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oldcelt
Guest
Infallible foreknowledge + creation = Causation Perfectly logical.
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fhansen
Guest
No, creating the other person is simply not the equivalent of determining his or her actions. And knowing his or her actions beforehand is simply having the benefit -or the misfortune-or whatever-of having foreknowledge. I can’t create a being and give it free will, or make it morally responsible; God can. IOW, whether or not God created us, and whether or not He foreknows our choices, we are responsible for our actions, for those choices.
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PumpkinCookie
Guest
We’re not saying that knowledge entails causality as a general truth, but rather that it applies to God specifically because of his omniscience, omnipotence, and his being the “first cause.”Knowledge doesn’t entail causality! No one has explained the mechanism by which it could. Insight isn’t equivalent to coercion…
No one is saying that God’s knowledge is the cause of everything. We’re saying that his infallible knowledge + the fact that he is solely primarily the cause for the continuous existence of absolutely everything makes him liable for all of the outcomes.
God’s knowledge isn’t causality, but his knowledge combined with his creative act is the source of his moral responsibility.
I don’t know how to make this any more clear.
I’m OK with God being this way because I reject 1) libertarian free will and 2) gratuitous evils. The rejection of those two things allows me (I think) to continue to believe in and praise an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God without doing violence to my intellect by believing something that is clearly contradictory and irrational.
However, if you want to maintain the idea that human beings have libertarian free will, then your God cannot be either omnipotent or omniscient. This is a well defined and much discussed problem with a pretty much uncontroversial conclusion. The fathers of the church did not believe in libertarian free will either. What your church teaches as “freedom” is much less robust than you might suppose. Our modern concept of “free will” is largely influenced by enlightenment era UK philosophers.
Also, if you want to maintain belief that there are gratuitous evils (like hell for instance) then you cannot also allege that God is omnibenevolent. I will be writing a new thread about this soon.
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Vico
Guest
The St. Thomas Aquinas position is called soft determinism (today): human beings are free in their actions, but they are determined to act by God. Freedom of choice is not removed by any characteristic of an individual, whether inborn or acquired. Summa Theologica I, Q83, 2.
newadvent.org/summa/1083.htm
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CHESTERTONRULES
Guest
You are just wrong.
You know as well as I do that you and I make choices all the time. We decide to follow God’s will, hopefully, most of the time, but not all the time. God would prefer that we always follow his will, but he let’s us choose.
Matt 23:37
Jerusalem, Jerusalem! She who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, yet you were not willing!
Ezekiel 33:11
Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways!
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fhansen
Guest
Just to be clear, you’re saying something different from what some others are saying here, who’re maintaining that man can have no free will at all if 1) God created everything, and 2) He foreknows everything that occurs. Your version, where human culpability is mitigated to one degree or another by virtue of our having a somewhat limited freedom, is not what everyone here is saying. Others are speaking of sheer determinism in every choice we make.
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tonyrey
Guest
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PumpkinCookie
Guest
OK sure yes. It does seem like they want to say that free will is totally incompatible with an omniscient, omnipotent creator God. I could be wrong, but it seems like they’re hinting at something similar to Sartre’s famous statement:
- If God exists, then I, Sartre, am not free to choose myself
- But I, Sartre, am free to choose myself
- Hence, God does not exist
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AyJSimon
Guest
You make choices, but you don’t author your choices. Can you choose to recognize these words as being written in a separate recognizable language rather than English?
To equate free will with simply ‘having options’ or just ‘making decisions’ to is to not understand what free will actually is.
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davidv
Guest
Please explain why making a choice is different from authoring a choice.
I don’t think this is meaningful question.
What is your understanding of what free will actually is?
This is the Church’s understanding.
CCC 1704:
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AyJSimon
Guest
But if your God is *both *the Creator of Everything and the Possessor of Perfect, Complete Foreknowledge (not one or the other, but both), then you have no logical room to claim free will.
Several people in this thread keep trying to argue with me by ignoring the complete picture. Saying things like “God having foreknowledge doesn’t mean we don’t have free will.” I agree with you. But that ignores half the argument. What you’ve done here is even stranger - taking both halves of the argument in turn, while ignoring the implications of putting them together. And they *must *be considered together - or find me a Christians who’s willing to concede that God didn’t create everything, or doesn’t have perfect foreknowledge.
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AyJSimon
Guest
You’re in a supermarket freezer aisle. In the cooler is a carton of vanilla ice cream and a carton of chocolate ice cream. To ‘make a choice’ is to select one or the other (or both, or neither). But to ‘author the choice’ is to be aware and to control all the antecedent causes in your mind that lead to make whatever choice you make.
Let’s say you choose vanilla. Why did you choose vanilla? Because you like it? Why do you like it? Because it tastes good? Why does it taste good? Do you choose to enjoy the taste of vanilla ice cream? Very soon, if not immediately, you’ll be forced to concede that you can’t even be aware, much less control, all the antecedent causes that ultimately lead you to the freezer aisle to pick up a carton of vanilla ice cream.
It is meaningful. If you purposefully focus your attention inward, I think an honest person begins to realize how much of the content of one’s consciousness is arising, absent any direct effort. Ever suddenly remember something that you couldn’t remember hours earlier (the name of a song, or where you left your car keys)? You’re thinking about something completely unrelated, and suddenly, there it is - popping up out of nowhere. First of all, isn’t it odd that you can’t force yourself to remember a specific fact that you clearly always knew (otherwise, how would you ever remember it)? And secondly, doesn’t the fact that the locations of your car keys just “appeared” in your memory suggest something about how little control you have over your own thoughts?
My question was an example of that. Even if you understand both English and German writing equally well, you would still be incapable of recognizing my words as being written in German.
Free will is the ability to author your choices - to choose what you choose.
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Richca
Guest
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davidv
Guest
Given this and your definition of authoring, this is a different free will than what it is in subject of this thread. This makes most of your argument irrelevant as it attacks a straw man.
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oldcelt
Guest
If, as a human being I, with absolute foreknowledge, create a machine that I know will run rampant and cause great harm…then I am morally responsible for that creation. It should never have been created…knowing what I knew in advance.
Should a lesser standard apply to a deity?
John
Should a lesser standard apply to a deity?
John
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AyJSimon
Guest
As far as I can see, everyone else’s definition of free will amounts to either just having options in the first place, or just choosing between those options without considering the antecedent causes of the choice. Neither of these amounts to free will in any practical sense, so the straw man isn’t the one I’m attacking.
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Richca
Guest
God created human beings in his own image and likeness. If God did not create any beings with a spiritual soul of intellect and free will after His own image, then there would be no creatures who could share in His beatitude for eternity. This is what God offers mankind, eternal life and happiness and a share in God’s beatitude for all eternity. Would you rather not be offered this but rather be as a lifeless rock? God knew by creating intelligent creatures with free will he was taking somewhat of a gamble as it were, some would reject their creator and would rather live in eternal misery and unhappiness. However, many would know, love and serve their creator and choose life and happiness and be blessed with eternal beatitude. I, for one, am very happy that I have a chance to live eternally with God and live happily forever.
The evil we see and experience in the world is not God’s doing but man’s. Yet, even from our evil doings, God draws good out of it and so we sing “O happy fault, that earned for us so great, so glorious a redeemer.” Your view of the world and of God, apparently, is certainly not ours.
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davidv
Guest
Why do you think free will implies unlimited choices?
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AyJSimon
Guest
I didn’t say it did.
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davidv
Guest
That is what is implied when you say you want to author your own choices.
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