RE: Better reasons to quit Christianity
August 20, 2012 at 10:02 am
(This post was last modified: August 20, 2012 at 10:07 am by spockrates.)
(August 20, 2012 at 9:08 am)Rhythm Wrote:(August 20, 2012 at 4:01 am)Undeceived Wrote: There's an unstated step in the logic here.
1. God has precognition (Premise)
2. God will always act on his precognition to achieve what he knows is most healthy* for his creation.
3. Therefore God predestines all.
The question is, is #2 true?
By whom, certainly not by me. I'm stalled on precognition, because precognition, in and of itself, erodes the very concept of choice, as I've already stated. I'm still laughing at the premise, I haven't taken any steps further, and honestly, there is no need to go any further. The premise is borked, it doesn't matter what assumptions you tack onto it.
(August 20, 2012 at 7:09 am)spockrates Wrote: Simple illustration to make a point that even a rat in a maze has a choice. I guess I don't understand how someone would have no freedom to choose when he is (as you said) free to choose either (a) or (b). For example, my son who is a drug addict and on probation and is living in his own apartment has asked to move back home. Now my wife and I have a choice to either allow him to move back into our house, or not allow him. Please explain how (if God exists) the choice is not ours. In what way, exactly would God (and not my wife and I) be the ones who decides whether we allow him to live under our roof.
Except that a: you're just claiming that the rat has a choice in the first place, you haven't established that it does, and B, you've invoked precognition, which you won't be getting around anytime soon. Either precognition bends or choice bends. I don't think you're getting me here.......if god is a precog, precog alone....not making your choices for you, just a fucking precog....you have no choices. It is an illusion born out by your relative inability to perceive future events that -from some point in the time line, available to some observer- have already occurred. If you could truly go either way, then the precog would not know your choices. They would not be precognitive. This, of course, assuming linear progression of time, which is important to you myth. If instead, we proposed that the precog knew both of your choices and could see the timeline going in two divergent directions all the way unto the end for every choice made by every being capable of making choices then you have invoked infinite alternative timelines and the amount of hot water that puts your myth in is staggering. Not only does it put the myth into hot water, each individual you in every divergent timeline still had no choices, it was still an illusion.
Now, to be fair, hard determinism is already a bitch, that's without invoking magic, but once you do, the nails become firmly seated in the lid of the coffin.
Sorry, that still went over my head. I think I understood what this means:
Quote:If instead, we proposed that the precog knew both of your choices and could see the timeline going in two divergent directions all the way unto the end for every choice made by every being capable of making choices then you have invoked infinite alternative timelines and the amount of hot water that puts your myth in is staggering.
But you are correct that I'm not getting why this is true:
Quote: I don't think you're getting me here.......if god is a precog, precog alone....not making your choices for you, just a fucking precog....you have no choices.
Given that the definition of precognition is this,
knowledge of a future event or situation, especially through extrasensory means.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/precognition?s=t
I'm still blind as to why knowledge of a future event is the same thing as causing a future event. Will you give me a brief example to illustrate your point?
"If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains (no matter how improbable) must be the truth."
--Spock
--Spock