Quote:
Originally Posted by truckfixr
For God to be able to see all of time as a
single "moment", all of time must already exist. If it did not exist, it would not be there for Him to see. If any event (in our future) can be seen by God in His "now", such event must occur in our future.
We are confined within the limits of space-time even if God is not. We therefore are required to travel through time in a liner progression from our past to our future, with "now" being the only frame of reference that exists to us. For us, the future that is seen in God's "moment" does not exist. For our future to coincide with God's "moment", every aspect of our future must be set in stone.
Omniscience renders free will an illusion.
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Omnipotentence renders it a reality.
I really think that omnipotence can easily render the argument completely pointless... SO I won't try to rely on it
I think this relates to your reply , Rust, so I'll reply to that post here.
I'm really not sure how to reply to this, so I'm basically just gonna list some shit that pops to mind.
First, even if God knows what we're are going to do, presumably we've already done it? I mean, Seriously, God knows what we do before we do it, but
We are still that ones that did/do it. It is I that performs the act, even if someone knows that I am going to do it, it was my choice, regardless of whether someone knows.
Fuck it, let's try an analogy:
I am a uhh, plane scientist, I want to know how my new plane is going to fly for the first time, and so I decide to do a simulation on my computer before-hand, for the sake of the argument the simulator is 100% correct to what will happen. Now, before I have physically flown the plane, I now exactly what will happen. A few points from this:
1. The only reason I can predict anything about that plane is because the data entered into the machine was minutely precise and personal to the plane I was testing, I know what the plane is going to do before it does it, but only because that is the way that that Plane must react to the situations around it. Relating this to a person, God knows exactly what a person will do before they do it, because of the infintely precise 'measurements' that God has about that person, but this only works because as a person we act in certain ways because of the person that we are. I can know in advance that I won't pick up a raw tomato to eat, I know that this is because I am a person that hates raw tomatoes.
I think that Identity is closely, if not inextricably, linked to Free-will. Flipping a coin to decide whether I eat a tomato or not is not free will, it is random chance. As a free agent I make predertiminable choices, in this case not to eat the tomato, because of who I am. Now, God only knows the choices that I will make because he knows more more closely than anyone else and so can know my choice before I make it.
Also, seeing as God is also in this, I'm gonna bring in souls, because, fuck it, why not.
It is possible that my soul is as immortal and timeless as God, and that this timeless entity dips it's ethereal tentacles into my timeline. Let's try another analogy: My soul is a cylindrical block, time is a table with a square, triangle and circular hole in it. My soul will only ever fit into the circular holes because that is the shape of my soul, it is the nature of my soul to only enter circular holes, and to not enter square or triangular ones.
To say,'Well why can't the circular block enter the square of triangular holes!'
Can only be answeed by:
'Because if it could, it wouldn't be a cylinder.'
Either way, I don't believe that knowing what someone is gonna do before they do it in any way infringes their free-will if they make a free choice.
That said, I still don't really believe in free-will.