4thTimeLucky

Just a few thoughts.

a) Free will is a BIG issue. And I mean BIG. Hundreds upon hundreds of books on the subject and more journal articles than you would need to wallpaper the Albert Hall* with.

b) I didn't (or at least don't think I did) make the point the point Lebell ascribes to me. But I am so flattered at a reference that I'll overlook it

c) The reason I didn't make that point is that God's omniscience and freewill are not incompatible....
- There is a fixed past. If you got a B in Maths you got a B in Maths. You cannot change this, overwise you would have both had a B and not had a B and that folks, ain't gonna happen.
- There is a fixed future. If you are going to die at 83 you will die at 83. You cannot change this, otherwsie you would both die at 83 and not die at 83 and that folks, ain't gonna happen.
- That is not to say you do not have control over your future. You may die at 83 because you choose to live a sensible and healthy lifestyle. It simply states that there is one single future that will occur and what will occur is just as fixed as what has occured.
- So our past was fixed and I know what happened in your past: Loki at 01:40PM pressed the "Submit Reply" button on his computer. Does that mean you did not have a choice in that action. No. It simply means I know it occured.
- So our future is fixed and God (if He exists) knows (if he has omniprescience = total for-knowledge) what I will do next week: I will drink coffee at 4.35pm in Starbucks. Does that mean I did not have a choice in that action. No. It simply means He knew the result of my deliberation.

d) There is a difference between omniprescience and predeterminism (I don't know which one you would say predestination is closer to - people understand it in different ways). In predeterminism God doesn't just know what we will do He determines, He decides it, He chooses it. Quote....

Now obviously in this situation there is a contradication between God's power and us having Free Will. There can only be one person who takes the ultimate decision about how we act - Free Will says it us, predeterminism says that it is God.

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NB: All of the above stems from philsophical reasoning and logic. You don't need to invoke any theories of science, so it stays quite simple. Though you might start to invoke some sort of multi-universe theory to say that all future states occur, but that strikes me as (a) being incompatible with God [who presumably both gave His son to die on the cross and didn't give His son to die on the cross!] and (b) gets you into a whole host of trouble about identity - YOU can only be in one universe/place/time at once.
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e) The whole Free Will thing (regardless of God is tricky). There seem to be only two categories of event: random and non-random. I too couldn't give you an example of a random event, but physicist friends assure me they occur. That doesn't bother me or the discussion, because randomness doesn't equal free will, so the issue of their exsitence only needs to be raised to be dismissed. But if the event is non-random then science and reasoning seem to tell us that it will be determined by the preceeding state of the world. When we look at what determines things we see a picture of trillions of atoms hitting atoms in a long causal chain from Lincoln to the first man to land on Mars. The challenge is fitting the idea of *us*, human minds, into that picture: affecting or being part of this causal chain. How can atoms make me *feel* like I'm in love and how can my decision to buy flowers affect or be a part of this long causal chain. Getting my head around that is still something that I have not managed and indeed I don't think anyone has.


* For those outside the UK this is a very big music hall. The Beatles know how many holes it takes to fill it.

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I've been 4thTimeLucky, you've been great. Goodnight and God bless!