WLC free will and omniscience

[Whateverist]

You know Tb, you gotta lot of fight in you.......if only that was directed elsewhere.

Yeah .. that never works. I once addressed those very words to the thug who was kicking my ass. Usually the person getting the beat down tires of the fight before the one delivering it ever does.

[Rampant.A.I.]

Yes. BECAUSE God is omniscient. You see what you did there? You concluded that humans are lacking free will from the perspective of God. From the human perspective, our freedoms to act are not restricted.

From this human's perspective, you're conflating free will with the illusion of free will, fr0d0.

Damn, thank you. I was getting tired of this "the facts change based on perspective" presumption he's using.

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From this human's perspective, you're conflating free will with the illusion of free will, fr0d0.

How so? I hold that there is no free will, but there is free agency.

Because you're flipping back and forth between terms when it suits your argument, as a semantic game, without defining "free agent," which by definition:

free a·gent
noun
noun: free agent; plural noun: free agents
1.
a person who does not have any commitments that restrict their actions.
a sports player who is not bound by a contract and so is eligible to join any team.

Is equivalent to Free Will:

free will
noun
1.
the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
synonyms: self-determination, freedom of choice, autonomy, liberty, independence

If free will doesn't exist from a possible perspective, what we have is the illusion of free will.

"From my perspective, the earth is flat, but from an astronaut's perspective the earth is round" is a statement of illusion caused by perspective. It does not mean the earth is actually flat unless you're an astronaut.

[MindForgedManacle]

The future isn't determined, it's just known if any being has the ability to traverse time, or be omnipresent, as God does. God can still mould events to produce results. In this case, our reality is as God wills it. I have no issue with the balance of good and evil. Life wouldn't be possible without it I think.

If God can mold events and alter the future, he never actually knew the future. If God KNOWS the future, the future is determined because there is then a fact of the matter about what will be the case. Since knowledge is classically defined as a justified true belief, and God knows what will be the case, then it is a FACT that the future is determined if God knows the future.

[Tonus]

When I was a theist I believed that god could not predict the future insofar as the future was not pre-determined. But god could predict events in the future that he was planning to cause or to influence. So if god said "such and such nation will be destroyed by a massive tidal wave" it wasn't because he fast-forwarded the universe and saw it happen; it meant that he caused a tidal wave to hit that nation just when he said it would.

To me, the idea that omniscience involves knowing exactly how the future unfolds means that that events are pre-determined and even god cannot change them. Which means that he's stuck in some other god's universe or otherwise is restricted by some outside force or circumstance. In which case, nothing is anyone's fault. Does not compute.

[fr0d0]

The future isn't determined, it's just known if any being has the ability to traverse time, or be omnipresent, as God does. God can still mould events to produce results. In this case, our reality is as God wills it. I have no issue with the balance of good and evil. Life wouldn't be possible without it I think.

If God can mold events and alter the future, he never actually knew the future. If God KNOWS the future, the future is determined because there is then a fact of the matter about what will be the case. Since knowledge is classically defined as a justified true belief, and God knows what will be the case, then it is a FACT that the future is determined if God knows the future.

Isn't that semantics? What is important is what you derive from determinism. Some would suggest that this removed choice from linear time beings, where this is clearly false.

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To me, the idea that omniscience involves knowing exactly how the future unfolds means that that events are pre-determined and even god cannot change them. Which means that he's stuck in some other god's universe or otherwise is restricted by some outside force or circumstance. In which case, nothing is anyone's fault. Does not compute.

If God operates outside of time, all of time appears at once. When is Gods fine tuning done? 'When' isn't something a timeless God is confined by. The tuning could bea constant ongoing process and our reality an infinitely morphing one.

[RobbyPants]

You guys are unreal.
Foreknowledge does not mean planned interference.
You are insinuating that you are victims, some kind of chess figure on the board.
Baloney.

It's true that it's possible that God knows, yet gives us free will to make choices. Free will is possible with an omniscient god. That in and of itself isn't a logical contradiction.

Where it gets weirder is that he has an infinite punishment/reward system set up with a specific set of criteria for who goes where. He came up with this system while simultaneously knowing who would and wouldn't make the cut. So, while we may have free will in relative to our own decisions, we certainly don't have free will relative to God, and he's the one judging us.

[MindForgedManacle]

Isn't that semantics? What is important is what you derive from determinism. Some would suggest that this removed choice from linear time beings, where this is clearly false.

No, it's not "just semantics", which even if it was is not much of a criticism. Semantics happen to be very important.

What I did was show that given determinism, there can be no such thing as making a choice that could have been otherwise. Under determinism, there is a fact of the matter about how things will be beforehand, which is incompatible with libertarian free will.

[fr0d0]

OK I'll call it bullshit instead then. Because the freedom of the subject is unaffected by an atemporal beings abilities.

[MindForgedManacle]

Again, you are missing the point. Let me lay this out for you in, ah, a deductive form:

1) If God exists, his omniscience includes knowledge of future events.

2) God's knowledge of future events entails the truth of determinism, otherwise God could not have actual knowledge of what the future held.

3) If determinism is true, then libertarian free will is false.

4) God exists.

5) Therefore, libertarian free will is false. (from 1 - 4).

Which of these do you deny? You already agreed with 1). 2) and 3) are true by definition of the terms involved. Clearly you accept 4). Hence, 5) follows deductively for you but not for someone like, say, Chad who rejects 1)

[coldwx]

Maybe I do not understand the logic, but if God is aware of future actions how can their be free will by the actors. Even if I were to concede this, are you saying that god does not intercede in the universe's processes, human or otherwise? It seems to me if God intercedes at all based on his foreknowledge then our will ceases to be free. His actions have removed the will of at least one or more actors, human or otherwise, and by doing so has rendered the entire argument null.