Coelacanth, in fairness, having recognized how inflammatory my original post was I changed it. I apologize if you feel I stepped over the line... I was just agape that you would write what you did seriously.... I am equally agape that you would respond by writing this:
Sorry, I was reading a book about when the mexicans stormed the bastille during the battle of hastings.
you seriously amaze me. you have constructed very careful arguments to make your points (both those that are positive for your side and those that are negative for the other) and the other side refuses to engage you in any meaningful way. it simply amazes me.
Look guys. If the timeline is set, its set. We can tell you a million times that if an entity has perfect knowledge of the timeline, then that timeline cannot be deviated from. If it cannot be deviated from, then you cannot make any choices that differ from what god saw initially. If you can't make a choice, then you don't have free will. It isn't that difficult to follow. Your counters include logical fallacies that either equate imperfect knowledge with omniscience (the playwriter), or equate observation of recorded programs with perfect knowledge of future events. Neither of those analogies hold water. Nobody answered my question either. Why does the Christian God need to be omniscient and why does man need to have free will?
However, Fondren, that does sound like an interesting new thread: Omniscience and Free Will in Christianity. I would certainly participate.
Fondren, i won't reply to the first part of this post because it is as if you haven't even read Coelacanth's posts. you are just beating a drum but ignoring what we are saying. the burden of proof is on you to show the mechanism that makes true what you are asserting dogmatically. as for this:
just for kicks....let me try to do something unique with this conversation since Fondren, Mia and GT don't want to tackle Coelacanth's arguments. so, it seems that Fondren's primary argument is that if God sees the future then the choices made there can not be free, but are actually fixed. is this proposition also true of the past? before you jump to any conclusions about what i mean by that question let me unpack it just a bit. we know the past in fairly great detail, at least as it concerns certain events. at any rate, we all agree that the past happened in a particular way whether or not we know it. we also appear to agree that the past happened "freely" inasmuch as it contained free human agents. so, while we know that the past is now "fixed" in terms of it not being able to be changed (i suppose God could change it, but what point is there in arguing that since we would not know it and it doesn't affect our discussion), we also agree that it came about "freely" if we believe in libertarian freedom yes? so, if the past can be known and yet arrived at freely, why can the future not have the same features? so were past agents free? if your answer is yes. then how is it possible that the past happened in only one way, but was nonetheless arrived at freely? does this not apply to the future? someday the future will be the past and it will have happened in one way, yet we want to believe the agents that brought it about were free no? strange line of reasoning i know, but i am trying to understand Fondren's, Mia's and GT's arguments. by the way, i think Coelacanth tried to make such an argument earlier, but i hope to flesh it out a bit.
if i may add a 3rd option Coelacanth..... does God know my future actions because he is THERE with me as i am making them? seems similar in some respects i realize, but i actually think it is an important distinction and touches on some of the problems of trying to root this question too firmly in time. perhaps, if time really is a linear progression, but God really is outside of it, he is at every point in the time line including every future free choice i am making and he is seeing me make them. his omniscience may not come from "predetermining" my future actions, it may come from being present at the point of my future actions. somewhat confusing i know, but this is what i have been pondering since the 6th grade, so i do think it is possible....even though my mind gets a bit muddled when i try to think on it for too long....... but hey, i remember reading in 1999 that if you fire protons (or is it electrons?) at a Cesium atom you see the proton leave the atom before it ever enters it. therefore, we have seen protons travel forward in time. if protons can do it, why not God?
It doesn't matter. Look at it this way. Since it doesn't matter, you can still be the one to choose. The question would then be when. Since God knows what you are going to choose, you make every choice you will ever make at the same moment that God has knowledge of your life. Therefore, eons later, when you actually exist, you would simply be living the life that you chose eons ago. You don't have the ability to change it up, so you don't have free will. You simply have the perception of free will, since you made every choice prior to the beginning of time. That's why it doesn't matter whether you or God lays out your life. Your life is laid out either way and you cannot stray from the decided course. So imagine if prior to your birth, God showed you your life and you didn't like part of it. There's nothing you could do to make it different, or else God would not be omniscient.
i disagree Fondren. the question is whether or not the choices we made in the past, although they are now known, were free choices. i think that we agree that they were. therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that future choices are free, although they may be known by God. by the way, we may find out that God does not know our future choices. i just believe he does. i could be wrong on this point. but as Coelacanth has said, the question is one of logic, not theology. is it possible for God to know of our future free choices? i believe the answer is yes and i don't believe that you, Mia, or GT (or Brickhorn for that matter) have shown otherwise.....yet. perhaps you will, but nothing you have said yet amounts to much more than repeatedly asserting what you believe to be true, without demonstrating a mechanism or a logical argument for why it is the case.
mop: Well, I think you're right to say that there is a problem with trying to root the question too firmly in time – or at least we can’t root our arguments too firmly on some idea of how God reckons time. I’m not sure I want to say that God is outside of time. I’m not really sure what that would mean. God’s movements within and without time are a mystery to me, and so I’m uncertain what logic to apply to that concept. However, it does seem to me that the creator will always be a separate thing from the creation. And so, he could be “there” in time, perhaps, but it would be untenable, to me, to say that he could be there with me in the existential sense – that we are somehow coexisting.
coelacanth, Now you are attempting to change the definition of free will. A definition that you agreed upon several posts earlier. Free will is the ability to choose as choices are presented. Now you want to change the definition to include the ability to choose prior to your existence. You have also assumed that we have a pre-corporeal form, which brings in entirely different variables. The life we are certain of begins at birth and ends at death. It is this life that we are discussing and there would be no free will during this life if there is an omniscient god. You are still having a problem with the difference between the perception of free will and actual free will. This morning, you perceived that you were choosing between cereal and eggs. God has always known that you were going to eat cereal today. Therefore, when you were presented with the options of cereal and eggs, you didn't really have a choice. You had to eat cereal. That is the perception of free will, not free will.
How, exactly, does free will manifest? Is there a claim that human cognition takes place outside of the causal electrochemical state machine of the brain?
