God is out of our jurisdiction...Follow

Just reacting to a Nexa smash. Carry on.

And gbaji, you just restated what Pensive had already said better. Grats.

One of my Jinxisms in WoW is "omgracious!" I was on Vent one evening and one of my guild mates pointed out, "you... really do say that, don't you?"

Haha, busted.

No. From God's perspective we take all the possible alternatives simultaneously. There's a Nexa out there that didn't reply to my post the way you did. You are only aware of the one that did. An omniscient being would see both equally.

See how that works? You were free to make that choice. In fact, you're so free that you can simultaneously make all the choices possible to you. It's just that you are only aware of one of them at a time. He doesn't have to force you to make any choice, but is aware of all of them that can be made. There's no illusion of free will here. Both can exist at the same time, you just can't see it from your point of view.


As I pointed out. You're approaching this from your own perspective, scratching your head and going "That doesn't make sense". But somewhat by definition an omniscient being isn't going to see reality the same way you or I do.

Edited, Oct 2nd 2007 10:42am by gbaji

In this thread: Nexa points out that Gbaji has watched Back to the Future II too many times.

Also: it should be noted that somehow you've confused rolling my eyes with scratching my head...though I suppose that somewhere out there, there's a Nexa scratching her head at how silly it is that people over complicate simple issues. Obviously, that Nexa is going to hell.

Nexa

Right, but did God know that that Nexa was going to scratch her head, or was it just a possibility?

gbaji, I don't know what makes me think I can reason with you, but I guess I can't resist.

What you're proposing is essentially that there are an infinite number of universes that exist simultaneously. Fair enough. If god chose to create every possible universe within his power, that was still his choice, not ours.

Really, in this day and age, notions of god should be about as popular as believing that the world is flat, or that Santa is real.

Except that in that particular film, time travel was defined as a linear event, with one reality that could be changed by going back in time and doing something different. Completely different concept from what I'm talking about.



Ok. First off. I'm not debating about whether or not God exists. I'm agnostic. I don't really care. The argument is about whether the existence of a truly omniscient being negates the possibility for man to have free will. Please leave the "People who believe in God are children" statements out of the topic (and certainly don't apply them to me in any case).


Secondly, you're still missing the model I'm trying to describe. I know that it's hard to grasp (and hard to describe), but let's try:


Imagine that the universe exists as a single 4 dimensional construct. Within that frame, everything exists simultaneously (all time, all space). When I think of it, I tend to picture a sphere like structure, with a single point at the bottom, and a single point at the top and a volume that balloons out in the middle. Imagine that the point at the bottom is the big bang. Imagine that the point at the top is the "big crunch" (or whatever). The idea is that when reality "started", it did not just create space, but time as well (thus the word "space-time"). Just as space expands as a result of the bang, so does time. In this frame of reference the "width" of the structure represents all the possibilities that could occur. So that atom could have spun off in that direction instead of the direction it went. All of those possibilities are present inside the structure, not just the one that any individual path within the structure contains.

As time goes by, the universe ages and slows down. The number of possible alternatives stop increasing and start decreasing. This would be the mid-point (kinda like the equator of a globe) of the structure. Since there's less movement and randomness, there's fewer alternative possibilities that can occur, thus the universe shrinks, not just in space, but in time. As this process continues, the structure gets smaller until it meets back into a single point of space-time at the top (back to zero probabilities and zero mass/energy).


If you've ever watched Hawkin's "A brief history of space and time", he describes this basic model of the universe (although he's a bit more obscure in his description IMO). I'm not making it up, you can go watch the film yourself. It's one of the more current and "new" models that high level Physicists are looking at right now.


Now. Looking at that model, if a being were capable of existing in such a way that it could view *all* of the universe from "outside" that frame of reference, then he would see all possibilities and all times and all places simultaneously (from his perspective). Thus, all possible paths that your life could follow are equally "real" to this being. Clearly, that being would qualify as "omniscient" from the perspective of our universe, right? But also, there's no need for him to actually interfere with free will in order to have that omniscience. From your perspective you are truly free to make any choice you want to make. Because it's not that this omniscient being knows what choice you'll make (which is why most people argue that omniscience cancels out free will), but that he knows all the decisions you could make and to him they're all equally real. He could choose to examine any thread of time he wished within this construct. All are equally real (can't stress that enough).


That model most definitely allows for both the presence of an omniscient being *and* free will. Which was the point of the question if I recall...

Edited, Oct 2nd 2007 12:39pm by gbaji

Kachi? This was the point that sparked the debate. This is what everyone was arguing about. You're free to expand that into a broader debate about "God" (and everything that might entail), but that's not what I was addressing.






How about we skip the part where you try to argue with an agnostic about whether or not God exists and get right to the above bit instead? Just a thought...

Edited, Oct 2nd 2007 1:16pm by gbaji

SEE? This is why we're not 20K posters.

Oh, I do that too.

I do the same with emails at work. One of these times I'm going to hit "SEND" by mistake and have to scramble around to find that RECALL function.

If you were omniscient, you'd know I'm not wearing panties.

Nexa

Does this mean I can blame Gbaji for everythign now?