Forgiven for what, eactly?

[AvalonXQ]

I can't imagine I've come off as anything but condescending to you, Avalon

I would agree, but I appreciate the politeness you built into your condescension. Thank you for that.
Forgive me if I choose not to respond directly to what I consider to be wholly inappropriate speculation about my personal life.

If I could have one last question answered, I wonder if Avalon is at the least capable of imagining the world as he sees it, hypothetically, without a need for a god in any way.

Certainly. I consider an atheist universe to be entirely reasonable; I simply consider it be untrue. My life includes enough first-hand evidence of God to be confident in His existence.

 

[iknownothing]

Very early in this thread, I noted that assuming that God could have made a better universe is a flawed assumption -- we don't know what that would entail, and whether it would even be "better", but certainly it would be different in some ways important to God. People like to throw out the word "omnipotence", but I always point out that any universe that is "better" may have less of something important in it -- challeges, free will, wisdom, what have you.

I think you're talking about "better" universes on some kind of average -- better or worse overall. But I think in the Christian universe, all of the people condemned to eternity in Hell (which is the vast majority of all people ever born) would consider this universe as bad as it gets.

So God created all of these people, knowing full well that they would suffer an eternity of pain? And that's really the "better" universe he came up with? And again, the crime for which all of these people -- the vast majority of all people ever born -- are condemned is simply being a human, and thus sinful.

I could imagine that God could have done a worse job...but that's not really a big vote of confidence.

First of all, I'll ignore your contention that AXQ uses logic because it's ridiculous on its face. He's a Christian, he believes in an invisible tyrant who lives in the sky, created the universe and performs magic for those who sufficiently kiss its ass. In a decent society he'd be dragged in to be lobotomized, sterilized, stuffed into a straight jacket, and locked into a rubber room to drool his life away!

I just have to point out that this paragraph contradicts its opening sentence, since you are not ignoring the contention.

 

[D'rok]

First of all, this...

Just setting down conclusions as if they're shown by premises without any assertion of logical rules or use of logical steps isn't a syllogism, it's continuing to beg the question.

...is so hypocritical as to beggar belief. You beg the question every time you insert God into a premise, because, as you have admitted in this thread, God is the entity that can overcome contradiction through supernatural means.

Your "argument" boils down to this:

P = God.

P.

And yet again, you simply write conclusions that don't follow from your premises. Which premises are logically combined to produce those conclusions, and by what rules of logic? What you wrote makes as much sense as:
Premise 1: Albany is the capital of New York.
Premise 2: Some bananas are yellow.
Conclusion: You owe me a million dollars.
Just setting down conclusions as if they're shown by premises without any assertion of logical rules or use of logical steps isn't a syllogism, it's continuing to beg the question.
Try this:
Premise 1: At t0<t1, God knows P at t1. (God knows Truman will choose to run for President before Truman makes that decision. No dispute.)
Premise 2: For all x, if God knows x, then x. (God's knowledge is infallible. No dispute.)
Premise 3: For all x at t, if God knows x before t, then ~C(~x). (If God knows something to be true before it happens, then it does not have the capacity to not happen. THIS PREMISE IS UNTRUE, and without it, I don't know of any way to get the contradiction you want. I would love to see you do so.)
Premise 4: C(~P) (At t1, Truman has the capacity to choose not to run for president. No dispute).
Substitution on 1,3: For P at t1, because God knows P before t1, Statement 5: ~C(~P).
Conjunction on 4,5: C(~P) and ~C(~P). Contradiction.
I invite troubleshooting if I've made an "elementary logical error" in the above.
So, again, if you just assume that God's knowledge of P before t1 implies ~C(~P), then you can arrive at a contradiction. That's the whole thing we're arguing, and I don't accept that assumption. Instead, I have repeatedly asserted that God's foreknowledge does not remove the capacity for counterfactual choices from agents. God knows those choices won't be made, but that doesn't imply that those choices cannot be made. The capacity persists.
If you can actually show a logical proof that doesn't include Premise 3 or a form thereof, I would love to see it.

Here we go again. You rely merely on a bald assertion based on your importation into the argument of God's supernatural qualities as a hidden premise. Which then reduces the whole thing to...

P = God.

P.

It's a theorem with no contradictions. Not a very useful one, though. Or, at least not if the goal is honest argumentation. It's simply the nuclear option to any syllogism.

Colloquially: Goddiddit.

 

[AvalonXQ]

In D'rok's mind, being a theist in a thread about the nature of God means I'm begging the question. I'll let everyone else decide whether that's a reasonable position or not.

 

[D'rok]

In D'rok's mind, being a theist in a thread about the nature of God means I'm begging the question. I'll let everyone else decide whether that's a reasonable position or not.

C'mon. You are asserting that God's infallible foreknowledge doesn't confound Truman's free will because God has supernatural qualities that make it so. Fine. I concede. I have no counterargument to that. I simply repeat my earlier question:

Why does logic matter if magic trumps it?

 

[Matt the Poet]

We seem to have got away from the original question, here, which I think is much more interesting than all this philosophical noodling about free will – in that it exposes more fruitful contradictions within religious thought.

Free will (much like the existence of deities) is unprovable either way and therefore not really worth spending energy arguing about. Provided you start from the assumption that your god exists is sufficiently ‘magic’ (which AVXQ has) you can ignore any logical barriers. I don’t understand why you would start from that assumption, personally, but it appears that people do.

So let’s accept, arguendo, that some sort of personal deity who cares about individual human actions not only exists, but has an omnipotence that still (somehow) allows for free will – so that I could do something that it didn’t want me to do, and subsequently forgive me for that act if I ask it nicely (or, somewhat more bizarrely, agree to make regular, ritualised public declarations about my beliefs in its existence and activities on Earth).

The question then becomes – why should I bother? If I’ve wronged a person tangibly it’s clear I should seek out forgiveness from them, but it’s hard to see how I could do this to an omnipotent being. If I haven’t wronged a person tangibly but god is still upset for some reason, why is that my problem and not god’s?

 

[Robin]

Great. Keep going.
P = Truman chooses to run for president at t1.
~P = Truman chooses not to run for president at t1.
C (P) = Truman has the capacity to choose not to run for president at t1.
C (~P) = Truman has the capacity to choose not to run for president at t1.
Premise 1: At t0<t1, God knows P.
Premise 2: At t1, C(P) and C(~P).
Premise 3: P.
...
Okay, who can fill out the rest of the premises and show me, EXPLICITLY, the contradiction?

OK you have a slightly odd use of symbols there but:
P = Truman chooses to run for president at t1.
~P = Truman chooses not to run for president at t1.
Q = God makes a statement in the world at t0<t1 that P
R = God's can make a wrong statement
S = God is omniscient

P1: possibly P & possibly ~ P Hyp
P2: possibly Q By definiition
P3: possibly ~P & possibly Q -> possibly R Hyp
P4: possibly R MP P1&P2,P3
P5: S -> ~ possibly R By definition
P6: S Hyp
P7: ~ possibly R MP P5,P6

Contradiction between P4 and P7.

 

[tsig]

You haven't been paying attention; he knows the mind of god.

He knows the mind of god til we get to the hard parts then god suddenly becomes mysterious and unknowable.

 

[Hellbound]

Let's try a different analogy that may, perhaps, give some insight.

Let's say I'm a robot designer. I build a test chamber that I'm going to use to test my robots.

I design the robot from scratch. I'm am 100% familiar with every aspect of it's construction and it's programming. I install a random number generator to give it "choice", but I know exactly what sequence of random numbers the RNG wil spit out. Thus, I can predict exactly what the robot will do in my test chamber, even though it's technically got randomness in it. Does this robot have free will? It's making it's own choices, but I know beforehand what those choices will be. Are there any modifications to this that can be used to maintain both premises, that my robot has free will and that I know what it will do in my test chamber?

 

[tsig]

In D'rok's mind, being a theist in a thread about the nature of God means I'm begging the question. I'll let everyone else decide whether that's a reasonable position or not.

I'll betcha D'rok wishes you'd get out of his mind.

 

[D'rok]

OK you have a slightly odd use of symbols there but:
P = Truman chooses to run for president at t1.
~P = Truman chooses not to run for president at t1.
Q = God makes a statement in the world at t0<t1 that P
R = God's can make a wrong statement
S = God is omniscient

P1: possibly P & possibly ~ P Hyp
P2: possibly Q By definiition
P3: possibly ~P & possibly Q -> possibly R Hyp
P4: possibly R MP P1&P2,P3
P5: S -> ~ possibly R By definition
P6: S Hyp
P7: ~ possibly R MP P5,P6

Contradiction between P4 and P7.

I get confused without brackets. I assume P3 can be expressed ((possibly ~P & possibly Q) -> possibly R). Is this correct?

 

[D'rok]

I'll betcha D'rok wishes you'd get out of his mind.

And don't forget to turn the lights off when you leave!

(Lobs softball slowly towards the plate).

 

[Sophronius]

I didn't think this would happen, but I think I actually agree with the young earther on this one. The presence of an omniscient god does not necessarily violate free will. It depends on what definition of free will you use.

Allow me to explain:

If god knows that person X will do Y at time T and is infallible, then at time T it is impossible that person X will do anything BUT Y (let's say, run for president). BUT, this does not mean that it is not within the physical/mental/situational capacity for person X to not do Y. These are two very different things. So if with "free will" you mean to say that the same person COULD have chosen differently IF the situation had been different, that would be entirely correct.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

The problem is really that we're working with two poorly defined and arguably self-contradictive attributes.

 

[Ben Adams]

 

[H'ethetheth]

I didn't think this would happen, but I think I actually agree with the young earther on this one. The presence of an omniscient god does not necessarily violate free will. It depends on what definition of free will you use.

Allow me to explain:

If god knows that person X will do Y at time T and is infallible, then at time T it is impossible that person X will do anything BUT Y (let's say, run for president). BUT, this does not mean that it is not within the physical/mental/situational capacity for person X to not do Y. These are two very different things. So if with "free will" you mean to say that the same person COULD have chosen differently IF the situation had been different, that would be entirely correct.

Perhaps, but then that would be entirely deterministic as well. In other words, God apparently created us such that all of us will sin, and he must have done so in full knowledge of who would offend him and when.

Let's not forget that that is why we are discussing this.

 

[SOdhner]

Perhaps, but then that would be entirely deterministic as well. In other words, God apparently created us such that all of us will sin, and he must have done so in full knowledge of who would offend him and when.

Right. By that more relaxed definition of free will (which I actually prefer) you can have omniscience and free will... but you can't have an omniscient omnipotent god who created the universe AND free will.

 

[SumDood]

I didn't think this would happen, but I think I actually agree with the young earther on this one. The presence of an omniscient god does not necessarily violate free will. It depends on what definition of free will you use.

Allow me to explain:

If god knows that person X will do Y at time T and is infallible, then at time T it is impossible that person X will do anything BUT Y (let's say, run for president). BUT, this does not mean that it is not within the physical/mental/situational capacity for person X to not do Y. These are two very different things. So if with "free will" you mean to say that the same person COULD have chosen differently IF the situation had been different, that would be entirely correct.

Wow, I don't get that at all. If it is impossible for the person to not do Y, how does the "physical/mental/situational capacity" exists to not do Y? If something is impossible, by definition the capacity to it does not exist. By "the same person COULD have chosen differently IF the situation had been different" do you mean "the person could do Y if it was not impossible for them to do so"?

 

[H'ethetheth]

...do you mean "the person could do Y if it was not impossible for them to do so"?

I read it like that, yes.

 

[qayak]

Let's try a different analogy that may, perhaps, give some insight.

Let's say I'm a robot designer. I build a test chamber that I'm going to use to test my robots.

I design the robot from scratch. I'm am 100% familiar with every aspect of it's construction and it's programming. I install a random number generator to give it "choice", but I know exactly what sequence of random numbers the RNG wil spit out. Thus, I can predict exactly what the robot will do in my test chamber, even though it's technically got randomness in it.

If it is truly random you would not be able to know everything it is going to do 100% of the time with 100% accuracy. Once you no longer know what it will do, the analogy no longer holds with an all knowing god.

Does this robot have free will?

No because you have programed it to act in a certain way. If it wanted, and was able, to act in a way you couldn't predict with 100% accuracy, we could say it might have free will. (It gets much more complicated very quickly from here.)

Are there any modifications to this that can be used to maintain both premises, that my robot has free will and that I know what it will do in my test chamber?

Not that anyone has been able to think of. Now, imagine substituting a human for the robot and something as complex as evolution for the programmer. From there, with, or without a god, the question of free will becomes very complex indeed.