Ok give me lots of feedback on this, I know it's not perfect but w/e

Ok so say you are sitting in a room with only a table and an apple and you have only 2 choices (to keep it simple) you can:

Option A- Eat the apple

Option B- Walk away

Since God is omniscient he knows what you are going to chose, so you say you cant have free will because you can't chose the one God knows you wont in advance. Wrong.

Take this for example, A. there is no God, so you do have free will and can chose the way you want. Think of the same situation (room, 2 choices, A and B) but this time there is a videocamera in the room (no God in this example remmember so you have free will) So say you chose option A and eat the apple. Now the videotape of you choosing is brought back in time to your mother 5 minutes before you make the decision. She watches the tape and knows that you will choose option A, like God knows, but lets you go into the room and eat the apple.

She KNEW you were going to eat the apple because she could see the future, but did that rip you of your free will? NO!

So that's how my logic shows that even with God, there is free will.

Opinions?

How is your will free if you have to make a choice? Technically your free will is pre-limited by your position in life that you are born into. Another way you could look at is that free will doesn't have unlimited probabilities and is mathematically limiting making free will impossible.



[This message has been edited by Dark_Merchant (edited 12-06-2005).]

Yes but suppose as soon as you bite the apple you travel back in time to before you choose, forgetting what happened. Then when you choose again, the same thing happens. COuld you say that no matter how many times you do this, you will continue to choose the apple? If so than I think free will is removed.

The thing about free will that we often forget to keep in mind is consequences for our choices.

Side note - (The video camera analogy is an interesting angle though - I'm assuming you are talking about accountability or a whitness? If there is not a God then what will afflict ones conscience to obey the laws of the land?)

Choosing to eat or not to eat an apple isn't a good example unless it is a metaphor for something else. For example, if the apple is a symbol of lets say - stealing - You can choose to steal or not to steal. How about adultry - you can choose to commit adultry or not.

Things take on a different meaning when you apply consequence to decisions.

"Since God is omniscient he knows what you are going to chose, so you say you cant have free will because you can't chose the one God knows you wont in advance. Wrong."

God knowing and being able to predict your actions doesn't mean you have no free will it means he can predict its exercise.

In reality we have no free will because we are just like a rock and are entirely controlled by our environment.

Freedom is relative.

Don't know if you saw this but

http://www.totse.com/bbs/Forum15/HTML/004292.html

[This message has been edited by imperfectcircle (edited 12-07-2005).]

Don't know if you saw this but

http://www.totse.com/bbs/Forum15/HTML/004292.html

God is a rapist. If you don't love him he'll hurt you.

Fairly basic.

Fuck it, I'm hungry... anybody have an apple?

[This message has been edited by Nidias_91 (edited 01-21-2006).]

quote:Originally posted by Sig_Intel:

The thing about free will that we often forget to keep in mind is consequences for our choices.

Side note - (The video camera analogy is an interesting angle though - I'm assuming you are talking about accountability or a whitness? If there is not a God then what will afflict ones conscience to obey the laws of the land?)

Choosing to eat or not to eat an apple isn't a good example unless it is a metaphor for something else. For example, if the apple is a symbol of lets say - stealing - You can choose to steal or not to steal. How about adultry - you can choose to commit adultry or not.

Things take on a different meaning when you apply consequence to decisions.



Go suck a dick. "Adultry" is just the old fat fucks way of aquiering more sheep.

quote:She watches the tape and knows that you will choose option A, like God knows, but lets you go into the room and eat the apple.

She KNEW you were going to eat the apple because she could see the future, but did that rip you of your free will? NO!

It surely did.

What you have done is interchange an "omniscient god", with a "women that knows the future"; both scenarios are the same since the knowledge of the omniscient god being used to refute free will is just his knowledge of the future - as the woman in your scenario poseses. Therefore the conclusion for both scenarios must necessarily be the same; that being, that the choices would be restricted, and thus free will as well.

That she knew I will eat the apple before I ate it means that I could not have possibly walked away; B was not a choice at all and A was the only possible choice.



[This message has been edited by Rust (edited 01-21-2006).]

I could post an article from Wikipedia here or I could have a discussion. COnsidering myself somewhat matured, I will choose the latter.

There are a large number of mental ghost notes that occur before you make any decision. Anyone with a basic grasp of psychology can tell you that your thoughts and actions are influenced by the past. A man who was raped by a man wearing a clown mask as a boy will fear or hate clwons as he grows older with very few ever getting over the event. The past is delicately intertwined with the present.

As a result of this, it narrows down your thoughts to certain percentages. Let's take up the rape scenario again. A man is raped by a clown every day as he grows then is left alone for twenty years. He meets a clown again in a back alley as he walks home. Now, freeze time. From here is where we will discuss.

At this juncture, with only the previously dictated events to follow, his reactions can run the gamut in a fairly large way. He could attack the clown; he could run away; he could cry. There are a large number of events. Now, since a man's life is not solely controlled by one event, let's add some others. These will be over-exagerated, but it is to prove a point. A thought experiment, if you will.

Say every woman he ever fell in love with he would alter find out was a clown. There are messy breakups each time he would hear this. How will this affect our frozen section of time? The bitterness make increase of the percentages of his either attacking or weeping.

Following this thought, you can add more and more factors from his past to change the percentages. Every little facet msut be factored in; nothing can be left out, nothing saved. As a result, many options are very clearly cut compeltely out of his options. The man has fewer and fewer things to do to the clown. This, however, does not limit him to one option.

We ahve forgotten environment of the actual event! Even in the frozen moment, there are factors to take into account. Warmth of the air, darkness of the alley, velocity of both figures, stature, presentation, if any has a weapon, if weapons are around... seven options in one instant thought up off of the top of my head in a few seconds!

And even still, there are more! The mind and emotions of the man have great effect as well! His current thoughts, why he was out, the man's intelligence... Literally millions and millions of tiny details, each affecting the eprcentages somewhat until, eventually, after all the options are through, the man can only do one thing, the thing that happens right after our frozen moment.

After the moment is unfrozen, the man only does one thing. He doesn't act on every possibility. Ultimately, due to his past, his thoughts, why he thought is thoughts, the environment, the option is not his own to choose. There is no free will for he can only do one thing.

However, there is the illusion! The illusion is ridiculously important to our continued survival as a race. Since we cannot be aware of everything that flies through our minds and every part of our past and every facet of the environment and every little grain, we believe, we honestly believe, that the choice is entirely ours. We are never aware of all the facets and thus we see it as a sphere that we picked with our own hands. For this reason, free will is as real in our minds, and, thus, reality, as if it were truly real in the first place.

It doesn't matter if something is real or not so long as you believe in it and that belief affects you. It's the same with God.

There is a fundamental flaw in your reasoning, as you have omitted from it the fact that according to your conception of God, he created everything that exists. The mother with foreknowledge by videotape did not.

We can disregard the problems with the convergence of ompnipotence and omniscience by assuming that for any and all actions, God has complete knowledge of the results of each action. God has always and everywhere been omniscient, including at the time(s) and place(s) before he created the world, the universe, and every person and soul. So, he knew--before creating everything exactly as he has now--that a path of events and the passage of time would lead you to either eat the apple or walk away (lets say you eat the apple). Now, with this (and all other) knowledge already his, he decided to create you. He is responsible for the event of you chosing the apple, because he knew that you would when created, and chose to create you.

-God is privy to absolute knowledge of the result of the passage of time, based upon a certain initial creation of things

-God initially creates things accordingly

-God is the sole agent responsible for all ensuing events

For an analogy, let's say that you are pointing a gun at someone. It is without question, readily apparent to you that the gun is indeed aimed directly at the person. There is no question in your mind that if you pull the trigger, the bullet will hit and injure the person in your aim. [God's omnicience ensures that this is not a far-fetched comparison, indeed his knowledge that you would end up eating the apple--if he decided to create things the way he did--should be bounds more apparent, in context, than it is apparent the bullet will strike the person in your aim; give no mind to the result being injury, as we could just as well discuss a magic bullet that would turn the person purple]. Now, considering your unquestionable foreknowledge of the result of the action of pulling the trigger, whom else but you can be considered responsible for the injury of the person in your aim should you decide to pull the trigger?



[This message has been edited by Adorkable (edited 01-22-2006).]

Gorloche, nice explanation.

Here is another thought experiment based on your example:

Imagine two scenarios, the only difference being that in one version the man had never been raped by a clown, and in the other he had. All else is the same.

In the first version he beats the clown to death with a garbage can, and in the second he just nods and continues about his business.

We can see here then it is ultimately the rape-by-clown that made the difference, and makes free will irrelevant, whether it is "real" or not.

As "god" had the power to both set all the variables, and know the outcomes, everything that happens would then be "his" responsibility. You know, if "he" were "real".

its called theft