If we write it ourselves, the God doesn't know what we're going to do, and consequently is not omniscient.

And is precisely the conclusion I was getting at.



The 'random universe' thing still presupposes the existence of this Universal 'timeline', only that this timeline is itself of totally random origin and not set in motion by God. This still violates our free will, because the future is still 'written', it just avoids the dilemma of infinite gods.

Yeah, and I don't care what he knows. A "written future," as you put it, still doesn't conflict with free will.

A written future doesn't conflict with free will? ...not sure what I'm supposed to say to that...

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]Yeah, and I don't care what he knows. A "written future," as you put it, still doesn't conflict with free will.[/QUOTE]

..of course it conflicts with free will. It's pretty much the opposite of free will.

The ability to see the future and free will are entirely unrelated concepts.

...

If your actions are pre-written, then you don't have free will because you would then be incapable of changing your actions.

Free will and OMF TEH FUTURE are related concepts after all.

Precisely what I was going to say, except with about ten times as many words and various illustrative diagrams, as is my wont apparently. ;

No, they aren't. You still make the choice but some entity just knows what choice you are going to make. Still no conflict.

....

No.

Just no.

If an entity KNOWS you are going to do something, then THAT FUTURE EVENT CANNOT BE CHANGED. YOUR FREE WILL HAST BEEN TAKEN.

LIFE IS A FACADE OH NOS!


It's kind of like Greek Mythology. Only the fates could decide what was going to happen as they wove the tapestry. The individual was predestined to do whatever the hell. The God's could TELL a person what they were gonig to do, but a person could in no way change this fate.

But no one has told you what to do. You still make a choice.

It's okay, sithlord. Rob's just confued. He thinks that you actions are dictated by the timeline, instead of the other way around.

But the timeline doesn't change. It cannot change, because if you made some 'other' decision, God would know about it, and he'd write that on the timeline instead.

If your actions dictate the timeline, then god can't know what you're going to do next, because the timeline is written AS YOUR ACTIONS OCCUR. But if god already knows those actions, the timeline is already written and can't be changed, meaning you have no free will. It would only appear that you have free will because YOU don't know what's going to happen next. But god already does know.

...I don't understand why you don't get this...

I'm very glad that at least some people do.

I do get quite tired of having to repeat myself, but it's slightly more bearable when there's other people repeating myself too.

Get off your high horse. This isn't some kind of fact that you can use to pound people over the head with a sledgehammer with. That's my beef right there. I consider that a false statement, and you've done nothing to prove that it's true.

You said:

timeline already written -> no free will.

I disagree. Unless you have proof of this, buzz off.

...because if the timeline is written, and you make a different decision, the timeline changes. To god it's like "whoa didn't see that coming!" but there's nothing you can do that will suprise god, because he's omniscient.

Timeline already written -> no free will makes PERFECT sense. It means your FUTURE IS ALREADY WRITTEN. AND YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT. What are you not getting here??

...



God knows everything you're ever going to do. God could write this knowledge down, like a timeline.
This is a timeline of everything you're ever going to do.
You cannot deviate from this timeline, because if you were, God would know about it, and it would be on his timeline. Because God has always existed, and God has always had infinite knowledge, this timeline has always existed (and always looked exactly the same).
Because you cannot deviate from this timeline, you cannot make choices, you can only 'follow' this timeline.
Because you cannot make choices, you have no free will.

But you are still making a choice. It's the same concept as not being able to travel to the past and changing your choice. It has no bearing on free will.

You are not making the choice! The choice was made before you were even born. Effectivley by God. *sigh*

But you don't have a choice. The choice has been made for you already.

Yes. (and no, because God doesn't have free will either, so God cannot have made that choice either)

Strike one.

Incorrect. You still make the choice. God only knows what the choice is.

But God knows what that choice is before you make it.

Check.



Check.



Check.



Check.



This is where it breaks down.

Can't deviate from timeline -> you can't make decisions

I don't buy it. PROVE IT. Prove that statement to be true. Don't just rehash all the other garbage, prove that statement. You offer no proof.

An alternative to that statement which I consider to be more accurate is that your decisions constitute the timeline in realtime, yet god knows the timeline before the timeline occurs. A simpler way to put it is that god knows the output of your free will.



If you cannot make choices, you have no free will, true. However, you have yet to prove that decisions can't be made by mortals in the same universe as an omnicient god.

Very simply, whether or not there is or is not a God, god, and/or gods, there is no such thing as free will.

If you define free will to mean that you can make decisions, you are sorely wrong.

Remember this is God's timeline of events, not yours. This is God 'writing down' everything he knows about what is going to happen.

Because God has always existed, this timeline has always existed.
Because God has always had perfect infinite knowledge, this timeine has always been perfect and infinite.

If you made a 'decision' that wasn't on the timeline, it would no longer be perfect, and neither would God.

Because God (and by extension, the timeline) is perfect, the only 'decision' you can make is the one that is on this timeline. That is not a choice, and so is not free will.

Let me offer my 2 cents.

First of all, I believe God can see everything and knows everything that has and will happen. I also believe we have free will.

Now, I'm sure you agree that, whatever decisions we make, we make one at a time. That is, we can't decide to do something AND ALSO not to do it. Once we do something, it's recorded to time permanantly.

There doesn't need to be lack of free will for that to happen. Even if you second guess yourself, I would argue that God, knowing you even better than you know yourself, knows what you will ultimately decide.

Some might define this as a fixed will. But if so, what is free will then? Time as we know it is only one dimentional anyway. There is only one sequential set of events that have and will take place in this universe.

Now, what I believe free will to be and why we have it... It may very well come down to faith. I believe the Bible when it says we either make a decision for God or against God, and that we are free to choose either way.

I'm not sure there's any way you can really argue free will through science.

But why would this decision be any different from any other decision, which you acknowledged as being 'fixed'? If God has infinite knowledge, he knows whether you are going to make decisions 'for' or 'against' God (whatever that's supposed to mean), so you cannot 'choose' that any more than you can anything else.

And we've not been arguing anything through science.

MORT. The only decisions you can make are on the timeline because your decisions WRITE the timeline.

Of course you're not going to see a decision you didn't make on the timeline.

This is God's timeline of events, past and future. This timeline is already written and was written at the very beginning of God - because God has always had infinite knowledge.

Indeed, if the timeline were unwritten then you would be writing it and you would be shaping the future. But then God would have no what you're going to do, because the timeline is unwritten - and therefore would not be omniscient.

Don't you get at what I'm saying? Yes, this is GOD's timeline, which is what I think you're failing to understand. You need to consider the implications of being able to see into the future. To someone who can see into the future, the past depends on the future. In other words, our future decisions had to be observed by god in order for him to create this timeline at the beginning of time.

But he could only observe it if he went through the entire history of the Universe, write it all down as it happened, and then went 'back in time' and told himself what was going to happen.

(Even then, it is assuming that we are going to do exactly the same 'this time round' as we did before, so we'd essentially be actors playing out a script)

But God has always been omniscient, so even at the beginning of God he knew what was going to happen always before it ever happened. Omniscience isn't about infinite observation, it is about infinite knowledge.

Tell me, Mort, what does god do to strip us of our ability to make a decision?

Do you honestly believe that because entity X possesses a bunch of data, that entity Y is hampered in its ability to make a decision?

That simple argument is why I can't accept your point of view. There is no correlation whatsoever between someone's knowledge and someone else's ability to take action.

God doesn't have to 'do' anything. This isn't really even about God at all. The future could very well be written without a God, and we would still have no free will.

It's about free will. It requires us to have the ability to shape the future. It requires us to be able to shape the future right now.


But if some entity x already knows the future, then we do not have that ability. There is nothing we can do to 'avoid' the future that entity x knows. Either entity x is wrong, or we do not have free will to shape the future.

Of course there's nothing we can do to avoid the future that entity X knows, because it's the future. Not just the future, but THE FUTURE. What shaped that future was our decisions, not entity X.

Entity X is looking into the future at the beginning of time. Entity X knows that the downfall of the United States in the year 2019 was because Mort-Hog ate a terrorist's piece of cake, the terrorist got P'd off, and decided to nuke America.

This IS the future, and it's IMMUTABLE.

If Mort-Hog had decided not to spoil his dinner, America would exist, and that would become the IMMUTABLE FUTURE based on the decision Mort made in the year 2018.

Of course, entity X hasn't done anything.


But because entity X knows THE future, there is only ONE possible future.

If we had free will to shape the future, there'd be a huge (almost infinite) number of possible futures - but there isn't. There is ONE future.

Indeed, entity X isn't actively doing anything to shape this future - entity X is largely just there as 'evidence' that the future is already written. Like I said, the future could very well already be written without an entity X and the whole spiel would be exactly the same.



Those are two different scenarios based on two different choices by an equally foolish Mort-Hog. Mort-Hog has the choice to either eat cake (and result in downfall of United States), or not eat cake (and result in the existence of America).

But entity x knows whether I'm going to eat this cake or not. Entity x knows whether the terrorists are going to get angry, and entity x knows whether America will exist. I don't - but entity X does.

There is only one possible scenario. If I had the free will to make the choice to eat the cake, or not, there would be two. But there is only one, so I cannot have that free will.

Aha, I think we finally got down to the heart of the matter. You see, I don't think so. I think there is only one possible future even considering we have free will. For the exact same reason that there is only one history, not millions of versions. It's because we can only make one decision at a given point in the timeline.

History is the timeline of the past. Free will requires the ability to change the future. Inability to change the past has nothing to do with free will. Free will requires the 'past' and the 'future' to be essentially different things.

If there is only one future, and that future is dependent upon our decisions, then I have only one choice. All the other possible choices are impossible, because they lead to 'other' futures - and there is only one future.

Except there is only one future. No matter how many different ways tomorrow might happen, it will only happen one way.