I'm an atheist as well. I'm saying that if God interferes and actually does talk to people, wouldn't that go against the idea of free will and faith?

... no it doesn't? The theory of Evolution would negate creationism depending on how you view the latter.

Here's an interesting problem:
If God is omnipotent, he knows all that was, is, and will be. So, God has foreknowledge of everything right? Let's stipulate that, for the sake of the experiment.

Now, Sarah has three pairs of socks. A red pair, a blue pair, and a green pair. Today is sunday, and tomorrow she's going to wear one of those three. Now, God knows that sarah is going to wear the green pair on monday. The question becomes, can she choose what pair she's going to wear? If God knows that she's going to wear the green pair, then she must wear the green pair. Some might say that she still chose the green pair, but it's not really an excersize of free will if that was preordained, was it? If it's preordained that she is going to wear the green pair, then no, she can't choose the red pair or the blue pair, otherwise it would have been preordained that she would wear that pair. So, if God is omnipotent, there can be no free will, can there? If he knows all, then Sarah can't have free will. If Sarah can pick her pair of socks, then God doesn't have foreknowledge does he? It's an interesting dilemma. There is a sort of solution, but I'll leave that for you folks to sort out

Whether you see/hear God does not destroy your free will, you still have a choice whether or not to follow him, obviously it influences you, but it does not force you to obey him.


Not necessarily, God could easily have used Evolution as a means to create Earth, and the inhabitants thereon, the Bible says that the Earth was created in 6 days, however, in later places it says that 1 day to God is 1000 of our years, if the 6 days was a hyperbole, how do we know whether or not 1000 years means millions of years or not? Many parts of the Bible, while many people take them literally, are often metaphorical and not literal at all.
Evolution can easily intertwine with religion as long as you realize that what is said in the Bible should not always be taken in a literal sense.

You meant to say omniscient.

This is a nice thought experiment that will lead us nicely into Epicurus' Problem with Evil. You usually when you start with something as complex as Theodicy, the theist will just go bonkers and stray from logic, but starting simple like this to get the basic concept down is a good idea.

I think I may have a nice elegant solution, although, it's a bit of a stretch. Every one has free will and decides how to live their whole life, however, God at the same time, knows what's going to happen as he sees everything, past, present and future. He does not hinder free will, but merely observes it. God see the life you will live, have lived and are living but does nothing to interact with your overall decisions. I imagine it as there being an infinite amount of gods at different time periods all simply watching and all information being relayed to god, who is all of these gods at once -- well, that's how I WOULD imagine it if I believed in god.

Well, if this god or these gods know what's going to happen, and by know I mean there is a 100% exactitude (if that's a word) that something they/he know(s) WILL happen, for example, they know sarah is going to wear green on monday, then sarah has no choice. The only possibility that exists is to wear the green socks, since he/they know(s) she will wear the green socks. It really doesn't matter if there is one god or many simultaneous gods in this case, if the action is predetermined, then Sarah isn't really choosing anything is she? This really has nothing to do with god forcing her to do anything, as in physically interacting, but rather through the fact that he has foreknowledge, she cannot apparently make any "real" choices. Sure, you might say "god isn't reaching down and putting the green socks on her so she has a choice" but if god truly has foreknowledge of her actions, then she isn't really making a choice. See what I mean?

I see what you mean, but if Sarah chose to put the red socks on, the God would know Sarah was going to put red socks on.

On another note, maybe there is no free-determination. Sure, you say that you decided what you were going to wear, or that you chose to go down a different path to school, but what if this is all on purpose? What if all your actions you attributed to "free-will" were determined to happen by god or fate? I may be writting this on what I think is free will, but what if I'm actually destined to so that I can demonstrate this point to you? It's a really philosophical question which has no real answer.

Exactly.


Well, the answer really depends on how you look at it. If you're a rationalist, then you want the solution I foreshadowed in the first post. If you're an existentialist, or realist, or empiricist, or pragmatist, then there's another answer. When you do anything, what is the force behind it? When you raise your arm, it goes up, and when you lower it, it goes down. There isn't some "force of fate" that comes along and pushes my arm up for me, my brain sends a signal to the muscles which contract, because that's what I decided to do. If some God or Fate or Destiny decreed that I was going to do that, then why was it that I observed myself making the decision. If there is some fate, then it is irrelevant because our thinking and acting occurs in correspondence with our thinking and acting. If a man sudenly decided that he was going to no longer act at all because he was mad at fate, and simply lied down on the ground and stopped moving, what would happen? Eventually, he would get thirsty, and hungry, and decide that well, maybe he should go get some food and drink. He might ask himself "Is fate making me lie here?" and he might answer "No! I'm hungry! This fate thing is stupid, I'm gonna go eat!" Besides, if fate is really so precise as to have control over every atom, every electron and proton and boson and curve in time and space, then no one is ever going to figure it out. It's too complex, and it boils down to the system of free will anyway, since no one can really use fate. "Well, maybe everything is predetermined, but it doesn't make a difference to me, it still hurts when I step on a nail, even if I was fated to do it." Or, "He just ripped the eyes out of three babies and murdered each of their mothers, but he was fated to do it, so he's not going to jail or anything." Ludicrous, right?

That's one answer. The other (rationalist) answer is one of those lofty technical solutions that someone like socrates or plato might say though.

I wanted to wait for some genuine theists to respond rather than play devil's advocate(lol, that never gets old), but I'll give my response early because I don't want to forget this tomorrow:

Your reasoning seems a little too confined by space-time Vrael. You are looking at it all wrong, omnipresence can explain what omniscience can't.

What is the one thing you know? The one thing you know more than anything else! Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am), your senses and everything else can be deceived, but even if you are living the fucking matrix you still have that rock solid foundation that you think therefore you must exist. Now hold onto this because with just this I will reason that god can simultaneously exist along with your choice.
That is perfect knowledge. All of your other knowledge is biased in terms of your human wiring to perceive events by cause-and-effect. You may not have perfect knowledge of the mass of a basketball, the color of your eyes, or even fucking 2+2=4. You can stipulate that invisible undetectable flying spaghetti monster magic is the cause of all perceived and unperceived phenomena around you, but even the FSM can't touch your Cogito Ergo Sum with his hypothetical omnipotence. Think about that! Compare anything else you feel you are certain about with the certainty that you think THEREFORE YOU ARE. Side by side with "I breathe air" it's like a mountain next to an ant hill.

TLDR; You know that you are you more than anything else you may think you know(infinitely times more).

Onwards, So we know that this type of knowledge(knowing you exist) is far superior to our everyday empirical knowledge governed by cause and effect. Omniscience as we see it is to have such perfect information, that you can perfectly deduce what the effect will be for any given cause(which isn't actually a cause yet, but we'll call it that). This is an impossibility. It is impossible that perfect knowledge can come from a cause and effect thinking system since we've already proved that self-existence knowledge is perfect, and that it is a greater knowledge than empiricism. (if A > B and A = C, then B != C )

Here's the crux - God doesn't know everything because he deduced the chain of events(like watching dominoes fall), it's because he exists in every point of space, and thus has perfect self-existence knowledge of every point of space. So since god IS everything, when he goes Cogito Ergo Sum to himself - he knows everything... with perfect knowledge. Now I just have to take this one step further. If god is everything, then it is reasonable to assume he is everything all the time. So let's say God already exists in all time was or ever will be.


NOW I can answer your question about socks! God doesn't know that Sarah is going to pick the green socks because he made her that way and already knows every decision she well ever make because he programmed her freewill, he knows because he was just THERE.(and is still there in some way, as he is everywhere/time else also. Remember that time you were jacking off to midget rape porn alone in your room, yeah got is still there, and will always be there for all eternity... just hanging out, maybe that's why he hates stuff like that so much...)

TLDR; The moral of the story is that omnipresence is Einstein, and omniscience is his retarded little brother that still needs help going to the bathroom.

Well, I certainly know that I exist, because I have no way of percieving nothing since I have thought.

However, when it comes to superiority of knowledge, this is not necessarily superior to empirical knowledge. If you mean it is superior because it cannot be decieved, you have a point there, for empirical things can often be wrong until the true cause is isolated. However, take my knowledge of a chair and compare it to my knowledge that I exist. I know that I exist, and I know what a chair is. A chair is a chair, just as much as I am myself. I can describe to you the aspects of a chair, or the aspects of myself, I can tell you what a chair looks like, or what I look like, but I can't describe to you the form of a chair, just as I can't describe to you the form of myself. In both cases, I have the knowledge of [the chair or myself] through observation. I see a chair, which is a perception, and I percieve my own thoughts, another perception. I observe both, and if I know myself in any way better than I know a chair, it's probably because I have observed myself much longer. Math is another example. 2 + 2 = 4. This is absolute knowledge: the concepts involved will never change, nor will the equality (the symbols that represent them might, but not the actual equality), and we know this through observation. You can't observe 2 + 2 = 5. Someone somewhere had a group of 2 objects, and another group of 2 objects, put them together and had 4 objects. Or maybe s/he was just thinking about numbers, and realized that if you take two groups of two, that's the same quantity as 1 group of 4. We are not born with the knowledge of 2 + 2 = 4, we learn it as we grow.


Let me get this straight. You're building a higherarchy of the perfection of knowledge of empirical observation against cogito ergo sum.
Secondly, self-existence knowledge was gained through empiricism. If I had no manner of perceiving/observing, I would not have observed that I think; therefore I would not be able to conclude that I am.
Additionally, the fact that self-existence knowledge is perfect does not imply that other kinds of knowledge are not perfect.
If A = true and A = A, well, that doesn't say anything about B.

Well, I think your reasoning is false, but the conclusion you came to is the same one I brought up in the post: Either god is not all-knowing or sarah has no free will.

By omnipresent, you mean god is at all possible points in space, but not necessarily all-knowing, and omniscient, you mean he has perfect knowledge of all, correct?

I'll try again. It appears that I need to make a better case that self-existence knowledge > sense observations. I also need to clarify that rational knowledge(2+2=4, a is a) is not more true than existence, but it is inferior in that it isn't knowledge of anything that actually exists. So we have observational knowledge that can be biased and imperfect, but tells us something about phenomena; and we have rational knowledge which is true by definition and can be known, but doesn't actually exist (you can know that when 2 thing of 2 come together they will total 4, but that doesn't help you when you can never truly know that there is 2 of anything, and the whole idea that a '4' is created is an abstraction from our own minds).
Now I argue that the knowledge that you are exist(not to be confused with things like "I have brown eyes") has the best of both worlds because you are observing something that actually exists, and some how through your own god-like power you are not doing it through any of your 5 senses(which can be fooled). Thus you know something with the same certainty that you know 2+2=4, but it is about something that actually exists.

Now if god exists apply that idea to every point in space-time. That's knowledge better than simply starting at point A, and having enough observational knowledge about A that you know what point A will be when it transitions through time and becomes point B or point A+1.(your typical viewing of omniscience)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 28 2009, 5:31 pm by ClansAreForGays.

So... A > B because A != B? That doesn't really work. And who exactly are you to say that this self-eisting knowledge is perfect? What if all of this is an illusion and what you think of yourself doesn't actually exist. Then your observational knowldege would be greater than your self-existence knowledge. You can't go stipulating things that aren't concrete, which is why I stated this is a rather philosophical question without a concrete answer.

I didn't read all that other stuff, however, I think that the answer to this:

Is that God can see all possible futures, he can see that if you choose to go in one direction, what will happen, and what will happen otherwise, and so you can in fact have free will, and God will still have foreknowledge of everything that could happen, and most likely knows what is probable to happen, however there is always the human factor.

You didn't quite hit the nail on the head, but you did come close. The problem with this is, if god only know's what's probable, then he doesn't truly have foreknowledge, since he only knows what's likely and not what will actually be.

And CAFG, the problem with your case isn't really proving that self existence knowledge > sense observations, that I at least have taken to be true for this argument (for most cases). It comes from proving that sense observations cannot be perfect. There ARE cases in which our sense observations can be perfect, just because they can be imperfect sometimes doesn't mean they can't also be perfect sometimes. "I see a pen on my desk." Is there a pen there? Well, I can see it, touch it, lick it, hear it if I scratch it against the desk, and smell it if I jam it up my nose. I'm certain that there is a pen on the desk, just as certain that I exist to observe the pen. And if we are talking about a God here, then his sense observations are certainly going to be of the perfect order.

I clearly said that because A > B and A is perfect, then B can not be perfect because then A would have to equal B, which is impossible if we already know that A is greater than B... not what you said.

I already said that we know our sense of self is independent and different from our 5 senses that we experience phenomena with. The biggest difference between the sense of self and the 5 senses is that we have already proven that the latter can be deceived and are imperfect in knowing the actual world. If you really think that the sense of self can be fooled, then give me an example (I can easily give you examples of how the 5 senses can be wrong).

Have you taken any philosophy Aofst?

I've taken Theory of Knowledge.

Sense of self being fooled:
http://www.ipce.info/library_3/files/loftus_falsem.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(psychology)

Now, I know you are going to give me bogus ideas that these aren't true forms of self. In the first, Nadean Cool and Rutherford had their lives changed by outside sources, their sense of self changed, the way they viewed themselves and so on. The latter presents why this idea of the self should be criticized.

You state that the knowledge of the self is perfect, but as it is pointed out in Siddhartha, one is always trying to find one's self, and when they reach enlightenment, do they fully realize themselves, and how they connect with the rest of the world. A > B cannot be stated until it is proven that A is truely perfect. I personally doubt it is.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 1 2009, 5:30 am by A_of-s_t.

Thank you for showing me that memories can be falsified... but you still completely failed to even mention anything about I Think Therefore I Am. You seem to be hung up on something I already dealt with a while back. Knowledge of your own existence is not "I know I have blue eyes, I know I was raped when I was 3, I know I'm totally into Satan" You need to be thinking bigger. The only thing you TRULY know is Cogito Ergo Sum.

Also saying
Doesn't make it any less bogus. Maybe your problem is that you think I'm actually trying to argue that the forms of self is what I'm talking about. A form is strictly rational.

Perhaps you two are arguing overwhat I see to be a minor vagueness of language in cafg's description; it isn't some "self" that we have certain knowledge of, it's the fact that we "exist" that we have knowledge of through the "cognito ergo sum" thing. Apparently, according to descarte, even if our very thoughts are being decieved, we know at least we have to have some thoughts for them to be deceived, so we must exist because we are having thoughts. As to the actual, "self," well that doesn't say anything about it, except that it does exist.

As to the basis of your actual argument though, cafg, I would argue that it is in fact the same observatory function that can be fooled through the senses, that we used to come to the conclusion that we exist. If it is so, then the heirarchy of knowledge you are describing (the whole A > B thing) really doesn't exist, since well, A = A, not A > A. Short of death, we are tied to the physical world. Even if we have some soul or spiritual essence, the human body exists in the physical realm. I have not observed anything in any other realm, ever, perhaps others have, but I haven't heard about it, and I think it reasonable to say they haven't, short of religious fanatics. Even concepts like 2+2=4 are not of some other world, they're just a symbolic representation of ideas that exist within nature already. When you think in your head without talking, do you hear words? I often do. Words are another symbolic representation of things or concepts we find in the world. But consider a newborn: he has no knowledge of anything, yet over time he can come to know such words as "apple" and "justice" and "combinations," things that exist both physically and conceptually. It is not only in observing cognito ergo sum that we utilize our most basic function of observation, but throughout our lives, whenever we learn something. Often this basic power of observation is used on the physical realm, and if it is truly our power of observation, then it is not only the senses, but this power that can be fooled as well.

If God knows what's going to happen, but we do not, we have free will to make our decisions because our future only happens based on decisions we knowing that we have free will. The perception that we have free will makes it true, in a way.