God and Free Will

[bunny]

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By all means try to sort out which properties of God are consistent with the others, but if you start out from a 'feeling in my head', you have a big job to make it to the resurrection!

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I think it is impossible to rationally decide between two religious views (ie make it to the resurrection). This is outside the scope of my rationalising - I make an irrational decision because (among other things) I have to.

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If you find that the theism you have ended up with has no relationship to what you actually do, then I'd quietly suggest that the watering down has gone too far.

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I agree - of course, my faith (currently at least) leads me to believe that in fact this path will lead to a greater understanding of God, not distance. I cant claim that rationally though.

[J. Stew]

Why do you talk about God as if It were something different from yourself. Do you not have the ability to alter someone else's course of life? If you do not at the moment maybe you are not tapping into your well of potential. Einstein changed the way we perceive things. Where did his creative intelligence come from. Was he just really smart . . . yes, but where does that intelligence come from if not the mysterious depths of his own consciousness. Then what is consciousness. . . the background/stage for conceptual thinking to occur, but also vision logic, feeling, hearing, the culmination of the senses but also more subtle aspects which deepen into the causal. How far down does the well go if not infinite. Omni3 can be explained by one word . . . infinite, that is describable only as infinite, but the thought of infinite is only a concept. The experiential meaning of infinite is different than just the concept infinite. To use logic to explain infinite misses the point because concepts are used to box something in . . . define it. We try to define infinite by saying infinite and then we have an 'idea' of infinite, but the manifestation of 'infinite' is not finite, like a concept is. Free will? If I have to take a poop I can choose not to or I can choose to, that is my choice. If I do great, if I don't I will just be full of sh*t.

[Philo]

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This just came up on another thread....

Assuming an omni3 (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) god created you, he must know all the choices you will make in your lifetime. So it seems those choices will be made by god, not yourself.



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That doesn't follow. God's knowing what you will choose does not mean god makes the choice. I may know that my friend hates vanilla and loves chocolate ice cream, so when he's at the store and has to choose between the two, I know he will choose chocolate, but that doesn't mean that I made the choice for him.

I didn't create my friend, and I'm not omniscient, so the reasons why I know what choice he will make are different, but that just means that my knowledge is not infallible like god's is, but it still doesn't follow that we made the choices.

[Hererdebert]

based on these assumptions here is my reply:
1. We live in a closed physical universe.
2. That we have three areas to be considered as causal determinates: Physical, genetic and social.
3. that all of these elements are reducible to physical causality.
4. Free will is the idea that in a given situation, with the choice of a or b, a human is free to choose either without the influence of causal determinates.

Everything which I am, which makes me specifically me, is determined by my genetic make-up and the experiences which I have throughout my life. Both of these forms of causality are ultimately reducible to physical causality (although at a level of such complexity it doesn't bare thinking about). When I make a decision, I make it on the basis of my past experiences and my genetic predispositions. This is a deterministic view of human behaviour.
Looking at this view, it becomes clear that if you accept that the 'I' is a physically determined process (a story which we tell to ourselves and develops according to certain predefined and acquired constraints/predispositions). So every choice which 'I' make is caused by these different determined factors.
Looking at free will then: As defined in my 4th assumption free will can be characterised by the idea that if I went back in time to exactly the same point, with exactly the same conditions determining the situation, I could make a different decision each time. I.E., If I chose A the first time and then went back to that exact point, and all the determining factors (internal and external) were the same then I could still choose B.
Comparing the two, in the first we say that everything which makes 'I' 'I' determines the decisions which I make. In the later we see a situation in which 'I' (ie, our history, genetic make up and predispositions) has no determining role in our decisions.
In short, this notion of free will is a coin toss at the centre of human functioning. I personally find this to be a horrifying idea. I have no interest in believing that my acts are essentially random and uncaused.

[vhawk01]

Ummm....huh? You know he likes vanilla, and hates chocolate. And from this it follows that you KNOW he will choose vanilla? Thats asinine. You certainly know no such thing.

[guesswest]

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This just came up on another thread....

Assuming an omni3 (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) god created you, he must know all the choices you will make in your lifetime. So it seems those choices will be made by god, not yourself.



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That doesn't follow. God's knowing what you will choose does not mean god makes the choice. I may know that my friend hates vanilla and loves chocolate ice cream, so when he's at the store and has to choose between the two, I know he will choose chocolate, but that doesn't mean that I made the choice for him.

I didn't create my friend, and I'm not omniscient, so the reasons why I know what choice he will make are different, but that just means that my knowledge is not infallible like god's is, but it still doesn't follow that we made the choices.

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The OP wasn't suggesting that god's omniscience negates free will by itself, and I agree omniscience in isolation wouldn't be a barrier to free will. The OP was suggesting that omniscience coupled with him 'creating' us removes free will, since he's essentially creating our actions.

[Philo]

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This just came up on another thread....

Assuming an omni3 (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) god created you, he must know all the choices you will make in your lifetime. So it seems those choices will be made by god, not yourself.



[/ QUOTE ]

That doesn't follow. God's knowing what you will choose does not mean god makes the choice. I may know that my friend hates vanilla and loves chocolate ice cream, so when he's at the store and has to choose between the two, I know he will choose chocolate, but that doesn't mean that I made the choice for him.

I didn't create my friend, and I'm not omniscient, so the reasons why I know what choice he will make are different, but that just means that my knowledge is not infallible like god's is, but it still doesn't follow that we made the choices.

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The OP wasn't suggesting that god's omniscience negates free will by itself, and I agree omniscience in isolation wouldn't be a barrier to free will. The OP was suggesting that omniscience coupled with him 'creating' us removes free will, since he's essentially creating our actions.

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I'm not sure he's creating our actions in creating us, but let's say he is. It still wouldn't follow that we are not performing those actions from free will or by choice.

[WaterlooPoker]

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This just came up on another thread....

Assuming an omni3 (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) god created you, he must know all the choices you will make in your lifetime. So it seems those choices will be made by god, not yourself.



[/ QUOTE ]

That doesn't follow. God's knowing what you will choose does not mean god makes the choice. I may know that my friend hates vanilla and loves chocolate ice cream, so when he's at the store and has to choose between the two, I know he will choose chocolate, but that doesn't mean that I made the choice for him.

I didn't create my friend, and I'm not omniscient, so the reasons why I know what choice he will make are different, but that just means that my knowledge is not infallible like god's is, but it still doesn't follow that we made the choices.

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The point is not that God "makes the choice". The point is that if you cannot choose there is no choice.

[bunny]

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This just came up on another thread....

Assuming an omni3 (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) god created you, he must know all the choices you will make in your lifetime. <font color="blue"> So it seems those choices will be made by god, not yourself. </font>



[/ QUOTE ]

That doesn't follow. God's knowing what you will choose does not mean god makes the choice. I may know that my friend hates vanilla and loves chocolate ice cream, so when he's at the store and has to choose between the two, I know he will choose chocolate, but that doesn't mean that I made the choice for him.

I didn't create my friend, and I'm not omniscient, so the reasons why I know what choice he will make are different, but that just means that my knowledge is not infallible like god's is, but it still doesn't follow that we made the choices.

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The point is not that God "makes the choice". The point is that if you cannot choose there is no choice.

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I think the original poster's claim was that God does make the choice (which I think is incorrect). In terms of there being no choice this seems like a separate claim and nothing to do with God's properties - it seems to depend more on a belief in determinism (with or without a God).

[WaterlooPoker]

Teach me for reading only part of a thread... I thought philo was the OP of that quoted section. My apologies for anything incorrect and misleading that may have resulted as part of what I posted.