[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]And Raoul--Wookie is not a druggy, or drunk, and (to my knowledge) has not even experimented with illegal substances.[/QUOTE]

Smoked pot in '88. Drink but not enough to get drunk usually.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]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.[/QUOTE]

I don't get it. This is a philosophical debate in this thread and I've openly said I'm not argueing specific points. I'm discussing them. The other thread is a moron kid that first says he moons people every other day and his bus driver accomplices the acts and when I respond to that he contradicts it all. Disagree with me if you want but you should jump all over that guy for being an idiot. Just seems you wanted to pick a fight with me for a reason. poopoo face :p

No, you just don't realize what that kind of punishment DOES to a kid's life. Just like about all of the principals etc I've ever had. It can screw up their high school career which is a very BASIC need you must have in this world, and this screw up can concurrently destroy any chance a kid has at colleges, which...well I don't have to explain that.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]No, you just don't realize what that kind of punishment DOES to a kid's life. Just like about all of the principals etc I've ever had. It can screw up their high school career which is a very BASIC need you must have in this world, and this screw up can concurrently destroy any chance a kid has at colleges, which...well I don't have to explain that.[/QUOTE]

That's why the damn bus driver should be terminated. Well, depending on which one of the kids posts you believe. Hey, wait a minute. You posted in the wrong thread, poopoo face! I KNEW you were drunk! HA!

Hah, well I've been switching between tabs, IRC, music, and cleaning my mousepad/monitor (windex is a must for my computing needs). My bad.

Now you're a rule breaker with multiple accounts. BAN HIM!!!!

...

Damn, guess he just changed his name. Didn't know you could do that. Stand down the ban list. Stand down.

To the ever-attentive wookie. :p

I still want a better apology.



I'm waiting.




Waiting.




Yosh?

<cricket, cricket, cricket>

.. Are you drunk or on drugs?

I would give you one, but you already have stated your view on it quite explicitly in the other thread.

Obviously I know Wookie is not a druggy. I meant he is a hypocrit because he was acting in the way he was critizing you for acting. It just sounded beligerant and judgemental.

[QUOTE=Raoul Duke]Obviously I know Wookie is not a druggy. I meant he is a hypocrit because he was acting in the way he was critizing you for acting. It just sounded beligerant and judgemental.[/QUOTE]

Fine but Yosh understood the context.

How are humans supposed to make any statement about anything that is beyond human comprehension?

Does stuff exist that we don't know about yet? Sure. Does stuff exist that we cannot know about? Well, if it does, how are we ever supposed to know that it exists? What difference does it make if it doesn't exist at all?

The 'vanity of humanity' is the idea that we're somehow special enough, above all other organisms, to get an omnimax superbeing looking after us, guaranteeing that we'll live forever.

Consider: if I choose now what I'm going to wear tomorrow, does that mean I could choose nothing else because I know what I'm going to choose?
That answer should be obvious.

Just out of curiosity, how many times are you going to completely ignore the definition of free will? Do you think that if you ignore it enough, I'll just suddenly stop noticing? One more time: "the power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will."

You assume that it is God writing the timeline. God can't read? Oh, right, reading it means you control it again.

So it's random. How does that even come close to having anything whatsoever to do with knowledge of future events? You have yet to demonstrate the relationship, and I think that by now, this debate has gone on long enough for me to conclude that you can't.

*sigh*

Uh, no. The opposite would be slavery.

The only way this timeline example is going to work is if you look at past and future equally.

BUT WHO SAID GOD WROTE IT!?

It's you who doesn't get it because you, like Mort, are blantantly ignoring what it means.

But it is only knowledge.

I'm going to ask this once: Where in the definition of ree will does it say choices are made for you?
Oh that's right. It doesn't, because that's not what it means. (For the thousandth time.)

But God doesn't exist within time. He simply looks at it, past, present, and future, all at once. He can look at the future as easily as we look at the past. Who would say that because the past is fixed, there was no free will? If you will not, your argument has failed horribly.

Based on what? You made-up definition?

No, you have many choices. It is only possible to make one single choice with a given situation.

Yes, we do. If I shape clay, can't God look upon it? If I shape my future, can't God look upon that, too?

You fail to realize that God observing something does not relate to shaping it. Bear in mind what I said in my last response as well.

Knowledge bears no constraint on free will. Constraint of free will is a contradiction of terms. If you cannot demonstrate a CONSTANT in which knowledge bears direct relationship with control and/or action, I have no need to argue further. You have repeated the argument in nearly every post, but presented no reason why it is so. If there is no constant, your argument fails.

WICKED AWESOME.

Dogsrool, from the sound of it, your assertion is that God's 'vision o' the future' does not negate free will. You are saying that humans determine their futures... IE: I choose to wear a red shirt tomorrow. God can still know that I am doing so, because he can see the entire future of the universe based on that choice stretched out in front of us. However, should I choose, in five minutes, to instead wear a green shirt, the entire future of the universe shifts (at least a wee bit), but God can still see that.

Reading the timeline does not necessarily mean creating.

This does presuppose that God can interpret a nearly infinite (or infinite?) amount of information, but that's ok ;).

Exactly. 40 posts and I wasn't able to express it was well as you, saberopus. Nicely done.

But you don't know. You choose. You can change your mind. There's a difference. God *knows* with 100% accuracy what you're going to wear tommorow. Since God knows, it must happen that way. You must wear what God knows you're going to wear. If you "choose" to wear something else then God did infact not know what you were going to wear and is not all-knowing.

You can't know for sure what you're going to wear tommorow. An item of your clothing might get chewed up by the dryer or your house may set alight destroying all your posessions. The analogy is bad since your knowledge isn't perfect however god's supposedly is.

Another bad analogy. The past is fixed. The future isn't. We have the power to change the future however we cannot affect the past in any way at all. If god can see past, present and future all at once then everything ever is fixed because there is only one possible way to get from the beginning of time to the end of it.

...the whole purpose of my timeline example is to act as an illustration of God's infinite knowledge. This is God's timeline.




Of course the past is fixed, it's already happened.
But if we have free will, then the future isn't fixed. Free will requires this fundemental difference between 'past' and 'future', it requires us to be able to shape the future, to change the future. But if God already knows the future, perfectly, then we can no longer do that - there is no longer any difference whatsoever between 'past' and 'future'.

You cannot do anything that God doesn't already know you're going to do. The choices have already been made for you, and that is what God is observing. God isn't just observing your choices 'as you make them', because that would require him to be just as clueless as you are - he isn't just 'along for the ride'.

God knows everything that is ever going to happen, and this requires that all these events are pre-determined - otherwise, he wouldn't know them.

You seem to be making the argument "If I am not making these decisions, God must be making these decisions." You seem to be assuming that because I am arguing that you do not have free will to make decisions, I am therefore also arguing that God does. A mixture of a strawman and a false dilemma.


Imagine a billiard ball rolling across a table. I can see what direction this billiard ball is going, and I can see that it is going to collide with another billiard ball. The motion of this billiard ball was pre-determined, by whoever set it rolling. But they don't have to keep pushing it along all the way for it to hit this second billiard ball. The second hits a third, the third hits a fourth. Assuming I'm good enough at the mechanics, I could predict these collisions. But I didn't control them. Did I set the first ball in motion? Possibly. But everything else, I was just watching.
The important question - could these billiard balls, assuming nothing from outside the billiard table acted upon them, have done anything differently? Could they have not collided, could they have collided with other balls?
Do these billiard balls have the free will to decide their motion?

Take this billiard table, and extrapolate upwards... to the size of a Universe.


I've showed that you cannot be making these decisions, because the Universe must be pre-determined for God to have infinite knowledge over it - but I've never suggested that God has infinite control over all your decisions.

So what conclusions does this lead to?
That there must be some third 'unknown element', some 'thing' separate from you and God that set the entire Universe and all before it in motion...
(or simply that God is not omniscient)



Please, re-read my posts, because all these issues I've already covered in quite some depth

Sigh... No one read my post several pages back that addressed this issue.

I can if I have a dress code at work.

And your point?




Notice that God sees the whole timeline, the decisions that could've been made, the decisions that might be made, the decisions that have been made, and the decisions that will be made. All posibilities and certainties are in view. If possibilities have existed in the past, they shall certainly exist in the future. If the past has become solid, the future must do so as well.

The point is that the choices exist, just as much as the definitive outcomes. Without free will, there are no posibilities, and you have absolutely no control over your choices. At all. You would be a mindless puppet, controlled by a greater being. That is what the opposite of free will is.

Uh, yeah, thanks for clearing that up, because everyone didn't already know that.

Must...resist...burn...

I like cookies.

Apparently not, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. Yet here we are...

[Nevermind, that won't get me anywhere]

I'm sure Mort will come up with a better reply soon enough.

My point was you don't know 100% that you'll even go to work tommorow. Unexpected things happen. You could win the lottery. Your workplace could be burnt to the ground by then. Any number of things could happen to stop you going to work tommorow. Theres even the slightest chance that you won't be alive tommorow (Wow this post is really a downer :p). You can't know 100% even the slightest detail about tommorow. You can have a very good idea but not absolute knowledge. This is where your analogy fails. You can't be 100% certain of anything.

However if God knows the future then those events have a probability of 1. They have to happen.




But with the path set the choices don't have a purpose. They don't really exist because they're not reachable. Only the choices on the set path are reachable. This means there are no other choices.

The definition if 'free will' is irrelevant. If there is a written future known by god then there is nothing we can do to change it. We cannot influence the future in any way. Even if we think we can. You could attempt to change the future by changing your choice.. but god would know you'd do that.

If God knows the future then nothing we do matters in the slightest. It takes away any possible meaning to life. Life is doing the right things to get to heaven? God knows what you're going to do so why not just send you straight there if you're destined to go there?

But considering the line extends beyond 'present', then the 'choices' beyond that line might as well not exist at all.
Considering that line represents what will happen, the choices outside of that line are those that will not happen? So how can they possibly exist? All of those 'choices' are impossible. Only those that lie on the line are possible. All the choices outside of that line cannot be made. Just as it is impossible for me to defy gravity (and so quite clearly is not a 'possible choice'), it is impossible for me to defy the 'future' line.
Considering those choices (the dots) are impossible, the diagram is actually:




A Universe with free will would look like this:


Where we decide through which points the future goes. Each point is possible. There's a line in the 'past', representing which choices we've made. But there is no line in the future, because we haven't made those choices yet. We are the ultimate powers that decide the future.This is free will.

But because there is no line, God doesn't know what the future is.


God is actually irrelevant, the issue is really the line. A written, pre-determined future conflicts with free will (with or without God). It just so happens that an omniscient God requires a written, pre-determined future. But the central issue is the written, pre-determined future ("God is omniscient" is just being used as 'evidence' that the future is pre-determined).

On the assertion that god (God?) is nature (Nature, heh), then no matter what choices are made, they will all simply continue the cycle. Birth, life, reproduction, death. Both on personal and sociological levels. Nature, we can say, "knows" what all choices will inevitably lead to - therefore, globally-speaking, what you choose to eat for dinner matters squat.

ooh.. I said almost the same thing as Mort. I feel smart. You worded it better though, Mort. Nice post.

Thanks, but I'm not really into that sort of thing. Anyways, technically speaking, I'm an atheist, so I shouldn't even partake in this discussion. I believe we all have free will, to do whatever we want, but as I said, nature doesn't really care. Not unless we destroy it. Destroying just ONE planet in its eternal space wouldn't really hurt it. Our self-annihilation, our current choice, doesn't really matter for anyone but us.

But then, since we're so resourceful, we might actually find a way to destroy the world one day. A way to kill God.

Also, I futureposted you.

Oh man, this sounds like more New Age over-simplified Hindu/Buddhist tripe! Cease, before I eat you.

I think we have free will because it's more fun that way.

BUT, If I am forced to apply something more than that to this, I'll try.



Disregard the 'past' section. As you can see, God watches over me and sees that I have chosen a series of 'actions' (red line). God knows exactly WTF I'm gonna do! However, it is I, chaps, I who have decided that I will wear a red shirt, read the newspaper BEFORE eating, wash my car, drive to work, get lunch at Jason's Deli, yadda yadda. I thought about these! I planned them out. My free will. If you say that I did not make these choices, that they were predetermined, then so are my very thoughts. I was fated to think about free will and post this and my opinions and my own deliberation on whether or not I wanted to get involved didn't actually factor into it because they, as well, we predetermined. That sucks, in short, and I find it hard to believe that as I sit here toying with the notion of just hitting the back button and posting, that I do not actually HAVE this OPTION. Because I do.




Oooh, look. I changed my mind this morning, and have decided to wear a blue shirt. God still knows my future, you can say. He can see the results on the *trumpets* TIMESTREAM *trumpets* of my decisions. This, as I believe Mort is saying, does not mean he controls them, or creates them... I do, and the fact that God knows what the results of my actions will be is (perhaps) nothing more than the example of how God's omnipotence [sic] allows him to treat my every thought and action as an immense physics problem, going through countless calculations to figure out how a constantly shifting universe will look later.

Not sure why he'd do this, but this just reconciles the points of God being all-knowing and humans having free will. I hope.

If I've left something out or been unclear (not to say that anything in this thread is really 'clear'), please let me know!

That's two possible timelines, we'll call them the redshirt line and the blueshirt line.


Only one of those can actually take place. You either wear a red shirt, or a blue shirt. If you have free will, then both of those outcomes are equally possible, and you decide which takes place.

But God knows whether you are going to wear a red shirt, or a blue shirt. God knows whether the redshirt line or the blueshirt line will actually take place. Even if you go "Hmm I'll wear the red shirt. Actually no! Blue shirt! Wait! No! Red shirt! Oh no, blue! Red! Blue! I'll wear blue! Hmm. Red.", God knew that you were going to say that, and God knew what the outcome was going to be - God knew that you would decide red, God knew that the redshirt line is what would take place. The blueshirt line is therefore impossible. The redshirt line will occur and the blueshirt line will not. These two lines are no longer equally possible, you do not have the free will to choose.

It was always my understanding that not even God could see into the future. He just knows absolutely everything else.

But that means he's not all-knowing.

That too would solve the dilemma! (well, this particular one, anyway)

Well if he could see into the future, why would he have made Adam and Eve and put them in the garden of eden just to kick them out? I mean, if that's true, he must be a real jerk!