God's foreknowledge and free will

[brocke]

It's not a contradiction.

God can foreordain that I will want to choose X and that I will choose X.
Then I choose X because I want to choose X. My choice was "free" in the sense that I made it because I wanted to make it.

No you did not choose X because you wanted to choose X. God chose X for you and then made it so you would not do anything else. There fore it is determination not free will. If what you have postulated is true then God created Adam and Eve and wanted them to choose to eat of the Tree of Good and Knowledge. By your reasoning then God made it so Adam and Eve would end up choosing to disobey. If this is case then the atheist claim that God created evil is true.

I see all this as being contradictions.

Foreordained means God decreed or appointed that something will be. Therefore God made it so you would have made it so Adam and Eve had no choice but to disobey the Divine command. This makes God the creator of evil. I think your position has a huge problem. But I have a sneaky feeling your next response will be to just deny that there is a contradiction and just insist that the choice is a free choice by you. Ignoring that you actually have no choice in the matter it is determined by God.

 

[brocke]

The story of Adam and Eve is more a statement on early man addressing the question: Where did we all come from. It is no different from thousands of other Creation stories in that regard.

I disagree, I think it goes far beyond simply addressing, "Where did we all come from." The fall of Humanity in Genesis is a common theme throughout the book. There are repeated stories of God setting up a covenant with someone and that person falling short of the expectations and suffering the consequences of their sin. Yet God continues to work towards redemption of humanity. This can be seen in how the book is outlined; going from creation, to the fall of humanity, the flood to cleanse the world, the covenant with Noah, Noah falling short of expectations, God seeks to redeem. Evenutally it moves through the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all falling short of expectations. To end in the story of Joseph where God brings redemption to the whole family of Israel through Joseph.

I think to take the fall of humanity and just see it as an unconnected snippet in the book misses the whole reason the story is there in the first place.

Also it is unique in ancient Creation stories. I am unaware of any ancient creation story having a god create humans in a state of paradise and them choosing to rebel against that god.

 

[Cearbhall]

I guess I'm not really understanding the issue.

The only way you could possibly act contrary to what God knows is going to happen would be if he literally told you what you were going to do next, and so you did something different to test your free will. But he's not going to literally speak to you, so the idea of him having foreknowledge is solid. You can't act against his foreknowledge if you don't know what he knows you're going to do.

 

[twin1954]

You position is a contradiction. You are saying we have free-will but everything is determined already. This makes us simply robots acting out a play already scripted by another. This would imply that God is the ultra controlling dictator that Hitchens' described.

I don't see how you can justify this contradiction. If what you will do has been determined/predestined then you are not making free choices. In fact there is no choice at all. In your position of God predestinating people and foreordaining things - then choice is an illusion. This would make God a great deciever, and that then God had decided before creating people that they would or would not be condemned to hell already. Again this falls into the trap of Hitchens' insecure irrational controlling god.

We do not have an arbitrary free will but we do have a will of our own. Our will is determined and under the control of our nature. An example is that a dog chases cats and barks because it is its nature to do so. Our nature is to do what we desire to do and it is also under the control of God. We cannot will ourselves to grow wings and fly nor can we will ourselves to do that which God hasn't determined for us to willingly do. Even God cannot go outside of His nature. He cannot do evil nor be unjust or unrighteous and continue to be God.

 

[Locutus]

Well, no. It only means he knew how it would turn out.

If you throw a ball into the air, you know for a certainty if it'll come down or not, but that doesn't mean that you have "made" it fall back to Earth.

It does if you created the conditions for it to fall.

 

[Cearbhall]

God planned to destroy almost everything. He implemented that plan. He said he felt sorrow.

Here is the problem with your analogy. God blamed Adam & Eve for the sins of the world.

I agree with you that it doesn't make much sense with a fundamentalist interpretation. I've never considered the possibility that Adam and Eve existed, including when I was Christian, so I guess I've never been hung-up on that.

 

[Locutus]

s
It's an analogy, leslie.

Of course, no comparison of anything we observe in our world can completely address God's own powers and perception, but you need to understand that knowing the future does not automatically mean making all that will take place do so. We can indeed see example from our own lives of knowing the future but not causing it. To think that the one necessitates the other is illogical, regardless of whether it's God or ourselves.

No, it's not illogical. If you know a certain outcome, then that outcome must happen. Otherwise how could you know the outcome? Unless you can choose something your god isn't expecting (thereby rendering the god considerably less than all knowing and all powerful), you have only the appearance of free will.

 

[Cearbhall]

No, it's not illogical. If you know a certain outcome, then that outcome must happen. Otherwise how could you know the outcome? Unless you can choose something your god isn't expecting (thereby rendering the god considerably less than all knowing and all powerful), you have only the appearance of free will.

I'm not seeing how that flows logically. Knowing what someone will do in the future doesn't give you any more control over them than knowing what they did in the past. It's just knowledge of their choices.

 

[Locutus]

Not at all. That's a non-sequitur and pure speculation about God's decision-making.

What's inescapable is that he created a world in which that was possible.

There's the critical difference between your theory and the facts of the matter.

Christians speculate that god is Omni-everything, then get miffed when the implications of that speculation are brought to light.

And no, a god who planned everything that would ever happen created precisely the conditions for those things to happen. PLANNED, remember. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Facts?

 

[Locutus]

That wouldn't apply to what we've been discussing, though.

It totally applies, actually.

 

[Cearbhall]

Unless you can choose something your god isn't expecting (thereby rendering the god considerably less than all knowing and all powerful), you have only the appearance of free will.

This is the key phrase. You don't know what the god is expecting. You would have to share in that foreknowledge in order to go against it. Whatever you freely choose is what the god was expecting. Your free will would only be compromised if you knew what the god was expecting and were then forced to choose it.

 

[Locutus]

I'm not seeing how that flows logically. Knowing what someone will do in the future doesn't give you any more control over them than knowing what they did in the past. It's just knowledge of their choices.

I probably worded it out of sequence - Imma try again

I know that you will stand on your head and squawk like a chicken next Tuesday afternoon at 4pm. By know, I mean know absolutely and beyond a shadow of a doubt. The reason I know, as opposed to just assume, is because I have magical powers. If I only assumed, then I'm not magical at all, but merely human. Okay, let's move on ...

Can you, between now and next Tuesday afternoon, choose not to do as I KNOW you'll do? If your answer is yes, then it's clear that I do not have the magical power of foreknowledge, all I have is assumptions. If your answer is no, then logically you are predestined to do that which I KNOW you'll do.

 

[brocke]

WRONG! Atheists do not blame something they do not believe in for something they do not believe exists.
To clarify (since it apparently needs clarification).

• I do not believe in any gods
• I do not believe in the existence of something called "Evil".

• There are some acts that can be considered evil, bad, horrible, etc.
• There are some people who are evil, bad, horrible, etc.

But "evil" in the sense that you and many other religious people believe, is not something I believe in.


That is an interesting question. Let's follow your logic. If god instilled no sense of morality into them and they obeyed god and never partook of the fruit, then mankind would never have morals. At least not the God-Given-Objective-Morals that many Christians often refer to.


After Eden God gives rules for a lot of things - eating pork and shellfish, cleanliness in a marital situation, stealing, killing, etc. Basic rules for civilized living that had been around for thousands of years before the advent of writing. There are two ways to try to get people to go along with rules: Threat and punishment.

The A&E story it is meant to illustrate "Disobey God and a lot of bad things are going to happen". It's kind of like "just you wait until your father comes home!".


And, given an omnipotent, omniscient god, this was all part of god's plan.

OH I see what you are doing. You are in a sense doing this:

• I state this your believe
• Your believe has a problem
• Therefore your believe is false
• Therefore God does not exist.

Big problem with your argument. You are not presenting a god Christians believe in. You are presenting a god that you think we believe in, but we don't.

Also the rules are not given as a threat and punishment system. Again in Genesis there is the theme of God working redeem humanity, that was created to be holy and righteousness. Humans became unholy. The rest of the Pentateuch is instructions on how to be holy again. This is the message they are tying to convey, not "Disobey God and a lot of bad things are going to happen." Instead the message is obey God and you will be holy and right in how you were originally created to be and God's promises will be fulfilled for you.

Finally, if Adam and Eve had not partaken of the fruit then humans would never have morals. Yea I realized this is implied when I first stated it, and yes that would be true as we originally created innocent - without a knowledge of good and evil. So morals in that state of affairs would be mute. Very problematic, if and only if the story of Adam and Eve actually happened. But again I state the position it is part of a bigger message to illustrate the desired condition God created us to be in and how God is working to redeem us bringing us back to that condition.

 

[Locutus]

You knew that subcontractors would run late in the course of your building project, so you took that into account when starting to lay out your timetable. Does this mean that you CAUSED the subcontractors to get drunk on Independence Day or take sick at some time, and so fall behind schedule? I don't see how that can be argued.

he is a man, not an all powerful creator god. if he'd created the subcontractors, and created them to be predisposed to alcoholism, or illness, or just laziness, then it's his doing.

 

[brocke]

You really shouldn't be confused, if you understand the truth you can assume that is what I am saying. There is no paradox between foreknowledge and free will until man creates it. Gods foreknowledge is what He has planed and mans free will is man throwing a spanner in the works. God desires that man enter into His covenant but only a few do. God's plan is an infrastructure inside of which man may have free will to be with God or against him; it may be more appropriate to say man either has a will to be with God or a will to be against God and there is room for cultivating the will; in the KJV free will is mentioned in the OT but in conjunction with offering, freewill offering. If one follows the history of Israel, Israel's will to not follow God, which seemed to be most of the time, was not free and they were continually chastised.

You have a problem that could be called confusion but I refuse to accept responsibility for it.

Hogwash.

What you are saying is if you are with God you do not exercise free will you live in a position of determinism that will work out for the glory of all things. But if you are against God then you are using free will and that will lead you into sin.

Free will does not refer to enslavement. It simply means having the ability to act at ones own discretion the power to act without constraint from the necessity of fate or providence.

You continue to maintain an contradiction by setting up a paradox.

On a final note: don't say to me something like, "...if you understand the truth you can assume that is what I am saying." That means you have the revelation of God and I do not. Thus I should just give to your view. Very condescending and the position of many of a cult leader to their followers.

 

[brocke]

We cannot will ourselves to grow wings and fly nor can we will ourselves to do that which God hasn't determined for us to willingly do.

That is not an example of free will, i.e. the ability to act on one's own discretion or having the power to act without constraint from fate or providence.

Again you are describing determinism. God has determined how you will act. Therefore you have no free will.

 

[Locutus]

"Responsible for" isn't the same as "made it happen," though, Hank.

These subtle shifts in the wording of the claims that have been made need to be noticed.

.

Yes, but these shifts (unsubtle, from my POV) are made by those claiming their god is Omni-everything.

 

[Cearbhall]

Can you, between now and next Tuesday afternoon, choose not to do as I KNOW you'll do? If your answer is yes, then it's clear that I do not have the magical power of foreknowledge

Because you don't. It's not a valid comparison.

Plus, you just told me what you "know" I'm going to do. That doesn't happen in reality with any being that has foreknowledge, so there's no comparison. I already stated that it doesn't matter what effect the telling would have, unless you're a person who actually believes that there's a being who has foreknowledge and tells people what it is.

 

[Locutus]

My point of view is that knowing the future does not require the one knowing future events to make them happen. There simply isn't that correlation, although people seem to assume that because it's God we're talking about, there has to be one.

'people' assume it because Christians frequently assert that god planned everything that would ever happen, and that he is Omni-everything. if you don't like the implications of such claims, don't make them.

 

[Locutus]

Because you don't. It's not a valid comparison.

Plus, you just told me what you "know" I'm going to do. That doesn't happen in reality with any being that has foreknowledge, so there's no comparison. I already stated that it doesn't matter what effect the telling would have, unless you're a person who actually believes that there's a being who has foreknowledge and tells people what it is.

that we don't know the knowing confirms the theory of appearance of free will. we 'feel' free, but we're following a predetermined path. ie, robots with a little dinky pretendies software.