IATIA,
I have no idea how God knows the future. He can certainly monitor and calculate every reaction/event if He chooses to. But what are you actually saying? You seem to be implying that we are puppets of determinism whether God has foreknowledge or not. What do you actually think? Are we robots or are we free?
I have already answered this line of thinking several times. Knowledge of the past does not change the nature of the past. I am in the present, and I know what I did yesterday of my own free will. My knowledge today doesn't change the nature of the free will that I exercised yesterday, even if I recorded myself yesterday and replay it today to watch myself make my choices all over again. Remember, in your conception of time, our present is what you are currently calling our future, so my example of my own history is entirely applicable.
No. Free will does not by definition force a random variable into the universe. Randomness is not freedom. Will is not random. A robot has no will at all. A robot with a random number generator in its controller is still a robot. It has not suddenly gained free will.
Agreed. Nor can we know whether the simulation has been running for millenia, and we are just the current generation of avatars. But that is true with or without God's foreknowledge. It also negates every single complaint any atheist has ever registered against God. The pre-programmed mouthings of robotic simulations are meaningless.
Regards,
Shadow_Man
IATIA Wrote:Your god cannot see the future of free will. If your god can monitor and calculate every single wave/particle reaction/event, then your god will know what will happen, but then we are merely puppets of determinism.
I have no idea how God knows the future. He can certainly monitor and calculate every reaction/event if He chooses to. But what are you actually saying? You seem to be implying that we are puppets of determinism whether God has foreknowledge or not. What do you actually think? Are we robots or are we free?
IATIA Wrote:If your god can 'see' into the future, then it must have already happened and again, we are merely puppets, but this time of history. Your perception may give you the appearance of free will, but it cannot be so as you are just playing out a history that has already happened ...
I have already answered this line of thinking several times. Knowledge of the past does not change the nature of the past. I am in the present, and I know what I did yesterday of my own free will. My knowledge today doesn't change the nature of the free will that I exercised yesterday, even if I recorded myself yesterday and replay it today to watch myself make my choices all over again. Remember, in your conception of time, our present is what you are currently calling our future, so my example of my own history is entirely applicable.
IATIA Wrote:... or are simply a product of determined quantum reactions. Free will would, by definition, force a random variable into the universe and that cannot be known until it happens or it is not free will.
No. Free will does not by definition force a random variable into the universe. Randomness is not freedom. Will is not random. A robot has no will at all. A robot with a random number generator in its controller is still a robot. It has not suddenly gained free will.
IATIA Wrote:You do not know for a fact (nor can you) that you are nothing more than a computer simulation that was just started at this moment and everything you know was just simply programmed into your avatar.
Agreed. Nor can we know whether the simulation has been running for millenia, and we are just the current generation of avatars. But that is true with or without God's foreknowledge. It also negates every single complaint any atheist has ever registered against God. The pre-programmed mouthings of robotic simulations are meaningless.
Regards,
Shadow_Man
