...don't confuse existential future with possible future.

Obviously there is only one existential future.
But if the future is already written, then there is only one possible future as well.

That's why I said 'effectivley by God'. As soon as he creates the universe he creates and knows the answers to every choice ever.



Yes. But with free will you could choose how it happens. If God knows the future it can only happen one way. We cannot make choices which change it.

Exactly, Wookie.

The timeline of the future looks EXACTLY like the timeline of the past: because there is only one that is possible.

If that's the case we do not have free will.

For free will to exist, there must be an infinite number of possible future timelines. Why? Because those future events have not occured yet, so you cannot know what they are. If you do know what they are, it means they have already been decided.

"The timeline of the future looks EXACTLY like the timeline of the past"
Once that future has taken place, THEN it looks like the timeline of the past. Future events ARE NOT PREDETERMINED. THEREFORE THERE CAN BE NO WRITTEN TIMELINE FOR THEM.

You keep saying to offer proof and not just restate what we are saying. We are proving it. Every time we restate what we've said we are restating the proof. It appears you just don't get it.

I don't know about infinite. Very very very very big, yes... but not infinite. There's only a finite (though very very very very big) number of possible choices I can make, so a finite number of possible futures, surely?

But everyone in the world has a large number of finite choices which can potentially lead to chaning other peoples choices. I guess it's still not infinite though.

It's obviously infinite, because you can decide to move your pinky 3.999999999999999999999999999999 centimeters to the right instead of 3.99999999999999999999999999999 centimeters to the right. Well, not really DECIDE, but that event could occur at any level of precision possible. There could be an infinite number of universe states merely describing the time you decided to leave for school.

You could decide to leave for school at 7:09:23.2312321731283712312491281829892810, or maybe exactly 7:09.

Since there's infinitely many rational numbers between those two times... there's obviously infinitely many universe states.

well, assuming length is infinitely divisible.

Uh... it is.

not necessarily. (this is another 'big thing' in mathematics, Calculus specifically, which probably deserves its own thread)

Are you telling me there's not infinitely many rational numbers between, say, 0 and 1? That's ridiculous.

You'll find various sites explaining this better than I can, but I'll try to paraphrase. (I think it's called 'Zeno's dilemma' or something?)

You have two points:

Ax----------------------------------------------------------B


You're at A, and you're going to travel to B. But before you get to B, you have to get halfway between A and B. (You are x)


A----------------------------x------------------------------B

Okay, you're halfway between A and B, travelling to B. But before you get to B, you have to get halfway between your position and B (three quarters of the way from A to B)


A--------------------------------------------x--------------B


Okay, you're three quarters of the way between A and B, travelling to B. But before you get to B, you have to get halfway between your position and B. (seven eights of the way from A to B)


A----------------------------------------------------x------B


Okay, you're seven eights of the way from A to B, travelling to B. But before you get to B, you have to get halfway between your position and B. (fifteen sixteenths of the way from A to B)

A--------------------------------------------------------x--B



By dividing the distance A to B in half every single time, you are getting infinitesimally close to B, but you will never reach B because you can continue dividing that line into halves.

This is fairly easy to understand. The real philosophy is.. What does this mean?


It fairly obviously doesn't mean that it is impossible to travel from one point to another. So what does it mean? Well, one of the assumptions we made right at the start is that the 'line' between A and B is a continuous line so that in travelling you are constantly dividing the line in half.
If we disregard this assumption, and instead have the line as a series of discrete 'jumps', like:

A o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o B

Instead of you travelling along a 'line' from A to B, you are instead 'jumping' between the o's. This way, you are not travelling across half of the line because at some point your 'jump' will be larger than that infinitesmally small half and you will arrive at B.

And so you avoid the dilemma.

It doesn't matter that there are an infinite number of ways tomorrow may happen because in the end it will only happen the way it does. Now of course we still have free will to affect the outcome but in the end it only happens one way.

Speaking of free will, Mort, did you freely choose not to answer the question I posed to you in the last post of the 9/11 thread or did you simply miss it? I didn't want to bump the other thread just to ask that.

Well, that is self-evident, but the issue is whether there are an infinite (or near-infinite) number of possible futures, or whether there is just one possible future.

Yes, please leave out the physics. For all intents and purposes, infinite means "anything could happen."

Legitimate arguments can be made for both, I suppose. There are an infinite number of choices which can effect the future however the future can only unfold once and, therefore, in one way. Nobody can prove that things would have turned out differently if a different choice was made even though logic would suggest they would.

I can see why philosophy keeps people so busy. Still a waste of time, though!

If we have free will, then there will be an infinite number of possible futures.

But if there are an infinite number of equally possible futures, God cannot know which future will occur - so God is not omniscient.

If there is one possible future, God can know what future will occur (because there's only one), but we cannot decide our future because there is only one possible future - so free will does not exist.

That is the conflict.

Yeah. Freelancer, if you want to talk about the 'infinite divisions' thing, can you copy-paste it into a new thread or something? I think that would limit confusion.

Keeping in mind that I am not necessarilly expressing my religious opinions here but I think there is a serious flaw in your opinion here. You can't use that logic to disprove God or free will. Assuming that there is an all powerful, omnicient entity, you can't apply our own inabilities to "him". His ability to know what the future is would transcend any effects our "infinite" choices would have. He would know what choice you would make but his knowing wouldn't affect your decision making. It is a different plane of thinking, if that makes sense.

I'm not argueing the point with you and, to be honest, issues like this are what makes it hard for me to be a religious-type person. When I was younger I had a huge problem rationalizing that no matter how good a person I might be that if I didn't live a certain way some omnicient being could damn me to Hell. To be honest, I don't think much about religion at this point in my life. It is still something that I need to work out for myself.

Of course you can't disprove god with logic, but given what the Bible says, you can disprove that god is all the things the Bible says he is. That he gives us free will yet is also omniscient. Of course you can just say "it's beyond our comprehension." That's what I was always told in PSR when I was a kid. For some of us, that's not good enough to make us believe. We'd rather stick to logic.

I understand your thinking. It just seems apparent to me that *if* "God" exists then his abilities would be beyond our comprehension.

Hooray! I was waiting for this one - God is above logic, so logic does not apply to God. The last refuge of the theist? The argument to end all arguments, the argument that immediately trivialises all rationalising? It certainly looks like it... but I'm afraid not. There's two responses..

The first is somewhat tautological.. Existence is a logical quality, so if logic doesn't apply to God, neither does existence, so God does not exist.
Thoroughly unsatisfying, indeed, so I have a second.

If God is beyond logic, then God is beyond this Universe; if he is outside the realm of logic he cannot interfere with the Universe. If this God-out-of-logic would in any way interfere with the events in our Universe, he would become manifest in a logic framework.

And anyway, 'beyond logic' essentially means 'irrational', and is an admission that the stance is not rational - which is precisely what we're trying to prove in the first place.

I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. See, you're still applying logic, when that argument points out that logic doesn't matter. It's like saying there's no way you could possibly comprehend god, it's just beyond us. No matter what you think you've proven, you haven't, because god is still beyond it. It's really the point where you can't try to disprove God anymore. Last refuge for a theist? Perhaps, but you can't disprove it.

Yes, but I'm sort of applying meta-logic, logic about logic.


More significantly, if God is above logic, there is nothing stopping him being infinitely good and infinitely evil at the same time. Or indeed existing and not existing, at the same time. These are logical contradictions, but if logic cannot be applied then they are not contradictions. And so nothing remotely meaningful can be said about God at all, he is nothing, everything, and anything inbetween, all at the same time.


The only way for this to work is if God suddenly pops into above-logic-mode as soon as an atheist walks past, and then sneaks back into logic mode when he's not looking.

You see, this is why I specifically avoided the "god is beyond our comprehension" argument because I knew it would set off Mort.

Hee. I was surprised it hadn't come up before now, actually.

Well, at least it's out of the way.

Still, keeping in mind that, I'm not really argueing the point but it seems clear you can't apply human standards of logic and reasoning to an all powerful entity that supposedly created the universe and, therefore, us. What is so hard to understand about an entire plane of existence unknown to us being beyond our comprehension?

The fact that it, most likely, doesn't exist. What's so hard to understand about that?

Was that supposed to be ironic?


What is so hard? If it is beyond our comprehension, then it's infinitely hard.

So you don't believe that anything happens that is beyond human comprehension? That's what is called the vanity of humanity.

Oh shut up. He said he doesn't know, and he bases everything off what he knows. It's a logical, totally realistic viewpoint.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Oh shut up. He said he doesn't know, and he bases everything off what he knows. It's a logical, totally realistic viewpoint.[/QUOTE]

Are you drunk or on drugs? I'm having civil conversations with people and you come on with an uncharacteristic beligerant attitude. Check yourself, please.

No, but you are taking Mort's words and twisting them quite well to fit your own side of this er...conversation.

But funny that you think I must be drunk or on drugs. I don't **** with that **** during the week anyways.

How are hurtful (and obviously false) accusations any better wookie?

How hypocritical.

I'm not sure what you're talking about although you probably don't realize that I made this comment after his hateful remark to me in the "mooning" thread. I would seriously believe him to be impaired seeing as how he has gone from what has been his usual, calm self back to an insulting, confrontational (expletive).

You kind of have to put our posts from two threads in order to understand why I made the comment here.

[QUOTE=Raoul Duke]How hypocritical.[/QUOTE]

How so?

rofl. I wouldn't exactly classify his usual self as calm.

It still boggles me that anyone thinks I usually get worked up for whatever reason about what they say.

And Raoul--Wookie is not a druggy, or drunk, and (to my knowledge) has not even experimented with illegal substances.

Wookie--I'm confrontational because you have a "I'm right and nothing you do can change it mentality," which, while making me laugh, kind of irks me enough that I feel like not being too kind in the way I deliver my retorts.