Free will and evil

[TOmNossor]

AnAtheist:

Treating time like a spatial dimension is just a mathematical trick to make calculations easier. If one wants to use the Euclidean scalar product, the time axis has to be imaginary (mathematically - a space/time point = (ict,x,y,z) with i = sqrt(-1), c lightspeed, t time) for the space/time-vectors to be Lorentz-invariant. That’s special relativity.
Time has some intriguing properties, which are not fully understood yet. (Yet! We will in time.) Entropy and CPT-symmetry violation comes into my mind.
If we take gravity into account, our 3-dimensional space is folded into the 4th dimension, that makes at least another axis. Some unified theories postulate space to have 11 (or more) dimensions, but they are no way proven yet.

So God must be at least 6-dimensional by your analogy. Ok, you won’t have a problem with that .

I was once quite intrigued by string theory and m-theory (still am, but limited TIME you know) so I am familiar with what seemed to me to be dimensional explosions. I was not bright or patient enough to try to nail down the math such that it all became “real” to me so now I merely nod to the extra dimensions.

Concerning philosophy and theology, the characteristics of time have always seemed to be quite important to me. Nature abhors time travel (except for constant “walking” one way at a constant “speed”). The math seems to explode in many ways, predicting??? This produces a great deal of life characteristics and causality relationships that seem important to our mortal tutelage. We can neither have a “redo” nor recover “wasted” time.

In any case, while our current understanding of space-time suggests to us that time cannot be completely modeled by a fourth special dimension upon which the “police” require that those in mortal tutelage walk one way one speed; this is a useful model to conceptualize what it might be to rise into the fifth dimension and look down upon the three special dimensions marching down the fourth time dimension.

Our understanding of the world around us is imperfect and models are used such that we can get our hands around the experimental results we see. Our understanding of theology (be we Pope or Prophet) is likewise incomplete and models are used so that we may try to get our hands around the experimental (revealed) results we see (feel).

You seem to be intrigued by the rabbit hole that is physics. The rabbit hole that is theology and philosophy is many thousands of years deeper. For many years nobody pushed forward the excavation whose tools were the stopwatch and ruler, but philosophers have been excavating with the thought tools throughout recorded time.

Charity, TOm

 

[DuMaurier]

AnAtheist:

How does that fit to Iesaia 45:6-7 ?

The article on evil in the Catholic Encyclopedia gives a good overview on various theories. I think I agree most closely to that of Aquinas:

**Evil, according to St. Thomas, is a privation, or the absence of some good which belongs properly to the nature of the creature. There is therefore no “summum malum”, or positive source of evil, corresponding to the “summum bonum”, which is God; evil being not “ens reale” but only “ens rationis”–i.e. it exists not as an objective fact, but as a subjective conception; things are evil not in themselves, but by reason of their relation to other things, or persons. All realities are in themselves good; they produce bad results only incidentally; and consequently the ultimate cause of evil if fundamentally good, as well as the objects in which evil is found. Thus the Manichaean dualism has no foundation in reason. **

Evil is threefold, viz., “malum naturæ” (metaphysical evil), "culpæ" (moral), and “paenæ” (physical, the retributive consequence of “malum culpæ”). Its existence subserves the perfection of the whole; the universe would be less perfect if it contained no evil. Thus fire could not exist without the corruption of what it consumes; the lion must slay the *** in order to live, and if there were no wrong doing, there would be no sphere for patience and justice. God is said to be the author of evil in the sense that the corruption of material objects in nature is ordained by Him, as a means for carrying out the design of the universe; and on the other hand, the evil which exists as a consequence of the breach of Divine laws is in the same sense due to Divine appointment; the universe would be less perfect if its laws could be broken with impunity. Thus evil, in one aspect, i.e. as counter-balancing the deordination of sin, has the nature of good. But the evil of sin, though permitted by God, is in no sense due to him.; its cause is the abuse of free will by angels and men. It should be observed that the universal perfection to which evil in some form is necessary, is the perfection of this universe, not of any universe: metaphysical evil, that is to say, and indirectly, moral evil as well, is included in the design of the universe which is partially known to us; but we cannot say without denying the Divine omnipotence, that another equally perfect universe could not be created in which evil would have no place.**

newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm

 

[john654]

AnAtheist,

I don’t know why you are not being answered. The begining of wisdom is to FEAR God!
If you don’t obey God, Your right, you will end up in Hell. God won’t PUT you there, you will go because of your own pride. Right now the way it looks to me you have a pretty good chance of making it.

John

 

[AnAtheist]

john654:

I don’t know why you are not being answered. The begining of wisdom is to FEAR God!
If you don’t obey God, Your right, you will end up in Hell. God won’t PUT you there, you will go because of your own pride. Right now the way it looks to me you have a pretty good chance of making it.

That puts new words to my usual answer. It is not possible to fear or to obey something, which doesn’t exist for you. I should change it to “You cannot insert transitive verb here] something, which does not exist.”

If God existed and he has created this world in a way, that I must conclude from my nature (which he created as well) that he does not exist, and I am going to hell for that, which he created as well, then it is exactly the same as if he put me there actively, esp. when he knew all this beforehand. The theodicy problem is not solvable with an omniscient god, that’s why the Jews never tried it (afaik). Hence this lovely passage in Jesaja 45. God created EVERYTHING. Period. (Jewish opinion, not mine.)

 

[DuMaurier]

AnAtheist:

That puts new words to my usual answer. It is not possible to fear or to obey something, which doesn’t exist for you. I should change it to “You cannot insert transitive verb here] something, which does not exist.”

If God existed and he has created this world in a way, that I must conclude from my nature (which he created as well) that he does not exist, and I am going to hell for that, which he created as well, then it is exactly the same as if he put me there actively, esp. when he knew all this beforehand. The theodicy problem is not solvable with an omniscient god, that’s why the Jews never tried it (afaik). Hence this lovely passage in Jesaja 45. God created EVERYTHING. Period. (Jewish opinion, not mine.)

I’m not convinced it is through a person’s nature that he could deny the existence of God. The vast majority of people believe in some sort of higher being. I find that generally, the ones that don’t either suffered some sort of calamity in their lives or rely too heavily on the scientific method which wasn’t invented to guage the spiritual. So I think Aquinas’ analysis still holds.

I don’t mean to presume that applies to you but that’s what I’ve found when talking to non-believers in general. The militant ones seem to be mostly former fundamentalists and bible literalists.

 

[AnAtheist]

DuMaurier:

I’m not convinced it is through a person’s nature that he could deny the existence of God. The vast majority of people believe in some sort of higher being. I find that generally, the ones that don’t either suffered some sort of calamity in their lives or rely too heavily on the scientific method which wasn’t invented to guage the spiritual. So I think Aquinas’ analysis still holds.

I don’t mean to presume that applies to you but that’s what I’ve found when talking to non-believers in general. The militant ones seem to be mostly former fundamentalists and bible literalists.

Then I rely too heavily on science. :yup:

Former smokers are usualy more militant non-smokers than those, who have tried it. The converts are almost ever more fanatic than those who believed something from the cradle.

Taking the bible literally makes it easier to refute it.

 

[Carl]

Taking the bible literally makes it easier to refute it.

Refusing the Bible and Christ makes life miserable.

Ask the atheists who are in prison for life.

They also do not believe in free will. They (and their lawyers) blame their crimes on fate (bad parents, bad genes, or someone else) but never on themselves. They do not accept their sinfulness, as the Bible teaches literally. They are in complete denial because they deny there is Anyone against whom they could have sinned.

They have no hope either in this life or in the next.

A hopeless life is easy to refute. I could tell you many stories of atheist prisoners who finally made it to chapel as a way to refute their hopeless lives.

 

[Calbreese]

As a Trekkie, scientist, Catholic Researcher and screenwriter, I believe I may give some direction here. Dr. Duff’s “M” Theory does indeed have 11 dimensions. My research paper, which is at the Vatican Academy of Science, addresses our four dimensions, plus seven heavens - do the math. I faxed Micheal the specific Church views. But it is a great question. How does God get people with free will to love him? …Love them first, always and forever. God is unaffected by time, which is a given result of measured energy movement from the “Let There Be Light” start of our 3rd/4th dimension. Here is a tidbit of the movie treatment…IHS Daryl Gravitons, magnetism, divine light, soul/spirit interdimensional travel and tied Church and science together. Even Jacob’s ladder/seven heavens and Duff’s 11 dimensional supergravity “M” theory. It was a revelation to this UK Dr. of Physics.