Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?

[henryp]

Let's also say precognition is possible. So it is previously knowable, at all points before this decision is made, that I will pick the number X. What number do I pick? I pick the number X, of course.

Pretending we believe free will is a thing to begin with, If I pick a number between one and ten, and video tape it, would you agree the tape is a recording of me exercising choice?

Let's pretend you say yes.

Now we send the tape back in time.  What is on the tape now?  It's still a recording of me exercising choice.  The time change doesn't change what the tape is.  

Precognition is a form of time travel.  Some aspect of the precog travels to the future, witnesses an event, and the information is returned to the past.  It is just a copy.  A VHS tape of the real event, and there is nothing about the tape being in the past rather than being after the event that changes the nature of what is on the tape.  

If you want precognition to be magically knowing things on a linear timeline without any time travel (or other temporal weirdness), I agree with what you're saying.  But in the frame of this discussion, I don't think you can put that precognition in that box.

[robvalue]

Sure, you're taking about how you could actually know the future. But theists don't tend to go into much detail about that side of it. Generally it's magic, or some idea of being outside of our timeline. Magic is nonsense of course; being outside our timeline reduces our reality to a slideshow. The whole thing becomes a VHS tape, with clearly no real choices because there could never be any others. Saying there could have been different choices if the initial conditions were different is true but irrelevant (I'm not saying you're suggesting this). You might as well say the characters in a video are making choices because you could have watched a different but similar video. The characters feeling the illusion of choice doesn't make the choices real or "free". (Again, this isn't aimed at you.)

Indeed, running that point in the future over and over would indeed be the same as watching the vid over and over. However, in a reality where genuine choices are actually being made, you're only watching a replay of one possible choice. Sure, you're watching a decision being made, but not a "new" one. I find the idea of traveling in time incoherent anyway, especially when you're dealing with futures that can "change".

The point is that for precognition to be possible, for the knowledge to be obtainable somehow, there must be only one fixed future event which cannot change. If it's at all subject to change, then you're only seeing one possibility.

I don't know how I can explain this any more clearly to our theists. I guess I'll just have to give up now.

[RoadRunner79]

Sure, you're taking about how you could actually know the future. But theists don't tend to go into much detail about that side of it. Generally it's magic, or some idea of being outside of our timeline. Magic is nonsense of course; being outside our timeline reduces our reality to a slideshow. The whole thing becomes a VHS tape, with clearly no real choices because there could never be any others. Saying there could have been different choices if the initial conditions were different is true but irrelevant (I'm not saying you're suggesting this). You might as well say the characters in a video are making choices because you could have watched a different but similar video. The characters feeling the illusion of choice doesn't make the choices real or "free". (Again, this isn't aimed at you.)

Indeed, running that point in the future over and over would indeed be the same as watching the vid over and over. However, in a reality where genuine choices are actually being made, you're only watching a replay of one possible choice. Sure, you're watching a decision being made, but not a "new" one. I find the idea of traveling in time incoherent anyway, especially when you're dealing with futures that can "change".

The point is that for precognition to be possible, for the knowledge to be obtainable somehow, there must be only one fixed future event which cannot change. If it's at all subject to change, then you're only seeing one possibility.

I don't know how I can explain this any more clearly to our theists. I guess I'll just have to give up now.

While I can only speak for myself, I don't believe in the type of free will that you are describing here either. Is there a world view, where this is tenable?
I wouldn't say that choice is an illusion or that we have no free will; however, I mean something different by the phrase.  I don't have much problems with your arguments.

[AceBoogie]

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?

[John V]

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.

Which means that you don't actually exist as an autonomous being and so you have no rights.

[Asmodee]

Thinking about it, I would think the only one who actually has free will would be the one who knows how it's going to all turn out, and even then it comes down to chemical processes which obey the physical laws of the universe, so humans still wouldn't have "free will", just the illusion of free will.  After all, no matter how strong your will you simply can't stop a chemical process in your brain from happening.  Or make it happen.  If I could account for every particle in the universe and know everything about every particle at any given time, knew all the laws that governed the universe at any point in time and why, and if I were capable of doing all the math required then I could theoretically predict the future to infinity with perfect accuracy.  Barring interference from outside the universe or any process I didn't understand or account for, I could predict with perfect accuracy who you would marry, how many kids you would have, what their names would be, etc.  I could even tell you a true story about the time a book is going to fall off a shelf just as your great, great, great, great grandkid is walking by, causing him to throw his half-drunk coffee into the face of a nearby police officer 200ish years from now, not because I could see it, but because if I know where all the particles are, where all the energy is and the state of all of it I can predict its every interaction, and that includes what is going on in any brain at any point in time and why.

[SteveII]

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?

You ignored the Molinism post I wrote which brings in a third option to your question. The future has not happened yet--even for God. No contradiction.

[robvalue]

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.

Which means that you don't actually exist as an autonomous being and so you have no rights.

Sure, you are just a self-aware cause and effect machine.

Have no rights? What does that mean, and how does it follow?

[AceBoogie]

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?

You ignored the Molinism post I wrote which brings in a third option to your question. The future has not happened yet--even for God. No contradiction.

Interesting. I'll check it out I'll admit I have not yet read every single post in the thread.

But a god that does not know the future is clearly not all-knowing. A god that does not know the future surely must operate within the confines of time in the same way humans do (in the sense that we also cannot see the future because it has not yet happened)... and if god is confined by the limits that time imposes on us all then surely god is not all-powerful.

How did god create the universe if god is limited by time itself? Did god not create time?

[robvalue]

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.