1. When it says that he made you fully aware of all choices you are going to make. If so, then how would this be possible. It doesn't seem like that because as a human I assume that people generally think about that choices before they make them. They think of the different possibilities and etc. Assuming this is true, then would that mean you aren't aware about the choice you are going to make? If you were to be aware of all choices, then you wouldn't think through anything, or am I understanding this wrong?
Well, yeah, as humans we all think before we act - but, theoretically, God, as he is omnipresent, knows EVERYTHING, including what you are going to think before you think it. Making the decision in your head to do something is itself a decision - so, technically, God made that, too. See, in this model we only have the ILLUSION of choice - we have been created with God's intent that we do, think and say everything that we are going to do, think and say. This includes the act of thinking about your own actions before you make them.
Happymeal wrote:
2. Assuming the above were true, then how does this mean he constructed all our choices for us? Assuming we are aware of all choices we are making, then does this really mean he made all our choices for us? The real question is, how does the above mean that he made our choices for us?
Because by creating you with the knowledge in mind of everything you will ever think, do and say he is therefore automatically creating you TO think, do and say those things.
Hmm... I'm struggling to find a way to explain this better...
Ok, so, say God has a will - which most religions say he does, the Will of God, and it is precisely why there are rules. Sinners are those who disobey God's will. But if God willfully created (and he had to have done it willfully because he is by definition infallible) you then that means he had to have created you to defy his will because he knows as he makes you that you will defy his will. And since he makes you willingly, you defying his will IS his will. See how it works out? By God being omnipresent, everything you do isn't your will, it's the will of God. _________________ A dick that's bigger than the sun.
That's the whole basis for Judas' Dilemma. Was Judas Iscariot a sinner and traitor for selling Jesus, or was he not, because God knew what his part in the greater scheme would be all the time?
That's the whole basis for Judas' Dilemma. Was Judas Iscariot a sinner and traitor for selling Jesus, or was he not, because God knew what his part in the greater scheme would be all the time?
Yeah, because Judas was created by God who is in turn Jesus, Jesus was not killed but in fact committed suicide. _________________ A dick that's bigger than the sun.
Well, yeah, as humans we all think before we act - but, theoretically, God, as he is omnipresent, knows EVERYTHING, including what you are going to think before you think it. Making the decision in your head to do something is itself a decision - so, technically, God made that, too. See, in this model we only have the ILLUSION of choice - we have been created with God's intent that we do, think and say everything that we are going to do, think and say. This includes the act of thinking about your own actions before you make them.
I guess I just don't get this train of logic too well. How does knowing everything lead him to create our choices for us? He knows everything because he is omnipresent,I get that, but how does knowing everything lead into creating our choices for us? He made us and gave us a free will(if he exists), even if he knows everything, that wouldn't mean he's making the choices for us. if he knows everything is gonna happen before it happens, then wouldn't that mean he's just letting it play out? I guess I can't understand this train of thought too well. you're explaing things in a way I can understand, but I think the argument is just faulty or to say the least, the argument is a little hard to understand
I guess I just don't get this train of logic too well. How does knowing everything lead him to create our choices for us? He knows everything because he is omnipresent,I get that, but how does knowing everything lead into creating our choices for us? He made us and gave us a free will(if he exists), even if he knows everything, that wouldn't mean he's making the choices for us. if he knows everything is gonna happen before it happens, then wouldn't that mean he's just letting it play out? I guess I can't understand this train of thought too well. you're explaing things in a way I can understand, but I think the argument is just faulty or to say the least, the argument is a little hard to understand
Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm really shitty at explaining this.
Ok, I guess the key here is this: should God exist, he CHOOSES to create you. He CHOOSES to make you and does so while knowing what all your choices are going to ever be ahead of time. That's basically akin to programming. He knows what you're going to do. He creates you willfully, so he wants you to do what you're going to do. So, essentially, you've been created to do exactly what you're doing. Which means you never actually had a choice in the matter - in any matter. You were created so that you could make those choices. What you consider to be free will, what you consider to be logical thought before an action would actually be an illusion because you had to have been created with the mindset that you would do this regardless, and were created BECAUSE you would do this regardless.
Consider, of course, that God could also choose to NOT create you - because God has the freedom to either create you or not means that your creation is based solely in this model upon what suits God's will and not your own. _________________ A dick that's bigger than the sun.
Can't leave Jackwc's comments there without having a go at rebutting them.
Jackwc wrote:
The Ontological Belief:
God exists -> God is perfect by definition -> God is good -> God is not a deceiver -> (another point which is unrelated to this argument)
But if God is not a deceiver, then he cannot obfuscate or conceal his infinite existence. Should he, then he is not good. If he is not good, he is not perfect. If he is not perfect, he does not exist.
See response to A General Belief. Also, I'll paraphrase Richard Dawkins:
"A friend was telling me the other day that he understood why people used to think the sun revolved around the earth. I asked why? He said because it looks that way. I then asked how would it look if the Earth did revolve around the sun?"
Jackwc wrote:
The Judeo-Christian Belief:
God is omnipresent; Humans have free will; God created humans; God must be omnipresent otherwise he is not perfect otherwise he is not God.
But if God is omnipresent then humans do not have free will, for God knows all their conceivable actions before they take them. And if humans do not have free will, which is the basis of most Judeo-Christian belief, then the Judeo-Christian God does not exist.
You seem to be mixing omniscience and omnipresence. An omnipresent God can hold a free-willed being in existence, no problems there. When you get to omniscience, causality goes a bit weird. Omniscience is not deductive, the causal chain is backwards, sorta like time travel. You could say he allowed you to make the choices you make, but not that he caused you to make them.
Related: God cannot directly cause all possible worlds to happen. If free will exists, there's a possible world where everyone freely chooses to dress up like a penguin and do the robot every day, but God can't cause this to happen, because you can't make someone freely choose something.
Jackwc wrote:
A General Belief:
God must be by definition perfect, therefore all he creates is perfect. Therefore all he creates is true. God created the idea of God, therefore he exists. God created the idea that he does not exist; therefore he does not exist. God both exists and does not exist; therefore God does not exist.
Similar to the problem of evil, my response to this would be something along the lines of: God and imperfection aren't mutually exclusive; if God exists and imperfection exists, then it follows that God has a justifying reason to allow imperfection to exist.
Possible reason #1: Humans as responsible moral agents require an intelligible universe, and the means to comprehend it, which entails having logical faculties, which entails a wealth of different ideas.
Possible reason #2: It's not about the mind, it's about the heeeeart.
Possible reason #3: Some other thing. Whatevs, I don't need to come up with the answer. There's no logical contradiction in the first place.
Jackwc wrote:
Then there is the ever-present Atheist Architect Argument:
If the universe cannot exist without a creator, God cannot exist without a creator.
Entirely bollocks. The reasons that the universe suggests a cause are particular to its nature; namely its having a beginning, its being comprised of finite parts, etc. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in its contingent dependence on something else, or in the necessity of its own being. The latter mode of existence (ie. existing in all possible worlds) is hard to comprehend, but something of that nature must exist in order for anything to exist at all.
Hey athiests if we evolved from rocks how did The blessed U S of A to the moon without god figure?
Hey athiests how can you belive in the sun even tho you have not been there?"
Checkmated king me nerds, im going to go make out with God _________________ Alt Right meme game on point
I FEEL DISCRIMINATED AGAINST AS A PERSON OF JUDGEMENT.
(To Dave, not BongRitsu as he is currently making-out with God)
(I'm going to preface this by saying that some of the views I presented were just examples of typical views and rebuttals)
Some very good points you've brought up.
I'd like you to elaborate on your first one - not entirely sure I got what you were trying to say (also, as a side point, we know that the Earth revolves around the sun precisely because it does NOT look like the sun revolves around the earth).
For point 2:
As you and I just discussed privately this afternoon, there is technically no chain at all because we're dealing with a statement which relies on time being irrelevant, and thus could create an infinite chicken/egg scenario on crack.
For point 3:
A point very similar to one a more theistic friend of mine proposed when we had a similar discussion on the matter - though he also expressed that truth could be much more subjective than we humans can comprehend, and that perhaps a dual truth such as God exists/doesn't exist could exist.
He provided another really interesting point involving multiple dimensions, but I'm forgetting the details of it right now. We were both a pretty high at the time. If I remember it entirely, I'll post it.
For point 4:
That is unless there is no finite point of beginning. There are some that say that time is only progressing in what we perceive to be as forwards because the universe is expanding - theoretically, the universe should eventually stop expanding and start contracting (as Einstein predicted); if both these points are true, then time will start to "move backwards" until all matter is condensed into a single unit of space and then possibly re-expands.
For all we know, this may be an infinite loop of contractions and expansions. _________________ A dick that's bigger than the sun.
Point 1: What I was getting at was that as human understanding developed, a view that was initially counterintuitive was shown to be exactly reflective of what people had always experienced. In the same way, it may turn out that God is not obfuscated and the way the universe works is exactly reflective of the nature of its creator.
Point 2: This may be to do with the framework with which we're analysing the situation. Here's how I'd write it out:
1. Given situation X, person Y will freely choose to do Z.
2. God, aware of what person Y will choose in all possible situations, decides on situation X.
3. God causes situation X to exist, and person Y chooses to do Z, as God knew he would.
It is not evident to me that God made person Y do Z, nor is it evident to me that person Y would not be culpable for the action. God doesn't made person Y's decision for them. Regardless of what God knows, all he has directly caused is the situation in which the decision is made.
Point 3: Righto. Well I'm not really a fan of that sort of thinking, since it denies some of the basic axioms that comprise logic. I can't really do much with that.
Point 4: I believe the universe has a beginning because I'm a fan of mainstream science, and the standard Big Bang model has held up over time while alternate beginningless models have been routinely discredited.
A recent study by NASA found that due to the distribution of dark energy, the expansion of the universe is going to continue to accelerate and the universe will continue to expand forever as it reaches heat death. On top of this, in 2003 the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem was able to prove that any universe which has, on average, been expanding throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary. The model you propose sounds like it still involves a space-time boundary anyway.
Regardless, if a past-eternal space/time reality were to exist, the same basic ontological questions can still be asked: could it have not existed? If it could have not existed, or been different, then it follows that the space/time reality is still contingent.
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