"All knowing"

[psyah]

Re: “All knowing”

@sceptic

Psyah,

I’m sorry I am selectively quoting from your arguments/ideas. I deeply appreciate your examples and explanations, but trying to keep the discussion focused and relevant, and a little succint. In case I have excluded something you believe to be imperative here, please do refer back to it.

I am not saying that prior knowledge equates influence. What I am saying is, absolute prior knowledge of your choice would make the alternative choice an illusion of choice since you will only do what god already knows you will do.

Granted that the concept of time doesn’t exist for god; for him our past, present and future is like an open book. Breaking it down though, he is the one who created all that he sees ie past, present and future. He may look at it like a photograph, its all there, say in my case, my birth, growing up, getting old, death, the choices I made, the course I took, and that I ended up in heaven or hell. He has full visibility to it from the outset. He even knows when I would pray to him and when I will ask/pray for something to happen. So there is absolutely no surprise element. Isn’t that incompatible with the idea of freewill, and even judgment? You have created ‘n’ number of possible choices for a person at a given point, now unless you don’t know the choice he is going to make, how can you judge that person on that choice?

That’s my entire point, for you the multitude of choices is merely an illusion/appearance. For god, its not a puzzle, its not a matter of waiting to see what happens. Its already known, already there. So your free will should also be an illusion. What you think you have chosen for yourself was in fact your only choice, existence of an alternative was merely an illusion. Since god himself created those choices, and knew that you will choose whichever one.

Now lets pick up duah. Isn’t it based on the premise that you can make god change his mind (sorry for putting it rather crudely)? He already has a plan for you, he knows what he wants to bless you with and what he doesn’t want to bless you with, he knows what events will happen in your life, its all there right in front of him like an open book. So if you pray for something, would he change his mind and change your destiny? But then again, didn’t he already know this will happen i.e. you will pray at that particular point in time and that he will then give you what you are asking for? So there is essentially no change in anything. It was, again, pre-destined. Unless he didn’t know that you will pray for something, and now that you have, he might decide to let you have it. But that is not the definition of him.

We can use similar arguments for the creation of hell and evil - why did god create it in the first place, and then thew a multitude of temptation into the mix. And then based on that, he is judging human beings for being enticed. And, although a ‘no go’, we can question the very beginning of everything. When he created Iblees/Satan, didn’t he already know he would defy him? Did Iblees have a choice? The poor guy did what he was supposed to, and was damned for eternity. When Adam defied god’s will, what exactly upset god? Did he not already know this was going to happen, his anger surely could not have been a ‘reaction’ to what Adam did.

Unless we bring in the God works in mysterious ways argument, I think religion has and always have had problem with logic.

Peace sceptic

This is the way we are supposed to reason this out:

1. State your assumptions/rules/a priori

2. Work within the assumptions

3. Conclude

a) God is Omniscient and has Pre-ordained matters
b) Humans have been given freedom of choice

2. Rule - Neither a) is allowed to overrule b) nor b) is allowed to overrule a) they are both rules

3. Whatever we choose to do - God Sees it
   Whatever God Sees - He had Seen it in the past and will See it in the future.

Physical Laws > Traits > Environmental > Supplication

God has established physical laws over us we see that we can lift one leg and not the other at the same time. This is the marriage between choice and destiny - to break the bounds of physical laws we must use physical force and this cannot be extended beyond a certain amount for example flight enables the other leg to be lifted too, but this has limitations.

Our traits define what we are likely to do - but we can change or alter the traits we have by learning and improving ourselves it will always be harder for a person who loves his food to stop eating, but it is not necessarily the case that a person who loves his food is going to be fatter than another who does not love food as much, because the latter may be eating more out of habit whereas the former could be eating less out of struggling with his traits.

The environment we are in can help or hinder our choices - for example we can try to get up early by ourselves - but in an environment where everyone has woken up early then that becomes easier.

The layer of supplication is a direct request to God to alter our course - perhaps by providing the environment, traits and physical necessity for a certain outcome to manifest. The alteration of the environmental constraints is a common acceptance of a supplication such as getting well from a bug by setting forth the conditions where a cure is in place and effective. The alteration of traits changes a person’s psyche and is a level higher, the acceptance of a request may in some rare instances result in breaking physical laws momentarily - these are called “miracles”.

Coming back to the topic … You are asking us to take the vantage point of man and the vantage point of God at the same time … This is the fallacy …

The choice may seem to be unreal - but that is not the case - because we can see empirical evidence that we have choice … if choice is unreal then you might conclude that predestination is unreal … but then that will limit God, so that too must be real.

The moment you try to derive one from the other as you are trying to do then you will come to a problem … the problem is not in the dichotomy - it is in the association of the two … they are not meant to be viewed as associated phenomena - but are to be accepted as real independently since one is from the vantage point of man and the other is from the vantage point of God.

We can also see signs of constraints in this life … for example - number of children - it is impossible for us to have more than a given number of children in our lives … age - that we die … the journey’s we make and so on … but what can clearly be seen also is that we have choice.

The discussion above is meaningless if what we know to be true is testable and working … as far as we are concerned we are accountable for our lives in the decisions we make … if we find it IMPOSSIBLE to pray then we have an excuse before God … but we don’t have that excuse.

Our freedom of choice can be better analysed by comparing us to animals rather than hypothetical constructs about Divine Ability … Our lives differ from the lives of animals … An important aspect is that we can perceive the past and future and create conceptual models, we can see choice and realise the choices for their moral value as they lay before us. Animals cannot do that.

We also have animal nature - we can if we like, simply do the first thing that our instincts tell us to do - but we don’t … not even the worst human will always be so low.

Let’s look at your key sentence and show how it breaks the rule …

I am not saying that prior knowledge equates influence. What I am saying is, absolute prior knowledge of your choice would make the alternative choice an illusion of choice since you will only do what god already knows you will do.

Written as an inductive argument this takes the form:

Absolute prior knowledge of the choice I make, translates to me doing what God Knows I will do - therefore - illusion of choice

The problem with this argument is this:
Choice - is a noun that stems from the verb “to choose” - in order to choose the chooser needs to be unaware of the choice to make - not the one who provides the choices.

Absolute prior knowledge **by God **of the choice I make **its my choice **not God’s choice. It remains my choice even if it Known by God. My choice is in the contingent reality - it is a moment that has been taken out of eternity. The moment is finite and static and eternity is dynamic and infinite … It doesn’t even make sense to compare them.

If there is no free will and there is only predetermination and God has created beings then it follows that all created beings should be worshiping God.

Since not all created beings worship God then we can say:

a) There may be free will
b) God makes people meant for hell and others meant for paradise
c) There is no accountability of us
d) We can do what we like

If there is no predestination and only free will and God has created beings then it follows that there will be nothing in the universe that is predictable because predictability means that it is following some pattern of behaviour a trend that can be relied on …

Since we can see things with patterns, we can say:

a) There may be predestination
b) We may have a pattern that we should choose to follow
c) There is no accountability for us
d) We can do what we like

In these scenarios a) and b) are tensions but c) and d) will be met with their opposites

Such that we have free will within set boundaries and that is what we will be judged on, we should follow a code although we are not compelled to do so from the physical laws. We can do what we like, but we should not as we will be accountable for what we choose.

The question of the manner in how predestination coexists with free will remains unanswered as we also believe that finite exists with the Infinite and we don’t attempt to question that either. We accept it.