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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 17, 2015 at 1:09 pm
(June 17, 2015 at 12:38 pm)robvalue Wrote: You thought you probably would have coffee, you didn't know it for a fact 
There is a difference between knowing something and causing that something to be. Generally speaking, knowledge of something is not a cause of that something. If I know that on 1 July 2015, there will be a full moon, that knowledge does not cause there to be a full moon at that time, and has no effect whatsoever on there being a full moon at that time. Knowing something about the future does not cause the future to be that way. Nevertheless, there are some things that one can know about the future.
Knowing something is not the same as causing it, and it is fallacious reasoning to believe otherwise.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 17, 2015 at 1:10 pm
(This post was last modified: June 17, 2015 at 1:10 pm by robvalue.)
It doesn't cause it, but it does assure it will happen, if it is actual 100% knowledge. I would say we don't have any such knowledge about anything. We have predictions. You don't know about a full moon, you have a projected probability
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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 17, 2015 at 1:17 pm
(June 16, 2015 at 6:44 pm)IanHulett Wrote: So, I'm in the process of debating a christian on youtube Something tells me that if there is a hell, it is very similar to the process of debating a christian on youtube.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 17, 2015 at 2:37 pm
(June 17, 2015 at 1:10 pm)robvalue Wrote: It doesn't cause it, but it does assure it will happen, if it is actual 100% knowledge. I would say we don't have any such knowledge about anything. We have predictions. You don't know about a full moon, you have a projected probability
You can be assured that there will be a full moon on 1 July 2015. But so what? The assurance and the cause are not the same thing. Knowledge of that fact does not compel that event to occur.
When an honest person promises you something, you may be assured of the person keeping the promise. But the assurance does not cause the person to act.
Predicting the future, and causing it to be that way, are two completely different things.
I have decided that I am going to drink, as long as I live. You can count on that being true; I do not care if, in the future, a doctor tells me that it will kill me. I will give up wine when they pry my corkscrew from my cold, dead fingers. Does that mean that in the future, I lack free will, because I have made such a decision, and am committed to it?
(Not that it matters for the discussion, but I do not drink every day, and a typical day of drinking involves sharing one bottle of wine with my wife. So a typical day will involve me drinking about 3 glasses of wine, not a dramatic amount that is generally unhealthy. But if it became unhealthy for me in particular, I would not stop. I enjoy it, and a life without enjoyment is not worth living.)
I suppose, though, that the better approach in all of this would have been to demand an exact definition of " free will" that is supposedly incompatible with knowing the future, but it really seems pretty much irrelevant to any common notion of the expression. One may, of course, deny that there is such a thing as "free will" at all, and depending on the chosen definition, that might be the most sensible course to take. Of course, that will be irrelevant to other definitions that people use.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 17, 2015 at 2:59 pm
(June 17, 2015 at 6:55 am)jjosej Wrote: Hi all,
Without God how did this world come to be?
How did all the life spring up?
How did God just spring up?
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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 17, 2015 at 3:04 pm
(This post was last modified: June 17, 2015 at 3:08 pm by robvalue.)
Pyrrho: what we are highlighting is that idea of having precise knowledge about yet undetermined events is a logical contradiction. Either everything is already decided and we just trot along a series of flash cards; or else it's impossible for anyone, even a god, to know what will happen.
So it's really reductio ad absurdum, "knowing the future" is horse shit if there is anything other than purely deterministic rules. And in that case, God has no free will for the same reason, and he's part of the machine rather than in charge (if he is able to know his own future).
The whole thing makes no sense, of course. It only comes about through ridiculous attempts to beef up God.
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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 17, 2015 at 3:15 pm
(June 17, 2015 at 3:04 pm)robvalue Wrote: Pyrrho: what we are highlighting is that idea of having precise knowledge about yet undetermined events is a logical contradiction. Either everything is already decided and we just trot along a series of flash cards; or else it's impossible for anyone, even a god, to know what will happen.
So it's really reductio ad absurdum, "knowing the future" is horse shit if there is anything other than purely deterministic rules. And in that case, God has no free will for the same reason, and he's part of the machine rather than in charge (if he is able to know his own future).
The whole thing makes no sense, of course. It only comes about through ridiculous attempts to beef up God.
You should read up on "free will":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 17, 2015 at 4:10 pm
(June 17, 2015 at 2:59 pm)KUSA Wrote: How did God just spring up? By browsing a porn mag?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 18, 2015 at 3:17 am
(This post was last modified: June 18, 2015 at 3:17 am by ignoramus.)
He sprung up the same way a mushroom springs up when surrounded by the right "culture"
No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
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RE: 'God' is starting to make less sense to me. (rant)
June 18, 2015 at 3:34 am
(This post was last modified: June 18, 2015 at 3:40 am by robvalue.)
This is all just my stupid take on this
Pyr: I believe what you are describing is an intention to act, given certain conditions. For example, you intend to have coffee each day, if it is possible, and if there is no big reason not to. That doesn't mean it will actually happen, so you don't know it will happen for a fact. You may simply forget, you may go off coffee, you may run out of coffee... So it's just an intention. To actually know for a fact you were going to have it would require that knowledge to be completely accurate beyond dispute. Of course, no human can have such knowledge so it's a moot point. There's no reason to think such knowledge is possible.
And if God knows everything about his own future, he knows it down to the finest detail of every tiniest fraction of whatever passes for "time" or whatever in his case. I'm not saying he merely intends to do something so can change his mind, I'm saying he can "see" the future by knowledge. Again, this is of course absolutely absurd and even theists often back off at this point and say he can't know the future because it isn't logically possible to, but then try and make out he still does know what will happen..
Ahem! But if he can see our future but not his own, that means he cannot act upon our reality in any way not consistent with what he has already seen, so he still partially binds himself.
Again, this is all absurd. The idea that you can "know the future" makes no sense, that is the point You'd have to be outside a stationary deterministic object where time has already been taken into consideration as one of the dimensions so you're just viewing the whole thing. Again, no reason to think this is possible with our reality.
I'll leave it at that, if I've not convinced you that's fair enough I'm no expert I just like to waffle.
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