RE: Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?
December 19, 2016 at 6:01 am
(This post was last modified: December 19, 2016 at 6:07 am by Ignorant.)
(December 18, 2016 at 9:42 pm)Tonus Wrote: I am questioning the method. If God had any capacity for sympathy, he would not have needed to experience all of human suffering in order to feel compelled to do something about it. [1] And the way he has gone about it since then would indicate that he doesn't really understand the concepts of sympathy or mercy. [2]
How was it a failure? Jesus did not sin. He proved his point. [3] The humiliating execution was something he visited upon himself. Nothing stopped him from simply discarding the human body and returning to godhood. [4]
But he could have avoided that suffering and death for me altogether by making a more sensible decision from the beginning. [5]
The men who beat Jesus up and hung him on a cross will not be sent to hell for eternity? [6]
That's a bit of a stretch, IMO. I don't see how this implies that Jesus suffered every torment in creation. Nor do I see how such an over-the-top experience would provide a balanced perspective on what it's like to be a human being. [7] And I still don't see how any of it was necessary for God to provide humanity with a better fate. [8]
I would expect him to have knowledge of our tragedy, since he authored it. From that perspective, it's not impressive that he saved us from it. Or that he will, eventually. [9]
I realize I'm repeating myself here, but he didn't have to endure these things in order to be close to us. He created us, right? He knows us inside and out. Our condition is the direct result of a curse he placed upon all of humanity as penance for the crime two other people committed and paid the penalty for. We shouldn't be suffering at all. [10]
Maybe he claimed to have fixed things, but they don't look fixed. People still suffer, people --and nature-- still visit horrors upon one another, people still walk that wide path to destruction, and so on. This could have been stopped right from the beginning, but instead there were centuries of suffering followed by the implementation of a bizarre fix that hasn't taken effect two thousand years later. We live in a world that resembles one where there is no god, and explanations like the ones above sound like attempts to account for that. It's just not convincing to me. [11]
1) As I've said many times: God did not need to experience all of that suffering. You have it backwards.
His capacity for sympathy is exactly what moved him to do something about our suffering. What did he do? He saved us by and through suffering with us. Why? Because he was revealing that he wants to be close to us, even amidst our suffering and sin.
He saved us as a human so that in one sense, God saves us, and in another sense, we humans actually participate in our own salvation. We aren't damsels in distress. God saves us through Jesus's human action. When we are united in Jesus, we participate in our own salvation. Why? Because Jesus suffers with us.
2) What is sympathy and mercy, as you understand them?
3) Well yes. I said it looked like a failure, because it ended in public execution. Not exactly an expectation of the Christ. But if he tells us that even a perfect life won't avoid suffering (even his didn't)... how easy does a perfect life appear?
4) Exactly. He could have done that. What does it tell us that he chose to remain united to his humanity even in the face of suffering?
5) Ah, we come to it. Had you been god, you would have done it differently. Fair enough.
6) No, not necessarily. There is nothing God is not willing to forgive. He would gladly forgive the men who killed him if they asked for the forgiveness. "Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked? says the Lord GOD. Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way that he may live?" -Ezekiel 18:23
7) I presented that passage regarding the idea that we have been given access to the divine life, here and now, through our suffering.
8) It wasn't necessary at all. It is simply the way that God wanted to carry out in a way that 1) saves, 2) allows us to participate in our own salvation, and 3) reveals the reality of that salvation all at the same time.
9) Impressive? Maybe not. Good news for us? I think so, given that he didn't have to.
10) He cursed us? Or did he create a world in which we curse ourselves... only to enter into that world so that we could give us his own power with which we can heal ourselves?
11) Fair enough. Like I said, Christians live in-between worlds. In one sense, as you have well described, this world is passing away from its own corruption (both moral and physical). We live in that world. God, however, will renew and heal and restore our dying world some day in the future. The good news, is that this future expectation has come to our present world in the spiritual sense. We can live with the divine life in a real but incomplete way, here and now. I understand that doesn't convince you, and I truly appreciate your responses.
(December 19, 2016 at 5:53 am)robvalue Wrote:
So to make it simpler, God shows up in front of you, and tells you that in the next 10 seconds, you're going to walk slowly towards and then through the red door. He has seen it already, and he knows it to be true. [1] Can you ignore him and instead walk towards and through the blue door in the next 10 seconds? Or are you compelled to obey, and to do as he has predicted? [2]
If you're a theist and you don't claim that God can see our future beforehand, then you have nothing to address here. There is no contradiction, and free will is coherent. God cannot truthfully make such a proclamation, and so you can ignore him; at least partially.
Some people still seem to treat the future as if it's constantly changing. Precognition is meaningless if that is the case. God can't know the future if he has to wait and see what happens up until that point before finally knowing what will actually happen. That's simply called observing. Go watch the Minority Report, where the only people who can change the future are the police, for some reason.
1) Like I asked before: Does he know that I will choose to do this? Is my CHOICE part of what he knows? As God, that seems to be within his power to know.
2) If he infallibly KNOWS that I will CHOOSE to walk through the red door in that moment, then I will absolutely and definitely CHOOSE to walk through that red door. I don't see the problem that creates for the reality of the choice?
If he infallibly KNOWS that I will NOT CHOOSE to walk through the red door, but I will walk through it anyway, then I will absolutely and definitely walk through the red door without having chosen it.
So you have to be specific about the content of the precognition. Does it include the reality of choosing the red door or not?
