RE: Better reasons to quit Christianity
August 20, 2012 at 10:10 pm
(This post was last modified: August 20, 2012 at 10:16 pm by spockrates.)
(August 20, 2012 at 9:03 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Strange because I just googled the word and... Precog, precognitive, precognition.
http://bit.ly/OtDd9K
Your interwebs broken amigo?
(It's not as though I hadn't spelled the word out in full in these posts...are you actually reading my responses? I'm beginning to suspect that this, as I feared from the start, is going to be -another- word game.)
OK. You were saying God is a precog, which translates, "God is a precognition." The grammar is confusing, since precognition is a paranormal ability, rather than a person. It would be less confusing to say, "God possesses precognition," or something similar.
So let's look at the definitions of precognition:
pre·cog·ni·tion
[pree-kog-nish-uhn]
noun
1. knowledge of a future event or situation, especially through extrasensory means.
2. Scots Law .
a. the examination of witnesses and other parties before a trial in order to supply a legal ground for prosecution.
b. the evidence established in such an examination.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/precognition?s=t
You also made the point that if the God with precognition saw what choices a person would make, the idea that the choices were freely made would be an illusion. Now I see noting in the definition to suggest that one having the paranormal ability somehow causes freewill to be an illusion. A more detailed explanation of the word also does not seem to support your theory in any way that I can see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precognition
So I'm still at a loss as to why you believe someone having precognition necessitates that freedom of will is an illusion. Are you saying that freewill itself is an illusion, and all choices are predetermined, though there is no God? Or are you saying that if there was a God with a precognitive ability only then would freewill be an illusion?
An example I hope you will use to help me understand you:
A person with the paranormal ability of precognition is watching a chess match between two chess masters. The person has a premonition that one of the two chess players will win the game, how many moves it will take to win the game, and what the final move will be that puts the losing player in checkmate. Please explain how, in this example, the freedom of the two chess players to choose what moves they will make is an illusion.
"If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains (no matter how improbable) must be the truth."
--Spock
--Spock