(December 15, 2016 at 9:25 pm)alpha male Wrote: Yes, you did. The So...? construct implies that you find the question to be evident from the quoted position.

Wrong. No, I didn't. You implied that god does not have free will so I was asking you to clarify whether or not you were saying god was not all powerful. I never made any conclusions about god's power.

(December 15, 2016 at 9:25 pm)alpha male Wrote: But if it's really just a question, the answer is...no. Free will doesn't seem to be a function of power.

Are you admitting that god does not have free will?

(December 15, 2016 at 9:25 pm)alpha male Wrote: Which one? He tied two together. My response depends on which is used, hence the request for a definition in the first place.

The one in which he defines omnipotent. Did I really have to explain this for you? No, you're just incapable of having a genuine discussion and what I think you want is to bog down the debate with arguments over semantics so you can hope to prove some silly point.

(December 15, 2016 at 9:25 pm)alpha male Wrote: If you can't define your terms, you're not capable of having a genuine discussion

All-powerful isn't my term. Omnipotent isn't my term. see? I can be a petty asshole too, if that's really how you want to play this.

Quote:Alpha Male: I mean that I can't evaluate your conclusion without knowing how you define all powerful. So, why don't you just define it?

Quote:Mr. Greene: As we've spelled out; Omnipotence is an impossibility at the most fundamental level.

For the record;
omnipotent
adjective UK /ɒmˈnɪp.ə.tənt/ US /ɑːmˈnɪp.ə.t̬ənt/ formal

having unlimited power and able to do anything.

I accept that omnipotent means:"Can do anything which is not logically impossible". For example, a planar square which is curved is impossible, (a round square cannot exist by definition). So an omnipotent being could not make a round square. No problem.

What I object to is that in religious sermons, preachers claim that "God" is all powerful. Take this website as another example :-

Quote:"Discover God"
"God is all powerful"

http://www.discovergod.com/character02.html

It says: "God is all powerful so He can help you with anything ".

The concept of all powerful is not qualified in that website as limited in power. But if I wanted to make a square circle, "God" couldn't help me.

I do not suppose that you will hear a preacher in the pulpit claim: "Our Lord God is almighty, except for things which are not logically possible". No, they leave it at: "Our Lord God is almighty", thus misleading unsceptical people astray. It's dishonesty by omission, in my opinion.

(December 15, 2016 at 12:33 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(December 15, 2016 at 12:30 pm)pool the great Wrote: Wtf how can you hold contradicting views simultaneously so easily CL

I'm done here then..

I really don't know what you are referring to, Pool.

I think the crux of the contradiction, at least for me, is god's supposed omnipotence. If god, the decision maker in charge of existence itself, is an all-powerful being, that means he had literally an infinite number of potential scenarios for creation available to him. I mean...he could have made an earth full of green and purple, deaf-mute fraggles who all go to heaven in the end if he wanted to. Right? He is completely in charge, and wholly unrestricted in his power and potential. Yes?

So...if an all-powerful being, who has both limitless choices for potential worlds (and their subsequent outcomes) AND the power to see those outcomes beforehand (including every decision made by every living being born to that world), chooses one particular world from the many, than it was HIS choice; HIS free will. Not ours. He sealed our fates with his ultimate decision. We never had any control to begin with, because he saw what would happen and he made it so anyway.

Hopefully this clarifies the issue rather than further confusing it, lol. [emoji39]

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(December 15, 2016 at 7:49 pm)wallym Wrote: Let's say someone offers my kid a choice between Cake or Baked beans. I know with as close to 100% certainty as possible, she's going to choose the Cake. My knowledge of her future choice in cake in no way affects her freedom to choose.

So, hypothetically, if I have an omnipotent level of knowledge about her instead, I'd likely know every choice she were about to make. Again, my knowledge of her future choices wouldn't have anything to do with her choosing. Her free will would remain perfectly in tact.

I've got complaints, but I don't see a problem here.

BUT...if you were able to choose before your daughter was even conceived, whether she was going to be a person who prefers cake to baked beans or the other way around, and YOU CHOSE to create a daughter who will always prefer cake, than it's you who is exercising free will. Not her. She has no choice real choice in that scenario. It's an illusion of choice.

What's getting missed here is that god made a decision, knowing the consequences before hand. He isn't just an innocent bystander who just happens to be able to see into the future.

(December 15, 2016 at 10:28 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:

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(December 15, 2016 at 7:49 pm)wallym Wrote: Let's say someone offers my kid a choice between Cake or Baked beans.  I know with as close to 100% certainty as possible, she's going to choose the Cake.  My knowledge of her future choice in cake in no way affects her freedom to choose.

So, hypothetically, if I have an omnipotent level of knowledge about her instead,  I'd likely know every choice she were about to make.  Again, my knowledge of her future choices wouldn't have anything to do with her choosing.  Her free will would remain perfectly in tact.

I've got complaints, but I don't see a problem here.

BUT...if you were able to choose before your daughter was even conceived, whether she was going to be a person who prefers cake to baked beans or the other way around, and YOU CHOSE to create a daughter who will always prefer cake, than it's you who is exercising free will.  Not her.  She has no choice real choice in that scenario.  It's an illusion of choice.

What's getting missed here is that god made a decision, knowing the consequences before hand.  He isn't just an innocent bystander who just happens to be able to see into the future.

There's a difference between creating her to prefer cake, and knowing she will choose cake.  If the magic free will nonsense is what allowed her to choose cake via super spiritual whatever, the two aren't necessarily the same, as in that case, it was also possible for her to choose bakebeans.  She just didn't.  

I see what you're saying though.  It's tough to try and suss out the motivations of an imaginary being that doesn't exist in our space and time.  How does creating work for people without time.  The reason this will always be silly, is because you can make up whatever you want about an imaginary being that doesn't need to follow the rules of existence as we know it.  

I agree with you, that it seems goofy to create people you love knowing they will burn in hell for eternity.  But that's a slightly different topic.

Again we have the problem that everyone can freely make up anything they want. They can even change it on the fly. When we're dealing with imaginary concepts, a "God" for each theist, they can have it do whatever contradictory things they want. It never appears in reality for them to realize it's impossible.

There would be a bit of a problem if it did, since we'd have billions of competing, self-contradictory word-salad generated Gods, all with different opinions about everything. Oh, the humanity!

If there is a creator, no one knows anything about it. They just make it up, or believe stuff other people have made up.

Put it another way:

God has designed things so that there can only be one eventual outcome in any given situation, because he knows what that outcome will be when he designs things. He knows the eventual outcome. I don't care what it could have been, up to that point, or how many times it changes. This is irrelevant. He either knows what will happen, or he doesn't.

If you say there are actually more possibilities, but he knows which one it will be, then all the others are redundant. It doesn't matter that they "could" have happened, if he had designed it so they actually happened. They won't happen. They can't. If they did, God would be wrong about all his prior knowledge.

If any theist has a counter to the envolope scenario, I'd be interested to see it: You have a choice of two doors, red and blue, for leaving a room. I know which you will leave through, ultimately. (I'm a being capable of precognition.) I write it down and put it in an envelope, and give it to you. You put it in your pocket.

Let's say I know you'll go through the red door, so that's what it says. Can you choose to go through the blue door? Is that option actually available to you?

If it is, you'd walk through the blue door, then open the envelope to see that my prediction was wrong. But it can't be wrong, because I knew you'd go through the red door. So this cannot happen. The contents of the envelope would have to change, while you walked through the blue door. In which case, it wasn't a prediction at all. It was just me saying which door you went through, after you went through it. Or rather it's a magic piece of paper which writes down which door you just went through. Before then, it makes no difference what it says.

If I have a free choice, no one can know what I'll do before I make the choice. That's what free means. Otherwise, you may as well say a robot has free will. It has the capability to do all kinds of things, but it does what it's programmed to do. It's predictable. Did it choose to do the thing it was destined to do? God being "outside of our time" doesn't change anything. He stills knows what I'll do, before I do it, from my points of view. So I cannot choose to do otherwise. From his point of view, it's like watching a film. Or viewing every slide of a film at once.

(December 15, 2016 at 9:37 pm)operator Wrote: Wrong. No, I didn't. You implied that god does not have free will so I was asking you to clarify whether or not you were saying god was not all powerful. I never made any conclusions about god's power.

OK, if you've not made conclusions about God's power, I take it it's not an issue for you at the moment. If you change your mind and actually want to assert a claim regarding power, we can discuss it.

Quote:Are you admitting that god does not have free will?

Er, yes, I'm "admitting" to my position - by your definition of free will, God does not have free will. Further, if it's unreasonable to judge the actions of a being which doesn't have free will, then it's unreasonable to judge God for his actions.

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(December 16, 2016 at 4:53 am)robvalue Wrote: If I have a free choice, no one can know what I'll do before I make the choice. That's what free means. Otherwise, you may as well say a robot has free will. It has the capability to do all kinds of things, but it does what it's programmed to do. It's predictable. Did it choose to do the thing it was destined to do? God being "outside of our time" doesn't change anything. He stills knows what I'll do, before I do it, from my points of view. So I cannot choose to do otherwise. From his point of view, it's like watching a film. Or viewing every slide of a film at once.

And Rob unwittingly puts up another argument. If you conclude that we don't have free will, then we aren't agents with rights to fair judgment.

(December 15, 2016 at 7:00 pm)Tonus Wrote:

(December 15, 2016 at 3:07 pm)SteveII Wrote: So, God's actions did in a way (weakly actualizing) 'seal that man's fate as the person to betray God'. That in no way took away Judas' ability to choose otherwise. Jesus' message obviously did not resonate with him and the greed in his heart was obviously there. He went to hell not for his weakly-actualized-by-God actions, but for the same reason anyone else will--rejecting God in his heart.

But God's action put Judas in the position of taking the action that betrayed Jesus.  Absent that, what would Judas' life have been like?  Would he still have earned a ticket to hell?  Was he always going to be wicked regardless of God's actions and it was simply a matter of using someone who was screwed anyway?  Surely we've heard or read of people who made changes in their lives and became completely different because of some experience.  Was Judas immune to this or did God realize that --absent any divine interference-- he was already hell-bound?  This speaks to a God who had a chance to save Judas and instead used him as a convenient prop.

The notion that my life might be laid out along a path that I cannot change but that I cannot see means that my life would still have the appearance of being under my control.  In which case, there's nothing to worry about.  But it's troubling to think that my path was laid out long before I was born and I have no way of avoiding the decisions that would lead me to eternal joy or eternal horror.  That doesn't keep you up at night?  The possibility that your fate is to turn on God someday and be condemned to eternal hell without any recourse because it's how your life's thread was directed?  Or do you feel that you will be granted heaven because... ?

Regarding the idea that God uses people who are 'screwed anyway' to accomplish his will, yes, I believe that is the case. I believe that God's goal is the redemption of people and a desire for a personal relationship, and we have free will to choose such. While God does want the best possible life for you (given your free will and the free will of others), this might be supervened by the one objective that could override it--namely the accomplishing the greater purpose of the maximum number of people having a personal relationship with him. So, it could be that some event in my life would be terrible for me, but has a purpose I cannot see--or it might just be a terrible event that is the result of nothing more than natural causes, my free will and that of others.

Or, he could achieve exactly the same result, without it being terrible for you.

Unless God has strange restrictions which means he has to just "do his best"?

(December 15, 2016 at 7:13 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(December 15, 2016 at 2:18 pm)SteveII Wrote: According to Molinism, there are two ways in which God can make things happen: 1) Strong actualization, God brings about some effect directly by his action (direct cause-effect). 2) Weak actualization, where God places someone in a set of circumstances with the knowledge (middle knowledge from the Wiki article a couple of posts ago) that the person would freely decide to bring about the desired effect. 

If God weakly actualizing the circumstances to have Judas freely betray Jesus, that is not the same as God causing someone to do evil. While the effect was willed by God, the mechanism (Judas) still had free will. If God knew Judas was not greedy and selfish enough, then someone else would have been put in those circumstances.

I don't see how any of this solves the problem.  If Judas has/had libertarian free will, there is no counterfactual which would cover the situation as there is no knowledge of an event with more than one possible outcome given the context.  Saying that Judas' choice was weakly actualized depends upon his choices being determined by the combination of his character and his circumstance.  That's not libertarian free will no matter how you slice it.

Molinists say the logical ordering of events for creation would be as follows:

1. God's natural knowledge of necessary truths.
2. God's middle knowledge, (including counterfactuals).
---Creation of the World---
3. God's free knowledge (the actual ontology of the world).

So, at step 2, the counterfactual "if Judas was in circumstance C, he would freely do A", can be true or false only if that statement is determinate in the sense that C is fully specified. Being fully specified is not the same as being causally determined. Because of the ordering of God's knowledge (1-3), at step 2 there will be an unimaginable number of counterfactuals that will have truth value that will never be actualized.

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(December 16, 2016 at 9:51 am)robvalue Wrote: Or, he could achieve exactly the same result, without it being terrible for you.

Unless God has strange restrictions which means he has to just "do his best"?

And preserve free will? How would that work? It is far from clear that that is even possible.