A problem with open theism (HOF thread)
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Clete said:
Of course it does. Well, before I say that let me ask you to explain, becuase I think this issue is where we keep getting bogged down. Can you give me an example of something whose cause is known and outcome unknown.
Side note . . . is the one on one still going on?
Anything that involves a free will.docrob57 said:
Is that cheating? :chuckle:
I don't mean to be so flippant with my answer but that really is what I believe. I understand that the idea of causality is that any one set of causes has only one possible outcome but if this is so then it cannot be said that we have a free will and if we do not have a free will it is impossible to love. This is not acceptable in a Christian worldview and thus there must be something more than causalities going on or else there is more than one possible outcome for any one set of causes when a free will agent is invovled.
Well, while I would love to think that my one post closed the issue, that is certainly not the case. Mr. Coffee sent me a PM explaining that he intends to post something this evening if at all possible. TOL is the hoppinest discussion board in existence. The normal discussion pace here is way faster than normal so we're not used to having to wait so long. He's seems like a pretty busy guy so we'll have to cut him some extra slack.
Resting in Him,
Clete
Clete said:
Yes that is cheating. Okay let's take a scenario. I was born with a genetic predisposition to substance abuse. At age 10 I make a profession of faith and am baptized. At age 12 my parents are killed in a car crash. At age 16 I am offered weed by my girlfriend who promises me that if I smoke it I will be closer to God. Do I accept the offer?
Clete said:
Sweet and succinct. I am trying to give you more rep but it will not let me. When Julie realizes square circles cannot exist and that God is a God of order and not absurdity (it is either a square or a circle; it is either a man or a goat; they cannot be the same thing at the same time...what is that? the law of non-contradiction or something...it is fundamental to the universe and flows out of God's reality, not just ours), she will realize the weak foundation of her argument. This is why I started with omnipotence. Most people, including scholars/theologians in her camp, do not argue that God makes square circles. They recognize that His created order reflects His intelligence and rational design. We have to change all reality and definitions and make non-sense out of His revelation. There are absolutes that she is turning into fantasy, illusion, and relativism that is incoherent, by definition, not just because we are human and He is God. Her house of cards is about to come down if this indefensible concept is clung to as a legit argument. If A is not B, then A is not B! Math and logic flow from His infinite mind. They do not contradict it. Her other examples are not absuridities, incoherent, or logically contradictory. They are miracles, supernatural, and coherent as an omnipotent God intervenes in His creation. The argument does not parallel the issues relating to square circles and exhaustive foreknowledge of future free will contingencies.
Clete:
:third:
Julie:
:bang: :doh:
docrob57 said:
Apart from Darwin, B.F. Skinner, and determinism, you may or may not smoke it. You have the choice since predisposition is not coercive/causative. Your assumption that substance abuse is a genetic issue is also flawed (unless you are born an addict because your mother was...even then, it is physiological, not genetic...vice and sin is not a genetic/substance issue; it is a moral/volitional issue cf. homosexuality).
docrob57 said:
Free will and coercion/cause are mutually exclusive. The will and mind is the cause of choices. God has free will and originates ideas and actions without a 'cause' back of His will. We are in His image and do likewise.
Chosing between an apple or orange is not a causal process, per se. At the last second, I could chose either, all things being equal. God may know my intent or leanings proximally, but we cannot extrapolate this to remote knowledge in eternity past. The objects of knowledge relating to this scenario do not exist for God to foreknow it as a certainty.
Thoughts on these self-evident concepts?
"The distinction between what is possible and what is actual is valid for God as well as for us. The past is actual, the present is becoming, and the future is possible."
"If an act be free, it must be contingent. If contingent, it may or may not happen, or it may be one of many possibles. And if it may be one of many possibles, it must be uncertain; and if uncertain, it must be unknowable."
Volition is actualizing the possible.
A certain event will inevitably come to pass (you wrongly assume moral agents are goverened by the law of cause and effect...this applies to inanimate creation), a necessary event must come to pass (what necessitates me chosing an apple vs an orange?), but a contingent event may or may not come to pass. Contingency is an equal possibility of being and of not being.
How can it dishonor Him to know things as they really are?
"That future choice of holiness or sinfulness is, therefore, a thing now wholly undetermined, and hence an unknowable thing. And being an unknowable thing, its prescience involves an absurdity, and hence ignorance thereof necessitates no imperfection in Deity."
Saying things are different for God and us is true in some cases, but not in this case.
God's 'guesses' may be better than man's certainty, but that does not make possible, contingent events actual before they happen. It is one thing to predict based on proximal and perfect knowledge of past/present; it is another thing to think the future has already happened, exists, and is knowable. Clearly, this is not true, or we are living in a science fiction matrix. Time is unidirectional for God and us. The Book of Revelation is a vision, not a detailed historical report of things that literally happened in some 4th dimension.
You seem to be reducing genuine free will to an illusory freedom in order to cling to exhaustive foreknowledge. God knows all that is knowable. You can retain perfect knowledge/omniscience without jettisoning freedom. If you insist on reducing us to robots, then you can cling to future free will contingencies being exhaustively foreknown as certainties rather than possibilities/probabilities. I do not limit God's omniscience nor the Imago Dei. You limit the image of God and distort the nature of His creation and omniscience.
Come to the 'light side' :idea: :singer:
godrulz said:
With all due respect, you seem to want to ignore the fact that causality and free will choice are not incompatible in order to cling to a position. I have said this many times and it is actually true. If free will choices are uncaused, then you are essentially saying that all choices are the output of a cosmic random number generator, and any possible choice is equally probable at all times.
Humans are not pots of water. We have a spirit and a soul.docrob57 said:
We have a personality, emotions . . . a will.
The human will can't be placed in a beaker or put under a microscope. A will is not physical.
docrob57 said:
Have you not already agreed that to be free mean that we have the ability to do or to do otherwise?
Haven't you also agreed that if God knows what we will do that we have no ability to do otherwise?
What other logical conclusion is there when something contradicts a words meaning that the word cannot apply to that thing. If I do not have the ability to do otherwise, I do not have a free will. How am I wrong?
Resting in Him,
Clete
Yes
No, I have never agreed to this one. God is able to predict with complete accuracy what our free will choices will be.
You do have the ability to do otherwise. Again, God, having perfect knowledge of the causal processes that exist in His creation, including the processes that drive free choice, is able to predict perfectly what the free will choice will be, based on that knowledge.
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