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If God exists outside the limits of time, then free will does not.
This is based on the assumption that God is all good and all powerful.
When God created human beings he created them knowing each individual action that these humans were going to commit.He decided on this actions because he could design the human and their future actions in exactly the way he wanted them to.If he exists outside the limits of time then there are no surprises for him.
When human beings design something with artificial intelligence we judge whether it is intelligent, in part, by whether it can make its own decisions. If we already know the decisions it is going to make then it is not intelligent, it is just acting on its programming. As God programmed us knowing exactly what we were going to do we are not 'intelligent' as we would judge AI; we do not have free will.
If God is aware of the state of every variable at the start of time (as we know it), and is capable of processing every equation, he would be omniscient.
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To simplify:
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If I ask you... What will the sum of 2x + 2 be?
If we know that x = 3, then we know what the sum will be (8).
It is only when we do not know the value of x that the equation becomes uncertain. Or "Free"
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Therefore, in order for us to have free will, God must lack omnipotence, or just omniscience due to willful ignorance.
If questioning things means Im going to Hell, so be it. You have no business judging people when you dont know anything about them. I dont care if you think I suck at being a Christian. I really dont. Even Jesus questioned God, so yeah. Run that, Doc. ;)
Question things about your faith is what Christians usually do. "Why did God create evil? Why is abortion wrong?" etc. What you do is: Freedom and God! Fuck that. God is a cunt. Freedom shouldn't be in the same sentence as God" Its the definition of blasphemy. It is not questioning. It is merely insulting.
You know so much, dontcha? So tell me how you handled PTSD? How you handled a life time of abused. Job was a righteous man and even he had a bone to pick with God. I will not once claim to be righteous cuz Im unworthy of that label but what I will do is claim to posses sincere belief. Once you have your med licence and start working as a doc, you may or may not run into patients who have been through what I have been through. You dont have to care about me, but at least care about them. You have an amazing mind and I have no desire to fight you cuz I truely do respect you. You have opened my eyes to a few things. Tell me why you care so much what I do? Could it be that you are not the badass you want people to think you are and that byou are actually quite sweet? You have so much potential. Im sorry for whatever made you think you have to hide how you feel. Youre an amazing person with great potential. Stay awesome. :)
You know so much, dontcha? So tell me how you handled PTSD? How you handled a life time of abused. Job was a righteous man and even he had a bone to pick with God. I will not once claim to be righteous cuz Im unworthy of that label but what I will do is claim to posses sincere belief. Once you have your med licence and start working as a doc, you may or may not run into patients who have been through what I have been through. You dont have to care about me, but at least care about them. You have an amazing mind and I have no desire to fight you cuz I truely do respect you. You have opened my eyes to a few things. Tell me why you care so much what I do? Could it be that you are not the badass you want people to think you are and that byou are actually quite sweet? You have so much potential. Im sorry for whatever made you think you have to hide how you feel. Youre an amazing person with great potential. Stay awesome. :)
Of course it does. God decided how he should design a human being. In choosing that he recognised every action that every human was going to do. If he had designed the human being differently then any of those actions could have been changed couldn't they?
Its like making a robot, pressing a view buttons, a screen displaying "this robot will walk 2 metres, turn 180 degrees and walk another 1 metre. Do you want to confirm its creation?", hitting the play button, and the claiming the robot has free will. It didn't! You knew it was going to do it and you confirmed thats what you wanted it to do by completing its creation!
We makes choices. Our choices, though, are determined by our desires. And our desires come to us from God. Choice is the only thing that is necessary for free will, not that which is before it. If I am suddenly overcome by a desire for sex, and I have no desire that can compete with it, then I'm going to choose sex. But in that choice, I still made that choice. No one would say that the person didn't have free will; his desire for sex simply based his choice. And that desire came to him out of his volition. This is what metaphysical philosophers have long claimed, saying that moral accountability is still upheld, the deterministic cause not being at fault.
. If I am suddenly overcome by a desire for sex, and I have no desire that can compete with it, then I'm going to choose sex. But in that choice, I still made that choice.
At the dawn of time when God created the notion that that individual existed he decided that that individual was going to choose to have sex. He knew it and he decided that was what he wanted to create. He could have created the world in exactly the same way be decided that that individual was going to choose not to have sex. But he didnt. He chose to create the world in which he did have sex.
We choose our own path. We could have lived in harmony with nature (as in caring more about the planet we live on), been more loving, avoided all wars, and so on... But we chose to abuse our resources, be greedy and intolerant, and go to war. There are people out there who live according to the first path, so we are all capable of taking that path.
There is an interesting lecture by Alan Watts called The Dream of Life. Basically, it goes like this... Imagine that you go to sleep and have a dream, and within that dream you can experience about seventy years of time, and what you do in that dream is up to you. You'd do everything you wanted to do. Visit any place you want, go on different adventures, and so on. Once those seventy years are over, you wake up and do it again... And again, and again, until eventually, you get bored. So, you say, "well, lets mix things up a bit." You make it a little more dangerous, you have a little less control. You wake up and think, "whoa... That was close." Then you decide to remove all control, until eventually you live the dream that you are currently living. The ultimate reality, in which you pretend that you are not God.
Now, I am sure God is not sleeping, or dreaming... Not in the way that we know it, but could our existence be something similar? If God is everywhere and without form as the Bible says, then he thought us into existence. Everything is just a result of God's imagination.
What does free will mean then? Philosophers (most contemporary, metaphysical philosophers believe in compatibilism or are at least sympathetic toward it) who study this for a living don't think determinism and free will contradict, and neither does the bible--yet again another philosophy point to the bible. I've told y'all one reason why they think it, but y'all don't want to see it. That's fine, but so far there has yet to be any justification for that belief.
We choose what our strongest desire is. We don't choose our desires; they simply are. No one believes in libertarian free will, except maybe sartrians, though I might agree that they deep down know they are wrong. Free will how it is used proper is based in the ability to choose what we want. That's how it is used in normal language. You are free to choose and do your will, or what you want, not free to choose what your will is. If free will is the former, then determinism is compatible with it.
It was decided that he was going to choose that thing. That person still chose that thing. It was not against his will; he wanted that very thing. Simply because a person's will has been determined, it does not mean that he doesn't have free will. No one thinks that desires are chosen, while choices are simply types of a cognition of the strongest desires, but everyone still claims that people freely choose. That person's free will was determined by determinismm: it was determined that a person was going to freely choose sex. If free will is simply the ability to make choices without being impeded, and this person's own desires were the basis of his choice, which no one thinks are chosen (that would be circular), then the person has free will but determinism can be true also.
What needs to be understood is the fundamental difference of libertarian free will and free will. You're only allowing the former to be definitional to free will, but no one truly thinks that to be true.. Libertarian free will is that in all aspects of their life, people choose; it plays sometimes in the aspect of the will being free, meaning that one can shape what one wills. But this is insanely radical! Sartre claimed it, but who really thinks this? This would mean that a person can even choose desires. But how can one freely shape something without choosing to shape that thing? Can one choose desires? This is insanely circular: one chooses desires, which is based in the will to change the desire, which is chosen, and so on. Surely you can see this.. No one thinks that to be true! Desires simply are. Likewise, the environment shapes how we do things, how we think of things, etc. so no one truly claims libertarian free will, so why should we define free will in general as such, since everyone stills claims free will (the will being free to act, not the will being free to be determined--the difference in what word plays in which in 'free will') to be possible, and people can tell when a person has free will or not, namely whether the person is being forced do that which is against the will of the person? Instead, let us simply say that free will is the ability to choose without being forced against that choice. Determinism has free will then. If that definition doesn't suit you, then change it up to something like 'the ability to choose unimpeded.' But that doesn't change free will and determinism being compatible with one another also. If that definition does not suit you also, then change it to 'choosing without being forced to choose one way or the other.' But that's doesn't contradict it either, since the person's choice is based in desire, and desire is what is being determined.
Thank you for your comprehensive reply. You have clearly studied this.
I agree with your notion of free will. We must see it as a spectrum. Our actions are combination of free will and pre-determination (for me, this is either from our environment or our genome). This is from my atheist view point.
Your argument seems to be that God predetemines some things and but gives us free will to decide others. I can agree with this if you concede then that God did not have the foresight of what the humans he created would do (to me this seems to be a concession that God is not a supreme perfect being). Because if he did know the choices that the humans would make then he did predetermine those choices. As I say, a robot only has AI if it does something in a way that we didn't absolutely predict. It could be termed AI if the robot does something in an order we didn't predict. Perhaps this could loosely be termed free will. However, this is not the case with God. He knew exactly what every person was going to do when he created them the way he did (assuming you agree with that definition of God as all knowing and outside of time). He chose the choices, therefore there is no free will.
To clarify, I'm not arguing that God gives us the free will to decide certain things, but God predetermined others. I'm saying that in Gods pre-determination, free will is established. God determines our free will: we freely choose what we want (ie free will), but this want is established by God. In Gods predetermination, He gives us the heart for certain things, which results in choice. This is one of the many key differences between humans and robots. Robots do not choose; they only do. Humans do choose: people choose what they want, but this choice is predetermined by God through the establishing of the heart of the person.
Let us use a loose thought experiment to understand this better. Suppose there is a distinction of the body and the soul. While the soul is embodied, they both do the same things. It's a "both... and..." answer. Now carry the type of thought from this loose thought experiment to understand compatibilism. God determines our actions, but at the same time the choice is made by the human: God chooses for us to choose x.
God determines our actions, but at the same time the choice is made by the human: God chooses for us to choose x.
Okay. God chooses that we choose something. This is what free will is to a Christian? Everyone makes the choice that God chose for them and this is free will? It seems more like an illusion of free will.
Most contemporary Christians believe in libertarian free will, which is unbiblical, heretical, and unphilosophical. The bible claims compatibilistic free will. And this is not an illusion of free will, though you could claim it to be an illusion of the libertarian form. It is analytically free will and determinism.
You are claiming that if your choice was determined by someone else, then it can still be your choice.
To claim this you have to confuse 'illusion of choice' with 'actual choice'. It's true that if my choice was determined by someone else I might very plausible have the illusion that the choice was mine. But I doubt you can find any case where we would say that the choice was actually mine.
But let's test that claim. Is there a case where my choice being determined, still was mine? In order to test this claim I need a lemma, which is that in any given scenario, there's at least two courses of action. In any scenario I can either be passive or impassive. This is true for all situations, which shows that there must be at least two courses of action in any scenario, I can act or I can be passive.
Now the most plausible scenario I can think of is one where my "choice-making process" isn't being determined by someone else. That is, when I made my choice I alone was responsible for whatever happened in my brain. For my choice to be determined, my choice must have been determined by factors outside of my mind. That is, the one determining my action could only have changed the scenario I am put in. But in any given scenario I have a choice of at least two options. This shows that if someone isn't determining my choice-making process, then my actions can't be determined, since I will have at least two choices to pick freely from. Actual choice doesn't get undermined when someone is determining the scenarios I am put in. From this it follows, that in order to determine my actions, one has to determine how I am making choices; one has to determine my how my brain is working.
In order to refute your claim it is thus sufficient to show that determination of choice-making undermines any basis for actual freedom of choice. So let's take a look at it. If my choice-making process is being determined, then in no sensible way do I have actual freedom of choice. How could I? Doesn't having actual freedom of choice exactly mean that I am free to make my own choices? If not, what then does it mean to have actual freedom of choice? I challenge you to reconcile determination of choice making with actual freedom of choice.
Unless you can give me a strong reason, I see no reason to suppose that I have actual freedom of choice if my choice making is being determined. Instead what I do have in such a situation is an illusion of choice. If the way I am making choices is being determined by something other than myself, then I might perfectly well have an illusion of choice, but I won't have actual freedom of choice.
So to answer your question. Choice can be determined, but if choice is determined then I don't have actual freedom of choice (i.e. free will). All I will have is illusion of choice (i.e. lack of free will). So since the only way to determine my actions is to determine my choice making, and since determining my choice making undermines free will, it follows that determining my actions undermines free will.
This is sufficient for showing that positing determination of actions and free will is a contradiction. That is, if you can't show how I can have actual freedom of choice if my choice making is being determined, then your position will be self-contradictory. Q.E.D.
It is wholly our choice and Gods choice. There is no contradiction there, and compatibilism states this to be true, along with the Bible. Choices are simply from the strongest desire at that given moment. No one thinks desire is a choice; instead, people claim choice to be a type of cognition of desire. Indeed, free will is still wholly present in us, though we have been determined to make that choice.
My disagreement lies in one basic premise of the argument; that is the assumptions made not only about the nature of gods knowledge, but about fundamental properties of the universe.
Assuming god, as depicted in the bible, is real, his knowledge of the future could take one of three main forms without being inconsistent.
1) No actual precognition, but sufficiently powerful and intelligent enough to steer the course of history towards the desired outcome.
2) Actual precognition in the form of being able to 'see' all possible futures that could play out from any given point, their relative likelihoods, etc.
3) Actual precognition in the form of being able to 'see' the one true path that future will take.
Any of these cases would make the christian gods claims of knowing the future true, but only the third case precludes free will- and that also precludes the free will of god. If I were to believe in a god, I would expect that it is likely an overlap of cases 1 and 2.
Furthermore, your statements regarding programming are a bit off as well; while this is true for single-person projects, it is not necessarily the case when a team of programmers work together on a large project; this is one of the reasons that software is patched so much these days, as none of the programmers involved have the full picture and there are 'holes' so to speak. Going even beyond that, a programmer could also employ genetic algorithms, causing the program to re-write itself in successive generations, each one getting closer and closer to performing the desired task.
So really, not even someone programming an AI necessarily has the level of foreknowledge regarding what their creation will do that you claim. Perhaps the christian god created dna as the 'ultimate genetic algorithm.'
Thank you for making the effort to think about this.
I don't see the first and second as option as fitting with Christian doctrine. The Christian God is perfect. He does not have 'sufficient' power and intelligence; but rather it has unlimited power. It must be able to see all possible futures and it must have actual precognition.
Your analogy with the engineer fits if you accept that a perfect engineer would know every outcome of the programme.
I think you're oversimplifying christian doctrine. While some, possibly even many branches of christianity interpret the scriptures to mean that god is both omnipotent and omniscient, there is no actual scriptural backing that actually establishes this. There are a few verses that seem to imply this, but that's ultimately a matter of interpretation.
Even if we were to accept omnipotent and omniscience, that still doesn't necessarily include precognition; omniscience roughly means 'possessing all knowledge' but future events fall outside of the scope of the term 'knowledge.'
In this analogy, the engineer very well could know all possible outcomes of the program, but wouldn't necessarily know which outcome any given instance from any given iteration would produce, although being aware of relative probabilities thereof would allow how to guess very accurately.
Primary objections to the debate premise are as follows:
(1) Omniscience may not necessarily entail any deliberate exercise of that knowledge.
(2) There are multiple forms of intelligence, and not all are contingent upon the existence of free will. (I recognize this is an offshoot of the focal debate, but it was mentioned multiple times in the framing.)
