again, if i am misunderstanding, i am sorry, but i am open to that possibility.
csfilm: i understand the way your example is fallacious, but i dont see this situation as being analogous. basically, here is my line of thought.
(Assumption) 1. God is omniscient
2. omniscience implies infallability of knowledge
(basically, god knows all, and is never wrong about anything)
3. god knows that you will drink a cup of coffee tomorrow morning (and for the sake of simplicity, only ONE cup)
now,
4. IF (1.) god is omniscient, (2.) omniscience implies infallability of knowledge, and
(3.) god knows that you will drink one and only one cup of coffee tomorrow morning,
THEN you will drink one and only one cup of coffee tomorrow morning.
basically, my problem with the analogy is that in a situation such as this, it would seem that just because bob IS a bachelor does not mean that bob will be a bachelor FOREVER. in this example, we are dealing with single choices at various points in time. either i drink coffee tomorrow or i dont. there is no lasting influence, and any assumption as such is, as you pointed out, fallacious.
perhaps i am thinking too simplistically, but what we are dealing with is a series of dichotimous situations. now, to explain that thought, the question is no longer if god is omniscient, or if omniscience is infallable. rather, god, being omniscient, knows not only all the possible choices, but which one will be chosen at any given time, limiting our dilemna to only two options- whether we 1. complete the action/make the choice, or 2. we do not.
i agree (if you are thinking it) that this seems to be dangerously close to begging the question, but if we are to accept that god is omniscient for the first part of the argument, we must also accept it here (for if god is omniscient, she must be so in all cases, or she is not truly omniscient). that being the case, unless we are free to counteract an all-knowing entity, and thus disprove the quality of omniscience, we are bound by that knowledge whether or not god actually acts on us.
on to the issue of time.
if god exists in our dimension of time, and perceives our actions as they happen, and knows what we choose only because we choose it, we have an issue of a lack of knowledge. god would be all knowing only secondarily, because we would have to choose for him to know. i think of this as all-knowing the past. if this is the case, we have a problem with the definition of a god, but we certainly have free will.
if god exists outside of our time, and knows everythign that will happen from the time it created the universe (and, say, wrote it all down in the metaphysical book), we have a problem of predetermination (because this entails FOREknowledge of our actions). in this case, god is infallable, we have no free will, and we are screwed in terms of who will go to hell or heaven (assuming they exist- totally other topic).
if, on the other hand, god exists outside of our time, but from a disconnected sense where time really does not apply (in other words, god looks at this universe from the outside, and sees all that was, is, and will be in one swipe, regardless of any influence of time on him/her). to me, this is more in tune with true omniscience. if this is the case, we have no free will (based on the omniscience issue), but we are not predestined to anything (because there is no conception of PRE- or POST-destination without a conception of time as it applies to us)
now, as for me, just to be clear as to where i stand, i am definitely on the athiest side of agnosticism (if such a thing can be said to be a scalable thing). i believe we have free will in a limited sense, as strange as that seems.
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Originally Posted by pennywise121
anyway, with that out of the way, here is my answer: ........maybe.
see, think about some of the major things that influence the course our lives take- we could not choose our parents, our ethnicity, our socioeconomic status, our birth country/area, etc. these things inherently limit (or expand) our possible life acheivements. so on that count, no. no free will.
we are, however, able to transcend many of these problems. besides, we chose what to eat this morning, didnt we? (that is, within the confines of what we had in the house or within driving distance, given the limitations of our income, transportation, what the store had in stock, etc.) now you see how complicated this gets, and very quickly but in this regard, yes, free will.
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anyway, sorry for the long-ass post yet again
