Oh no not another free will thread.

[The Grand Nudger]

Now you're just being silly.

I'm always being silly, Lut....but, am I helping you to see?  Not that the universe -is- that way, but that if it were, our choices would not be meaningfully free?

[Edwardo Piet]

Despite the fact that even his own motives were ultimately predetermined by prior causes that he had no control over lol.

Then you are getting rid of “will” all together; free or otherwise. Likely also getting rid of conscienceness and reason. In which case, you didn’t come to this conclusion through reason.

I don't know how you come to that non-sequtur. Consciousness and will still exists whether it's free or not.

[Silver]

Nah. But if I was, I'd know you couldn't do anything other than what I knew you would do. I'd see what you were going to do next before you did it.

Incorrect, but keep on thinking that.

---

Now you're just being silly.

I'm always being silly, Lut....but, am I helping you to see?  Not that the universe -is- that way, but that if it were, our choices would not be meaningfully free?

I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing it.

Perhaps I have a blind spot in this particular instance regarding this discussion. Perhaps you're the one who can't see my perspective.

Either way, I respect your willingness to stick to your own as I am sticking to mine.

[Edwardo Piet]

The implication is that the all-knowing being dictates our choices through Its knowledge.  But why isn't it us dictating the All-knowing being's knowledge with our choices?

So you're saying, he's omniscent but not omnipotent so we can determine what he actually knows. Ah, clever.

Still, the point at the end of it all is that if you will do X, you will do X. That's just a tautology. So if that's what you will do, then you can't do otherwise. If the future is determined, then there are no real options.  

If there were free will, and I chose an apple, the all-knowing being couldn't 'know' me into choosing a banana instead.  Its knowledge is a solely a reaction to my future choice.

The problem would be that you still wouldn't have any 'choices' besides compatabilist ones.  

I think you can view knowing the future in a world with free will as a form of time travel.  Whether that's existing outside of time, and viewing it as a totality, or somehow being magical inside it, the explanation is time being non-linear.  Which is silly.  But all-knowing beings and free will are already silly.  Once you open the silly door, silly is on the table.

I don't think time travel is a coherent concept. And again, if ultimately the being knows what you will do, then the being knows what you will do. Maybe you will determine what the being knows... but how? That's where I would simply give you Strawson's argument.

But you say you don't believe in free will anyway. So I take it you are playing Devil's avocado? I mean, uh, advocate?

[GrandizerII]

If God knows 100% what I will choose to do in the future, then I will not but choose that which God knows I will choose. If I end up choosing something else instead, then God didn't correctly predict that I would do this. So there goes another major problem for the classical god.

What's your take on what i said?  The idea that time is not linear, and our choice could be viewed as dictating what God knows?

The premise is that God knows what you do before you do it.  But if God is operating outside of time, from that perspective, He'd just be viewing the choice you made without the concepts of 'before' and 'after'.

This would still completely invalidate the theist notion of free will, regardless of the nature of time and regardless of whether parallel worlds are a thing. God knows what you will inevitably do in this or that specific timeline because the choices are hardcoded into the system. If choices were made freely in the libertarian sense of the term, then there's no logical way God could 100% know what you end up doing in the future.

[henryp]

Do you believe your God exists inside time, or outside it?

Outside and beyond it but has a relationship to it, after all he creates present moment. The present exists, but God is not limited to the present. This however doesn't mean because he is beyond time, that the past exists, and the future exists, all at the same time.

How about this idea then.  God sees our existence as a stream.  There is a fork.  A person before the fork knows you will choose to go right.  But God reaches down and alters the stream.  Now the person before the fork knows you will choose left.  This shows the person's knowledge of the future is not set in stone.  So how can your future be set in stone?

[Catholic_Lady]

I disagree MK. God knows the future because He is not bound by time and sees everything that happens all at once. God knowing what choices we will freely make, does not mean we didn't freely choose to make those choices lol. Lutriane explained it well. Unfortunately it seems many people can't grasp it, as I've talked about this many times.

That may be true, but you can't deny the conclusion to prove the argument false, you have to deal with the argument. Also, I believe God innovates in real time,  future doesn't exist, he is not bound by time, but neither is time something that exists from beginning to end with him, the present exists, the past once existed, and the future is going to come about and is not determined.

I see it as God being able to see past present and future simultaneously and all at once, because He is outside of time. While we can only see the present because we are bound by time. Think of it as God having the ability to see a cube at an angle, seeing 3 faces of it at a glance (3 squares, if you will.) Let's say we are on one of those squares. All we can see is the square we are currently on. The "present" square.

Anyway, God being able to see things this way doesn't take away the fact that we choose our own actions. It isn't a time travel situation where God goes into the future, sees what we do, comes back to the present, and now we cant do anything differently anymore because God already saw what He saw and so it's sealed that way forever. That's not really how I imagine it works.

[The Grand Nudger]

---

I'm always being silly, Lut....but, am I helping you to see?  Not that the universe -is- that way, but that if it were, our choices would not be meaningfully free?

I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing it.  

Perhaps I have a blind spot in this particular instance regarding this discussion. Perhaps you're the one who can't see my perspective.

Either way, I respect your willingness to stick to your own as I am sticking to mine.

It's not really an issue of sticking to either of our anythings. It's not our contradictory bullshit and superstition, lol. Neither of us thinks that this god exists, neither of us thinks that the universe works that way, at least in this respect.  You conceptualize future knowledge as a could be.  I also think that accurately describes much or all of future knowledge in any common sense.  

That's not the type of future knowledge being invoked, however.  Will-be.

I'm asking you what choice you have if you -will- choose a.  Suspend our common skepticism that this is how the world works - it doesn't have to be how the world works to be logical or make sense.  It only needs to follow from it's propositions.  What freedom is there in that choice..there's certainly no freedom to choose b.

[Edwardo Piet]

This "outside of time" business doesn't appear to mean anything. What would it mean to be outside of time? Being "outside" is spacial, and time and space are intertwined as space-time.

May as well say "But he's magic!".

[The Grand Nudger]

Outside and beyond it but has a relationship to it, after all he creates present moment. The present exists, but God is not limited to the present. This however doesn't mean because he is beyond time, that the past exists, and the future exists, all at the same time.

How about this idea then.  God sees our existence as a stream.  There is a fork.  A person before the fork knows you will choose to go right.  But God reaches down and alters the stream.  Now the person before the fork knows you will choose left.  This shows the person's knowledge of the future is not set in stone.  So how can your future be set in stone?

A person who knows the future could know that god was going to reach down and alter the stream.  Easy peasy..oracles have been fending off objections like this for years in order to fleece the rubes.