A timeless being cannot create

[John 6IX Breezy]

I presented a view of time that many psychologists find useful.

Psychologists? Are they now in the business of determining what reality is?

Only reality as it is perceived by the senses and interpreted by the brain. Which is arguably the only reality that matters.

[GrandizerII]

I skimmed through it all a short while ago. Interesting article. Since I have all the time in the world now, what with not on any project at work lately, I'm going to now read this very thoroughly and see if I have something to object to their eventual solution.

I can probably summarize it if you want.

I just got done reading up to the author's alleged dismantling of the argument for logical determinism, and I remain unconvinced that he did.

The argument does not say A is necessarily true if A is always true in the actual world. The argument is that if A is always true in the actual world, then it cannot ever be false in the actual world, not that it cannot be false in a possible world. I don't see how the argument is invalid and unsound.

Maybe I'm confused and missing something here?

I'll read the rest later as have to go now.

[John 6IX Breezy]

I can probably summarize it if you want.

I began reading as well (first two section). However, its not immediately clear to me why foreknowledge affects free will in any way. I can see why, in contrast, something like causal determinism affects free will; because my will is the result of antecedent events I didn't chose. But knowledge seems like a very passive thing to have; what someone knows is not causally related to what I did or do. Free will remains as long as I could have done otherwise, regardless of someone knowing that I wouldn't. We predict behavior all the time; if I know my brother likes coffee and hates tea in the morning, then I know that if he drinks anything tomorrow he will drink coffee and not tea. Knowing that does not change the fact that he could have tea instead. 

To me the issue with free will has more to do with how God attains that knowledge, not God being in possession of that knowledge. I don't think anyone is in a position to say how God attains his knowledge; but we can predict that if free will isn't an illusion, then it isn't attained through things like causal determinism.

[brewer]

Somehow God is immune to physics but still has the ego to throw temper tantrums and get offended. A being that literally transcends space-time is also super sensitive? Acts remarkably like an insecure human?... wonder why?

It looks that way because you're conflating two very different views of God. To be fair, there are no doubt Christians who do the same thing, in a careless way.

But the God of the theologians is timeless and impassible, so he has no change and no emotions. The God of the literalists is the one who acts super-sensitively. 

It would be helpful if all the Christians were talking about the same thing, but it's a big group of people, and pretty much a dozen different religions loosely grouped under the same title. We have to be clear who we're talking about.

True Christians?

[GrandizerII]

I can probably summarize it if you want.

I just got done reading up to the author's alleged dismantling of the argument for logical determinism, and I remain unconvinced that he did.

The argument does not say A is necessarily true if A is always true in the actual world. The argument is that if A is always true in the actual world, then it cannot ever be false in the actual world, not that it cannot be false in a possible world. I don't see how the argument is invalid and unsound.

Maybe I'm confused and missing something here?

I'll read the rest later as have to go now.

And I just got done reading the concluding paragraphs. I don't think the author effectively solved the problem he was describing at the start. Only one possible world gets to be actualized, and there's no way the praying believer would have done other than to pray that their child survived the sinking ship in such a world. God being omniscient means he had to know in advance what the believer in the actual world would do, and so he knew that the believer would end up praying for their child. This is not an exercise of free will (in the libertarian sense), but an exercise of inevitable will (or random will, depending on how you look at it). Had the believer not prayed, then God's knowledge would've been false and God would not therefore be omniscient.

[GrandizerII]

I just got done reading up to the author's alleged dismantling of the argument for logical determinism, and I remain unconvinced that he did.

The argument does not say A is necessarily true if A is always true in the actual world. The argument is that if A is always true in the actual world, then it cannot ever be false in the actual world, not that it cannot be false in a possible world. I don't see how the argument is invalid and unsound.

Maybe I'm confused and missing something here?

I'll read the rest later as have to go now.

And I just got done reading the concluding paragraphs. I don't think the author effectively solved the problem he was describing at the start. Only one possible world gets to be actualized, and there's no way the praying believer would have done other than to pray that their child survived the sinking ship in such a world. God being omniscient means he had to know in advance what the believer in the actual world would do, and so he knew that the believer would end up praying for their child. This is not an exercise of free will (in the libertarian sense), but an exercise of inevitable will (or random will, depending on how you look at it). Had the believer not prayed, then God's knowledge would've been false and God would not therefore be omniscient.

Ok I had time to reread the concluding sections of this article and understand better what he is and is not arguing, and now I'm thinking the author actually makes fair points. I can't really find a way to counter his counterarguments. This doesn't mean, of course, that libertarian free will makes sense (it doesn't) but if we assume such free will exists somehow, then God's omniscience does not necessarily preclude such free will if you look at it from a different angle than what we tend to be used to.