He can say that of course, in fact he can correctly identify every individual who will choose to make their decision contingent upon and inverse to Gods prediction and inform each of them that they have been as going to do that in advance.
And, of course, a question about a conflict between God’s omniscience and His gift of free will is likewise “nonsensical by its very nature.” At best, it demonstrates that your concept of free will as ‘desire + action’ is what leads to a contradiction. (After all, if free will simply means ‘desire’, then you can desire all day long not to do what God predicted, and yet, without causing harm to your free will, it can happen that God’s prediction is seen to occur. Therefore, it’s only your need to perceive free will as including completed action that leads to the dilemma.
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Is that the best you’ve got? OK, then: “It does not show that God’s knowledge is contingent upon Tyrion’s hypothesized action.” Better?I hope you can see the irony in your response: that’s what many of us have been telling you all along – just saying “I will choose X since God predicted Y” does not ‘make it so’! Thanks for finally admitting it!
God says; there is no book on my desk; its title is The Bible.…They say that God knows not only what exists, but also what could exist. To illustrate how nonsensical this proposition is, consider: “there is no book on my desk. What IS its title?” Not: "what could be its title?, rather “what IS”. If God could “know something that does not exist”, then there would be a specific answer, giving that title. But this is nonsense! If there is no book on my desk, it has no title! And as such God cannot know it.
Now this is obvious. (Yet I wonder if someone will try to argue against it…
Tyrion, I just wanted to highlight this part. For two reasons, firstly it is incorrect, there IS a correct answer. You are asking God to describe a future event, in the case of “A” or “B” there are only two potential answers, if you had two people guessing at this one of them would have to be right.
The point is that there are infinitely many POSSIBLE answers, all depending upon the decison of the person with free will. But as long as we wait for that future moment to roll around, none of those possible answers are “correct” - in the sense that they conform to reality.
The actual question is nothing like that. It does not ask for the “number of the sides of a square triangle”, nor does it ask “what exists to the north from the North Pole”. It is a legitimate question, which cannot be answered since the decision is not made yet, and since any “prediction” can be invalidated by selecting yet another possible outcome - of which there are infinitely many.
That is the ONLY sensible definition of free will. There are a few reasons for this. First, your proposed “free will” can only be eliminated by total brainwashing - as described in the last sentence of 1984: “He loved Big Brother”.And, of course, a question about a conflict between God’s omniscience and His gift of free will is likewise “nonsensical by its very nature.” At best, it demonstrates that your concept of free will as ‘desire + action’ is what leads to a contradiction. (After all, if free will simply means ‘desire’, then you can desire all day long not to do what God predicted, and yet, without causing harm to your free will, it can happen that God’s prediction is seen to occur. Therefore, it’s only your need to perceive free will as including completed action that leads to the dilemma.
but there is a correct answer, don’t assume that because you are limited that then an infinite God must be limited.
C’mon now – now I know you’re Serious, back from being banned. You’ve quoted him verbatim, a second time!
LOL! In fact, that’s precisely the answer! We do not necessarily have the perspective – the omniscence, if you will – to see how the negatives that proceed from evil measure up as compared to the positives of free will – but God does. Therefore, ‘preventing mayhem’ is precisely what God is not in the business of! And no, in our context here, there is no ‘flak’ that I get for expressing this position… except for you, from whom the only ‘flak’ is bald assertion and never proof. I can handle that kind of ‘flak’…
Consider a circle on a computer screen. It appears circular, but really, it is composed of numerous pixels, each a square. So that is a square circle.
You contradict yourself, in a single sentence. Bravo! :clapping:
Um, no. If you look at the “circle” on the computer screen and zoom in, you will see it is not in fact a circle:
All I can say here is that you have absolutely no idea what exotic matter is (despite the link).
Finally, it seems you understand the difference! So you admit that Tyrion’s question is both entirely different from and far more interesting than, “what answer will not be given?”.
What you fail to grasp, probably because of your atheism, is that God can also answer correctly, those who choose oppositely of God’s prediction.
Neither do you. Despite your degree in physics. No one has ever constructed an object out of exotic matter. We don’t know what its potential properties are, yet. And, God can do anything.
It only proves that great minds think alike…
We cannot “make” exotic matter. We have never observed exotic matter and probably never will since, for the most part, they are the negative solutions to equations that are disregarded in most cases because of their intrinsically unphysical properties (negative values of scalars which can never be less than 0 by definition).
If you can demonstrate the logical impossibility of God constructing an object to my stated specifications, I will change my mind accordingly.
Please read what I wrote again. I stated that God cannot do what is logically impossible in response to your statement that God can do anything.
You mean they think while wearing blinders so thick that it’d take a welding torch to cut them off?