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