
Existentialism is a well defined movement that does not include nihilism you fricking moron. They have similar areas of interest but they aren't the same.
He just did, you are just too fricking autistic to actually comprehend any kind of argument.
>Nietzche
>existential philosopher
>discusses nihilism extensively
You can argue if he even was an existentialist or not, but that's all he did. HE DISCUSSED Nihilism (and even then he discussed it in the terms of existential dread and societal decay and not an actual philosophical point), he was not a nihilist you fricking cretin.
Nihilism is existential, political, or moral.
You might be moronic.
It includes nihilism. You are fricking stupid, dude.
Molinism
One thing that I feel like you fricks who defend "God is omniscient but we have free will" do not understand is simply the scale of what omniscient means. It sometimes feels like you are thinking of it as if God was looking at you from above and could peer into the future like a time traveler to know what you will do.
This isn't what Omniscience is.
Do you know what Omniscience is?
Omniscience is knowing the make up, location, lifespan of your every single cell, knowing the exact numerical amount of any force in the world, knowing always where every single speck of dust floats in a hurricane, being able to know of every single neuron in your brain and every single signal it will ever send. Being able to know your every thought, every smallest movement, every eye twitch, every move of your strand of hair. It is knowing EVERYTHING. Think for a moment about the implications of that, think about what omniscience ACTUALLY FRICKING MEANS.
Now realize this is true not only for the current world, but for EVERY SINGLE WORLD THAT COULD POSSIBLY EXIST.
Now realize that not even a single thing can go against this prediction, that God knows even the behaviour of neurons that are firing in your brain right now and that your every movement, every tap of the keyboard has already been predicted by him. And it has been predicted even when the world did not exist, when the world started. Even at Big Bang, God knew fricking EVERYTHING about you, your birth, what kind of cells you would be made off, the individual atoms that would make your being and far more. And that he had to choose it, that he had to know this as he was creating the world, that he had to know where every single atom would go, and which one of those would create your being. Everything.
THIS is what omniscience means. Do you not see how the very concept of omniscience and free will breaks?
>Do you not see how the very concept of omniscience and free will breaks?
No.
Then I'm sorry but you might be braindead.
I'm very sorry for not agreeing with your position despite you providing no arguments for it.
I did, the fact that you are relying on pedantics and willful ignorance to avoid them gives further credence to my insult.
You just gave a detailed explanation of what omniscience involves as if theists don't know what their own view entails. Nowhere did you explain why any of that is incompatible with free will.
Damn, you frickin stupid or something, anon?
Give an argument.
An argument for you not understanding logic? Go back and read all of your comments. Come
I've repeatedly had to explain basic philosophical concepts to people in this thread, so forgive me if I'm highly skeptical that you better understand formal logic than me.
You don't understand logic.
>If God is omniscient, meaning he has perfect knowledge of all things past, present, and future and nothing he knows can be false then how can free will exist?
I can record the superbowl, then watch it later, rewind it then watch it again and know everything the players will do. Does this mean I made them do it or where somehow involved with their decisions?
If you created the players knowing everthing they'd ever do, the game, the camera, the stadium,ect. Then yes.
Your argument is hollow and lacks substance.
Not that guy, but the word everyone is working with here is omniscience, not omnipotence.
According to you. We are talking about God. Who is both.
>If you created the players knowing everthing they'd ever do, the game, the camera, the stadium,ect. Then yes.
>Your argument is hollow and lacks substance.
Just saying "no" isn't an argument. Explain how knowledge of these things means the decision isn't the person's to make.
If you create a computer game and an n.p.c. to do a predtermined task, does the n.p.c. have free will?
>If you create a computer game and an n.p.c. to do a predtermined task, does the n.p.c. have free will?
No, but you incorporated a new variable of programming something. We're just talking about knowledge of what someone will decide. That alone does not imply programming of the thought.
>god does not record the superbowl when it happens and then rewatches it. he has a record of it before the event. how can that record exist if the event could happen differently?
The issue at hand is that God has knowledge of everything in the future. The OP suggests that this implies he controls decision making. It does not. If it did, then my knowledge of what will happen on a video suggests I implanted the decisions made. I did not.
Your argument is off topic from rest of thread, no one is equivicating omniscience to omnipotence. God has both, which is what we are discussing. Why don't you go hang out with the other middle schoolers, Timmy, adults are having a discussion.
>no one is equivicating omniscience to omnipotence. God has both, which is what we are discussing
You seem confused. We are specifically discussing omniscience here, via the OP. God's power is not relevant to that matter, because it is not implied that since God has the power to do something, that he must do it.
I'm unconcerned what you've tangented into for this thread. I'm addressing the OP. If the OP's topic is uninteresting to you, then continue your discussion about omnipotence with others, not me.
O.p. is discusding God. Which has both.
>O.p. is discusding God. Which has both.
He was a little more specific about that. God's omniscient knowledge of the future and how that implies we cannot have free will. I'm disputing that with an argument. Dispute my argument or speak to someone else.
God has omniscience because of omnipotence.
OP here, this is true.
God is capable of anything therefor God is capable of possessing absolute knowledge of the future.
>God has omniscience because of omnipotence.
chapter and verse please
god does not record the superbowl when it happens and then rewatches it. he has a record of it before the event. how can that record exist if the event could happen differently?
either the record does not exist i.e. god does not know the future, or the future is fixed and you have no real choice. you can have the illusion of agonizing over a choice, but every part of that agonizing is scripted. you can be - wrongly - sure that you could have chosen differently, but you can't know that, you can only imagine it, and I posit that you haven't made sure you know enough about the physical state of your own brain to reliably eliminate the actually impossible outcomes.
(in a world with true random sources the argument is more complex but not leading to any different conclusion. I have avoided it for simplicity.)
>how can that record exist if the event could happen differently?
Also, it can't happen differently. We will make only one choice for everything. God knows what those choices will be. We still are the one making the choice.
Not if god creayed you knowing everything you will ever do. You made no choices, the only choice was god making you.
>Not if god creayed you knowing everything you will ever do. You made no choices, the only choice was god making you.
You can keep saying that all you want, but it is still illogical. Just because God knows which way I'll go when I make a decision doesn't mean the decision is up to anyone else but me. God "could" arrange the universe to line my decision making up with an outcome he wants. But not only does that principle no invalidate the fact the decisions were still ours to make, there is nothing to suggest he does this for everything either.
Massive cope. Or extreme stupidity?
> I have no argument
I accept your concession
No concession given, anon.
You don't understand the argument that has been repeatedly given. You didn't win, you are just dumb as frick.
I find it bizarre you can't comprehend that if I watch a videotaped superbowl, then wind it, it doesn't mean I made the players make the decisions they made. Even tho they can't be changed. You keep bringing up other things to get around this. You are incapable of processing this point.
We all find bizarre how you can't understand that in the case of God, he does make the players and the decisions they made.
>he does make the players and the decisions they made.
Just repeating your premise is not an argument. Abandoning thread. Too many smooth brains. Probably just young.
We all understand your statement it is just irrelevant.
>If God is omniscient, meaning he has perfect knowledge of all things past, present, and future and nothing he knows can be false then how can free will exist?
There is no contradiction.
>It doesn't matter that the actions are being done by my will and not God's because the conditions are such that no other actions could possibly have been taken.
You aren't deprived of a choice because God knows what you're going to choose, that would be a paradox.
>This still has the same problem, *how* God knows doesn't really have any bearing on it.
Yes it does. God's perception of reality is absolute, whereas yours is subjective. God knows what happens if you choose A just as well as if you choose B. From God's perspective you choosing A and you choosing B are both equally real, it's only in your subjective reality that only one can happen.
>You aren't deprived of a choice because God knows what you're going to choose, that would be a paradox.
If God knows what I'm going to choose then the word "choice" just refers to my ignorance of the actions I've already taken in the future.
>Yes it does. God's perception of reality is absolute, whereas yours is subjective. God knows what happens if you choose A just as well as if you choose B. From God's perspective you choosing A and you choosing B are both equally real, it's only in your subjective reality that only one can happen.
But then God also knows that I will choose A instead of B and that his knowledge of what will happen if I choose B isn't what will truly happen.
>But then God also knows that I will choose A instead of B and that his knowledge of what will happen if I choose B isn't what will truly happen.
Holy crap learn to read.
>God's perception of reality is absolute, whereas yours is subjective. God knows what happens if you choose A just as well as if you choose B. From God's perspective you choosing A and you choosing B are both equally real, it's only in your subjective reality that only one can happen.
>From God's perspective you choosing A and you choosing B are both equally real
But they're not. If God is omniscient then he knows what will really happen and what won't really happen.
>it's only in your subjective reality that only one can happen.
It's the opposite, actually. In my subjective reality I lack perfect knowledge of the future so it appears to me like there are many possibilities of what could happen. From the perspective of an infallible omniscient being the outcomes of all events are already known and because this knowledge is infallible no other outcomes are possible.
Get a dictionary, dude.
>God's perception of reality is absolute (not qualified or diminished in any way; total)
>Meaning God has total perception of what events will and will not happen
Where's the problem?
>what events will and will not happen
That's subjective, not absolute.
Well, you see, you have to give God a little credit for fair play. He *is* God, after all. He is not playing a trick on you wrt free will, which is found or implied on virtually every page of the Bible.
>If God knows what I'm going to choose then the word "choice" just refers to my ignorance of the actions I've already taken in the future.
No. You cannot fit God into a logical box. You cannot checkmate Him, or reverse engineer Divine Providence.
You have free will because He has given it to you. Period. And that gift is vouchsafed to you in the pages of sacred Scripture.
Believe in order that you might understand, as St. Augustine counseled. Words echoed by St. Anselm of Canterbury:
“For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe -- that unless I believe I shall not understand.”
Truly, humility is wanted here, anon. Humility and faith.
For although they knew God,
they did not honor Him as God
or give thanks,
but they became futile in their reasonings,
and their senseless hearts were darkened.
Romans 1:21
Be as the wise, not the unwise. The fear of the Lord -- that is, profound reverence before God -- is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7).
Faith and reason work in a reciprocal manner. Believing in God, we see new vistas of truth. As we reason through these vistas, our belief in God is further confirmed. We believe in order to understand because, like Paul and Augustine, we know that without affirming the existence of God and His goodness, we cannot make ultimate sense of the world, or our place in it.
I'm not capable of believing logical contradictions.
I can't choose what I believe, I can't just say "I believe this" so hard that it makes me believe it.
The idea that God would judge someone for not believing in him makes no sense to me. No one chooses what they believe, how can we be judged for something we have no control over? It would be like judging someone for what they can and can't digest.
Anon, I wish you well, although I must say, I believe you are making a mistake.
Ah, but you are free to do so, eh? How ironic.
>I'm not capable of believing logical contradictions.
*You* are constructing the perceived logical contradiction. You have applied a rough calculus to a complex problem, based on what you *think* are the relevant variables -- but in fact this is pure speculation on your part, because you *do not know*, and *cannot know* the relevant variables.
Because, relative to God, in trying to judge this matter of human free will you are like someone living in Flatland -- a limited creature trying to assess the workings of an infinite, uncreated Being.
See: https://aish.com/free-will-vs-predestination/
It is not wise to separate yourself from your Creator - who created you to be with Him in eternity - on the basis of an imponderable:
>The fact that God knows the future yet we maintain free will at every moment is one of the great philosophical and theological mysteries of mankind. For so long as we live in the physical world, bound by the limits of time, we will not be able to understand this contradiction. The true answer of how this works, as Maimonides writes, is unknowable to the human mind. We simply do not possess the tools to imagine the infinite realm of God's existence.
As for God's judgment, whatever else it will be, it will be fair, and it will be merciful.
Anyway, I hope you will consider some of the reading and viewing suggestions I have made - Spiritual Journeys, etc* - all of which I make with nothing but goodwill towards you, for I see in you myself 30 years ago. Blessings, anon. And think twice before you sell your birthright for a mess of pottage.
*
Well I think the premise is that God wrote that he exists on your heart so you should be able to recognize it from that standpoint. That if you aren't able to recognize it, it is because you are too wicked.
Bible says nothing about a sufficient level of wickedness overriding Romans 1
That seems like a very convenient way to dismiss any genuine disbelief as the result of some moral failing on the part of the disbeliever.
I do believe in God, I just have no reason to think christianity is right about him.
>I do believe in God, I just have no reason to think christianity is right about him.
What do you make of this God?
Without free will, God almost necessarily becomes the immediate source of evil, or less than omnipotent wrt to evil that arises from some other source.
Likewise, absent free will, any thought of human love for God is negated. Pic related.
Thus, absent free will, any "God" is radically different from and remarkably deficient compared to the God of Christianity.
>What do you make of this God?
I don't know. I'd describe myself as an agnostic theist, I believe a god exists but I currently have no way of knowing anything about it.
It seems more likely to me that any god that does exist isn't omniscient (or if it is that the future isn't something that's knowable and thus not covered by omniscience) because free will makes more sense than lack of free will for the reasons you posted.
God can simply be the code which governs everything which operates in the Universe. The big question which exists is: "does true randomness/free will really exist?". We'll never know the answer to this, and will never know whether our actions are pre-determined.
Whenever we reach a limit in our understanding, we'll just assume there's something beyond it.
As such, our sole purpose is just to mine upwards and downwards; to discover as many systems as possible and to spread whatever we have within us to them; manipulating the unhuman and ungodly into something "more".
Free will does exist otherwise we would all be robots, though everything is already settled and done, and God did all the heavy lifting for us before creation began to provide for all of us, God isnt the code but He made the vibrations that hold everything in place, He foresaw every evil being done and every good thing and He planned and provided accordingly to justify the good and condemn the evil
>He has given it to you.
Please do not apply human forms or verbs to God. Just as you said:
>You cannot fit God into a logical box.
Humans lack the ability to refer to God with any language other than 'to be'. Doing otherwise is extremely prideful; assuming that you can act in a Godful manner.
As for the random people you quote in your post. Who are they to speak on behalf of God? Acceptance of God's being is all that is necessary; any abstraction layer over this is serving powers other than the Almighty for nefarious purposes (i.e. carrying out the wishes of the Pagan Constantine, or the Gnostic Augustine).
The bible is God's word, Anon.
Imagine limiting the sheer power of God's word to a mere book written by Romans 2000 years ago. The folly!
God's Word exists in absolutely everything around us. Every single item is worthy of study to learn God's Message. How an Earth can you even begin to believe that God Almighty is only capable of a system which you can read in a day, lmao.
The study of God is one which has lasted hundreds of thousands of years and counting. You are an ignorant fool going against the very nature of God by limiting your belief to a 2000 year old fake designed for political purposes. Shame on you.
>God's perception of reality is absolute, whereas yours is subjective
God is a subject. therefore, his perception is subjective. it being absolute doesn't negate that fact
>you choosing A and you choosing B are both equally real
in separate dimensions or in the same? if it's the latter, that's a contradiction
>God is a subject. therefore, his perception is subjective
>it being absolute doesn't negate that fact
look up the definitions of objective and subjective anon
Jeezus I thought this was Oyish not the remedial reading class.
perception is mind-dependent by default. why some people can't grasp this escapes me
Might be the same reason you can't find your shift key.
I have to copy and paste apostrophes 🙁
I meant more like everyone gets it but you. Duh perception depends on consciousness, what you're not getting is God's perception is absolute. It has to be because God is absolute, without God there'd be no anything (btw that's why Molinism is wrong in case anyone cares).
is like saying "my penis is a vegana, it being a penis doesn't negate the fact".
>"my penis is a vegana, it being a penis doesn't negate the fact"
there are people who would defend this statement unironically
Yes and they have brain damage.
>Duh perception depends on consciousness
yes. anything that is mind-dependent is subjective.
>my penis is a vegana, it being a penis doesn't negate the fact
nah, you're committing a category error.
on one lane, there's objective vs subjective. on the other, there's absolute vs partial. me having a pear in one hand and an apple in the other doesn't make the pear go away
>yes. anything that is mind-dependent is subjective.
Not if it's God's mind because God is absolute.
This is the most meaningful discourse I've seen all day.
Molinism
not biblical
I love how the only thing Christians and Atheist agree on is the lack of free will
Imagine it like you created a robot thus you know his engine, how he will move and his responses to certain actions. Well were are like robots.
Does your memory refute free will?