Why did God create me if he knew I would spend an eternity in hell?

[Candide_West]

No. He does so by picking a starting point, …the adult is arrived at by the choices that the soul makes.

As above.

Which happens to be the person. When the person chooses good or evil, it is the person who chooses not God.

Again you have re-introduced your assumption of free will. To be accurate here you should have started this with “IF a person has free will, THEN…”

Well, as I keep saying, you have failed to establish that. *All you’ve managed to do is something like blame the railway corporation for the person who jumped on the tracks because if there was no track to jump off then the person would not have jumped off the tracks. Totally absurd.

Well, it would be if I had done something like that. But I haven’t. So it isn’t. I’ve been pretty specific and clear in what I have said, so if you really think I’ve said something like this. Then by all means identify where and draw the correlation for me.

Which all happens to be caused by the person, not God.

Again, that is your assumption. Not the conclusion.*

The end result which was done by the person so therefore he was responsible for his actions.

Again, that should be “IF he has free will…”

Exactly. And if he never interfered with the internal workings of a persons thoughts, or coerced him to act in a certain way, then the person acted freely. Therefore the person has free will.

Wrong. This is the second of the two errors I mentioned. And is just as major as the first. If you assume that the only way free will can be an illusion is for God to directly control the mind of a person then obviously if God doesn’t do this then we have free will. BUT that assumption is wrong. God does not need to directly interfere with an individuals thoughts in order to make that persons free will an illusion.

To be clear, I am not and have never assumed that God does any twiddling with peoples mental functions. That would be assuming the conclusion (as you have done in error 1). What I am doing is showing that EVEN IF God doesn’t twiddle with peoples brains, BUT does have the four specified characteristics. THEN free will is an illusion.*

NOT (as you appear to think) “IF God has the four characteristics, THEN he twiddles with peoples brains.”*

Can you explain to me how changing the epicenter of an earthquake would change a person’s decision to help the disaster victims or to end one’s life? *I mean beyond pure speculation. You need to show that if the epicentre is in point A this will unquestionably move Person A to suicide but if it were in Point B this will completely logically move Person A to help.

Ok, this is rather obvious in truth, but I’ll lay it out anyway. Let’s say God moved the epicentre 500 miles away from where Person A lives. Are you saying he would still get up in the morning and after surveying the total lack of any damage be so appalled he’d kill himself because of it? No, clearly not. What if the guys own house was the epicentre and he was killed in the earthquake itself, would he still commit suicide? Clearly not. What if he survived but had a broken leg? Climbing those stairs to kill himself might be tricky, yes? What if he was fine but there was not a single standing building high enough to commit suicide from, he’d probably not jump off one then, right? What if the epicentre was moved so that his next door neighbour had survived instead of died and persuaded him to help her rescue people? What if…? What if…? What if…?

So we can safely conclude that any one of hundreds (probably millions actually) of different combinations of effects could result for Person A depending on where the epicentre was.

All of these permutations would of course be visible to God. In advance. And again with Gods omniscience he would know for certainty which epicentre location would lead to exactly which consequence. After all he can’t help but know. He’s omniscient.*

So no, I can’t say which exact hypothetical location of epicentre of your hypothetical earthquake would lead to your hypothetical person jumping off a building or following any of the other options. But obviously God would be able to.

Same fallacy yet again. *How exactly does moving the epicentre change Person B from a suicide case to a food delivery service angel? Where is the connection there.

I have no idea, but God clearly would (being omniscient and all). As I said all permutations must be visible to God. Clearly as described above many of those options would not involve suicide.

Third illogical conclusion this far in your post. *How exactly do you know that this is what God would have thought?

As I said, he MUST have known. Because he’s omniscient.*

 

[Candide_West]

How exactly do you know that for a fact?

I don’t, in fact I don’t even believe it, however it follows logically from God having the specified characteristics. So IF God exists and has those characteristics. THEN the above is true.*

And here again, you fall again into that error that David accused you of –equating knowledge with causation.

Not at all, I am equating cause with cause.

Remember, the only way that God would have caused this person to kill himself is if He had whispered into this man : “kill yourself”, *and then overwhelmed his will such that he has no other option but to kill himself.

Wrong. This is repeating your error 2 again. As long as you assume that this is the only thing that means we don’t have free will then this conversation is doomed to go in circles. I am NOT suggesting God does anything of the sort. In fact I’m assuming he NEVER does this. And even so we still end at the conclusion that free will is an illusion.

But remember, you said earlier in your post that you are not saying that God does that at all.

Correct. I’m assuming God never does that.

So therefore, if God did not do those things then how exactly has God caused him to not freely choose to kill himself.

With the logic I have already given this should be quite apparent. But let’s use the example I started out with rather than running multiple threads at this. We’ll get to this, it’ll just take a little longer. But as they say, slow and steady wins the race.

Because as you said before, He did not influence the man’s thoughts not over rode this man’s choices.

Right, and the chaps “free-will” was still an illusion…*

…

How do you know that A could have done differently with a change to the epicentre. *You are making major assumptions here.

Well above I have given some of the possible permutations from moving the epicentre. Obviously God would have an infinite array of permutations available to him while I only have time to write a few. In any case it is clearly not much of an assumption that changing the location of the epicentre of an earthquake changes who and how it effects.*

Furthermore, “could have” does not mean “would have”. It seem you are unable to make a distinction between these two.

The distinction here is that I am not omniscient so can’t say “would have”. Unlike God (if he exists).

The “could have” existed even at the same epicentre.

Nope, because otherwise God would have been wrong… Obviously you’ll disagree with that point. But we’ll get to that eventually from the above example.

Nope, I am right and very much so.

And modest too.*

With everything that you have written, the only thing you have so far been able to support *is the conclusion that because of these 4 “characteristics”, knowing that you will freely choose to make a bad choice, he is therefore partly responsible for the resulting chaos that this bad choice engendered.

Nope, there is no “freely”, or “partly”. Otherwise you’re about right.*

That is all the case you can make. *Free will remained free, and definitely not illusion.

Again, I’ll walk you through the logic behind point 3. And that should resolve the misunderstanding.*

I have done plenty of time. You just don’t seem to be grasping it because you keep making the same errors, the same non-sequiturs.

In fact no, the problem is that you added two extra assumptions to those I gave. First - that we have free will, which made your point of view tautological. And second - that the only way God can interfere with free will is to directly control a persons thoughts. Which resulted in you misunderstanding where my argument leads and therefore seeing it as a set of non-sequiturs.

You were unable to make a case that each individual choice at each point in this person’s life was somehow coerced by God. Only then, does free will disappear and become an illusion. That is a very simple thing that for some reason seems to elude you.

Again a reference to error 2. I am not and never have suggested God carries out some kind of coercion.*

No he wasn’t because the person had a choice not to. As you yourself said, God did not manipulate his thoughts.

Here you have used error 1. You have essentially said. “He has free will and you can see that because he had a choice”. IF you assume it was his choice THEN it is obviously true that he had free will.*

But then again IF you assume he had free will THEN it is obviously true that he had a choice. Circular reasoning doesn’t create progress.

And you know what, what we choose, depends on what we think. How we act depends on what we think. If God did not interfere with your thoughts then obviously your thoughts are your own and your decisions are your own.

Again a reference to error 2. I really am so glad it’s finally become apparent that you’ve been making these assumptions. It all makes so much more sense now.*

You did not make it complex. *You are just not very clear about your position which makes me think that you do not grasp entirely you own position.

Actually, I have been quite clear, the problem was that you had added the extra assumptions. Hopefully now that this is identified we can move forwards.

 

[Candide_West]

As for assuming the conclusion, you assumed the conclusion way before, when you said that the 4 characteristics …

No, again that was not one of my assumptions. It was the conclusion of a line of logic which I have clearly not been able to elucidate sufficiently clearly enough for you. I have high hopes of success now though with your errors / assumptions identified.

Fingers crossed

 

[davidv]

It is assumed that all the actions of all humans are known to God. In other words, there are two sets: one is the set of all human actions. The other set is God’s knowledge about these human actions (God has other knowledge, too, but it is not relevant in this respect). There is a one-to-one correspondence between the two sets.

In theory there are exactly 4 options:

1. God’s knowledge causes human actions.
2. Human actions cause God’s knowledge.
3. Some unknown causative agent causes both God’s knowledge and human actions.
4. It is sheer coincidence that human actions and God’s knowledge just “happen” to be the same.

Option #1 denies free will.
Option #2 denies God’s absolute nature, making it contingent.
Option #3 makes both God’s absolute nature and human free will impossible.
Option #4 is a mathematical impossibility.

Pick your choice.

In post #230 you presented what I though be a false dictomy.

All the above is built on the false assumption that knowledge=cause. The argument presented is unsound - based on a false premise. You have not demonstrated the truth of the dicotomy presented in post #230. To me this makes the argument in 230 invalid.

 

[Spock]

In post #230 you presented what I though be a false dictomy.

All the above is built on the false assumption that knowledge=cause. The argument presented is unsound - based on a false premise. You have not demonstrated the truth of the dicotomy presented in post #230. To me this makes the argument in 230 invalid.

I am sorry, but from your answer it is crystal clear that you don’t understand the problem at all. I am not suggesting anything nor do I assume anything, I am presenting a logical analysis of four possible ways and means how God’s supposed knowledge happens to coincide with the free actions of humans. Read it again, if you want to.

 

[davidv]

I am sorry, but from your answer it is crystal clear that you don’t understand the problem at all. I am not suggesting anything nor do I assume anything, I am presenting a logical analysis of four possible ways and means how God’s supposed knowledge happens to coincide with the free actions of humans. Read it again, if you want to.

Too bad you are sorry. I still don’t see a legitimate basis for the truth of your premises. Your secondary argument did not answer the question that was posed.

 

[benedictus2]

Not according to the Catechism and the dogmas. God is absolute and not contingent.

God is not contingent but what He does sometimes is. Otherwise right and wrong has no meaning and is pointless.

God is simple - God has no “parts”.

Who said He has?

God’s knowledge cannot be separated from God’s essence (whatever it may be).

God’s essence is Love.

If God’s knowledge would be contingent, then God would be contingent.

I did not say that God’s knowledge is contingent.

There is no way out of this.

There is a way out of your misunderstanding of these terms.

All are the “infallible” () dogmas of the Church, which must be accepted by all Catholics.

And we do but we are able to hold all these and still say that God responds to our actions. Otherwise prayer is pointless and yet Jesus commanded us to pray.

 

[benedictus2]

No, perhaps you didn’t read my reply. I HAVE read your post 192. I acknowledge that you tried to rebutt my argument. But you failed and I don’t think it is a valuable exercise to backtrack over territory we have already covered to show you why you failed.*

No you have not rebutted those arguments in 192. Maybe you should give it a shot.
All you did was dismiss it without a rebuttal.

No, it really is a side issue. IF we have free will, THEN we are responsible for everything we do including (if they exist) whether we end up in heaven or hell.*

IF we don’t have free will, THEN we are responsible for nothing including (if they exist) whether we end up in heaven or hell.*

The above statements both remain true no matter what heaven or hell is like. You see now? The question of what heaven or hell might be like if they exist is entirely secondary in this discussion to whether we have free will in the first place.*

Let me simplify it this way:
Assume that the whole of life consists of one decision. To face God or turn away from Him. Heaven is to face God, hell is to turn our face away from Him.
Hell is something we choose, not something God damns us to.

Indeed, there are many billions of layers of causality.

Again, the changes is not a case of layers of causality. The changes are ontological, there is a change in being. So you cannot dismiss this as simply layers of causality.

But as covered in my previous post. God ultimately determined in advance the internal and external elements of each and every decision. Thus he just hides himself from being visible to us. But remains the cause of each decision.*

And as I have explained before which you conveniently ignore all the time, God did not determine in advance the internal factors. God created a soul capable of making its own decisions.
So there’s the error that you keep re-iterating. I hope you will keep that in mind when you next respond. If soul is the internal, God did not determine the soul as such. God determined an infant soul and this infant soul He gave free will to use as he/she pleases so the soul determines what the soul becomes in the end.
Please read that again because you keep going on and one about God determining the internal when I have already explained that He does not.

Perhaps I should again take you right back to the start for simplicity. See if we can get through the most basic example together.*

That very first decision (decision 1) that a baby makes when their “soul” is still exactly as it was crafted by God. Let’s say that God had four shapes (square, triangle, circle and oval) that he could have made the soul in for simplicity. And there are two options (A and B) available from this very first decision point.*

God (being omniscient) knows the nature of the first decision situation the soul he is making will go into. He also knows how his shaping of the soul will affect the “choice”. Let’s say (for simplicity) the results will fall out as follows:

Square (S) - option A
Triangle (T) - option A
Circle (C) - option B
Oval (O) - option B

So. God at the point of selecting a soul shape determines whether option A or B will be chosen in decision point 1.

Are you still with me at this point? I’ll leave this here for now and see because I don’t want to go jumping ahead again.*

Let’s make it even simpler. Imagine a soul, that God created in its infancy and it is good. So we have a good soul. Imagine too that for simplicity’s sake, the baby soul knows the difference between good and bad and he knows that the right choice is “the good”.
Decision time comes, baby soul decides whethere to do the good thing of the bad thing. Factor in the parents and environment if you like.
Please show exactly how, given that scenario, free will all of a sudden evaporates.

No, actually it isn’t. But it does require that you’ve read my previous post explaining how this works in more detail if you can’t join the dots. Again I’ll leave this for now in favour of the above example.

I have. And point 5 remains a non-sequitur.

Here is the first of the two errors I mentioned at the start of this post that you’ve been making. Your “givens” include us having free will. This is a logical error as your conclusion is one of your assumptions. This makes it a tautology.*

But free will is not my conclusion. I am not saying “a is b, therefore there is free will”
I am saying that creation, omniscience and omnipotence – throw in intervention if you like and let’s call this is COCI ) does not in any way preclude free will.
Your position however is this : COCI precludes free will.

If you start with the assumption that we have free will then it’s hardly surprising that ANY line of logic will lead you to the conclusion that we have free will. In order to have a meaningful discussion about whether free will is real or an illusion you will need to cease using the assumption that it is real as one of your starting points.

You assumed it too but you phrased it in the negative, as I have shown above.

 

[Spock]

God is not contingent but what He does sometimes is. Otherwise right and wrong has no meaning and is pointless.

God cannot act. Any act separates before, during and after, thus presupposes time. What you say is self-contradictory. Also God is immutable, and that contradicts actions, as well. To exist “outside” of time would mean total, frozen stasis. No actions, no thoughts, just a frozen, unchanging “existence”.

Who said He has?

You did; right above where you said that “God’s actions are sometimes contingent”. God’s actions (if there would be such a thing) cannot be separated from God’s simple nature.

God’s essence is Love.

Whatever that means. When one looks around the world, there is no sign of this “love”. I know what love looks like, and the wolrd definitely does not reflect any “divine love”

I did not say that God’s knowledge is contingent.

If God’s knowledge exists, because we do it and he observes what we do, then his knowledge is contingent.

There is a way out of your misunderstanding of these terms.

Haha. This particular cop-out does not work.

And we do but we are able to hold all these and still say that God responds to our actions. Otherwise prayer is pointless and yet Jesus commanded us to pray.

The word you were looking for is: “doublethink” - to hold two contradictory ideas and believe that both of them are true. Intercessory or supplicative prayer in nonsensical, since God is supposed to know already what you are going to ask for, and according to his alleged immutable nature, he will do what he decided to do, whether you ask for it or not. All you did is enumerated yet another contradiction. Getting pretty numerous now. (Besides, Jesus also promised that whatever you are going to pray for in his name will be fulfilled, and that promise does not seem to have been fulfilled either.)

 

[benedictus2]

Again you have re-introduced your assumption of free will. To be accurate here you should have started this with “IF a person has free will, THEN…”

Again, free will is not a conclusion. Your argument is that free will and COCI cannot co exist. My point is that they can.

You are reading this discussion wrongly I think.

Well, it would be if I had done something like that. But I haven’t. So it isn’t. I’ve been pretty specific and clear in what I have said, so if you really think I’ve said something like this. Then by all means identify where and draw the correlation for me.

Sorry but that is exactly what you have done. Simplified, your responses went like this:

A) God created the soul (determined the internal);

B) God put the soul in the specific milieu ( determined the external), he knew this before hand (omniscient) , and can intervene if wants to (interventionist)

C) Therefore the all the actions of the soul were determined by God.
How exactly does C follow from A to B?

If God as we say created the soul with the capacity and ability to choose for itself, then how does the soul’s actions become controlled by God?

I think what colours your thinking is that you cannot believe that an Omnipotent God would do just that – create a free soul

Again, that is your assumption. Not the conclusion.*

Well helloo, it was the person who chose to do that.

Again, that should be “IF he has free will…”

Well you haven’t shown that he hasn’t.

Your position is “if God is COCI, then there is no free will” which essentially means COCI and free will cannot hold true at the same time, that they are contradictions.

But, they can, as I have shown in post 192.

You have not been able to show that God’s being COCI will not enable him to make free-willing people.

Wrong. This is the second of the two errors I mentioned. And is just as major as the first. If you assume that the only way free will can be an illusion is for God to directly control the mind of a person then obviously if God doesn’t do this then we have free will.

Thank you, because that is the only way that the person loses free will Also, as I have explained before, bad choices (as in sin) erodes our free will as well.

BUT that assumption is wrong. God does not need to directly interfere with an individuals thoughts in order to make that persons free will an illusion.

Enlightened me then as to the other ways that God can interfere with our free will thereby rendering us un-free.

To be clear, I am not and have never assumed that God does any twiddling with peoples mental functions. That would be assuming the conclusion (as you have done in error 1). What I am doing is showing that EVEN IF God doesn’t twiddle with peoples brains, BUT does have the four specified characteristics. THEN free will is an illusion.*

Which you have not shown.

I think we need to get back to basics and define first what we mean by free will.

When I speak of free will, I mean our ability to make choices free from constraints.

NOT (as you appear to think) “IF God has the four characteristics, THEN he twiddles with peoples brains.” *

I know you don’t mean that, but that is the only real constraint that will completely nullify free will.

Insufficient knowledge will diminish culpability if all we are trying to determine is guilt, but it does not nullify free will. Based on any given set of parameters, we chose and that choice was freely given based on those parameters.

If someone had put a gun to our head, the choice is diminished, but the choice is still there, we could choose to die in assent to the truth or live in denial of it.

There is another factor in Catholic teaching and this is grace. God always gives us enough grace to choose right. The odds are never so completely stacked against us that there is no other option but to choose evil.

Furthermore, God judges our responses (choices) depending on how stacked the odds are against us.

My mom asked me why the judges in the showed “Dancing with the Starr” gave DancerA a 7 (she danced extremely well) and gave Dancer B an 9 (danced well but not as good as Dancer A).

I explained to her that because Dancer A had studied dancing before, then the judges expect more from her than Dancer B. So while Dancer A may have danced better than DancerB, she got graded lower because more was expected of her because she had had dancing lessons before.

I think you have the impression that God judges our actions as black and white. Suicide to hell, not suicide to heaven. Stole to hell, worked heard to heaven.

God sees the impediments more clearly than we do, and much more clearly whether our choices were completely free or whether they were compromised by the the external factors your speak of.

Ok, this is rather obvious in truth, but I’ll lay it out anyway. Let’s say God moved the epicentre 500 miles away from where Person A lives. Are you saying he would still get up in the morning and after surveying the total lack of any damage be so appalled he’d kill himself because of it? No, clearly not.

Are you saying that he had no other option when he surveyed the damage but to kill himself? No, clearly not.

 

[benedictus2]

What if the guys own house was the epicentre and he was killed in the earthquake itself, would he still commit suicide? Clearly not.

I am sorry to say this but that is a rather stupid addendum to the discussion. What has him dying of the earthquake got to do with anything? We are only talking about human choices here.

What if he survived but had a broken leg? Climbing those stairs to kill himself might be tricky, yes?

What’s to stop him from slashing his wrist or drinking poison?

Seriously, you get bogged down with the minutae and this is why you lose focus.

What if he was fine but there was not a single standing building high enough to commit suicide from, he’d probably not jump off one then, right? What if the epicentre was moved so that his next door neighbour had survived instead of died and persuaded him to help her rescue people? What if…? What if…? What if…?

Again, this is crossing the threshold of irrationality. Seriously, in your attempt to pass his decision on to God, you are coming up with “what ifs” that has got no bearing on the discussion.

What if God already knew that all these “what ifs” will lead to the same thing – suicide of one form or another and that there may be an element on this what if that could pull him the other way?

With all these what ifs, please explain how his decision to kill himself is not his decision. Please show that he was somehow constrained from choosing the other option, that is to continue living.

In giving this what ifs, you are again falling into your usual error, equating could have with would have. Please, please, please you need to see the difference between these two.

can safely conclude that any one of hundreds (probably millions actually) of different combinations of effects could result for Person A depending on where the epicentre was.

Can you safely conclude that the only choice he could have made was to kill himself?

All of these permutations would of course be visible to God. In advance. And again with Gods omniscience he would know for certainty which epicentre location would lead to exactly which consequence. After all he can’t help but know. He’s omniscient.*

Again, how exactly does God’s knowledge of his intent to kill himself, make his decision suddenly God’s decision? He was the one who chose to kill himself? At the most, all one can say is being Omnipotent, He could have stopped it. Being Omniscient, He could have put him in a different milieu. But the ultimate decision to end his life was his.

In the movie, Man on Fire, the father organized the kidnap of his child in the hope of getting the ransom money. Things went wrong. Long story short, the wife found out, confronted him and he was distraught because they thought that the daughter had died. She gave him a gun with the unsaid dictate that he should kill himself. He shot himself. Was the woman responsible for his death. We could say she egged him. But, ultimately, the choice was his – to suffer the consequences of his actions or to take the easy way out.

This final choice was a result of the little choices that he made all through his life which killed his sense of morality.

So no, I can’t say which exact hypothetical location of epicentre of your hypothetical earthquake would lead to your hypothetical person jumping off a building or following any of the other options. But obviously God would be able to.

And whichever epicentre, if the person wants to kill himself, he will. It was the person who chose to jump. He did not have to, he chose to.

I have no idea, but God clearly would (being omniscient and all).

But you are the one arguing that moving the epicentre would change the results. So …

As I said all permutations must be visible to God. Clearly as described above many of those options would not involve suicide.

But just because they are visible to God does not nihilate free will. This late in the discussion you still have not be able to show that the choice to jump was not made freely. You still have not been able to show that there was no other option but to jump.

As I said, he MUST have known. Because he’s omniscient.*

No, you said must “MUST HAVE THOUGHT.”

These are your exact words: “God (from his own perspective) looking at those 3 options must have thought "I’m going to put the centre at O, this will cause (amongst billions of other things) person A to kill himself."

There is no way that one can conclude from the assumption that God is omniscient that God would have thought that.

Actually from formulations such as this, it is very clear that your conception of God, if you believed in one is of an unfeeling evil despot. You have a very myopic and deformed idea of God so it is no wonder that you can’t conceive of COCI and Free will being both true.

 

[kesa82]

On the battlefield eyewitnesses have claimed they saw a cannon ball coming. They avoided being hit by the ball by the simple expedient of stepping out of the way.

That is, they foresaw the future, and at the same time exercised free will.

I do not see where one necessarily cancels out the other.

We perceive time as linear, moving only one way, in one line, from point A to point B, like a river.
This is not actually proven.
Time could in fact be like a still lake.
A movie consists of a whole series of static images that as used give a perception of time as linear, moving like a river.
In actual fact though, the first static image of the movie did not pass into the past. Take the movie apart, and, yep, the first static image is there the same as the last static image. A progression does exist in the movie, the first static image is the first static image and the last static image is the last static image. But in real terms there actually is no future movie or past movie, it is all the same movie.

Anyway, the whole freewill versus omniscience "argument is based on what is clearly NOT known.

 

[benedictus2]

I don’t, in fact I don’t even believe it, however it follows logically from God having the specified characteristics. So IF God exists and has those characteristics. THEN the above is true.*

So you think that “God thinking:I’m going to put the centre at O, this will cause (amongst billions of other things) person A to kill himself.” follows logically from His omniscience?

Sorry, but there is nothing in God being COCI that makes this a foregone conclusion.

Not at all, I am equating cause with cause.

No you are equating knowledge with cause. David was so spot on with that.

Wrong. This is repeating your error 2 again. As long as you assume that this is the only thing that means we don’t have free will then this conversation is doomed to go in circles. I am NOT suggesting God does anything of the sort. In fact I’m assuming he NEVER does this. And even so we still end at the conclusion that free will is an illusion.

But that is just it. You have not shown that. All you have managed to show so far is that God is partly to blame for the results because He still created us in spite of the fact that He knew we will sin.

That is about the only case you can make with your arguments, nothing more.

With the logic I have already given this should be quite apparent. But let’s use the example I started out with rather than running multiple threads at this. We’ll get to this, it’ll just take a little longer. But as they say, slow and steady wins the race.

With the logic you have given this is very not apparent. As a matter of fact this is a non-sequitur.

Right, and the chaps “free-will” was still an illusion…*

How? Again, how? So many posts later and you still have not shown that.

Well above I have given some of the possible permutations from moving the epicentre. Obviously God would have an infinite array of permutations available to him while I only have time to write a few. In any case it is clearly not much of an assumption that changing the location of the epicentre of an earthquake changes who and how it effects.*

And the possible permutations do not preclude him killing himself in other ways.

The distinction here is that I am not omniscient so can’t say “would have”. Unlike God (if he exists).

But you are the one positing the “could have”. You are making the assumption that if the situation was changed, the “could have” is a “would have”.

You are forgetting the other could have – that he still “could have” chosen life over death given the situation. The “could have” chosen life, was not taken out of the equation in that scenario.

As for God, how does His knowledge that the man “would have” killed himself, erode this man’s free will. Was the choice not there? How was his choice constrained by God in this scenario?

And modest too.*

I try to be but rarely succeed. Knowing that one is right and saying so is not a case of immodesty.

Nope, there is no “freely”, or “partly”. Otherwise you’re about right.*

Yes, there is a totally free will and there is a partly free will. Choices made under duress (gun at your head sort of scenario) is not totally free but that “could haves” for both good and bad are still there.

Again, I’ll walk you through the logic behind point 3. And that should resolve the misunderstanding.*

I have read in detail your every post (as attested to by my line by line rebuttal) and sorry to say you have not made your case.
David was so right in that one liner response to you.

In fact no, the problem is that you added two extra assumptions to those I gave. First - that we have free will,

No I never added that assumption. I merely restated your case:

My case: God’s being COCI and Free Will are both true.

**Your case: **God’s being COCI and Free Will cannot both be true. If God is COCI we don’t have free will. If we have free-will God is not COCI. These two are in contradiction with each other.

which made your point of view tautological.

Not at all. I actually showed you how it works in post 192. Maybe you can rebut that one.

And second - that the only way God can interfere with free will is to directly control a persons thoughts. Which resulted in you misunderstanding where my argument leads and therefore seeing it as a set of non-sequiturs.

Free Will means a choice made without constraint.

You have not shown that the scenarios (externals as you put it) are constraints to free will such that it totally destroys it. Some scenarios limit it, but it does not totally destroy free will. Even in the direst scenarios, free will is still there. Even when a person holds a gun to one’s head. That is why there martyrs.

Here you have used error 1. You have essentially said. “He has free will and you can see that because he had a choice”. IF you assume it was his choice THEN it is obviously true that he had free will.*

You have not shown that there were any constraints.

 

[benedictus2]

Here you have used error 1. You have essentially said. “He has free will and you can see that because he had a choice”. IF you assume it was his choice THEN it is obviously true that he had free will.*

You have not shown that there were any constraints.

But then again IF you assume he had free will THEN it is obviously true that he had a choice. Circular reasoning doesn’t create progress.

It’s not circular reasoning. I am not here to make a conclusion for free will. I am here to show that COCI and Free Will can both be true at the same time. I am here to show that this is not a case of “either/or” but an “and”. You were trying to show that it is an “either/or.” That is the difference between your case and mine. You tried to show either/or but did not quite succeed.

Again a reference to error 2. I really am so glad it’s finally become apparent that you’ve been making these assumptions. It all makes so much more sense now.*

Actually it was you, from the beginning who made the assumption of no-free-will, when you said that God determined the “internal”. So from the beginning, you have already assumed that the soul had no free will.

Actually, I have been quite clear, the problem was that you had added the extra assumptions. Hopefully now that this is identified we can move forwards.

Now that I have shown you that you have assumed the non-existence of free will from the beginning, then perhaps you can re-think your position.

 

[benedictus2]

God cannot act. Any act separates before, during and after, thus presupposes time. What you say is self-contradictory.

So you are saying that right and wrong has no meaning for the Catholic. After all, if God does not act in response to our choices, what is all that teaching about right and wrong?

Besides, being Omnipotent and the maker of time, how exactly is He precluded from acting within time?

Also God is immutable, and that contradicts actions, as well.

Only if you think of immutability in terms of space and time.

To exist “outside” of time would mean total, frozen stasis. No actions, no thoughts, just a frozen, unchanging “existence”.

How do you know that for a fact? Have you been outside of space and time?

You did; right above where you said that “God’s actions are sometimes contingent”. God’s actions (if there would be such a thing) cannot be separated from God’s simple nature.

And how is God’s responding to our actions and prayers make Him contingent? His existence is not contingent on anything but it does not mean that He cannot choose to make Himself respond to our prayers. The contingency in this case is not because of His nature but because of His own choosing.

Whatever that means. When one looks around the world, there is no sign of this “love”. I know what love looks like, and the wolrd definitely does not reflect any “divine love”

Then I am really sorry for you. You must be a very sad person. I have a friend who thinks like that too and he is one of the most miserable person I know.
I do. I see a lot of love around me and a lot of goodness. I see a lot of evil too but there is much love. I see God’s love everywhere in His creation. I do not equate suffering with the absence of Love.
I pray that you do too, someday, or you will forever be mired in misery.

If God’s knowledge exists, because we do it and he observes what we do, then his knowledge is contingent.

Not quite. He knows but he allowed us to choose freely.

Haha. This particular cop-out does not work.

Not quite, just a rational assessment of your situation.

The word you were looking for is: “doublethink” - to hold two contradictory ideas and believe that both of them are true. Intercessory or supplicative prayer in nonsensical, since God is supposed to know already what you are going to ask for,

Only if you view prayer as a kind of ATM, stick your card in and out comes the money.

and according to his alleged immutable nature, he will do what he decided to do, whether you ask for it or not.

And it is not against His immutable nature to decide to do things in response to your prayers. There is nothing in immutability that says He is barred from choosing to will to let His decisions be in response to prayers.

All you did is enumerated yet another contradiction. Getting pretty numerous now. (Besides, Jesus also promised that whatever you are going to pray for in his name will be fulfilled, and that promise does not seem to have been fulfilled either.)

Sorry but there have been many, many, prayers that have been answered.

So yes, what was asked in His name was granted.

 

[Spock]

So you are saying that right and wrong has no meaning for the Catholic. After all, if God does not act in response to our choices, what is all that teaching about right and wrong?

Right and wrong actions are not dependent on how someone reacts to them. That is one of the major errors on the believer’s part.

Besides, being Omnipotent and the maker of time, how exactly is He precluded from acting within time?

If God is outside of time, then he is not inside of time. Elementary logic.

How do you know that for a fact? Have you been outside of space and time?

Simple logic.

And how is God’s responding to our actions and prayers make Him contingent? His existence is not contingent on anything but it does not mean that He cannot choose to make Himself respond to our prayers. The contingency in this case is not because of His nature but because of His own choosing.

It does not matter whose “choosing” it would be. Contingency is contingency.

Then I am really sorry for you. You must be a very sad person. I have a friend who thinks like that too and he is one of the most miserable person I know.

Your sorry is misplaced. I am probably the most upbeat and optimistic person you have ever met.

I see a lot of love around me and a lot of goodness. I see a lot of evil too but there is much love.

Sure. So do I. All coming from people.

I see God’s love everywhere in His creation. I do not equate suffering with the absence of Love.

That is your error. Love cannot be reconciled with unnecessary suffering. And before you ask, all sufferings are deemed unnecessary which have no visible, positive consequence to them, which would justify that suffering. If just one instance of suffering cannot be explained, that suffering is unnecessary. If you cannot explain it, then call on God to do the explanation. If God does not come, the suffering remains unexplained - and as such it is unnecessary. There is no “cop-out” that “maybe” there is some perfectly good explanation.

Only if you view prayer as a kind of ATM, stick your card in and out comes the money.

That is exactly what intercessory or supplicative prayer is - and it should not be confused with meditiative prayer. As Ambrose Bierce said in the “Devil’s Dictionary”: “To pray (v.): To ask that the laws of the Universe be annulled on behalf a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy”.

Sorry but there have been many, many, prayers that have been answered.
So yes, what was asked in His name was granted.

Would be nice if it were true. I bet you that many, many people of good will prayed for peace, the cessation of misery, stopping hunger, sending rain to the drought-stricken areas, stopping epidemics from spreading… and there seems to be no response.

 

[boncrayon]

No, perhaps you didn’t read my reply. I HAVE read your post 192. I acknowledge that you tried to rebutt my argument. But you failed and I don’t think it is a valuable exercise to backtrack over territory we have already covered to show you why you failed.*

Especially when your most recent set of posts (that I’m currently replying to) show so clearly the two most major errors you have made. And presumably have been making all along. The arguments and errors you have made suddenly make much more sense once I saw these. I’ll reply to them and explain as they come up below.*

No, it really is a side issue. IF we have free will, THEN we are responsible for everything we do including (if they exist) whether we end up in heaven or hell.*

IF we don’t have free will, THEN we are responsible for nothing including (if they exist) whether we end up in heaven or hell.*

The above statements both remain true no matter what heaven or hell is like. You see now? The question of what heaven or hell might be like if they exist is entirely secondary in this discussion to whether we have free will in the first place.*

Indeed, there are many billions of layers of causality. But as covered in my previous post. God ultimately determined in advance the internal and external elements of each and every decision. Thus he just hides himself from being visible to us. But remains the cause of each decision.*

Perhaps I should again take you right back to the start for simplicity. See if we can get through the most basic example together.*

That very first decision (decision 1) that a baby makes when their “soul” is still exactly as it was crafted by God. Let’s say that God had four shapes (square, triangle, circle and oval) that he could have made the soul in for simplicity. And there are two options (A and B) available from this very first decision point.*

God (being omniscient) knows the nature of the first decision situation the soul he is making will go into. He also knows how his shaping of the soul will affect the “choice”. Let’s say (for simplicity) the results will fall out as follows:

Square (S) - option A
Triangle (T) - option A
Circle (C) - option B
Oval (O) - option B

So. God at the point of selecting a soul shape determines whether option A or B will be chosen in decision point 1.

Are you still with me at this point? I’ll leave this here for now and see because I don’t want to go jumping ahead again.*

No, I haven’t made this error. However I won’t reply to this in detail until I see how you manage with my back to basics example above.*

No, actually it isn’t. But it does require that you’ve read my previous post explaining how this works in more detail if you can’t join the dots. Again I’ll leave this for now in favour of the above example.

Right, to avoid jumping ahead again I’ll wait on your response to the above.*

Here is the first of the two errors I mentioned at the start of this post that you’ve been making. Your “givens” include us having free will. This is a logical error as your conclusion is one of your assumptions. This makes it a tautology.*

If you start with the assumption that we have free will then it’s hardly surprising that ANY line of logic will lead you to the conclusion that we have free will. In order to have a meaningful discussion about whether free will is real or an illusion you will need to cease using the assumption that it is real as one of your starting points.

---

In Faith, be careful of the use of Logic. My logic seminary professor told me at the end of his course that the laws of logic in themselves are “illogical”! He went on to say, “You will do yourself a favor to throw away your Logic text book and lead a more stable life!”

I am not attempting to show contradictions. I am attempting to show you a line of logic. At the moment the problem appears to be with point 3. So I’ll focus on this one and I’m using the back to basics example above to do so. I’ll try to take it a step at a time so as to avoid jumping ahead. So you just let me know if / when you lose me.*

 

[benedictus2]

Spock:
Right and wrong actions are not dependent on how someone reacts to them. That is one of the major errors on the believer’s part. Huh? That does not make sense at all. How do you get that from “if God does not act in response to our choices, what is all that teaching about right and wrong?”

If God is outside of time, then he is not inside of time. Elementary logic.

Only to a materialist. Since we also posit that He is Omnipotent, then He is capable of working within time which after all is His creation.
There are other attributes to this creator aside from being outside time.
A little analogy should clarify it for you. Keyhole surgery. Doctor is outside of the patient but is able to work inside the patient.

Simple logic.

No simple logic does not get you out of that one. So again, how do you know what it is like to be outside of time?

It does not matter whose “choosing” it would be. Contingency is contingency.

Depends on how define that contingency. If contingency in terms of existence yes. Not in terms of actions because of the reasons stated above.

Your sorry is misplaced. I am probably the most upbeat and optimistic person you have ever met.

If you cannot see any love in the world, then your upbeatness is a delusion.

Sure. So do I. All coming from people.

And if there is no God then then whatever you see coming from all these people is just self-interest, inverted self-interest.

That is your error. Love cannot be reconciled with unnecessary suffering.

No that is my blessing and your misfortune.
Since you are not God you do not know which is truly necessary and which is unnecessary.

And before you ask, all sufferings are deemed unnecessary which have no visible, positive consequence to them, which would justify that suffering.

Only from a materialist point of view.

If just one instance of suffering cannot be explained, that suffering is unnecessary.

God does not owe anyone an explanation but a heart attuned to God does get a glimmer of the whys.

If you cannot explain it, then call on God to do the explanation.

Well you sound like a man who demands an explanation but stuffs his hands on his ears.

The explanation can be understood by the heart attuned to God.

If God does not come, the suffering remains unexplained - and as such it is unnecessary.

God does not owe you an explanation.
Do you explain to the cockroach why you must spray it insecticide? Or to the cow why you must kill it so you may eat its flesh?

There is no “cop-out” that “maybe” there is some perfectly good explanation.

And at this point in time, the perfectly good explanation is beyond your grasp - by choice.

That is exactly what intercessory or supplicative prayer is - and it should not be confused with meditiative prayer.

No it isn’t. The first thing that intercessory prayer does it makes us realize that we are in need of something that we cannot bring about by ourselves. It grounds us in humility. It makes us realize our need for God.
Meditative prayer is more a case of getting to know God more deeply and more personally.

As Ambrose Bierce said in the “Devil’s Dictionary”: “To pray (v.): To ask that the laws of the Universe be annulled on behalf a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy”.

And who is Ambrose Bierce that we should be mindful of his definition of prayer? He is nothing more than an editorialist and satirist who is probably a materialist as well.
That would be like citing as authoritative Michael Jackson’s conclusion (if he had proferred one) on cosmology.

Would be nice if it were true. I bet you that many, many people of good will prayed for peace, the cessation of misery, stopping hunger, sending rain to the drought-stricken areas, stopping epidemics from spreading… and there seems to be no response.

And many people have prayed and their prayers answered. My family can testify to so many and my kind you can multiply a million times.

God works in His time,not ours. To conjur a God that is like an ATM is to conjur a God that is contingent.

 

[Michael19682]

Lets say that I reject God and choose to spend an eternity in hell. He knew I would make this choice, and yet he still made me.

If he loved me so much…

Psalm 139:8. God’s presence exists even in Hell. Correct me if I am wrong…or rather, don’t!

 

[Michael19682]

Also, Romans 8:38 states that no power will ever be able to separate us from his love in Christ Jesus. Hell is certainly a power.