What would be your reaction?

[Bagheera]

It is a contradiction only to those who lack Faith.

It is contradictory to you because you do not have Faith.

Sorry, this is exactly what all the snake-oil peddlers say to those they bamboozle into buying their “product”… “You need faith! You must trust me!”.

Remember that I said that Divine Logic trumphs human logic.

There is no “divine” logic. There is only one logic, and it is very simple.

1. A == A - everything is itself. (The law of identity)
2. A and not-A is always false. (The law of non-contradiction)
3. A or not-A is always true. (The law of excluded middle).
   And “usually” it is asserted that not even God can violate these laws.

You do not yet understand everything about the universe and never will, not even 1% of it. How in the world can you expect to understand God?

I am perfectly well qualified to understand what people **believe **and **say **about God. I can discern if their assertions are contradictory, and no amount of repetition will change those contradictions into “mysteries”.

On the basis of Faith, grounded on Divine Revelation. I told you that up front. We have access to the fact of God’s Omniscience through Divine Revelation.

Where and when did this ***PUBLIC ***divine revelation happened? I would like to see a set of independent proofs for that. And I mean ***REAL ***evidence…

 

[Paddy_Walker]

What you are adding or proving with your argument? What was said was a simple explanation showing that in the state of belief that God is aware of decision made by his creature, the future could be known from God preservative given the initial condition of creation in deterministic way. In another word, everything from God point of view is known in deterministic way which is what you believe. There is no room is left for God’s creatures in this point of view, since everybody fates is defined by the initial condition of creation. We however have serious objection on this point of view since we believe God would leave some room for his creatures so a creature could at least change his/her fate and that requires a redefinition of free will in which God does not know the outcome of decision made with a creature, otherwise we fall in the previous trap meaning that we have no control on our fates.

Are you sure you are not confusing knowledge and something else.
Some ancient prophets you could say had a sort of pre-determined fate. They must prophecy at least what they were meant to prophecy.

We believe, I think, that God knows all possibilities and outcomes and that mans work or purpose in this world is to co-operated with Gods will for him and do the works which were set aside for him to do from the moment of his creation or before…
From this point of view it is a co-operative effort of two wills. Everybody’s fate is not defined at creation, because time and co-operation and will is involved. Humans are designed to learn to align their own will with their creators with his assistance. So from our perspective it is an ongoing trial which may really go either way, but from Gods perspective the result is seen but not pre-determined by him.

 

[Bagheera]

The thread is again deteriorating into irrelevancies. I am restating the relevant point in a very concise format for those who wish to engage in a rational conversation:

B: Please make a prediction about my future action, where I can choose to perform either “X” or “not-X”. Currently I am inclined to choose “X”. What is your prediction?
G: It is simple. There is no future for me, I can see (in this unchanging, eternal now) that you will perform X. It is not really a “prediction”, from my point of view, I see the actual outcome.
B: Thank you. However, I did not perform “X” as of yet, so what you call “actual outcome” is only a “possible outcome” for me. As a matter of fact, I am contemplating to perform not-X. But, please, before I actually carry out this inclination, answer this: What does your “eternal, unchanging now” show NOW?

At this point the experiment “forks” into two possibilities.

#1:
G: Obviously, now it shows that you are going to perform “not-X”.
B: Aha. So your “eternal, unchangeable now” has changed?

#2:
G: It still shows that you are going to perform “X”.
B: Very well. So I am performing “not-X”. (B actually acts at this moment). What happened to you “eternal, unchanging now”?

Just think about it. And have fun!

 

[Back2Church]

Nonsense. Knowledge of the external reality MEANS to have a correct mental image of that external reality. In other words: “knowledge **reflects **the external reality”, which means that the reality is primary, the knowledge about it is secondary. It is getting very boring that I have to explain such elementary concepts.

I guess you didn’t finish reading the rest of the post where I further addressed this:

One might immediately say, "But in the very first line you said “God’s knowledge is dependent on the actual result,” and then you end with saying “God’s knowledge is not dependent on extra-divine things. That’s a contradiction!”

It definitely appears to be a contradiction on the surface, but it’s not. It’s simply a limitation with language. To say something like:
Bagheera;11246320:

I say that God’s knowledge of our actions is **contingent **

upon what we do.
is not very useful in itself. “God’s knowledge of our actions depends on our actions.” That’s like saying “The answer of 4 to the math problem 2 + 2 depends on the sum of 2 + 2.” The answer was 4 before the student adds 2 + 2 together. It was 4, it is 4, and it will always be 4. The reality of 4 being the sum of 2 + 2 did not come into existence when the first rational being figured out how to count and add. To say so is silly, because that would imply that 2 + 2 did not equal 4 until this primal mathematician caused it to be so.

In the same way we can say that God has all knowledge of extra-divine things. His knowledge is of everything and always has been.

If one insists that God’s knowledge of extra-divine things is dependent on those extra-divine things, because without those extra-divine things He would not have knowledge of them (only knowledge of the possibility of them), then it should be noted that this concept cannot be a source of contradiction for dogma #33. Obviously God cannot have knowledge of extra-divine things if those extra-divine things did not exists. He would have knowledge of their possibility, but not knowledge of their actuality.

But to claim this contradicts dogma #33 is to read something into this dogma that isn’t there. If this is the sense of dependence that dogma #33 was speaking about, then nothing could actually exist. Such an interpretation of this particular dogma only allows for God to have knowledge of possibilities and does not allow anything other than God to actually exist. Obviously the Catholic church does not believe in such an idea, so it can be understood that this is not the correct sense of the dogma. Therefore, dogma #33 is not contradicted.

At this point, I can foresee the objection of “How do you know what the sense of dependency in dogma #33 is intended to be? Perhaps you are wrong!” Indeed, a perfectly fine objection. The only way to answer it is to study the actual writings where this summarized dogma #33 is taken from. I’ll try to find the actual document(s) that establish(es) this dogma and post what I discover. Just don’t expect it any time soon, because I have kids, work, and tons of reading to do for school, so not very much free time.

 

[Peebo]

We can in fact argue on this too.

Go ahead

And what exactly happen when we die. Those who were Christian will have a new body and go to Heaven. What are you doing in Heaven? All mysteries become clear to you and you live with God in state of peace, love and harmony. This remind me the story of angles fall.

What has this to do with fallen angels??

And what is that God? To best of my knowledge there many state of believes each different from another, each have different God, and each promise the everlasting life with different type of gifts.

As you well know…this is a Catholic forum…so you know to “which” God I refer

Why it wont matter for you but matter for others?

No…if there is no God then it won’t matter for anyone…believer or non believer…we will no longer exist in any form

First, you can’t prove God nor disprove it. A defined God and creation however have to be consistent. The conflict of omniscience and free will which is subject of this thread is only one example.

I’m not trying to prove God…I don’t need to because I believe in him through faith…you are trying to prove that there is no God through your reasoning…many have also come to the conclusion that there is a God through their reasoning…that is not consistent with your reasoning…so your reasoning is not consistent

Either way, we are responsible for our fate and we can change it. To do so we have to first be critical on God we accepted as absolute truth, then creation including ourselves, otherwise we fall in trap of one belief as other fall in another trap each person thinks that she/he knows the absolute truth.

You said that right in that we are responsible for our fate…and we can change it…and so we can come to a conclusion either by faith…reasoning…or a combination of both…or…we can come to a conclusion by reasoning that it’s all a fairytale…that is for each of us to choose

I don’t think if God has such feeling and thought toward those who don’t believe God

If you don’t believe in God then there is no reason why you should care about what God thinks or feels about non believers one way or the other.

 

[Peebo]

oops…I posted my replies in the same post as Bahman

 

[Paddy_Walker]

The thread is again deteriorating into irrelevancies. I am restating the relevant point in a very concise format for those who wish to engage in a rational conversation:

B: Please make a prediction about my future action, where I can choose to perform either “X” or “not-X”. Currently I am inclined to choose “X”. What is your prediction?
G: It is simple. There is no future for me, I can see (in this unchanging, eternal now) that you will perform X. It is not really a “prediction”, from my point of view, I see the actual outcome.
B: Thank you. However, I did not perform “X” as of yet, so what you call “actual outcome” is only a “possible outcome” for me. As a matter of fact, I am contemplating to perform not-X. But, please, before I actually carry out this inclination, answer this: What does your “eternal, unchanging now” show NOW?

At this point the experiment “forks” into two possibilities.

#1:
G: Obviously, now it shows that you are going to perform “not-X”.
B: Aha. So your “eternal, unchangeable now” has changed?

#2:
G: It still shows that you are going to perform “X”.
B: Very well. So I am performing “not-X”. (B actually acts at this moment). What happened to you “eternal, unchanging now”?

Just think about it. And have fun!

I rather think that if you did ever manage to come face to face with God you would be thinking something completely different. Just an observation.

 

[jimmy]

I am still waiting for an answer to my post to bagheera about his misuse of contingency and about the parameters of the argument. He continues this argument even though his argument isn’t rational.

But here is another problem. Gods knowledge isn’t really under question in this ‘thought experiment’. The problem is more focused on your own knowledge of which one you will pick up and roll. If God knows what die you will roll, and that you will be contrarian if he reveals it to you, the problem isn’t with Gods knowledge but rather with your ability to recieve the knowledge or in the communication of the truth. God knows the truth, whether he is silent or not; the problem is on your end because you can’t hear the truth. Since you insist on acting contrarian, it is a problem with your comprehension of the truth.

But, of course I am assuming that you are infallible in your ability to act contrarian. No matter what God says, you will do the opposite, and nothing (including coincidence, divine will, conversion disorder, and etc.) can prevent you from being contrarian.

 

[Peebo]

Perhaps the greater profundity is this…Catholics do not care whether you can perform X,Y,or Z…your assumptions are irrational and irrelevant to those whom God has revealed himself…nothing else needs to be said.:sad_bye:

 

[Hypnotoad]

I think the encounter would have probably gone something like this:

G: No
S: (just finished giving consent to the temptation to put God to the test.)

 

[MPat]

And you forget that one prerequisite was that God does not “mess” with the agent’s free will. As such your “solution” is worthless, since you changed the goalposts.

Well, has it been defined what “messing with free will” mean…? Anyway, the example was “tongue-in-cheek” (as you might have guessed) and I did agree that “patching up” to avoid those specific problems is possible.

Up until this point the analysis is correct. The error comes in the next segment. All we need is a prediction of anything, and the freedom of the agent to either follow the prediction or not. No, this is not “smoke and mirrors”.

Er, at this point you only claim you need “prediction” and “freedom”. But you have yet to demonstrate how the “riddle” without them is any different from the “riddle” with them.

Oops! This is incorrect. We do live in reality, where there is a “delay” between the prediction and the action. That “latency” cannot be removed. The agent’s action is contingent upon the prediction - this is the fundamental point of the exercise.

What exactly would change if there was no latency? We still find out what the “action” will be the moment we find out about the “prediction”. Anyway, at the point you were citing I was explicitly saying that the logical inverter in question still has latency (it was removed on the next step). The logic inverter only lacks free will, doing just what “S” was trying to do: give a value contrary to the one that had been predicted. “S” in your example wasn’t trying to do anything else. So, what thing relevant to the “riddle” is truly different after this step…?

 

[Bagheera]

Er, at this point you only claim you need “prediction” and “freedom”. But you have yet to demonstrate how the “riddle” without them is any different from the “riddle” with them.

Why? First, it is against the rules to answer a question with another question. And you keep changing the goalposts. In post #182 I made a short summary of the problem. The problem is that contradiction between the freedom of the agent and the alleged “eternal, unchanging now”, where God supposedly “dwells” in.

The “latency” does not even have to be a temporal delay. It is simply a cause-effect relationship between the prediction and the actual outcome of the agent. You cannot remove the causal relationship. Nor can you remove the freedom of the agent to either comply or go against the prediction. Now, if you wish to give me your thoughts about that “eternal, unchanging now”, I will be happy to read it. If, not, then bother to reply.

 

[Bahman]

Not at all. It is true that God is guiding all creation to the end he has in mind for it and he does this through the laws and powers he has created in their natures. But when his intelligent creatures are involved, there is nothing " deterministic " about their actions. They are free to act as they choose. But God has made allowances for our disobedience and failures. His Plan will Infallibly be completed according to his Will.

Creation behaves in deterministic manner from God point of view and as a result is deterministic from everybody point of view who believe on omniscience of God in strong form, meaning that God knows actions of beings in all given situations. I don’t quite understand your logic, in one hand you say that God knows how the creation evolves from eternity to eternity. This knowledge is not dependent on our actions since God knows our actions in every situations. This lead to a picture of creation that God could easily in deterministic manner know the evolution of creation since the only sole variable that could change the deterministic picture is our free will which is deterministic from God point of view.

If one accepts the theory of evolution you are correct. God is guiding evolution to the ends he has in mind. Not quite sure what you mean by saying, " The things however in this picture depends on initial state of creation. " It may seem rather confused to us, but God’s Plan is effective from the very moment of creation ( in whatever " confused " state this may have been.). .

I meant that any stage of creation could be predicted from initial condition of creation since God knows the actions of all being in given situation. This leads to a deterministic picture as I described.

I realize you are having a problem. Its a matter of Faith and you don’t have it. But you have to admit, to those who have Faith it makes sense. Our Faith is based on Divine Revelation and we know that God does not lie. It makes sense to us to believe what he has revealed of himself.

I understand your point about the faith but a faith has to be consistent with logic. All I am saying is the omniscience of God leads to a deterministic picture, whether you like it or not.

 

[Bahman]

Are you sure you are not confusing knowledge and something else.
Some ancient prophets you could say had a sort of pre-determined fate. They must prophecy at least what they were meant to prophecy.

All the argument is around the fact that if actions of being is known from God point of view then creation evolves in a deterministic manner from God point of view as such it is deterministic in its nature.

We believe, I think, that God knows all possibilities and outcomes and that mans work or purpose in this world is to co-operated with Gods will for him and do the works which were set aside for him to do from the moment of his creation or before…
From this point of view it is a co-operative effort of two wills. Everybody’s fate is not defined at creation, because time and co-operation and will is involved. Humans are designed to learn to align their own will with their creators with his assistance. So from our perspective it is an ongoing trial which may really go either way, but from Gods perspective the result is seen but not pre-determined by him.

To have such a beautiful picture one has to accept that God does not know the action of beings with free will, otherwise the concept of co-operative effort of two wills is lost and beings in the picture that God has omniscience are reduced to agents who just experience events, in another word they cannot even change their fates etc.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

I suppose that through all of this most people are assuming that God would answer.
But it appears more likely than not that an omniscient being who obviously knew you planned to chose the opposite of whatever he said would not bother to answer you, though he would know what you would do, so his knowledge is not dependent on what you think but on what he wills to happen.

 

[Bahman]

What has this to do with fallen angels??

Simple, angels fell so you could also. That sounds like a cycle.

As you well know…this is a Catholic forum…so you know to “which” God I refer

You didn’t answer my question namely: To best of my knowledge there many state of believes each different from another, each have different God, and each promise the everlasting life with different type of gifts.

No…if there is no God then it won’t matter for anyone…believer or non believer…we will no longer exist in any form

Your have conservative way of looking at thing. Our argument is simple, you cannot sum up the free will with omniscience. Please read #192

I’m not trying to prove God…I don’t need to because I believe in him through faith…you are trying to prove that there is no God through your reasoning…many have also come to the conclusion that there is a God through their reasoning…that is not consistent with your reasoning…so your reasoning is not consistent.

We were not trying to prove that there is no God as I stated before.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

All the argument is around the fact that if actions of being is known from God point of view then creation evolves in a deterministic manner from God point of view as such it is deterministic in its nature.

To have such a beautiful picture one has to accept that God does not know the action of beings with free will, otherwise the concept of co-operative effort of two wills is lost and beings in the picture that God has omniscience are reduced to agents who just experience events, in another word they cannot even change their fates etc.

He can know the action of beings without controlling their actions. He can accept their free actions even if they are against what he wills.
Say, if I know what you are going to write next that doesn’t mean that I have written it or that I want you to write it and if you think about what I want then you might write what I will you to write. But you are free not to write it. If I determined from your creation what you should write then you would have only the appearance of free will. But if I know what you will write from the moment of your creation then you have determined with your own will what you should write. But that doesn’t mean that I know you won’t write something else under special conditions. But, then I might intervene in your life and see if you willingly change what you will. But then, either, I might wait for you to will that I will intervene. And I will.
It isn’t pre-determined because you are free from the beginning. But you also operate under types of feed-back loops in time. And time is something which never existed before. It did not exist when all there was, you might say, was will, his will. And whatever was willed without time was what happened. His will for you is one thing. Your will for yourself is another thing. But then we have thrown in this new property called time which creates a will which is constantly changing. Now his will cannot change, but yours can. Where it stops you don’t know. Its why catholics pray for a good death. So that we stop, that is, our lives stop, at the most advantageous step for us. God knows that there is one and God knows there isn’t one and because of this wildcard, time, it means we can co-operate with what he wills and still remain free.

 

[Bahman]

He can know the action of beings without controlling their actions. He can accept their free actions even if they are against what he wills.
Say, if I know what you are going to write next that doesn’t mean that I have written it or that I want you to write it and if you think about what I want then you might write what I will you to write. But you are free not to write it. If I determined from your creation what you should write then you would have only the appearance of free will. But if I know what you will write from the moment of your creation then you have determined with your own will what you should write. But that doesn’t mean that I know you won’t write something else under special conditions. But, then I might intervene in your life and see if you willingly change what you will. But then, either, I might wait for you to will that I will intervene. And I will.
It isn’t pre-determined because you are free from the beginning. But you also operate under types of feed-back loops in time. And time is something which never existed before. It did not exist when all there was, you might say, was will, his will. And whatever was willed without time was what happened. His will for you is one thing. Your will for yourself is another thing. But then we have thrown in this new property called time which creates a will which is constantly changing. Now his will cannot change, but yours can. Where it stops you don’t know. Its why catholics pray for a good death. So that we stop, that is, our lives stop, at the most advantageous step for us. God knows that there is one and God knows there isn’t one and because of this wildcard, time, it means we can co-operate with what he wills and still remain free.

We are afraid that the concept of omniscience leads to determinism following the below argument:

1. God does know all states of creation from eternity to eternity.
2. This means, given creation in a given instant God does know what would be the state of creation in later instant.
3. Determinism means that every state of creation is the inevitable consequence of antecedent state of creation.
4. Summing premises 3 and 4 one could conclude that creation evolves in deterministic way from God point of view since otherwise it conflicts with omniscience of God.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

We are afraid that the concept of omniscience leads to determinism following the below argument:

1. God does know all states of creation from eternity to eternity.
2. This means, given creation in a given instant God does know what would be the state of creation in later instant.
3. Determinism means that every state of creation is the inevitable consequence of antecedent state of creation.
4. Summing premises 3 and 4 one could conclude that creation evolves in deterministic way from God point of view since otherwise it conflicts with omniscience of God.

The words that stand out are antecedent, evolves, and deterministic.

From a plant life’s point of view your argument gets no argument from me. The plant is created from eternity and returns to its eternal state after evolving in its deterministic way through all the antecedent states of creation.

Plants have no will of their own, however, so all of the above happens as arranged.

However a creature with its own will within creation causes an apparent problem.
The problem is that;

1. You know already that you have free will.
2. You know already that the plants life is deterministic.
3. Your brain is unable to comprehend any resolution of both of these facts.

I imagine a sort of relativistic solution. In relativity a thing is at rest and not at rest simultaneously. It is not possible to resolve both states into one answer encompassing both. At least not in your problem.

But in a relativistic way God could always know your decision even though your decision can be freely changed. He knows it because of his omniscience in a relativistic way knows the final state of your will as your will changes.

 

[MPat]

Why? First, it is against the rules to answer a question with another question.

Against the “rules”? What “rules”?

And you keep changing the goalposts.

No, I am clarifying the same objection.

In post #182 I made a short summary of the problem. The problem is that contradiction between the freedom of the agent and the alleged “eternal, unchanging now”, where God supposedly “dwells” in.

Yes, you did restate your “riddle” in a more simple way. I am claiming that it is possible to state it in an even more simple way and that both “freedom” and “eternal, unchanging now” can be dispensed with.

In other words, I claim that your “riddle” can be simplified to “Predict the value from the set {0, 1} that the logic inverter will/would output after being given the prediction.”. Or “Find such a value A from the set {0, 1}, for which it would be true that A = not A.”.

Do you claim that such restatement actually does change something essential?

The “latency” does not even have to be a temporal delay. It is simply a cause-effect relationship between the prediction and the actual outcome of the agent. You cannot remove the causal relationship.

It certainly does stay in my restatement. The output of the inverter definitely does depend on the (name removed by moderator)ut.

Nor can you remove the freedom of the agent to either comply or go against the prediction.

Why? Isn’t only the “freedom” to go against the prediction essential for your “riddle”? After all, if you comply, there is nothing to solve.

And the logic inverter certainly has the “freedom” to go against the prediction.

Now, if you wish to give me your thoughts about that “eternal, unchanging now”, I will be happy to read it. If, not, then bother to reply.

Wasn’t it “against the rules” to “answer the question with a question”…?

So, is your “riddle” any different after my restatement in any relevant way?