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Old 10-14-2005, 05:21 PM   #153 (permalink)
Francisco
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IF there were an omniscient being, then the process would have been rigged. How it was rigged would depend on whether you believed in a creator, or in a more mechanical process, and of course most who believe in an omniscient being also believe this being was also the creator who rigged the process. Which would make it a lot easier to be omniscient. And some have argued that it eould be inaccurate to call this hypothetical being omniscient if it also influenced the process.

As to one going through the cognitive process of making a choice, we get back to the basic question of whether any of that process, if other than just putting a pre-programmed biological computer to work, involves freely made choices, or choices predetermined by an outside force or entity.
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Yet one never has knowledge of what one will do until one makes a choice.
Exactly. We can predict from past experience what we will probably do, but won't be sure until we take the initial step to do it. Only the hypothetical omniscient being would have that prior knowledge, and what we're talking about here is of course a hypothetical situation or scenario. And we presumably are talking about it to see which, if any, of these various scenarios might explain what happens in the real world, what our purpose is in being here, etc. - rather than talking about it just out of curiousity or for purposes of winning an argument.

What's important is that we don't have to ultimately agree on any of these things, because I personally don't think such a thing is possible. No two people will ever have exactly the same point of view, nor should they. What's ultimatrely right for one may be ultimately disastrous for the other. But that's a subject for a whole other thread.
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