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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: How do you see time?
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
Does that mean it is Gods will that shit happens to us?
Exactly. Once you go down the road of placing God outside of time, you end up diminishing free will, which means you've got to place God at the center of evil, whether as an active cause or as passively permitting it to occur.
The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.
What is evil and what can God do about it?
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Love wins
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
What he means is God's foreknowledge of what I will choose to do doesn't have any bearing on my exercise of freewill. He's right. But of course it's nonsense as the information doesn't exist. The future hasn't happened regardless of how timeless, whatever that could mean, God is.
The DVD is on the radiator. At some undetermined time I will put it on the bookshelf, at an undetermined location. Until then, it isn't there. God CANNOT know when and where it will happen. Because it hasn't happened.
I mean I'm filmic, but this is ridiculous, God: THE movie.
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Love wins
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The fact that you suddenly switch gears in the last sentence and post a conclusion that is completely contrary to your argument up until the final sentence does not change the logical thrust of the argument.
If you think I'm switching gears you haven't understood my argument.
Consider the following fallacious argument:
I read your post. So you couldn't have posted anything other than what you did post. If you couldn't have posted anything other than what you did post, you don't have free will.
The argument is fallacious because it depends upon an ambiguity in 'couldn't have'. (It is de dicto in the first usage, and de re in the second usage.) My contention is that your argument about God's foreknowledge is fallacious for exactly the same reason.
If you had infallible foreknowledge of what I was going to write, could I have written something else? If so, then your foreknowledge was not infallible. If not, then I was not free to write something else.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.
Do you really find that any more unsettling than a God who is able to stop evil, but doesn't?
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.
Do you really find that any more unsettling than a God who is able to stop evil, but doesn't?
Yes, because we have a promise that it won't always be so, that is when our Lord returns. If he is unable then that promise essentially means nothing except to give false hope.
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
Saying that God foreknows things puts Him inside time. It's not so much that, as that He already encompasses/transcends what we perceive as past, present and future.
Yes.
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
Saying that God foreknows things puts Him inside time. It's not so much that, as that He already encompasses/transcends what we perceive as past, present and future. It's a little like that bit by Douglas Adams about grammar and time travel.
Lovely bit of grammatical gymnastics, but not sure if that changes anything.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The alternative is an impotent God who is unable to do anything about evil.
Do you really find that any more unsettling than a God who is able to stop evil, but doesn't?
Yes, because we have a promise that it won't always be so, that is when our Lord returns. If he is unable then that promise essentially means nothing except to give false hope.
Here is the dividing line between open & process theologies. Process would say God is unable, Open would say God is sovereign. He cannot know definitively the future choices of free creatures, but he can know all of the contingent possibilities. And because he is thoroughly and completely aware of every contingent possibility and all the contingent ramifications of each, he is therefore able to make sure promises in which we can place our hopes.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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ChastMastr
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# 716
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Lovely bit of grammatical gymnastics, but not sure if that changes anything.
It's been my basic understanding of how all of this works since I became a Christian. ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
That's fine ChastMastr. God bless you and keep you in it. He met you with it, in it. As long as there are humans, many will have to believe as you do. Nothing those who can't could ever say can change that. And vice versa. I tried a moment of doubt last night, the first hot flush of cold sweat that I could be wrong. Like the attraction of atheism. I couldn't sustain it.
God doesn't have to open the desk draw to see and touch the ball of Blu-Tack ('the future') or to take it out and put it on the desk. Any 4-D being can do that. But He can't if it isn't there no matter that He supervenes, pervades, transcends, grounds and thinks (11-17)+ dimensions.
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Love wins
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
The DVD ended up, after a moment on the shelf, in a box on top of the wardrobe where presents for my wife accumulate. God KNEW that would happen for almost sure, knowing me a tad better than I do. But not when and not in its final disposition and trajectory. None of that is knowable at ANY time. Especially when I factored in a TRUE random number of seconds.
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Love wins
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If you had infallible foreknowledge of what I was going to write, could I have written something else? If so, then your foreknowledge was not infallible. If not, then I was not free to write something else.
I've been trying to explain that I think the word 'could' is ambiguous. The first half of your dilemma applies whether 'could' is used in a de re sense or a de dicto sense. The second half of your dilemma only applies if the word 'could' is used in a de re sense.
If Hercule Poirot finds no footprints in the flower bed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. But that doesn't mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.
If Hercule Poirot discovers that the window was locked and the lock was jammed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. That does mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.
If God had foreknowledge of my actions, I 'couldn't' have done otherwise only in the flowerbed sense of 'couldn't'. I could have done otherwise in the 'locked window' sense of 'couldn't'. And it is only the locked window sense that would mean I wasn't free.
I'll pass over that 'foreknowledge', if God is outside time, does not mean the same as if God is in time. Nevertheless it really does affect the argument.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
We, mostly, have no idea of the power of chance. If you can manipulate chance happenings, you really can do anything.
Consider the moment when you met your SO. I met my husband by the xerox machine, where I happened to be photocopying leaflets for a college event. Ten minutes later I might never have met him; my life would assuredly be very different indeed. Entire movies, even Broadway musicals, are based on this premise -- the latest one was titled, appropriately, If/Then
Or consider cancer. Although there is much chatter about cigarettes/fatty diets/radon/cell phones causing cancer, they've determined that the sweeping majority of them spring from a chance mutation. The dice just came up snake-eyes for you; no exercise/diet/yogic regimen could've prevented it.
The only mortals who manipulate this tool, on a very small stage, are writers, often badly. (Read Les Miserables and the way people keep on running into each other by chance, you would think that the entire population of France was less than a hundred people.) But consider what a very powerful one it is in God's hand. Who does He want you to meet and marry? Is there a line at the xerox machine?
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
The only mortals who manipulate this tool, on a very small stage, are writers, often badly. (Read Les Miserables and the way people keep on running into each other by chance, you would think that the entire population of France was less than a hundred people.)
In the musical. In the book, Hugo gets away with it by separating each unlikely coincidence with a hundred page essay on the Battle of Waterloo or sewerage. (Also, Hugo's a poet. He's not writing a realistic novel in the style of George Eliot.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Lovely bit of grammatical gymnastics, but not sure if that changes anything.
It's been my basic understanding of how all of this works since I became a Christian.
Yes, no disputing it is the predominant understanding within contemporary Western Christians. The question is why? Is it because it fits best with science, with logic, or with biblical revelation? Or is it because of the influence of later philosophies that have nothing to do with those three things?
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If you had infallible foreknowledge of what I was going to write, could I have written something else? If so, then your foreknowledge was not infallible. If not, then I was not free to write something else.
I've been trying to explain that I think the word 'could' is ambiguous. The first half of your dilemma applies whether 'could' is used in a de re sense or a de dicto sense. The second half of your dilemma only applies if the word 'could' is used in a de re sense.
If Hercule Poirot finds no footprints in the flower bed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. But that doesn't mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.
If Hercule Poirot discovers that the window was locked and the lock was jammed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. That does mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.
If God had foreknowledge of my actions, I 'couldn't' have done otherwise only in the flowerbed sense of 'couldn't'. I could have done otherwise in the 'locked window' sense of 'couldn't'. And it is only the locked window sense that would mean I wasn't free.
I'll pass over that 'foreknowledge', if God is outside time, does not mean the same as if God is in time. Nevertheless it really does affect the argument.
I don't see at all how your Poirot example has anything at all to do with divine foreknowledge. You keep comparing apples with oranges.
At the point when Poirot finds ("sees") the footprints in the flower bed, the murderer is NOT free to leave from the window-- s/he has already left thru the flower bed. S/he cannot unchoose it, therefore at that point does not have free will to leave any way s/he wants. That is more analogous to the question of foreknowledge, since once God has foreseen which way the murderer will escape, it cannot be changed-- the person does not have free will to choose other than what God has foreseen, even if God is outside of time and they are not.
[ 19. May 2015, 15:02: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
... And because he is thoroughly and completely aware of every contingent possibility and all the contingent ramifications of each, he is therefore able to make sure promises in which we can place our hopes.
You see, I can accept this. God does not need to know the future to be able to make promises and prophecies. These fit into two types, in my opinion:
1. Predictions of events that will happen, because they happen in some form in all timelines. These predictions are important but not sufficiently precise and detailed that there is only one possible fulfilment.
2. Promises to us about the nature of God. these hold fast whatever happens, which is the point.
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
Exactly. Although I would tweak that a bit to say God does know the future-- he knows all the intricate, varied future possibilities. There is no future choice that is going to hit him out of left field-- he will have anticipated every possibility and the ramifications of each. The analogy frequently given is of a master chess player who can see several (in God's case, all) moves ahead and has a plan in place whatever move the other player might make.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
God can't possibly 'know' all possible futures. They aren't knowable. Why would He need to? Want to?
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Love wins
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I suppose I was differentiating between "the future" - the events that will happen - and "the futures" - the possible events, and you clarify cliffdweller. God knows all of the possible futures but does not need to know which will happen.
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Lord may all my hard times be healing times
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
God knows all of the possible futures but does not need to know which will happen.
I'm sorry, I do not understand. Can you expand please.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
If Hercule Poirot finds no footprints in the flower bed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. But that doesn't mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.
If Hercule Poirot discovers that the window was locked and the lock was jammed, then the murderer couldn't have left by the window. That does mean the murderer wasn't free to leave by the window.
If God had foreknowledge of my actions, I 'couldn't' have done otherwise only in the flowerbed sense of 'couldn't'. I could have done otherwise in the 'locked window' sense of 'couldn't'. And it is only the locked window sense that would mean I wasn't free..
Nice analogy, Dafyd.
It wouldn't be out of character for Hercule Poirot to know the mind of the murderer so well so as to be able to predict - with a high degree of confidence - that he murderer would break into the house to steal the pearls, and leave by the window. And set a trap accordingly... That's a type of knowledge, concerning a free choice.
However, if Hercule Poirot were so careless as to explain his thinking to his baffled assistant at a place and time such that the murderer overheard, and then the murderer went and left by the window anyway, one would have to conclude that the murderer was in some sense not free to do otherwise. Perhaps a psychological compulsion of the sort that novelists resort to when the plot requires it...
If I have free will then telling me of God's foreknowledge (or the knowledge of the time traveller from the future) destroys that knowledge. Because I might be ornery enough to choose the option that would not bring that future about, just to prove said freedom...
Does that make God necessarily inscrutable ?
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
God knows all of the possible futures but does not need to know which will happen.
I'm sorry, I do not understand. Can you expand please.
God could design a universe where the future was definitively knowable, but that would mean the future would be fixed, unalterable. Which means we would have no free will, because, again, if God foresees our choices than we cannot choose anything other than what he has foreseen-- ergo, no free will.
Instead, God chose to create and enter into a universe where the future is open-- where some of the created creatures are able to exercise some degree of free will. In such a universe God cannot definitively know which choices his free creatures will make. However, God, being the sovereign creator of said universe/creatures, can and does know every potential choice those free creatures will make-- he knows every option. And he knows all the possible consequences of each choice. Which is how he is able to make sure promises/prophesies-- because he knows every possible future and is able to see how he will be able to accomplish his promised future in each of them. Open theists like to say God knows every possible future as thoroughly as a Calvinist would claim God knows only one future.
Again, the example of a master chess player is helpful I think: the master player knows every possible move but cannot know which move the other player will make. But because s/he knows every possible move and the consequences/ ramifications of each, s/he is able to plan ahead how to respond in each scenario.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Yes, no disputing it is the predominant understanding within contemporary Western Christians. The question is why? Is it because it fits best with science, with logic, or with biblical revelation?
I believe so, yes, though I'd say "with Reason, Scripture, and Christian Tradition" -- science, unless you mean math, doesn't (and needn't) come into it a whole lot.
quote:
Or is it because of the influence of later philosophies that have nothing to do with those three things?
If they were true philosophies, I don't think it's a problem. And Boethius was born in 480 AD, so I don't think it was terribly much later than, say, the canon of Scripture and the solidified Creeds.
(If someone else formulated this understanding before Boethius in his--in my view, excellent-- Consolation of Philosophy, I have no idea who. And if anyone wants to skip ahead to the bit at the end focusing on God, Eternity, Time, "Fore"knowledge, Free Will, and so on, it's here.)
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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Yes, no disputing it is the predominant understanding within contemporary Western Christians. The question is why? Is it because it fits best with science, with logic, or with biblical revelation?
I believe so, yes, though I'd say "with Reason, Scripture, and Christian Tradition" -- science, unless you mean math, doesn't (and needn't) come into it a whole lot.
I would argue that this default view of the "timelessness" of God is pretty much incompatible with both Scripture and Reason. Church tradition is pretty diverse on this topic, even within discrete groups much less from one group to another. Heck, even Calvin himself is internally inconsistent.
Physics apparent does come into it quite a lot, although as I said before, on a level that is beyond my expertise.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I don't see at all how your Poirot example has anything at all to do with divine foreknowledge. You keep comparing apples with oranges.
It's worth comparing apples with oranges if you're making statements about things that apply to all kinds of fruit.
quote:
At the point when Poirot finds ("sees") the footprints in the flower bed, the murderer is NOT free to leave from the window-- s/he has already left thru the flower bed. S/he cannot unchoose it, therefore at that point does not have free will to leave any way s/he wants. That is more analogous to the question of foreknowledge, since once God has foreseen which way the murderer will escape, it cannot be changed-- the person does not have free will to choose other than what God has foreseen, even if God is outside of time and they are not.
Change it to the present tense if you like. If the butler sees the murderer leaving by the secret door, the murderer can't leave by the window. If the murderer doesn't change their mind about how to leave, then they can't change their mind.
You say 'once God has foreseen which way the murderer leaves it cannot be changed'. (I'm not quite happy with that, since to me the word 'once' implies that God foreseeing something is something that happens at a point in time before the murderer leaving.) Freewill doesn't mean, as you say up above, that we can remake decisions once they're made - so it doesn't matter that once the murderer leaves it cannot be changed.
The point is that logically God's foreknowledge is due to the murderer's free decision. The murderer's free decision isn't due to God's foreknowledge.
I don't see that leaving the future open makes any difference anyway. It doesn't matter to us if the future doesn't exist, since if the future doesn't exist there isn't any future us to have free will in the non-existent future. If we're making a decision in the present there is only the present moment that we're in - the non-existence of any future moments makes no difference to that either way.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
God cannot design a universe where anything is knowable apart from by forcing everything to be so.
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Love wins
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You say 'once God has foreseen which way the murderer leaves it cannot be changed'. (I'm not quite happy with that, since to me the word 'once' implies that God foreseeing something is something that happens at a point in time before the murderer leaving.) Freewill doesn't mean, as you say up above, that we can remake decisions once they're made - so it doesn't matter that once the murderer leaves it cannot be changed.
Again, this is an argument for my position. Just as we are not free to unchange an action that has already been made, we are not free to unchange an action that has already been divinely foreseen. If you are not free to choose differently, there can be no reasonable way your decision can be described as free.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I don't see that leaving the future open makes any difference anyway. It doesn't matter to us if the future doesn't exist, since if the future doesn't exist there isn't any future us to have free will in the non-existent future. If we're making a decision in the present there is only the present moment that we're in - the non-existence of any future moments makes no difference to that either way.
It makes a difference for the reasons stated above.
1. If God foreknows the future, undermining free will, it creates all sorts of problem with theodicy and human moral responsibility.
2. The open view of the future is most consistent with the language and narrative of Scripture. The so-called "classical" view requires large chunks of Scripture to be dismissed as "anthropomorphizing."
3. Prayer doesn't make much sense in the classical view, but in the open view of the future, prayer is meaningful and signficant.
5. The open view of the future aligns with the way we intuitively act in the world and the way we relate to God. The reverse is true of the classical view. Having a theological framework that is consistent our experience of God helps us to know God more deeply; whereas a theological framework that is inconsistent distances us from God.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
God knows all of the possible futures but does not need to know which will happen.
I'm sorry, I do not understand. Can you expand please.
I suppose the analogy of the chess player is relevant here, again. One player can know all of the possible moves of their opponent, and can plan their moves accordingly. They can plan their set of moves, their approach to the game, that relies on their opponent making moves, but not exactly what these moves are.
They can draw up a plan, with some options, that takes into account all of their opponents possible moves. They can anticipate the likely responses - that their opponent will take a piece if it is offered, for example, or that they will not offer their strong pieces, and will resist attempts to take them.
So the player can act, make their own plans, predict that a certain piece of theirs will be on a certain square (or in an area) in a certain number of moves (roughly).
In the same way, God does not need to know which path through the future that we will take to be able to predict aspects of the future, to be able to impact us and our future. It is possible to have an open - undetermined - future, while God is still able to interact and engage.
It is only if predictions/prophecies/interactions have to be specifically known in advance that this falls down. If I was to say that a 32YO lady called Judy wearing a maroon skirt would meet you on Ashbury Road, outside number 14, and would give you a ten pound note with a serial number of ab1234567, and it would all happen at 13:23 tomorrow then I would have to know a precise future event (or, of course, manipulate it, but that is not the point).
In that case, if that sort of prediction was possible, then the future must be fixed and certain. However, I don't think that God is actually like that, because I don't think that time is actually like that. I don't think that God can know about Judy, because I don't think that Judys actions tomorrow are already fixed.
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Blog
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Lord may all my hard times be healing times
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You say 'once God has foreseen which way the murderer leaves it cannot be changed'. (I'm not quite happy with that, since to me the word 'once' implies that God foreseeing something is something that happens at a point in time before the murderer leaving.) Freewill doesn't mean, as you say up above, that we can remake decisions once they're made - so it doesn't matter that once the murderer leaves it cannot be changed.
Again, this is an argument for my position. Just as we are not free to unchange an action that has already been made, we are not free to unchange an action that has already been divinely foreseen. If you are not free to choose differently, there can be no reasonable way your decision can be described as free.
But the fact that we can't unmake a decision once it's made doesn't mean we weren't free to make it. Likewise, the fact that we can't not make a decision God has foreseen doesn't mean we won't be free when we make it.
Consider:
If you choose to read my post then you can't choose not to read this post. If you can't choose not to read this post then your choice to read it isn't free.
That is fallacious. I think your argument is fallacious for the same reason.
At least, instead of just saying the same thing again, you need to explain why God's foreknowledge is supposed to stop us being free in a way that other things don't.
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I don't see that leaving the future open makes any difference anyway. It doesn't matter to us if the future doesn't exist, since if the future doesn't exist there isn't any future us to have free will in the non-existent future. If we're making a decision in the present there is only the present moment that we're in - the non-existence of any future moments makes no difference to that either way.
It makes a difference for the reasons stated above.
I think you've misunderstood what I was saying.
If free will is impossible should the future be determined, it is still equally impossible should the future not be determined.
quote:
If God foreknows the future, undermining free will, it creates all sorts of problem with theodicy and human moral responsibility.
Frankly, most of the problems of theodicy remain.
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The open view of the future is most consistent with the language and narrative of Scripture. The so-called "classical" view requires large chunks of Scripture to be dismissed as "anthropomorphizing."
The God is a bastard view of theodicy is pretty consistent with the language of Scripture too. Unless we're prepared to accept that genocide of Israel's neighbours was divinely commanded, we're going to have to go with the not at face value interpretation of large chunks of Scripture anyway.
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Prayer doesn't make much sense in the classical view, but in the open view of the future, prayer is meaningful and signficant.
In my experience, the opposite is true.
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The open view of the future aligns with the way we intuitively act in the world and the way we relate to God. The reverse is true of the classical view. Having a theological framework that is consistent our experience of God helps us to know God more deeply; whereas a theological framework that is inconsistent distances us from God.
Speak for yourself. As I say, your intuitions and experience clearly differ from mine.
[ 20. May 2015, 19:06: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You say 'once God has foreseen which way the murderer leaves it cannot be changed'. (I'm not quite happy with that, since to me the word 'once' implies that God foreseeing something is something that happens at a point in time before the murderer leaving.) Freewill doesn't mean, as you say up above, that we can remake decisions once they're made - so it doesn't matter that once the murderer leaves it cannot be changed.
Again, this is an argument for my position. Just as we are not free to unchange an action that has already been made, we are not free to unchange an action that has already been divinely foreseen. If you are not free to choose differently, there can be no reasonable way your decision can be described as free.
But the fact that we can't unmake a decision once it's made doesn't mean we weren't free to make it. Likewise, the fact that we can't not make a decision God has foreseen doesn't mean we won't be free when we make it.
Consider:
If you choose to read my post then you can't choose not to read this post. If you can't choose not to read this post then your choice to read it isn't free.
That is fallacious. I think your argument is fallacious for the same reason.
At least, instead of just saying the same thing again, you need to explain why God's foreknowledge is supposed to stop us being free in a way that other things don't.
Again, your argument seems to support my position.
At one point in time-- the present-- you can choose freely. At another point in time-- the future (when the choice is past) you are not free to choose. In the present you are free to read or not read whatever you choose, but having chosen and acted on the choice, you are not free to unread what you have already chosen to read (how many times have we all uttered those words!).
Some thing with foreknowledge. If God has definitive foreknowledge of our future choices, we cannot choose other than what he has foreknown for the exact same reason we cannot unchoose an action we have already chosen.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
There is also the point that you can't demand the logically impossible. How can you both open the window and not open the window at the same time?
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Prayer doesn't make much sense in the classical view, but in the open view of the future, prayer is meaningful and signficant.
In my experience, the opposite is true.
Really? Then please, head on over to the intercession thread, where there seems to be a whole lotta people struggling to explain the purpose and meaning of prayer in the classical pov.
[ 20. May 2015, 23:34: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ad Orientem
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# 17574
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Posted
Well, personally I think you're both wrong. God is neither a clairvoyant predicting a future that doesn't yet exist nor a gambler who hedges his bets.
God knew from eternity everything that would ever happen. He knew that I would be sitting here writing this post whilst it's raining outside, not as a possibility from an infinite number of possibilities but as something already completed. The Incarnation was not a contingency plan. God knew that Adam would sin and creation would fall from before the foundation of the world.
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
I'm sorry, but for myself - from the pov of us knowing what God does or does not know and how that happens - it's several steps beyond arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
At one point in time-- the present-- you can choose freely. At another point in time-- the future (when the choice is past) you are not free to choose. In the present you are free to read or not read whatever you choose, but having chosen and acted on the choice, you are not free to unread what you have already chosen to read (how many times have we all uttered those words!).
Some thing with foreknowledge. If God has definitive foreknowledge of our future choices, we cannot choose other than what he has foreknown for the exact same reason we cannot unchoose an action we have already chosen.
The reason we cannot unchoose an action we have already chosen is that we can only choose or unchoose actions at the time we make them. We make choices in the present. That's a truism.
We still can't unmake our past decisions even if we forget what they were. If I left the house without locking the door, I can't change that. I still can't change that if I cannot remember whether I locked the door. It is not the fact that we know what our past decisions were, or even that God knows what our past decisions were, that means we can't change them.
It is not God's past knowledge of our past actions that stops us from changing them.
We can't choose future actions on the open model either. We can make plans or form intentions as to what to choose, but if we could actually choose future actions we wouldn't have any free will when it came to making those actions.
The fact that we can't now choose future actions does not at all mean we won't be free to choose them when the time comes around.
Just as God's past knowledge 'now' doesn't mean we weren't free then, so God's foreknowledge 'now' doesn't mean we won't be free.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
But through Grace, there is some leeway to change consequences. For instance the difference between a burglar happening to pass by or not in the case of an unlocked door.
The Course in Miracles gives some interesting viewpoints on all this - I didn't get it first time I came across it some 20 years ago, but I've been receiving their daily lessons for the past couple of months and it makes a lot more sense to me now.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Ad Orientem. How?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Ad Orientem. How?
Eh? You might as well ask, how does God exist? To that I would answer, he just is.
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Well, personally I think you're both wrong. God is neither a clairvoyant predicting a future that doesn't yet exist nor a gambler who hedges his bets.
God knew from eternity everything that would ever happen. He knew that I would be sitting here writing this post whilst it's raining outside, not as a possibility from an infinite number of possibilities but as something already completed. The Incarnation was not a contingency plan. God knew that Adam would sin and creation would fall from before the foundation of the world.
The Open view is often mischaracterized as God "gambling" but it is anything but. Again, because God can accurately anticipate every possible choice and the consequences/ ramifications of each, there is no gambling-- he isn't caught off guard by our choices, and has a plan in place in every potential future to accomplish his purposes. And yes, I would agree that in all those potential futures, the incarnation was always a part. Yes, because of human sin, but even more so because God is a God who is incarnation by his very nature-- that God desires always to come to us and be with us.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
At one point in time-- the present-- you can choose freely. At another point in time-- the future (when the choice is past) you are not free to choose. In the present you are free to read or not read whatever you choose, but having chosen and acted on the choice, you are not free to unread what you have already chosen to read (how many times have we all uttered those words!).
Some thing with foreknowledge. If God has definitive foreknowledge of our future choices, we cannot choose other than what he has foreknown for the exact same reason we cannot unchoose an action we have already chosen.
The reason we cannot unchoose an action we have already chosen is that we can only choose or unchoose actions at the time we make them. We make choices in the present. That's a truism.
...It is not God's past knowledge of our past actions that stops us from changing them.
We are circling the same territory here. Again, the two are precisely the same. God's definitive foreknowledge of our future choices would have the exact same restraining effect on free will as time does. We can't unchoose something that has already been chosen, we can't choose differently from something that has already been definitively known. They operate very much in the same way to eliminate human freedom.
But we are both repeating ourselves at this point-- a sure sign that the debate has reached its inevitable stalemate.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
Funnily enough, Cliffdweller, I agree with your posts more often than you realise#
not sure which emoticon to use here
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Funnily enough, Cliffdweller, I agree with your posts more often than you realise
I was thinking the same thing back on the prayer thread! I'm gonna go with the classic
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
That's a category error of infinite magnitude.
God's existence is to be desired. To have to believe that He knows how today's indeterminate electrons will spin tomorrow is ... psychologically fascinating.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Snuffy
Apprentice
# 18404
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Snuffy:
We debate free will & determinism and God's omnipotence & omniscience until our heads explode with the counter arguments & contradictions.
While it may seem like a trivial argument, it has real-world consequences that for me change everything about the way I relate to God. It particularly has real-life consequences for the way we understand the purpose and meaning of prayer. It has real life consequences for the way we understand the problem of theodicy, and the ways we engage evil and suffering in the world, both human-caused and natural. For many of us, making a shift from an Augustinian/Calvinist understanding of divine nature to an open/relational paradigm has breathed life into our reading of Scripture and brought passion, immediacy, and intimacy to our experience of God in our world today.
Am sorry if I appeared to trivialise. What I was hoping to get across was that we cannot in our fully mortal state reconcile the apparent contradictions but that God is big enough to hold both together.
Am with you on the above. Agreed.
As I understand it He (God, fully outside time), and we (fully inside that version of time that depends on the rotation of the spheres that are important to us, especially while we are on one of them!) relate to God (the Father) through the person of the Godhead who subjected Himself to our measure of time for our sakes. This he does via the Holy Spirit (interestingly granted to all believers, especially the first recipients, after a significant passage of our time - I write at the start of Shavuot) who exists & ministers within our time but also eternally. Indeed, Genesis appears to suggest that the Holy Spirit was the agent in bringing our version of time into being at the command of the Godhead.
HTH
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Keeping everyone up to snuff, self included, while breathing in the fumes of failure
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cliffdweller
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# 13338
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Posted
Understood.
Even in your kind and conciliatory post, and hopefully not to take away at all from its gracious tone, I hear that default assumption that God is outside of time. I'm suggesting it's important for us to reconsider that assumption, for the reasons I outlined in the part you quoted.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
That's impossible cliffdweller. We're different species. So we must do something else. Together. All of us.
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Love wins
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
Parcheesi, perhaps? Twister? Gin rummy?
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Snuffy:
As I understand it He (God, fully outside time), and we (fully inside that version of time that depends on the rotation of the spheres that are important to us, especially while we are on one of them!) relate to God (the Father) through the person of the Godhead who subjected Himself to our measure of time for our sakes.
But the God fully outside time idea breaks down in that it isn't just through God becoming man that God relates within our time frame.
There's creation, Abraham, the Exodus and giving the law, the Judean monarchy, the exile and return. All revaluations of God in a time frame. The fact that God shows himself within time over and over again makes me think that the fully in fully outside time is more than a little philosophically optimistic.
We humans are inside time, I'll give you that. Unfortunately as we are inside time seeing an eternal perspective for us is impossible, and anything else is just philosophical speculation which does not affect the way we encounter God, which is within time.
The practical stuff, how we encounter God, is what is important.
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