The Free Will argument is a response to the problem of evil based on the theistic conception of God. According to this picture God created everything including the devil, set up a situation in which the human fall into sin was inevitable and if we must go there, we have all been corrupted with original sin by which we have a sin nature.
At this point Free Will is introduced, a concept never explicitly stated in the Bible. According to strict Calvinism it’s an impossibility and only an act of God to which some are predestined will save them. But let’s say free will actually exists, and phenomenologically it does to some extent. What then? Does God wash his hands of the entire design based on the Free Will escape clause?
And how would a God of love exist blissfully for eternity in the presence of human primate souls writhing in the torments of hell, knowing that they are there because of his design flaw?
Especially if he loves the creatures he has created unconditionally? Surely an omniscient God could do better.
I’m sorry if you are ignorant of both relativity theory and elementary logic. That is your problem, not mine.
Some things can be demonstrated empirically and some can be demonstrated deductively. I’m afraid you have no grasp of either, and thus are ever condemned to slip into your babble about “the gap” and “dasein” and all the rest of your time-wasting twaddle.
Yes, and I was addressing ONE of your points, about “omniscience and human volition.”
And you ignored what I wrote — made no effort at all to engage with it!
And yet you then demand, over and over, that people engage with your points, even after they have done so, and you have refused even to consider what they say to you! The same thing happened, of course, in the determinism thread, in which you ignored my discussion of the regularity theory response to the alleged problem of causal determinism negating free will. In the case of omniscience and human volition, I am trying to show you how omniscience fails to negate human free will. Yet you ignore all of it. I am not asking you to simply bow down and acknowledge that I am right — I am asking you to honestly engage with arguments that I present.
But you never do. And you behave the same with all your other interlocutors here,
If you are determined to begin yet another thread here in which “iambiguous is the problem” is the subject, go ahead. Just not on this thread. I made my points about pascal’s wager above. That’s what I’m here to discuss.
Let’s see where FreeSpirit and I agree and disagree.
He believes that God exists. I do not.
He believes that humans have free will. I agree, and I define free will as the ability to have done other, than what we actually did, at any given point.
He then presumably believes, if he shares my definition of free will, that humans are morally responsible for their acts. If he believes that, and I presume that he does, I agree.
Presume God exists arguendo and we take the standard definition that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Does FreeSpirit agree with this definition?
Following earlier points, it would seem to logically follow that FreeSpirt believes we have free will (could have done otherwise, with full moral responsibility for our acts) in the presence of a God as described above. Does he believe that?
The problem, of course, is the claim that if God infallibly knows in advance what we will do, we must do that thing, and thus are mere puppets of his divine foreknowledge and cannot be morally responsible for our acts. This is also called theological determinism. I disagree with this claim, and must presume FreeSpirit does as well.
Determinism takes a little mind-time to see what is going on and why people must be held responsible even though causality would not have allowed them to behave differently.
That is the very definition of causality - “everything is caused by prior conditions”.
I agree with you on that - foreknowledge from some other being has nothing to do with freewill one way or another. The implication is that because a being could know in advance - then causality must be the reality (that declaration could be debated - can God know things even without the principle of causation? - another issue).
See my discussion in the Determinism thread of regularity theory, also known as Humean or neo-Humean compatibilism, in which the idea that causal determinism obviates free will is challenged,
Regularity theory doesn’t change the definition of the word - it only declares (without sufficient backing) that people cannot know causality - rather only what seems regular.
Just because you cannot know God - doesn’t mean there isn’t God.
Dueling definitions begetting dueling deductions begetting the sort of “general description intellectual contraption” dueling we find here all the time. My “world of words” vs. your “world of words”.
Both God and determinism defined into existence. Little or nothing in the way of hard evidence establishing that either of them actually exist phenomenally as proposed theoretically.
As for all of this given “the Gap” and “Rummy’s Rule”?
Trivial pursuits.
Wouldn’t all of this depend on how you define omniscience given your definition of God? If God knows everything and everything encompasses anything at all then how are we free to do something that God was not already privy to? Simple. Define causality and God in one or another theoretical contraption that allows for it.
And then when someone asks you to demonstrate your conclusions in the manner in which, say, an electrical engineer can demonstrate how a lightbulb works, you…do what exactly?
No matter what anyone writes on this board, iambiguous’s responses are pre-determined, as on a save-get key. All he has to do is press the key:
“world of words … theoretical contraptions in the sky … desein … I am fractured … of course, we’ll need a context … electrical engineer, lightbulb … the gap … Rummy’s rule …
It’s all the same post!
I offered you a logical demonstration of why there is no conflict between God’s omniscience and human free will. That’s even better than demonstrating how a lightbulb works. Of course, there might be a flaw in the demonstration — the logic may not be fully airtight on fuller examination —but you offered no such examination or even a meaningful response to the demonstration I offered. You just pressed your usual save-get key!
