God is out of our jurisdiction...Follow

It's really not worth it, trust me. I've argued with far more intellegent people on this subject and if they want to redefine words, there's nothing you can do about it.

Nexa

Tare you might be right about that. I always thought it was hilarious when people insist on making simple things difficult and then resort to insults instead of logic. oh well.

Have a good day! I will. :D

You're right, it is simple.

1. Omniscience: Having complete and unlimited knowledge
2. If you *know* the future, then it is, by definition, predetermined.
3. If it is predetermined, than your perception of free will is merely an illusion because you, in reality, have only one choice: that which is is predetermined you will choose. If you were to make another choice, God would be fallible and therefore, not omniscient.

Susan, there are, especially in the United States where the majority have been raised to value individuality and determinism above nearly all else, a ton of people who are trying to do the very thing you are doing: reconcile this value with their religion which is based on an omniscient God. Go to them, run! You can bring a cake and then eat it too!

The fact of the matter is that the principle of an omniscient God SIMPLY is not compatible with free-will. To try and reconcile the two is to manipulate definitions to fit your faith, and THAT is complicating matters.

Nexa


Edited, Sep 26th 2007 1:15pm by Nexa

Good post, Nexa.

The problem arises where people need to believe, but also need to reconcile contradictions. Some very (otherwise) brilliant people have fouled themselves on that line, including a personal favorite of mine, Isaac Newton. They tended to reconcile the dilemma (badly) with an explanation like, "Well, God WOULD know, and therefore preordain, if he looked; therefore he must not look." Hence the Divine Watchmaker metaphor.

Much easier to say, "It's a paradox. Either there is no God, or there's a less-than-omniscient God. Pick your damnation." Most people don't have the guts to do that, though, even nowadays when we're less likely to be burned for heresy.

That's just another way of saying "Well, God WOULD know, and therefore preordain, if he looked; therefore he must not look."

Enjoy your clockwork universe.

You're right, Nexa. This is hopeless.

Hey! You were right AND you have a kid! You must be omniscient!

Not entirely, but it still serves my purposes.

Assume that God is omniscient and omnipotent, even by your doctored definitions. It follows from those assumptions that God cannot be good. If he was all knowing, all powerful, and all good, he would not allow evil to exist in this world, or he would have made humans incapable of evil.

Also, before any of you twits come back with "But... but... God works in mysterious ways that we cannot comprehend," that's meaningless. That's like saying that I like eating turkey sandwiches, except that my definition of turkey is actually ham.

That's assuming that God believes said evil is in fact evil, of course using our definition of good you would be absolutely right. Is God supposed to be all good?

I am now attempting to remember this dude from phil of religion who developed at least a potential way to reconcile this but I'm drawing a complete blank; I want to say Paley but I'm only thinking of him because of the watchmaker, and I don't think that he's the right guy. In any case, the idea was that such a God existed entirely outside of time in such a way that the God was pervasive, and thus knew all instances of time by experiencing them simultaneously. In that way (so sayeth the nameless dude) time was only a human conception and it wasn't a problem, as all moments were considered present moments to anything that was omnipotent. In a way... it reminds me a little of what I was saying before, that omniscience destroys the very fabric of time, but I am much more inclined to believe that there is no omniscience, and that time is real, rather than the reverse.


It does? Well, whatever, because that's not what's at stake. If you want to redefine omniscience, or even claim that we are somehow redefining it, then it really doesn't matter. We don't have to agree what is the real omniscience, but rather agree temporarily for the sake of argument, and for this particular argument, we're talking about a 100% certainty about the future.


This is perhaps more grounded. It gets more at the paradox of omnipotence itself (making a rock so big you can't lift it), but really doesn't say much about the paradox between omnipotence and omniscience in regards to free will. Certainly you could (and it's probably the best thing to do really) bite the bullet and say that yes, such a being could make a rock so big that it couldn't lift the rock.

On that note, even if you could reconcile both of those paradoxes, there is yet a third to be dealt with, of which Demea has already started to discuss. Omni-benevolence isn't very compatible with omniscience in that if the God knew everything, made it how it was, then the GOd's responsible for evil. One of those three has just got to go, even if you've already given up free will, just to save goodness.

***

COme to think of it that guy might have been Nagarjuna. I've got to remember to look that up.

Edited, Sep 26th 2007 4:58pm by Pensive

Thank GOD I'm an infidel.

Yeah, I remember the role playing books, but I can't remember what they're called either, sorry.

Nexa

I found them!