Soul does not need sustainer

[Gorgias]

Because of the paradox I raised.

There’s no paradox here, STT.

Here’s the claim you’re making:

• If God’s divine knowledge is eternal, then it exists apart from human interaction with that knowledge.
• However, if humans knew God’s foreknowledge, then they’d be able to falsify it by changing what God “knows” they’d do.
• Therefore, God’s knowledge cannot be eternal.

You claim that this is a paradox. It isn’t. It depends on a conditional – “if humans knew God’s foreknowledge.” Humans don’t have access to God’s foreknowledge. Since they do not, therefore the second claim does not occur – that is, humans are unable to falsify God’s “knowledge” since they have no access to it. Therefore, your case includes a counterfactual, and you cannot appeal to the counterfactual to prove your case.

Let’s try another example, to help you understand why your case doesn’t hold up to scrutiny:

• Germany is the top-rated international soccer team in the world.
• If Gorgias had the talent of Beckham, he would lead the U.S. squad to international victory.
• Therefore, Germany isn’t the top-rated squad.

Wait! That’s a paradox! Germany is both the top-rated squad and not the top-rated squad?!?

No… there’s no paradox here: it is not the case that I have any soccer talent whatsoever. Therefore, I do not lead the U.S. to victory, and Germany’s spot as world’s best is secure.

Your ‘paradox’ has the same characteristics: it presents a counterfactual, and then you attempt to use that counterfactual to ground your argument. It just doesn’t work.

Yes, it comes to discussion if God has not foreknowledge and requires knowledge to sustain the creation. The problem is that you don’t accept the paradox.

No – since there is no paradox, there is no problem. That’s only a problem for you, it seems…

 

[STT]

There’s no paradox here, STT.

Here’s the claim you’re making:

• If God’s divine knowledge is eternal, then it exists apart from human interaction with that knowledge.
• However, if humans knew God’s foreknowledge, then they’d be able to falsify it by changing what God “knows” they’d do.
• Therefore, God’s knowledge cannot be eternal.

You claim that this is a paradox. It isn’t. It depends on a conditional – “if humans knew God’s foreknowledge.” Humans don’t have access to God’s foreknowledge. Since they do not, therefore the second claim does not occur – that is, humans are unable to falsify God’s “knowledge” since they have no access to it. Therefore, your case includes a counterfactual, and you cannot appeal to the counterfactual to prove your case.

We could have access to God’s knowledge through prophecy or when we are in Heaven with Him. We can simply ask. Lack of response is the sign of weakness.

Let’s try another example, to help you understand why your case doesn’t hold up to scrutiny:

• Germany is the top-rated international soccer team in the world.
• If Gorgias had the talent of Beckham, he would lead the U.S. squad to international victory.
• Therefore, Germany isn’t the top-rated squad.

Wait! That’s a paradox! Germany is both the top-rated squad and not the top-rated squad?!?

No… there’s no paradox here: it is not the case that I have any soccer talent whatsoever. Therefore, I do not lead the U.S. to victory, and Germany’s spot as world’s best is secure.

Your ‘paradox’ has the same characteristics: it presents a counterfactual, and then you attempt to use that counterfactual to ground your argument. It just doesn’t work.

I am afraid that your example is not a paradox at all. You either have the talent of Beckham or not. If you do then US is top team otherwise it is not. The first premise in fact not always true and depends on whether you are good enough or not. Where is the paradox?

No – since there is no paradox, there is no problem. That’s only a problem for you, it seems…

It is a paradox.

 

[Aloysium]

:twocents:

Our spiritual soul is eternal, becoming itself through our choices in time.

The future exists as a possibility, actualized in the moment we decide.
Our actions in the moment fix our past, which is unchangeable but forgivable.
We experience a past-present-future by virtue of our being finite beings centred on the eternal Now of God’s infinite compassion.
The trajectory of our lives, which is determined by ourselves, is held in God’s loving hands.

God is the Ground of our being, this very moment, here and now, as is every here and now.

God’s omniscience appears in the form of foreknowledge in our journey through life.
Just as lines come together as they extend into the horizon, as the sun is seen to rise and set, as we cannot discern whether it is our train or the one next to us that is moving, the impression of foreknowledge arises relatively to where we are in the time-line our lives. God simply knows all.

The so-called paradox that keeps repeating itself boils down to the idea that we can do something that is not what we do - absurdity.

 

[Vico]

Well, I am raising a question against omniscient. Do you understand it? Do you want that we work on it?

Key ideas for such a discussion are the meaning of free will and of omniscience.

Fr. Vincent Serpa wrote about free will in mankind and the omniscience of God:

There is nothing to reconcile. Because you know that the sun will be in the sky tomorrow doesn’t mean that you will have caused it to be there! Even though God already knows what our free choices will be in the future, our choices are still ours and are still free. If our free choices change how the future will be, God already knows that and has known it for all eternity.

 

[STT]

Key ideas for such a discussion are the meaning of free will and of omniscience.

Fr. Vincent Serpa wrote about free will in mankind and the omniscience of God:

There is nothing to reconcile. Because you know that the sun will be in the sky tomorrow doesn’t mean that you will have caused it to be there! Even though God already knows what our free choices will be in the future, our choices are still ours and are still free. If our free choices change how the future will be, God already knows that and has known it for all eternity.

This argument is correct and I understand it. My paradox however deal with completely different situation. Supposed that you are in a situation that you can ask God about your future decision, for example you are in Heaven. You can of course do opposite of what it is revealed to you which this leads to a contradiction.

 

[Vico]

This argument is correct and I understand it. My paradox however deal with completely different situation. Supposed that you are in a situation that you can ask God about your future decision, for example you are in Heaven. You can of course do opposite of what it is revealed to you which this leads to a contradiction.

That event of the act of will of the person is ordered before the knowledge of it by that person and that event cannot be changed.

 

[STT]

That event of the act of will of the person is ordered before the knowledge of it by that person and that event cannot be changed.

We have free will in another word we are uncaused-cause. We can of course change our decision if we want to do contrary to what God tells us otherwise you face with a weird situation: you want to do something but you can’t.

 

[Vico]

We have free will in another word we are uncaused-cause. We can of course change our decision if we want to do contrary to what God tells us otherwise you face with a weird situation: you want to do something but you can’t.

God is an uncaused cause unlike the causes creatures. Creatures receive their existence from exterior principle.

 

[STT]

God is an uncaused cause unlike the causes creatures. Creatures receive their existence from exterior principle.

Do you believe that you have free will? If yes, then this means that you can change the chain of causality whenever you have options. That is not possible if your act is not uncaused-cause.

 

[Vico]

Do you believe that you have free will? If yes, then this means that you can change the chain of causality whenever you have options. That is not possible if your act is not uncaused-cause.

Will has various definitions. Also regarding causes, per St. Thomas Aquinas, there are four types of causes – from Aristotle – first two are internal and the second two are external: material, formal, efficient, final which answer the question of why for the matter, the form, the source, and the end, respectively.

For the will to be free the will must not be acting of necessity. For internal causality, of necessity the will follows upon reason. The will has no necessity in the order of efficient causality, but does have necessity for final causality… The general tendency toward the good is not free since it is determined necessarily. However, no particular means is necessary for attaining goodness or happiness so there is freedom. The free will chooses specific acts after it chooses to act at all.

Modern Catholic Dictionary

FREE WILL. The power of the will to determine itself and to act of itself, without compulsion from within or coercion from without. It is the faculty of an intelligent being to act or not act, to act this way or another way, and is therefore essentially different from the operations of irrational beings that merely respond to a stimulus and are conditioned by sensory objects

 

[STT]

Will has various definitions. Also regarding causes, per St. Thomas Aquinas, there are four types of causes – from Aristotle – first two are internal and the second two are external: material, formal, efficient, final which answer the question of why for the matter, the form, the source, and the end, respectively.

For the will to be free the will must not be acting of necessity. For internal causality, of necessity the will follows upon reason. The will has no necessity in the order of efficient causality, but does have necessity for final causality… The general tendency toward the good is not free since it is determined necessarily. However, no particular means is necessary for attaining goodness or happiness so there is freedom. The free will chooses specific acts after it chooses to act at all.

Modern Catholic Dictionary

FREE WILL. The power of the will to determine itself and to act of itself, without compulsion from within or coercion from without. It is the faculty of an intelligent being to act or not act, to act this way or another way, and is therefore essentially different from the operations of irrational beings that merely respond to a stimulus and are conditioned by sensory objects

Is decision uncaused-cause?

 

[Vico]

Is decision uncaused-cause?

There is a distinction between freedom of will and freedom of action – free will is necessary for the performance of free actions.

In a series of efficient causes, the cause of a member of the series is the member before it, so if there was no first cause in the series, then there would be no series at all. The first a efficient cause is God, the uncaused cause. God is the cause of the fact of freedom for his created agents but the agents have freedom to act.

 

[STT]

There is a distinction between freedom of will and freedom of action – free will is necessary for the performance of free actions.

These thing we know.

In a series of efficient causes, the cause of a member of the series is the member before it, so if there was no first cause in the series, then there would be no series at all. The first a efficient cause is God, the uncaused cause. God is the cause of the fact of freedom for his created agents but the agents have freedom to act.

We are not part of a chain of cause. We are not machine. We can break the chain of causality.

Again, is decision uncaused-cause?

 

[davidv]

These thing we know.

We are not part of a chain of cause. We are not machine. We can break the chain of causality.

Again, is decision uncaused-cause?

No

 

[STT]

No

Therefore you cannot break the chain of causality hence you are a machine.

 

[Vico]

These thing we know.

We are not part of a chain of cause. We are not machine. We can break the chain of causality.

Again, is decision uncaused-cause?

Yes, in the sense that you mean it it is, because it not of necessity. However your view is not in agreement with Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Christianity does not accept emanation as described by Alfarabi and later Arabic philosophers. Emanationism is, per the Catholic Church a heresy. However, since this thread is not specific to Catholic theology, it is an unusual discussion.

 

[STT]

Yes, in the sense that you mean it it is, because it not of necessity. However your view is not in agreement with Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.

They were wrong.

 

[Vico]

They were wrong.

See the update to my last post. Note that Catholic theology relies on revealed truth not intellectual argumentation, although there are attempt to describe those truths after the fact. The Holy Spirit gives infallibility to the Church on matters of faith and morals.

 

[STT]

Christianity does not accept emanation as described by Alfarabi and later Arabic philosophers. Emanationism is, per the Catholic Church a heresy.

What is emnationism?

However, since this thread is not specific to Catholic theology, it is an unusual discussion.

This thread is related to Catholic theology. Where do you think that it is unrelated?

 

[Vico]

What is emnationism?

This thread is related to Catholic theology. Where do you think that it is unrelated?

Thread is under: Apologetics > Philosophy

Apologetics is not specific to Catholic.