Okay, but we’d still need this…
…to take it beyond what theoretically we surmise the truth to be given the definition and the meaning that we ascribe to the words used in the academic argument itself.
comereason.org/omniscience- … e-will.asp.
What does this have to do with eternal punishment and time?
It’s not the omniscience of ‘god’ alone that prevents freewill, but the combined omniscience and omnipotence of ‘god’ that makes it impossible.
I have been watching Christian philosophers try to wiggle out of this problem for over twenty years.
Similar experiences encompass and inform my thinking.
[quote=“promethean75”]
It’s not the omniscience of ‘god’ alone that prevents freewill, but the combined omniscience and omnipotence of ‘god’ that makes it impossible.
I have been watching Christian philosophers try to wiggle out of this problem for over twenty years.[/quote)
That is because you or they believe reason will explain what God is like; it will not. So dead end arguments continue forever if you are trying to fathom the God of the three Os by rational argument. Experience, testified by many, is as close to knowing God as we can get…
[quote=“Ierrellus”]
The very notion that we with our finite minds could possibly comprehend the implications of omniscience is absurd.
[quote=“felix dakat”]
Amen.
How can you attribute omniscience (or omnipotence or omnibenevolence) to God if our minds are so finite that we can’t comprehend all this stuff in the first place?
IOW how could you possibly know that God is omniscient? (Whatever ‘omniscient’ means. 
)
Omniscience I take to mean all knowing or knowing all. It is a product of the mind that supposes it knows something and imagines what it would be like to know everything.
A maximal concept of God must include the idea that God is the ultimate of everything. Anything with a limit will be surpassed by the infinite. Notice that infinite is defined by what it is not , that is, finite.
Who claimed to know that God is omniscient?
“The very notion that we with our finite minds could possibly comprehend the implications of omniscience is absurd.”
For the sake of our argument, we know enough about what is implied to know that, as a result of having that power, and the power of omnipotence, freewill cannot be possible if a ‘god’ with those powers exists.
We don’t need to know anything more about what it is like to be omniscient. We got what we came for.
But u gotta be careful with the whole ‘god is ineffable so we can’t know x and y about him’. Remember we’ve ready gone on vacation even using the word ‘god’ at all… we don’t get to cherry pick which parts about ‘god’ we can explain. U don’t get to say ‘god is mysterious’ when a nuclear power plant blows up and kills 300 people. If ‘god’ truly is an ass-ranger, we need to be honest about that.
Do you understand my argument about why omniscience by itself does not preclude free will?
If so, can you explain why omniscience and omnipotence together preclude it?
Yo I just changed my mind in the middle of a post. Imma post it anyway.
Man I shouldn’t even be in this conversation. My people would disown me if they found out I wuz posting shit like this. U better keep this in the down low.
Gotta explain this in shorthand lest I write I fuckin thesis.
Familiarize urself with the substance monism of the mad jew, spinoza, first.
Once u have an understanding of ‘god’ as an immanent thing in creation rather than separate from it - as the scholastics believed - the principle of parsimony will lead u in the same direction as spinz went, and you’ll end up with an eternally existing substance acting in a causally deterministic way, seamlessly throughout, - all the possible modes and modifications of that singular substance coming into and out of existence as eternal time passes and watches all the little democritean units of being swirling around the void.
Basically anything that happens, happens necessarily and is an effect of some antecedent set of conditions and forces. So on an so forth like a circle. Yo like that snake dude who eats his own tail or whatever. The Aurora Borealis.
Pertaining now to the question u ask, good sir, I feel I am having difficulty resolving this very matter as we speak, for I now believe that mere omniscience is enough to prevent freewill, since despite our ‘god’ not acting causally within the system he created (the clock maker theory of deism), simply knowing in advance whether Joe gets up or not means that one or the other was destined to happen, since whatever ‘god’ knew joe to do before he would do it, wouldn’t be ‘wrong’. That is, ‘god’ would not be mistaken about what he knew joe would do.
Formerly I was prepared to insist that omnipotence wuz necessary too, but I now believe this is an error. I apologise for ur time, good sir.
I told you all. Fucking Aristotle.
Sigh. Yes, god would not be mistaken as to what Joe would do. It does not follow from this that Joe must do, what he does. If he had done something else, god would have known that other thing, instead.
I had hoped to explain this, but my hope was in vain, it seems.
There is a difference between, “Joe could not have done, other than what God knew in advance he would do” and “Joe could not have done, other than what he did.” They simply are not the same and the distinction is vital. Please think on this.
No wait I’m still a nuanced version of a hard-determinist… I’m just saying that the absence of freewill would be even more obvious if a ‘god’ did exist.
I don’t see how if a god exists, that fact would support hard determinism. But more to the point, I see no support for hard determinism.
Of course all of this could be cleared up immediately if a God/the God actually revealed Himself, confirmed that He is omniscient/omnipotent and explained to Joe what the hell is going on when he drinks a glass of water.
In the interim, however, there are mere mortals we call philosophers who “think up” explanations “in their heads”…theoretical assessments entirely in sync with the assumptions they make in their intellectual constructs. Words that define and defend other words completely detached from an extant God, Joe and the glass of water.
So of course the logic goes around and around in circles.
Joe gets to freely choose Coke or Pepsi not because God knew from the get go which one he would choose, but because God knows from the get go which ever one he does freely choose.
Whatever, for all practical purposes, that means.
Or: I had hoped that you would agree with my own definitional logic here but you are obviously not intelligent enough to.
Jebus Christ you’re an idiot.
If God knows in advance that Joe will choose Coke, then Joe will choose Coke.
If God knows in advance that Joe will choose Pepsi, then Joe will choose Pepsi.
Joe can choose either Coke or Pepsi. He just can’t choose differently from what God knows.
How hard, really, is this to understand?
This is a thought experiment. It does not mean God exists. It means we posit an Omniscient Agent (aka God) for the sake of argument. This is done all the time in philosophy.
Why are so many people here meatballs? I think it is because there is no moderation and therefore bad money drive out good, aka Gresham’s “law.” Here, bad posters drive out good, because who in their right mind would put up with drivel like this?