Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?

[RoadRunner79]

So; what is the difference if you go through door A and there is no envelope with the prediction?  What does it mean that you do not have freedom in this sense?
I could will to fly like a bird, but I'm not free to do so.

The envelope was an analogy. If what you will do is already known (doesn't matter by who or what) then you have no free will because your will is already determined. That simple. In this case the envelope knows your will, in your case the very God you believe in knows your will. 

Something cannot be known if it isn't determined, in this context.

Thanks, I understand the analogy, but nothing changed in regards to your will (or really within you at all). The argument seems to suggest that this freedom comes from outside of the individual. Does this freedom override your will?

[RozKek]

The envelope was an analogy. If what you will do is already known (doesn't matter by who or what) then you have no free will because your will is already determined. That simple. In this case the envelope knows your will, in your case the very God you believe in knows your will. 

Something cannot be known if it isn't determined, in this context.

Thanks, I understand the analogy, but nothing changed in regards to your will (or really within you at all). The argument seems to suggest that this freedom comes from outside of the individual.  Does this freedom override your will?

If my will is what I want, and it is known that in 10 years I will and will want to eat chocolate cake, how can I possibly not eat chocolate cake if it is already known that I will want to? If god knows that my will for the rest of my life will be to commit sins that will eventually lead to me going to hell then how can I possibly not commit sins if it means that God was lacking knowledge or was wrong?

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this is the point

[RoadRunner79]

Thanks, I understand the analogy, but nothing changed in regards to your will (or really within you at all). The argument seems to suggest that this freedom comes from outside of the individual.  Does this freedom override your will?

If my will is what I want, and it is known that in 10 years I will and will want to eat chocolate cake, how can I possibly not eat chocolate cake if it is already known that I will want to? If god knows that my will for the rest of my life will be to commit sins that will eventually lead to me going to hell then how can I possibly not commit sins if it means that God was lacking knowledge or was wrong?

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this is the point

Ok.... you just mean non-determined will. Why do you think this is necessary that it needs defending? You seem to be arguing that there is no choice(if it is known), it I think that you still have will and it is free. To me, it appears to depend on what is the causal factor. I don't think the envelope made you do anything.

Do you argue the same against the position of many materialist that of a purely mechanistic process? There I do t think you have will at all.

[robvalue]

Still no counters to my envelope scenario.

(I put an envelope in your pocket, containing a note that you will go through the red door, although you haven't seen it. I know this is true, because I have precognition. Can you choose to go through the blue door?)

Yes, I could have chosen the blue door, and you would have had to put a note in my pocket saying I go through the blue door.  It is my choice that is controlling your actions, not the other way around.
(If I believed in such at thing)

But I didn't, I knew you'd go through the red door. I'd seen it in advance, and noted this inside the envelope. That is the scenario. Given that this is the case, can you choose go through the blue door?

If your actions control my "precognition", then it's not precognition at all. If my prediction isn't determined until after the event, it's not even a prediction.

The envelope is just a way of demonstrating the fact that a prediction is constant. It can be noted before the event. It just represents the knowledge. I get the feeling some people think a prediction can change over time.

Of course, this whole thing shows that either you don't have free will, or I can't have precognition. Get rid of either, and it works fine.

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To the envelope question.... I don't see how an unknown envelope (no matter what it contains) can effect your choice or free will.

It's just a representation of the fixed prediction.

[Ignorant]

What I meant is that our ability to empathize means that we can relate to the suffering of others even if we do not share it.  In your example re:Syria, I may decide to travel there to help out and I may be moved by what I see, but my desire to help was triggered by empathy even though I was seeing their plight through a very narrow lens and from a much more comfortable perspective.  I didn't have to suffer with them in order to be moved to help them. [1]

But this implies that the ordeal he went through wasn't necessary. [2]

If he were to immediately eliminate all pain and suffering, I would know that he was compassionate and merciful. [3]

But that's something that separates him from those of us made in his image.  See, it's not just that God could easily fix things in a second with a wave of his hand.  It's what his time as Jesus represents if we simply shift the perspective slightly.  Imagine that God has become frustrated.  His creation --both heavenly and earthly-- rebels against him and ruins his initial set up for humanity on Earth.  He strips perfection from them and watches as they continue to do what is wrong and hurt one another and follow false gods and so on.  So he masquerades as a human for a short time and lives a perfect life as if to mock humanity by showing them how easy it is. [4] He arranges for a brutal and savage experience of torture that ends with his execution... only to return three days later, refreshed and ready to return to his role as the most powerful being in all of existence. [5]

He is eternal.  Thirty-three years isn't even the blink of an eye for him, much less three days of suffering that ends with him becoming God again and able to visit the most horrific torments on the people who hurt his temporary physical body.  And they're going to suffer forever. [6] God is different from us in every possible way. [7] How would such a small sample make any difference in what he could do for us if he was truly compassionate? [8] Why would he have to experience all of the suffering that ever happened in order to decide that imperfect humans were in a really bad state? [9] And why go through any of that in order to fix it? [10]

Would I really be getting a share of his divinity? [11] I might end up as an eternal soul in heaven, but that's about where the similarities would end, isn't it? [12] I think it's the mormons who claim that after death each of us gets a planet of our own to fiddle with.  That strikes me as an example of God becoming man so that I could become a god. [13] Otherwise it seems pretty lopsided, and I think we'd all have been happier if God had just fixed things when they first went wrong. [14]

1) Exactly. Do you think I am suggesting that it is not similar with god? God knows our suffering, and so he decides to save us.

"I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey." -Exodus 3:7-8

2) It wasn't necessary. It was gratuitous, merciful, magnanimous, etc. 

3) If you knew it was god who did it, sure.

4) Did it look that easy? In fact, it looked like a failure of a life... ending in a humiliating execution.

5) Exactly! He promises you that your own suffering and death, in whatever form they take, will be followed by a similar refreshed return. If you believe that promise, and live in that reality, your refreshed return will include a share in the divine refreshment, a share in the life of the most powerful being in all of existence. He did it all to reveal what awaits us all. He revealed the true reality. If you live according to that reality, you receive divine life (typically called eternal life). If you don't live according to that revealed reality, you won't receive divine life.

6) Says who?

7) Yes, he is completely transcendent to humanity. BUT, then he united a human nature to his divine nature... becoming like us in every way except actually committing sin.

8) Because in that tiny blink of a half a day of torment, every single torment in creation was visited upon him. Now, through those sufferings, we have a connection with the divine. "The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him" -Romans 8:17

In other words, God's transcendent compassion became accessible through Christ's human and concrete compassion which he endured with humanity on the cross. It is no longer an abstract and disembodied concept of god's compassion that humanity must grasp at through philosophy or the old covenant. Instead, Christ's own human compassion concretely communicates god's compassion through the suffering of the cross. "God in heaven doesn't seem to care if I suffer" is answered by the cross. Not only does he care, he became a man to suffer with you, and to show you what awaits you in the resurrection, i.e. the divine and eternal life.

9) He already knew that we were in a bad state before Christ. It was exactly because he knew this that he sent his Son into the world as a human. His knowledge of our tragedy is why he came to save us from it.

10) To show us that his transcendence does not mean that he is far from us when we suffer. He is close to us always, and especially when we suffer and sin. So close in fact, that he endures that suffering and the effects of those sins himself.

11) YES!

12) NO! God's divinity will actually participate in your humanity, giving you a share of his life within and through your own. You will become "like" Jesus, who is fundamentally a divine person united to a human nature. You will be a fundamentally human person united to the divine nature.

13) Like almost all heresies, the Mormon teaching takes a Catholic one, and distorts or reduces or misinterprets it.

14) That's the good news. He's fixed things, and that fix has spilled over into our reality. For whatever reason (I honestly don't know why), he fixed the spiritual aspect first, and we wait for the physical fix. "We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." -Romans 8:23

We are caught in the tension between the final fixing of everything at the end (the resurrection of the body and renewal of all things), and that same final fixing being partially given to us even now. It's what Christians call eschatology. It's both "here" and "not yet".

[robvalue]

Thanks very much for your detailed answers

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God creating reality, knowing every detail of what will happen the instant he creates it, is akin to him writing a very complicated story. He writes every word. He writes every murder, rape, AIDS baby and hurricane. He could have changed any of those details so that something else happens at that precise time, since he has an infinite numbers of scenarios to choose from and he has no boundaries (so we're usually told). [1]

In this story he decides to write, for some reason he thinks making some elements of it self aware is a good idea. [2] Let some poor bastards endure all the rape, murder, hunger and tragedy. Sure, they get to enjoy some good times too. [3] But that doesn't justify all the bad stuff he's choosing to write in. He knows the bad stuff will happen. He could have missed every and any single instance of it out. But he didn't. [4] Sadist.

Talking about what he's trying to achieve is laughable, because he has no obstacles or adversaries (who can stop him). He can write whatever ending he wants, without having to write in a bunch of shit first. [5]

Oh yeah, he then judges the characters in his story. Hmm, that character did a wank. Even though I wrote that he did a wank, I'll say it was his decision. I could have written other stuff, so that means he had free will. [6] I'll just burn him forever. Wow this is getting boring, I'll go play some god-basketball now.

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Of course, this doesn't play out quite like this if God sets up the initial conditions but then isn't able to predict everything that will happen. So if you drop precognition, he loses at least a little of the responsibility. [7]

However, he has still set up the parameters of the reality so that suffering is possible. That's on him. There was no requirement to do that. [8]

Would you do that, if you were setting up a reality? [9]

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1) Yes. His only boundary is himself, and everything that takes place (down to the finest detail) takes place according to the story he writes exactly how he writes it.

2) Yes. According to Christianity, he wrote this part because he wanted his story (i.e. creation and history) to participate and share in his own divinity (i.e. his own image). We hold that rationality is a participation in God himself.

3) Sadly, yes, this is true. But it is the whole story?

4) So far I'm with you. He knows the bad stuff will happen because he's the one writing the story about the bad stuff. He could have left them out, but he didn't. Why? We don't know. All we know is that at some point, he wrote himself into the story. He wrote himself in as the one who experiences all of those rapes, murders, hunger, and tragedies (he really suffers the experience of every particular rape, murder, hunger and tragedy) on the cross. He never wrote a single moment of suffering into the story without writing his own suffering of that same moment. 

In other words, he writes the story with bad stuff in such a way that HE suffers all of that bad stuff WITH us. "To suffer with" =literally= "to be co-passionate/sym-pathea". He is not merely compassionate in the sense that he understands our suffering, but he is actively compassionate. He suffers everything WITH us. He is God-WITH-us. Seeing as Christmas is right around the corner... Jesus is the Emmanuel: "God-with-us". 

Does that answer the question of "why" the bad stuff is in the story at all? No. 

This seems to be suggesting that we are God, or something? Not much consolation. And, he wants to write himself into his story? This is so bizarre. Why does he have to also have innocent sentient beings suffer as part of his theatre?

5) Correct

6) I'm not sure that is how he "writes". He doesn't write the action, and then assign decision making capacity after the fact, and then conclude freedom later. It is more like, "that character is free to seek the good as he sees it. I freely show myself to that character as the ultimate good to seek in everything, and I do that in Jesus Christ. That character freely sees some good in manipulating the sexual organs in a way to obtain the good of sexual gratification without giving itself to another person. That character freely decides to seek that good in wanking. That character freely obtains that good in wanking, but that good obtained in this way will never be enough so as to fulfill the character's own sexual aspect of existence. It will always fall gravely short of what the character could obtain through the mutual, life-long self-giving to another person".

This appears to contradict your answer to 1. How is anyone free to do anything if it all happens exactly how he wants it to? He's just making he decisions for them, beforehand or at the time. Or does everything that occurs just happen to be what he wanted? How can we have any choice at all?

7) Yes.

8) Correct

9) I don't know. Maybe if I wanted to create people who could ask this question, suffering needs to be a potentiality? Who could even know if that is the case or not? There can't be any mercy if there is no compassion. There can't be any compassion if there is no passion (which is an old word for suffering). In a world without suffering, there is no mercy or compassion. I don't know if that would be a better world or not. Maybe a world without a need for mercy or compassion is better than a world with such needs?

Yes. A world that doesn't need mercy and compassion is better, in my opinion. Why would it be important for the people you create to have to consider questions of suffering? If there is some benefit to having bad stuff and then mercy etc. which "gains" something from the bad stuff, that is entirely how he set it up. He could have achieved exactly the same goals without anyone having to suffer ever, as noted before.

I'd just want my beings to be happy and to enjoy themselves. I see no need for any harm to ever happen. And I'd make it so that they never get bored, or need to suffer before they appreciate not suffering. I'm not sure why anyone would want to include suffering. Seems just pure sadism to me.

[Ignorant]

Still no counters to my envelope scenario.

(I put an envelope in your pocket, containing a note that you will go through the red door, although you haven't seen it. I know this is true, because I have precognition. Can you choose to go through the blue door?)

Does the note mean that I will choose to go through the red door once I see it?

[edit] I'll respond to your recent post after we talk about this one!

[robvalue]

Still no counters to my envelope scenario.

(I put an envelope in your pocket, containing a note that you will go through the red door, although you haven't seen it. I know this is true, because I have precognition. Can you choose to go through the blue door?)

Does the note mean that I will choose to go through the red door once I see it?

Well, if you looked at it before you chose, then yeah. You'd have to "choose" to go through the red door. That's what I'm suggesting. It's not a real choice. If you instead had the ability to go through the blue door, this makes my prediction wrong. But it can't be wrong. If you can explain how you could choose to go through the blue door, I'd be interested. It doesn't matter if you look before or after you've made your "choice".

As I wrote in a previous post, the envelope is just an extension of the prediction, cementing the fact that it's a constant prediction that can be stated before the event. Not some undetermined squiggle which just copies outcomes, like some people seem to think (not saying you do).

[Ignorant]

Well, if you looked at it before you chose, then yeah. [1] You'd have to "choose" to go through the red door. That's what I'm suggesting. It's not a real choice. [2] If you instead had the ability to go through the blue door, this makes my prediction wrong. But it can't be wrong. [3] If you can explain how you could choose to go through the blue door, I'd be interested. It doesn't matter if you look before or after you've made your "choice". [4]

As I wrote in a previous post, the envelope is just an extension of the prediction, cementing the fact that it's a constant prediction that can be stated before the event. Not some undetermined squiggle which just copies outcomes, like some people seem to think (not saying you do). [5]

1) I'm sorry, my question was ambiguous. I meant: "Will I choose to go through the red door once I see the red door?" No worries though, because I think your elaboration takes care of that question too.

2) Here is the important thing to clear up. Does your precognition include the reality of me choosing the red door and going through that door, or does the precognition simply include the reality of me going through the red door? If you foreknow that I will choose something... how does that somehow mean that I am not actually choosing? If it isn't a real choice, then your precognition is false. If it is a real choice, then your precognition is true, and I will absolutely and actually choose the red door.

3) Clearly, as a human being, I am a thing which is capable of choosing to walk through blue colored doors. I am even a thing which is capable of choosing to walk through this blue colored door. That "ability" is simply mine as long as I am a human being. That doesn't make your precognition wrong. It just means that, in this case, I didn't actually utilize that specific "ability", even while it remains a real potentiality (as long as I am a thing which is capable of choosing to walk through a blue door, I have the potential to choose to walk through any blue door).

4) In the case in which you have infallible knowledge of one of my future choices (in this case, my choice to walk through the red door), then I will definitely choose to walk through the red door. How does your knowledge of a future choice somehow invalidate the action as a choice?

5) Fair enough. I think the above comments operate with that understanding. Let me know if you think they don't.

[henryp]

Yes, I could have chosen the blue door, and you would have had to put a note in my pocket saying I go through the blue door.  It is my choice that is controlling your actions, not the other way around.
(If I believed in such at thing)

But I didn't, I knew you'd go through the red door. I'd seen it in advance, and noted this inside the envelope. That is the scenario. Given that this is the case, can you choose go through the blue door?

If your actions control my "precognition", then it's not precognition at all. If my prediction isn't determined until after the event, it's not even a prediction.

The envelope is just a way of demonstrating the fact that a prediction is constant. It can be noted before the event. It just represents the knowledge. I get the feeling some people think a prediction can change over time.

Once you start seeing the future, you can't think of time as linear anymore.  

What we do know:
1) You aren't choosing what color door you write down.  You are simply recording the happenings of a future event you're magically witnessing in present time.
2) During the future event that you witnessed, we have no reason to believe I wasn't free to choose either door.

While it seems like things are happening A-B-C, the nature of 'seeing the future' makes them A-C-B-C.   C being my choice of door, and B being your recording of it.  Somehow you'd be experiencing C out of linear time.  You're crossing a single point in time twice.  You're not causing me to choose red the second time.  There is no second time.  It is a single event in time that you are experiencing twice.