OK, we know who won (or: Does God exist?)

Mogosagatai · Post by **Mogosagatai** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 4:40 pm

What really gets me, when it comes to believing in a higher power of some sort, is the beauty in everything--something that's a little out of reach of the Weak Anthro Principle. Why is it that I find sunsets, landscapes, life cycles, music, math, stars, etc., to be stirring in a good way that transcends vision? (I was gonna add naked girls to the list, but it could be argued that that's purely biological, though I often doubt it.)

I think there's a sort of grand, probably ubiquitous sentience that has a very large hand in matters of the universe. I don't know or particularly care whether it knows every last detail of what I'm about to decide to do, only that it understands me right now. If it does know everything that I will do, that in no way hinders my free will. I'm not unable to do anything within my physical capabilities; I'm just unable to do something that the higher power didn't know I was going to do. But like I said, I don't know if it's all-knowing in that sense or not.

The God that I believe in may just be something like Karma, sort of the force behind the Law of Conservation of Beauty (something I just now gave a name to). You do something good (beautiful), you get to see more beaty. You do something bad (unbeautiful (not a real word)), you get to see less beauty. Of course, this doesn't happen on a second to second, or even year to year, basis, but more on an "everything that will ever happen, ever" basis. Those who believe in Heaven, Zen, or the Beatles' "The End" will probably agree with me, if they understand what I'm saying.

c hack · Post by **c hack** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 4:41 pm

That's a good way to put it: God knows your life the same way you'll know it the moment before you die.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 4:48 pm

starfinger wrote:
15-16 puzzle wrote:This is what strikes many people as a lack of free will.
It's not that God is enforcing his version of events, it's that you're not capable of faking him out by changing your mind at the last second.

-craig

I'm not saying that God is forcing anyone to do anything. God may very well be all-knowledgable of events without forcing any particular event to be. I'm saying if there's only one thing that will happen for any given situation, that's not free will.

Mogosagatai · Post by **Mogosagatai** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 4:58 pm

15-16 puzzle wrote:I'm not saying that God is forcing anyone to do anything. God may very well be all-knowledgable of events without forcing any particular event to be. I'm saying if there's only one thing that will happen for any given situation, that's not free will.

Of course there's only one thing that will happen for any given situation (unless you subscribe to one of the multi-verse theories). There are a jillion things that could happen, but only one that actually will, for any given situation. If God really can see everything that will happen, then it just sees the one out of all the possibilities that will happen.

Henrietta · Post by **Henrietta** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:00 pm

Sorry if this has been mentioned already:

Religion & free will was explained to me by a Baptist Bible study leader like this:

Catholics believe in free will. It's right there written in the Catholic Bible... "Man has free will."

Baptists do not believe in "free will". Baptists and other protestant religions do not accept a set of books included in the Catholic bible (known to them as the Apocrypha) as being true word of God. Therefore, they argue that man does not have free will, since it's only mentioned in the Apocrypha and nowhere else.

Being raised Catholic, I questioned him about my own supposed lack of free will. He explained to me that all men carry out God's will 24/7. Sinners were created for the sole purpose (no pun intended) of filling up spaces in Hell. Christians were created to fill up Heaven. Either you're God's chosen or you're not God's chosen, but either way you have no control over your own actions. Everything you do and everything you say is part of God's greater plan. It's also all been predetermined from the beginning of time who's going where in the end.

So, God in that case, would be much more than just a Santa Claus with x-ray vision. He really holds the great Trapper Keeper in the Sky with all of our names and each moment of our lives and afterlives already written down on loose leaf paper in purple gel pen.

Whether or not this is the belief of all Protestant demoninations or even all Baptist churches, I don't know. Maybe someone here can fill me in on that.

Mogosagatai · Post by **Mogosagatai** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:05 pm

That's not the sentiment of all Protestant denominations, nor even of all Baptist churches.

It is, however, a retarded sentiment.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:06 pm

Ahhh, the semantics game begins. I mistyped. Indeed, I meant that if there's only one thing that could happen, then that's not free will.

Mogosagatai · Post by **Mogosagatai** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:11 pm

Oh. Well I think* (and this seems to contradict, but it doesn't) that while there are many things that could happen, God knows which one that is. His knowing is not the cause of it's happening--it's happening is the cause of His knowing.

*Just to clarify, I'm only arguing from the viewpoint of those who believe God can see every future event. I don't fully believe it, myself.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 6:21 pm

Puce wrote: Just to be heretical, lets say I get the chance to have a little tea time conversation with Starfinger's God.

I think conversations like this are why God doesn't tell us what we're going to do. It screws up causality and choice. If you knew ahead of time, could you change it? Your discussion boils down to just the basic time-travel paradox, then.
-bill

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 6:26 pm

i'm protestant. i believe in free will. i don't believe that god knows our actions before we even do them. how would god benefit from that? and if we have no free will why would god bother giving us all the rules that he gave us and ten commandments? they would be all for nothing if our actions are already known. and why would jesus have even had to die to get us into heaven if god already knew whether we would or wouldn't make it? predestination doesn't make sense to me.

j$ · Post by j$ » Wed Nov 10, 2004 6:36 pm

Puce wrote:If God knows, well, everything, including what will happen, where is the allowance for free will?

For me (and apologies for coming late to a discussion that I can see rolls on for a while, which I have not yet checked to see if I'm duplicating) this is not parictularly relevant. Some people are humanist, some are calvinist (which has been renamed and redescribed in many different ways over the years.) The question really is, for me, have you ever experienced anything that makes you question your belief system? Whether that be God, Science, the Red Sox, whoever you turn to when who you are is not enough? If you have, then that moment is god (with a small g) to me.

Slightly pretentious, but I can't think of a wittier way of saying it at the moment.

j$

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 7:03 pm

Henrietta wrote:Everything you do and everything you say is part of God's greater plan. It's also all been predetermined from the beginning of time who's going where in the end.

Sounds like a great excuse to do anything you want, since in the end it's all just part of God's greater plan. Cool... NOT.

Just as an aside, I had a visitation when I was 13 years old. A figure presented itself in the middle of the night when I was sleeping in the living room of our place in VT. While we were staring at each other, I heard my father stirring in the next room. The figure, who looked like a squat Gandoff and was wrapped in loose material, put two fingers over his lips to request I stay quiet. My dad came out, passed me on his way to the bathroom. Then on his way back noticed my eyes were open and asked if I was OK, etc. I said I was fine. He went back to bed and the visitor was still there. I drifted off to sleep. The next day I asked my dad and he confirmed that we spoke during the night.

I had already decided when I was 8 that I didn't believe in God (lots of early Sunday school and such, and I was a critical-thought child). However, I believed - and still do - that there was someone or something there that evening. It's never occured again. And no, it wasn't my brother playing a joke. This has always kept my mind open to explanations. But it doesn't make me jump on anything convenient just to explain it.

Adam! · Post by **Adam!** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 7:15 pm

Hey everyone, here's a book.

HeuristicsInc wrote:It seems like you aren't trying to understand what we're saying.

Bill, I value intelligent debate over pretty much anything else, so I'm going to try really hard to understand what you're saying (Actually I think I do understand what you are all saying and I just don't agree with you). I think that if I have a belief it should be able to stand up to examination; If you guys poke holes in it then it's time to re-evaluate my beliefs. But I certainly don't want to look like I'm plugging my ears to what you are saying.

C Hack: Oh man, I’m staying as far away from the practical applications of what I am saying regarding personal responsibility and such. That’s a whole other argument (much bigger, too). Shouldn't Paris Hilton be in another thread? If there isn’t a thread for Paris Hilton there should be one.

Bill: I'm really not trying to be obtuse about the computer thing, but I can't find anything wrong in that logic, and a proof by contradiction is simple and sound. Lets propose it is a fact that the computer is on your desk tomorrow. Now lets test the truth of the proposition "Someone can move the computer before then." For this proposition to be true it must not lead to a contradiction. If someone moves the computer then this implies that the computer will not be there tomorrow. Assuming both "The computer will be there tomorrow" and "Someone can move the computer" leads to a contradiction, and since we know that the first statement is true then the second one must be false. To know something (when you are infallible) is to establish it as fact. I can't see anything wrong with this. If you still contest it then there must be some definition we do not agree on, but I really can't see what (and I am trying).

HeuristicsInc wrote:Your discussion boils down to just the basic time-travel paradox.

Not really. If you did know (for certain, well in advance) your future choice about something then you would realize that you don’t have free will regarding that choice. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable assertion. As you said we can never know what we will choose years in advance, but does this lack of foreknowledge give us back our freewill? No, I don’t see how it could. If someone can see, please tell me how.

Plato suggested that if we could build a device to observe the future and (accurately) record anything that is going to happen, then the future is set. God is such a device. To me and many others classical freewill is the idea that the past is set but future is not, and at any moment we can make decisions that will effect/change the future. Other people have the view that existence is like a videocassette (or screenplay), and that the past and future are set, and the present is the video head scrolling through the tape. My problem with that idea is that, just like characters in a movie, people appear to make decisions, when really they are just traveling down paths already scripted for them.

But instead of just asserting the same thing I’ve been saying over and over, I’ll look at what I don’t understand about what you are saying.

1.) You assert that the future is known to God. I’m thinking of this in the same way that we ‘know’ the past: we made decisions which are “set in stone” and cannot be changed retroactively. If I’ve got the wrong idea here, then I’ll ask “If God exists outside of time then how does God’s knowledge of the future differ from God’s knowledge of the past?” If you believe He knows the future in the same way He knows the past, then I think that is the source of our disagreement. To me, and to many people, if the future is “set in stone” like the past is then you do not have free will.

2.) Puzzle said something that I think is very true: “God may very well be all-knowledgeable of events without forcing any particular event to be. I'm saying if there's only one thing that could happen for any given situation, that's not free will.” I do agree that people ‘make a choice’, but choosing between one option (the option God already knows you will choose) is not classical free will. If a scientist, using an (obviously impossible) predicting machine to let him view any point in the past or future, could predict (aka knows, again not to be confused with ‘forces’) the choices I will make then, even though they are still my choices, it effectively reduces my number of options to one in each case. To me, if you really had freewill then you would be free to choose an option that deviates from what a computer, a scientist, or God knows. I think this might be the source of some confusion as well: to me deciding between one option isn’t free.

3.) Saying “God knows the choices that you will make” sounds exactly the same to me as saying “Here’s a scientist. He has used a computer to predict with a hundred percent accuracy (based on your upbringing, your experiences, your genes, your moral character, the future actions of those around you, and the atoms in your head) all the decisions you will make in your life.” To me this doesn’t sound like freewill. In fact, it sounds like just the opposite. Again, I am ignorant to most religions, so maybe there is some really obvious attribute of God that makes him different then such a scientist. If there is, lay it on me!

So Bill, I’ve tried my best to understand what you are saying, and I’ll ask that you do the same. Maybe I just lack the english to express myself. J$, you’ve got a masters in english, help me!

J$: You have a beautiful concept of god.

starfinger · Post by **starfinger** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 10:49 pm

Puce, if you ever have that conversation with God, then I will admit that you may have a point.

And Henrietta, the concept of predetermination has a lot going for it, but the description you got from the Baptist guy is fubared.

-craig

Henrietta · Post by **Henrietta** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 11:10 pm

starfinger wrote:but the description you got from the Baptist guy is fubared.

I'm glad to hear his interpretation isn't the widely accepted view. I wonder what other misconceptions I picked up from this guy.....

the Jazz · Post by **the Jazz** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 3:24 am

15-16 wrote:I hope I'm not being an insulting cock, just trying to voice a different viewpoint.

I don't know why, when I argue for the possibility that God exists, that people insist upon treating me like I am saying that God DOES exist. I never said that.

The confusion about free will seems to have to do with the perception of time, as I think it was Puce who mentioned earlier. Here's an example: if you could go back in time to late 2003 and talk to Grady Little during Game 7 of the ALCS, you might tell him that you knew he would leave Pedro in for the seventh inning. And he does, because that's what happened. So does that mean he didn't have free will at the time? No. Because then even the concept of free will is impossible, given the objective existence of time in dimensions other than the Present. The outcome of any choice you make will be known immediately after you make it, so if time exists beyond the Present there is no free will. By that logic there is also no such thing as life, or a soul, and everything is increasingly complex patterns and algorithms. And then how are we sitting here typing things? You can say, well, maybe we aren't sitting here typing things, and that's fine, but pursuing a definition of the universe by which we do not exist is pointless, and such a definition is effectively impossible, because it is the thought nullifying the existence of the thinker. But in order for the thought to exist the thinker must have thought it, in which case the thinker actually does exist, in order to think this thought which nullifies its existence, but then if it doesn't exist how does it think the thought; et cetera ad infinitum. (aka the "There's A Hole In The Bucket" theory)

Did I ramble too much? I am sorry.

Mogosagatai · Post by **Mogosagatai** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 5:23 am

the Jazz wrote:Did I ramble too much?

Yes.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:05 am

Puce wrote: Bill, I value intelligent debate over pretty much anything else...

Um, I don't think I do... so, honestly, I'm kind of getting sick of the discussion. I'm not a debater; I'm not good at it and I don't like it. Also, I don't feel strongly enough about this to talk about it as much as I have already. I'm not some kind of religious wacko! Which impression you might have gotten lately from my posts in this forum. Anyway. I'm just going to respond to stuff here for your benefit and then I may shut up.

Lets propose it is a fact that the computer is on your desk tomorrow.

If you propose this, then there is no discussion! It would be stupid to argue otherwise. I was proposing that from our point of view the future is malleable.

HeuristicsInc wrote:Your discussion boils down to just the basic time-travel paradox.
Not really. If you did know (for certain, well in advance) your future choice about something then you would realize that you don’t have free will regarding that choice.

I don't know if we know this for sure. A lot of science fiction talks about whether we can actually change things if we go back in time. This is all theory, one way or the other. For an example of what I mean, look at the difference between Terminator 3 and Back to the Future. In one the dude goes back in time and doesn't change anything - the past was set before he went back. In the other the future changes every time he does something, in big ways. Different theories.
I'm basing a serious discussion on these movies... ack

Plato suggested that if we could build a device to observe the future and (accurately) record anything that is going to happen, then the future is set. God is such a device.

I don't agree with this but I have no language to tell you why. I'm not a debater. I don't think the future is set, and that's all I can tell you. I don't agree with your points, and that's it, I guess. If somebody who doesn't get emotionally drained by debate wants to take this up, be my guest.
This is why I don't get into political discussions either.
-bill

Future Boy · Post by **Future Boy** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:09 am

Puce baby, how about this:

What if God's all-knowing ability is simply the ability to know the repercussions of every single decision/action anyone makes in every single moment. This is a bit like a computer, but it's a computer that can deal with an infinite number of constantly changing variables and by interpreting those variables can know all of the possibles "states" for any given moment in time. Is the present static? Why should have to be static? And surely the future is not static by any stretch of the imagination. Our world is based on change, entropy, nothing is static, not even those things that appear to be so. Also, I believe this would fall under the category of "there is no value until you make a measurement." So, the future wouldn't exist in a permanent way, but would instead be an infinite number of trajectories, one of which is the most likely at the time of measurement.

I think if you understand the statement, "God already knows everything you will do" to be shorthand for, "God knows everything choice you could possible make and what the subsequent outcome would be and can, using complicated statistical analysis and bit of intuition, predict with 99.99% accuracy what you will five minutes from now or fifty years from now."

So, your conversation with God would probaby run more along the lines of:

Puce: "God, will I apply for grad school?"
God: "Well, I really shouldn't tell you, but yes, you will apply on Nov 25th, 2004"
Puce: "Then I don't really have a choice in the matter, do I? Seeing as you already know the truth and all."
God: "My child, of course you have a choice. In fact, you have already chosen it, and I just know what your choice was. Except, now that I've told you that, and I know that what a cantankerous punk you are, I know that will choose to not apply just to spite me. Of course, now you're waffling a little and thinking that maybe you should apply anyway because you do want to go to grad school and what does spiting God get you in the long run anyhow..."

And he would continue in this vein until his head exploded. You see why the shorthand is important, maybe?
[/b]

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:11 am

Hey, is this topic about politics?
Ha ha!
Anyway, here's a link to an organization that's looking into whether voting fraud occurred in the recent elections, especially with the electronic machines:
http://blackboxvoting.org/
I think we need to look at these issues, since the whole foundation of democracy depends on the will of the majority being accurately displayed in the vote.
-bill

j$ · Post by j$ » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:14 am

I agree with Future Boy. It might make the God he describes unbearably smug in social situations of course.

j$

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:46 am

yeah, future boy's is an interesting theory, and it's close to something i was considering but didn't post about.
-bill

OK, we know who won (or: Does God exist?)

Who will win the presidential election?