That's an interesting perception that I haven't really thought much about. This kinda jives with what I was saying earlier about the pragmatist answer, since there really is very little noticeable difference between actual destiny and the illusion that we are making choices, whether it's illusion or reality. However, if God does know what's going to happen, the truth of the matter still is that we don't have free will, whether it affects our daily lives or not (according to the example posed earlier). Perhaps it's simply time for the answer I foreshadowed:
It's a simple answer, and it's even kind of silly in a way. God knows which pair of socks Sarah is going to wear on Monday. He doesn't know that she's going to wear the green pair, and he doesn't know that she's going to wear the red pair, but he does know which pair she is going to wear. In this way, God knows the truth and the choice is not predetermined. It's sorta like what Falkoner said, except he doesn't just know a probability or all the possible cases, he knows for certain, and he knows without eliminating the existence of the choice for Sarah. The reason I say it's kind of silly, is because if you were to ask God which pair of socks she was going to wear, what would he say? If he said "the red pair" well, that invalidates the answer just provided. And if he said nothing, well, how do we know he really knows?

I hadn't really thought of it that way.

And thanks, for once I finally feel like you get what I'm saying even though you don't agree. Now I can work towards something, I have to show:
(in order of importance)
1) The sense of self can not be fooled/inaccurate. Then you can truly take it that A > B.

2) That this knowledge of ones own existence is knowledge about something that actually exists in the universe(like you have knowledge of the distance between your face and this screen).

3) The sense that you exist is an entirely different empirical device than the other 5 senses that tell us about the universe.

4) 2+2 = 4 does not exist in nature and it is purely an abstract. This rational truth does not some kind of by product from nature.

5) You will never truly know anything about objects in the universe.

I will need you to clarify this for me though
Just put it in any other way so I can know what you mean better. There seems to be a premise that I haven't made a connection with yet.

Well, I asked my dad about this, and he told me something that made a lot of sense:

You ask, how is it free will if God already knows what will happen?
However, on the flip side, how is it not free will if he already knows? God doesn't create the observer effect, he does not modify it by seeing it, he just knows what will happen, we still make the choice, he just knows what choice we will make.
It's like asking why would you build a house if you already know how it's going to turn out. Sure, you know how it will turn out, but you have to go through the effort of doing it in order to actually get the house.

I asserted that the power that allowed you to know "cognito ergo sum" is the same observatory function that allows us to retrieve empirical data. If this is the case, then it is equal to itself, and not superior to itself. Hopefully that helps to clear things up.

Well, I don't know about the whole house part, but the point is that if God knows everything in advance, our actions are predetermined. For him to have knowledge of our actions before we actually act them, they must be predetermined in some way to have allowed him some manner of knowing them before they happen, else it is simply observation on God's part and not foreknowledge. If our actions are predetermined, then any choice we make is simply following the grand structure, path, way, construct, already set before us and determined without any input from our free will.
Hopefully that clarifies the dilemma.

Falkoner's [dad's] description of free will was good until the house example part.

The problem when people try to argue for free will is that they kill their own arguments by trying to illustrate them with materialistic examples. Free will when regarding spirituality cannot be illustrated within our senses or physical world.

For instance, regarding predetermination. What's really creating this schism between the two sides in this debate comes down to the effect/events that proceed because of this predetermination. People draw the correlation between predetermination and no free will by concluding that because everything we do has already been set out for us that therefore we have no free will. Now see this example: People on death row are predetermined to die via lethal injection or by the chair. No matter what they think, say, or do, their fate is inevitable. Here, these death row inmates have no free will because their destiny has already been determined; struggle, negotiate, or complain all you want but no matter what they do their final destination remains the same. This is a materialistic example that people can relate to or comprehend within their physical senses. This example proves that if your actions have been predetermined within your materialistic existence then you no longer have free will.

So we ask, who predetermines the future? I've seen much debate on this matter of free but unlike what I've seen a lot of people say, it doesn't matter whether you know your "predetermined" future or not. What actually matters is, who predetermines the future? Who sees into our tomorrows?

Now this part is where I know I will lose some of you due to a difference of vantage points but: I believe that if this "being" who exists outside of our materialistic, physical world and is of the spiritual sense is the one that "foresees" our future, then it does NOT mean that we have no free will. Because as I was trying to imply earlier, I believe "free will" is something that is of our physical senses and that it can only be affected by another property within the same universe. A super natural being, who exists outside of our physical senses, that foresees our future does not affect our free will. Because if within our existence our fates have been predetermined, then it is true that we do not have free will.
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**** OR ****

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(again this is a very deep subject IMO so I believe it is also plausible this way: )


Unlike what I said earlier, Free Will is NOT something that exists, is comprehended, or related within our earthly, materialistic, senses. It's hard to describe this and I am tempted to use the example of The Matrix here as that's the closest possible illustration that I can think of but this is far from being a perfect delineation. Now when we perceive "predetermination" we comprehend this subject within our physical senses and existence. But when we try to correlate these two: predetermination and free will, it just doesn't work. We can't even ask whether these two can or cannot affect each other because they are not compatible in the first place.
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Ultimately, what I am saying is that these two things: predetermination (as foreseen from a spiritual entity) and free will are of two possibly vastly different existences and senses so IMO no correlation can be drawn between the two.


HOWEVER, it is important to note that the underlying assumption that I am making here is that: because that the two subjects in question are different that they cannot be related with one another. This assumption is based off our way of materialistic and physical thinking. When our subjects involve in anyway a supernatural, spiritual, no concrete assumption or correlation can be made within our senses or existence. Agree or disagree, this is my opinion. This is one of those subjects which I continually try to understand more and more of day by day.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 3 2009, 5:14 am by MillenniumArmy.

I am not quite sure I grasp fully what you have said Millenium, but there may be some avenue of dissociation that you can pursue to create an environment which is friendly to both free will and predetermination, I'm not quite sure, cause I don't happen to be God.

The reason I brought up the example in the first place was because this seemed to be a religious topic and the subject of free will was breached, and in my experience, many people seem to believe that they both have free will and that God is all-knowing. In the purely logical sense, this cannot be. If it is possible to obtain 100% accurate knowledge, such as God might have, of what a person was going to do before he or she did it, then that person, even if under the impression that they are making a decision, is simply following the course that has been prescribed. Here is one analogy I think helpful: Imagine that we have some small arbitrary system of particles, and we know all the laws that govern their interactions and movements, and we have some computer of infinite calculating and memory capability. Now, if we know precisely where each particle starts and precisely the magnitude of all the forces and momentums and vectors related to them, then we can program our computer to tell us where they will be at any time past our initial frame of reference. In this way, we could have foreknowledge. If we similarly had knowledge of all the forces that act in the universe, we could extrapolate upon that to have foreknowledge of our universe. Maybe no one thing or person predetermines the future, pehaps that's simply the way things are. For the logical schism between predetermination and free will, all that's really required is the possibility of perfect prediction, and it doesn't matter whether it's God or some mad scientist doing the prediction.

If I can reference what I said in a earlier post about the pragmatic answer to this dillemma: who really cares? So what if some God or evil demon out in space knows exactly what I'm going to do next. Maybe I don't have free will, but it sure feels like it. Since I can't tell the difference between making a decision and following a predetermined path, what's it matter if it's predetermined?

I say all this because I believe at least some of what you are saying is wrong, Millenium. There is a clear logical relation between predetermination and free will, but that's the easy part, and the real heart of the matter is the pragmatic philosophical questions like these (and there may be more): "What signifigance does it have to a human being living life?" and "Can we really make a perfect prediction?" The spiritual divide you mentioned is not excluded, but rather encompassed within these questions. If there is some soul and it has some otherworldy effect on our bodies to make them live and act, maybe we can't ever make a perfect prediction, or maybe we still can, but it really has no signifigance to anyone. See what I mean?

Think of life as a lottery of scripts in a huge play. If one script is a billionaire with his own garage full of porsche, lamborghini, and ferraris who gets to live long and wealthy life, another is a happless guy who gets to die the next day he graduates community college! And in the end, the script gets to determine whether you get to go to hell or heaven (suffer eternally, or be in a paradise eternally.)