am i right in saying this...?

"If there is an omniscient and omnipotent god, then the universe is necessarily a deterministic one. Free will, if it can exist at all, can only do so in a universe without such a god." RWINGETT

More statements I'm afraid . Why must this necessarily be?

Originally posted by knightmeister
"If there is an omniscient and omnipotent god, then the universe is necessarily a deterministic one. Free will, if it can exist at all, can only do so in a universe without such a god." RWINGETT

More statements I'm afraid . Why must this necessarily be?

Re-read my posts. You must not have understood them the first time around.

RWINGETT SAID -"You make the mistake of assuming that the choices man makes are done so independant of the input that god has determined. They are not. Those choices are a direct result of god's design input. When god created mankind, he knew, in advance, exactly when each of them would sin. The fact that they sin, and the frequency with which they do so, are direct results of the whole casual chain of events initiated by god. A universe initiated by an omnipotent and omniscient god must necessarily be a strictly deterministic one."

Ive quoted this bit because it's of most interest to me. There's a paradox here that you may well have missed. Your argument depends on a deterministic existence in which all things exist for a reason . Causality rules . Everything can be chased back to it's original input, right?

However (and here's the rub) one could ask what initiated God to "input" any of this ? What caused him to do the initiating? If you say that there was some reason then there must be another "God" behind him causing him to do it.But then one could ask the same question again and so on and on into infinite neverending regress. Leaving you with a bit of a puzzle as to where it all stops (eternity or what ?). You could of course say that there was an Uncaused cause and the buck stops there but then you would have to admit that there is at least one thing in existence that doesn't need any "input" or reason to initiate , it (or he) just does it of it's own free will.

Now it's precisely because I don't believe in the infinite regress idea but I do believe in the Uncaused cause idea that I can say I believe God is entirely free and not reliant on anything else to initiate him. So it's not that difficult to imagine a God like that sharing something of himself with his creations. In effect he would be sharing his free (and not determined) nature with us enabling us to have actual free will. His "design input" would be to build in his own free nature into the output. But to do that he would have to share himself with us (this is where Jesus etc comes in but that's an argument for another day) You can only have this with an Uncaused cause though and the argument around free will and the origins of all exiatence are initmately connected.

However , you treat this argument as if it has obviously and self evidently been won convincingly when infact it hasn't , unless you are able to explain the ultimate origins of all existence itself to us all? In an entirely deterministic existence you are logically required to believe that the universe MUST have a cause (or been determined by something) to exist and cannot have come out of nothing because otherwise you are left with something which is not determined by anything.If everything happens by design who or what did the first designing?

So in summary I feel entirely justified in challenging your basic premise that this "chain of events" must be "strictly deterministic" if God exists as omnipotent or otherwise. I say this because if God exists then you have accepted the Uncaused Cause argument and accepted afterall that freedom from being determined by anything else is infact possible. You are perfectly entitled logically to dispute the Uncause Cause idea , but you are not entitled to treat the whole argument as "necessarily" and self evidently false either as if by making catagorical statements that somehow "proves" something.

So let's have some reasoning for a change. Maybe you would like to start with explaining infinite regress of causes and effects to us all in this "strictly" deterministic existence of yours? Remember you are not allowed to say the universe came from nowhere , that's a corner you've boxed yourself into I'm afraid.

RWINGETT "A universe initiated by an omnipotent and omniscient god must necessarily be a strictly deterministic one. It is impossible that we could make any set of choices that was not foreknown to him"

A weak link in your argument here is that you assume that all God can do is initiate things. You portray God as if all he is able to do is push over the first domino in a series of dominos that result in a whole load of pre-determined events. However , this would be the work of a very limited god. If God is omnipotent then surely he can do much more than this. He might be able to re-direct the dominos for example . He can influence outcomes . But most importantly he might be able to do more than just initiate. He can participate . He can incarnate amongst his dominos and do strange things like share his essence with his dominos. A lesser non-omnipotent god could only initiate and then powerlessly stand back and watch.

As for omniscience , you assume (once again) that God is limited or trapped in a timeline like us so therefore according to you he "foresees" events and that this is how he knows what we will do. However , a less limited God is not trapped in time like you and does not FOREsee things the way you might , being eternal and outside of time he can POSTsee what you did and events do not have to be predetermined for him to know everything.

In effect , your "god" is way too limited and lacks imaginative thought. He sounds neither omnipotent nor eternal. It's a god that no Christian I have ever met or heard of believes in , so whilst you may think you are making an argument against God you are actually making an argument against (your)"god" . If you are going to mock and dispute Christian theology and belief then it might be nice if you actually found out what it actually is , otherwise you will just chase shadows and mislead those who think you have some coherent argument.

"The God I believe in is not the god you don't believe in" CS LEWIS

Originally posted by rwingett
Re-read my posts. You must not have understood them the first time around.

I understood them alright , it just that they were unsubstantiated and statemented rather than argued.

I completely and absolutely understand your statements. If you feel entitled to make ill thought out premises and turn assumptions into absolutes then your position is entirely reasonable. LOL

Originally posted by twhitehead
They do not need backing up with argument as they are directly implied in the definition of omnipotent and omniscient.

omnipotent:
Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful.

omniscient:
having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.

Oh yes they do need backing up because as I hope I am showing in my other posts , the implication or argument is based on a limited human view of God being stuck in a timeline like you are and being less than omnipotent. The implication is correct only if you input a certain kind of god , but RWINGETT is inputting the wrong data from the wrong starting point.

You see , if you say God is omnipotent then you must logically follow the next step. God is free. Therefore the foundations of existence are not based on determinism (which is a vital component of RWINGETTS argument).


If God is omnipotent then one can assume that God is not dependant on anything else otherwise there would be some other more powerful God that he would be dependant on more powerful than him. Therefore he is the Uncaused Cause. If he is not dependant (or determined) then he is free from determinism , he is totally free and has a free will all of his own which is not reliant on any other cause. . Therefore existence cannot be totally mechanistic or deterministic as RWINGETT suggests because there is at least one thing (God) that is free. If God is ominpotent then we can presume that he has enough power to be able to introduce a little of this freedom into the universe? (ie US). Omnipotence in my book turns out to support free will. RWINGETTS god is not omnipotent enough to be an Uncaused Cause. Even RWINGETT would have to accept that a truely omnipotent God has free will! RWINGETT'S god is not powerful enough to create free will because he's not even free himself.

Now as for omniscience, well if he is omnipotent then can we assume he is not trapped in time and actually beyond petty stuff like timelines? He would be eternal without beginning or end. This means that for him time has no real meaning. It's a phenomena that came into being with the universe like gravity. It's perverse to suggest that he would be limited by it if he was omnipotent????

So why do you guys persist with this silly idea of God PRE -dicting things as if he was like you and that's the only way he might know anything? God can be present at every moment of your life in one instant or he can spend trillions of eons watching you throw a ball into the air or clean your teeth. You think he is in YOUR present trying vainly to predict YOUR future when in fact to God there is no past present or future - he lives in all of them at the same "time".
RWINGETT'S argument only has credence against the backdrop of a totally limited and time trapped god. But it is RWINGETT that is time trapped and limited NOT God. In his case that old Atheist mantra , " man makes God in his own image" has rung true. His God is not omnipotent enough , his God is not even eternal! It is modelled on him , but God is so incredibly different from him that he cannot imagine how God can be both in the future and in the past simultaneuosly.He only knows that the only way HE could know outcomes would be by looking along a timeline and predicting them He cannot imagine how God can know in any other way than HE does so HE automatically assumes God knows what he knows because he is predicting them. From this he thinks he can logically assume that god pre-determines things because otherwise god couldn't possibly know (because, for him, it's impossible to know the future unless it's pre determined ). Pre-determination is the only logical solution for RWINGETT because he has ruled out any other kind of omniscience than the one he has imagined for himself. I must admit that I find it hard too , but the theory of relativity is wierd too and requires imagination and yet we accept that often enough. Once you get a hint or grasp of how incredibly mind boggling the real God might actually be it's a little easier to imagine how what you thought MUST be implied actually isn't.

I've posted on this before here's an extract from the free will debate...

" In order to have something PRE -determined then it has to be decided or set in stone BEFORE it happens. However, God does not PRE determine anything because he only knows AS it is happening (ie in the future and NOT before). He knows because he watches you making free choices in the future but there's no PREdiction or PREdetermination involved other than in your imagination.

Think of a choice you have made in the past that you now know the outcome of. Because you know the outcome of that choice does it therefore mean that that choice was logically predetermined? If so why?

The confusion in your argument is that you assume that because God knows what we do in the future (his present) that it is inevitable. The key thing here is that it's not inevitable for us and it only becomes inevitable to him AFTER and NOT BEFORE it happens. You make the same mistake Conrau K makes in placing God in our time and not his. You know the outcome of World War two but does that logically mean it was inevitable or there could only have ever been one outcome? Of course , you are aware of the possibility of quite a few different outcomes , but you are aware of what happened (but it wasn't due to predetermination or inevitability but just timezones)

You imagine that God is with us in this present moment thinking "there's only one way this can possibly go and if you gave this a million goes it would still turn out the same way" but it's actually more like " I can see right now how this could go many different ways and you have lots of choices available to you , if you had a million opportunities there would be lots of outcomes but you can choose only once and I know which one you chose in the end."

In one sense you could say it is 'inevitable' to God and all laid out in front of him , but as long as it's not inevitable for US then we are still free.

A lot of you here are just saying God's omniscience 'implies' no free will or it 'somehow' predetermines things and then you think you have made a good point. Where's the back up argument though. Unless you can argue a causal link or why it predetermines things then you're not going anywhere."

Originally posted by rwingett
If there is an omniscient and omnipotent god, then the universe is necessarily a deterministic one. Free will, if it can exist at all, can only do so in a universe without such a god. Either there is no god, or god is completely other than what you imagine. If god is omnibenevolent, then he must lack either omniscience or omnipotence, or both. If god is both omniscient and omnipotent, then he cannot be omnibenevolent, i.e. he must be a sadistic SOB.

Can I throw in another way of looking at omniscience?

Your argument depends on God only having one way of knowing exactly what you will do tomorrow. That way is predetermination. However , if God has more than one way of knowing what you will do tomorrow then your argument starts to creek. Suffice it to say that God DOES have more than one way of knowing so it's not necessarily implied that your actions are predetermined.

Let's imagine that God was stripped completely of his intellectual powers and was unable to have the intelligence to make any predictions or calculations about the future (not that he lives in any point in time anyway). Let's imagine that he can't even make any input into creation or have any influence at all over your actions. Let's also say that you have free will and can make free choices. So imagine this depleated God , stripped of his powers because you put something nasty in his drink.He has become impotent. He needs viagra.

Now let's imagine that God has just about been able to hold on to one last quality of his nature and that quality is his ability to be eternal and not limited by timelines or time at all. He can't reason at all and he can influence or initiate . Infact he has lost his omnipotence to such a a degree that he wasn't even able to create the universe or free will in the first place . Bob Geldoff had to step in and do it for him. He can only watch and be eternal. Now , think about this, even this God with his only ability to be able to be in the past , present and future all at the same and stand outside timelines would still know everything you are about to do and everything you ever will do because he can see your entire life stretched out sideways backwards forwards whatever way he likes. Is it because you are neccesarily predetermined by him to do certain things ? Nope. Is it because he made you do anything ? Nope. Can you still have free will and him being able to do this? Yes , because if he can travel in time or stand outside timelines then we would expect him to know these things whther you had free will or not simply by being free of time. He would only see what you had DONE with your life , free or otherwise.

Can you see that it's nothing to do with omnipotence and everything to do with time and eternity? You are entitled to say that time travel is impossible. You are entitled to say that eternity is impossible. But you are not entitled logically to dismiss the argument without actually having the argument.

Originally posted by twhitehead
They do not need backing up with argument as they are directly implied in the definition of omnipotent and omniscient.

omnipotent:
Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful.

omniscient:
having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.

Sorry guys , I'm at it again. Got nothing else to do right now.

If God is eternal then he doesn't really have a great difficulty in knowing what we will do without it infringing on our free will. I think the main difficulty here is that you perceive the idea of God being eternal as unimaginable and paradoxical. It doesn't make sense to you . It's hard to imagine and conceiving of it starts to make your head spin (it makes mine spin !). You then maybe equate this paradoxical feeling with the idea of it not being a reasonable or logical proposition that this is the way it could really be (us having free will + God being omniscient). The two things APPEAR to be contradictory and paradoxical to you , so you therefore assume that it's not a reasonable argument.
What you miss is that if God is eternal and outside of time it would be logical for us to assume that things will seem very wierd and unnatural to us , because afterall we are talking about something that is supposed to be beyond time and the universe. This is similar to thinking about how the universe got here and and how did it come from "nothing" for no reason ( or an infinite chain of causal events with no definite beginning).There's something wierd about it but it's still logical. Some of the findings of quantum physics are the same . We deduce that electrons and protons seem to have some pretty wierd properties and it's logical and entirely reasonable to have your head spin a bit.

What I find myself wondering is whether you are mistaking paradoxical and wierd ideas for illogical unreasonable ideas. I agree that it's a bit paradoxical that God knows what I will do tomorrow but I am still free to do whatever I choose. It's wierd! But actually if God is eternal then he's going to look wierd to us. It will seem paradoxical but at the same time it is perfectly logical to assume that an eternal being will be able to do things that we find hard to conceive of. In reality the whole thing is neither illogical or unreasonable , it's a simple time paradox that's all.

Where have you gone rwingett?

why do you look on gods logic as human logic..? why cant tomorrow be predicted yet tomorrow be left to free will; why can there not be contradiction ..? all because it doesnt make sense now doesnt mean it wont ever make sense... i think thats one of the biggest mistakes we make as humans, we dont step outside our own circle of logic...

Originally posted by rooktakesqueen
why do you look on gods logic as human logic..? why cant tomorrow be predicted yet tomorrow be left to free will; why can there not be contradiction ..? all because it doesnt make sense now doesnt mean it wont ever make sense... i think thats one of the biggest mistakes we make as humans, we dont step outside our own circle of logic...

it is not contradictory for us to do something out of free will just because god knew we would make that choice

Originally posted by EcstremeVenom
it is not contradictory for us to do something out of free will just because god knew we would make that choice

Things do contradict on our level but then who knows about higher dimensions. The concept of a sphere would sound pretty wierd to a 2 dimensional circle.

Originally posted by knightmeister
What you miss is that if God is eternal and outside of time it would be logical for us to assume that things will seem very wierd and unnatural to us , because afterall we are talking about something that is supposed to be beyond time and the universe.

OK. If God is outside the universe, it would be reasonable to assume that he doesn't follow our universe's rules. How, then, can we reason about God? Our logic doesn't apply to him. How can we know anything about him? How can we know that he loves us, not hates us? We might think he loves us, but our way of thinking doesn't apply to God...

Originally posted by GregM
OK. If God is outside the universe, it would be reasonable to assume that he doesn't follow our universe's rules. How, then, can we reason about God? Our logic doesn't apply to him. How can we know anything about him? How can we know that he loves us, not hates us? We might think he loves us, but our way of thinking doesn't apply to God...

Do you really think that I sit down and work out on a calculator that logically God loves me?! It's much more sublime and experiential than that! The whole point of faith (well Christian faith anyway) is that God's love entered the universe , so although God is wierd in one sense and outside the universe he's also inside it too , his love is present with us. His love is quite wierd too and many people didn't understand Jesus either.

"How can we know anything about him? How can we know that he loves us, not hates us? We might think he loves us, but our way of thinking doesn't apply to God.." All these are fantastic questions , if only you would look for the answers...I'll give you a clue...try looking 2000 years ago.

Originally posted by knightmeister
Do you really think that I sit down and work out on a calculator that logically God loves me?! It's much more sublime and experiential than that! The whole point of faith (well Christian faith anyway) is that God's love entered the universe , so although God is wierd in one sense and outside the universe he's also inside it too , his love is presen only you would look for the answers...I'll give you a clue...try looking 2000 years ago.

Why are my questions "fantastic"? If we start from zero knowledge, isn't a bad God as likely as a good God? And do we really have any concrete knowledge other than your "sublime and experiential" certainty? What if I have some "sublime" experience that convinces me that God is out to make life miserable for mankind?

Your argument seems to boil down to "God is weird." Your answer to how you can penetrate this weirdness while others can't seems to be "Jesus said I'm right." These aren't very convincing.