(December 22, 2016 at 11:54 am)robvalue Wrote:(December 22, 2016 at 11:11 am)operator Wrote: Let's remember that an all-knowing creator creating the future before it occurs to us as humans is quite different than a human time traveling and have "precognition." An all-knowing, all-powerful creator created me and knew I would make this thread before I made it. That eliminates my free will in the matter and means that every single "choice" I make is actually not a choice at all, but actually part of god's plan.
So either fate is real.
Or free will is.
Which one is it?
It's very simple and we need not be bogged down by hypothetical scenarios or silly semantic debates. Which one is it, theists? Fate or free will? Because either your god is all powerful, or he is not.
I appreciate the enthusiasm in the subject that everyone has displayed but we're really getting far off track here. It's a simple contradiction that many of you are simply failing to see and quite honestly I'm not sure what's so difficult about it. Either god created the future, or he didn't. He either knows what you're going to do, or he doesn't.
Fate?
Or free will?
Strangely enough, science is showing more and more that free will is bollocks. If it's eventually shown everything is purely deterministic, it would in theory be possible for an external being to "know" the future, simply by calculation.
But most religious people require us to have genuine choices so that God has something to judge and isn't simply assessing robots he set in motion. This logically knows out procognition/fate, and I don't know why they cling to it so tightly. What difference does that make? Why can't God just not know? Would that make it suddenly unworthy of worship? I think it would make God more likeable.
I think that it is strange, because if everything is deterministic and you eliminate choice, then you can no longer trust logic (and therefore any scientific conclusions). If you cannot choose, then you cannot make a determination that one thing is more reasonable than another. Or at least, the determination, isn't based on logic or reason, but on the physical configuration of the brain.
Given two opposing ideas, you cannot evaluate them in any real sense, as your answer is predetermined based on physics, not on logic. You cannot answer any differently. And even though you think you may be correct, as well as thinking critically, this is also just an illusion (under this view). Even posts and discussions here, are not an example of any creativity, thought, or rationality, it is just the output that corresponds to the input. Although the algorithm processing the inputs may be quite complicated; in the end you have no choice, determination of your own, or ability to evaluate whether a correct or incorrect output is the result.
This argument appears to me, to be cutting off the branch that it is sitting on!
