RE: The Kalam Cosmological Argument
August 4, 2024 at 6:56 am
(This post was last modified: August 4, 2024 at 7:34 am by Sheldon.)
(August 4, 2024 at 6:38 am)Disagreeable Wrote:(August 4, 2024 at 6:34 am)Sheldon Wrote: Omniscience for example would certainly seem to present problems for any notion of free will, or autonomy of choice.
I point this out a lot. I've heard the objection "Omniscience isn't predestination so you still have a choice" and they completely miss the point that if God knows you will do X then you can't do otherwise.
Oh I had a tediously endless discourse with a Muslim on this, his mental gymnastics were impressive in their own right, but it lost its ironic humour for me eventually. If I posit two choices, lets say A and B, and a being exists that knows beforehand which one I will pick, then any autonomy I perceive must necessarily be illusionary. He just endlessly claimed that two mutually exclusive things were happening, that a deity knew which one I would pick, and that I still had a choice, he couldn't explain why without changing the claim to a deity knows all possible choices, or a deity exists outside of time and space and thus can see all choices instantly, of course no objective evidence to support any of the claims, and what was worse they still necessarily rendered any perception of choice an illusion.
It is marvellous to see the lengths people will sometimes go to, just to preserve a belief, if they are sufficiently emotionally invested in that belief.