Christians: predestination or free will voting thread

3,271 Views | 63 Replies | Last: 7 yr ago by diehard03
Dad-O-Lot
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God exists outside of time. He knows what we will do because in his reality we already did it. That doesn't negate the fact that we had choices and could have done something else.

A difficult concept to grasp, but the truth is that we don't have the language to properly describe it so we end up trying to fit our idea into a dichotomy that is in reality, false.
diehard03
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Dress it up all you like, but if the outcome is known, then the choice is removed. There can't be any other options.

This often sounds like the cognitive dissonance we choose because we just don't like the idea of everything being controlled for us.

It's ok though. We don't know how the strings are pulled, so to our perspective...it might as well be free will.
ramblin_ag02
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I've heard that argument before, but it only works if God is an impotent observer who merely witnesses our choices and is not involved. Then you could say He knows the outcome but did not determine it.

However, as an omnipotent creator, definitive foreknowledge absolutely precludes free will. If God knows every decision we will make even before He makes us, then He has the choice to make us that way or to make us differently so we will make different choices. All if our decisions become a direct result of how He made us. In that case there is no human free will, everything is God's Will, and there is no room for sin.

The entirety of Christianity falls like a house of cards without free will. Sin becomes a nonsensical concept, as do justice and responsibility and forgiveness. The ideas of submitting to God's Will and repenting both assume free will as does any notion of sacrifice.

Not too get all Messianic on you, but I my mind this is what happens when you try to make God and the Bible conform to Greek ideas of thought and logic. Gid doesnt have to fit within our concepts and boxes, even if they start with omni-
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diehard03
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However, as an omnipotent creator, definitive foreknowledge absolutely precludes free will. If God knows every decision we will make even before He makes us, then He has the choice to make us that way or to make us differently so we will make different choices. All if our decisions become a direct result of how He made us. In that case there is no human free will, everything is God's Will, and there is no room for sin.

The entirety of Christianity falls like a house of cards without free will. Sin becomes a nonsensical concept, as do justice and responsibility and forgiveness. The ideas of submitting to God's Will and repenting both assume free will as does any notion of sacrifice.

Not too get all Messianic on you, but I my mind this is what happens when you try to make God and the Bible conform to Greek ideas of thought and logic. Gid doesnt have to fit within our concepts and boxes, even if they start with omni-

Why punt on the whole concept? Either God is not an omnipotent creator, or the ideas of sin/sacrifice/etc are just constructs for us to adhere to regardless of "reality". Pick one.
ramblin_ag02
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Why punt on the whole concept? Either God is not an omnipotent creator, or the ideas of sin/sacrifice/etc are just constructs for us to adhere to regardless of "reality". Pick one.
I disagree. I believe an omnipotent, "omniscient" creator could create free will by creating both good and the potential for evil, and could also create a situation where He foreknows the reprecussions of every possible decision without foreknowing the decision itself.
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diehard03
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You did pick one though. You have a chosen a non-omniscient God who doesn't have definitive foreknowledge, as you put it. Knowing every possible combination is irrelevant. All that matters is direct knowledge of the actual events.

One could argue that the God you describe is not omnipotent either...because there's a limit to his power - to know the actual results of an event. But, that's probably just semantics.
ramblin_ag02
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You did pick one though. You have a chosen a non-omniscient God who doesn't have definitive foreknowledge, as you put it. Knowing every possible combination is irrelevant. All that matters is direct knowledge of the actual events.
That's why I put quotes around "omniscient". But I would argue that a God that has knowledge of the effects of all possible uncontrolled decisions has infinitely more knowledge than a God that definitely knows beforehand all decisions and the effects of them from start to finish. It's the difference between knowing one road versus knowing the entire networking system of roads. Even though the first case has a God that know everything, the second case has a God that knows infinitely more than the first God without knowing everything. Again, you would call the second God not-omniscient, and I would say that is trying to shoehorn God into an arbitrary Greek concept.
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diehard03
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That's why I put quotes around "omniscient". But I would argue that a God that has knowledge of the effects of all possible uncontrolled decisions has infinitely more knowledge than a God that definitely knows beforehand all decisions and the effects of them from start to finish. It's the difference between knowing one road versus knowing the entire networking system of roads. Even though the first case has a God that know everything, the second case has a God that knows infinitely more than the first God without knowing everything. Again, you would call the second God not-omniscient, and I would say that is trying to shoehorn God into an arbitrary Greek concept.

Maybe I'm confused, but it seems like you flip which example has the more knowledge half way through. In any case, I'm not sure what this gets you. It's not a volume of information question. It's a "do you know what WILL definitively occur or not" question. I don't think knowledge of the entire population of possible solutions satisfies this because you don't definitively know the actual one.
ramblin_ag02
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Just saying that in my mind, it doesn't lessen God's knowledge for Him not to foreknow certain decisions, but it actually infinitely increases His overall knowledge. It does knock Him out of technical omniscience, but that doesn't bother me. I think the concept of free will is more fundamental to Christianity than the concept of strict omniscience.
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diehard03
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it doesn't lessen God's knowledge for Him not to foreknow certain decisions, but it actually infinitely increases His overall knowledge.

And this is where I am stuck. As soon as you don't know something, your knowledge is less. I am confused on how you can get an infinite increase in knowledge when you don't know something.

In the end, we can agree that our actions do not change nor do the commandments placed on us...whether we have free will or not.
ramblin_ag02
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And this is where I am stuck. As soon as you don't know something, your knowledge is less. I am confused on how you can get an infinite increase in knowledge when you don't know something.
I'll try to explain better. Lets say I have 3 consecutive decisions, and each decision has 3 possible choices, and each previous decision affects each subsequent decision. If God is technically omniscient, then he knows the results of each of those 3 "decisions". So God knows the information associated with 3 decisions.

If God does not know the decision, but instead knows the affect of all possible decisions, then He knows what would happen if I chose any of the 3 possible choices at the first decision point. Since the first decision affects the second, he must know how any of those choices affect the next decision and the results of the second decision as well, meaning he knows the information associated with 3^2 . Add a third decision with 3 options, and God knows the information associated with 3^3 decisions. And He knows these right from the start. So as soon as He gives me 3 decisions, He has fully knowledge of all the information associated with 27 different outcomes.

In the first case, God doesn't have to know what happens if I chose B or C at each juncture, because he knows I will always chose A. In the second case, He knows what will happen no matter which option I chose, but He doesn't know which option I will choose.

Hope that makes more sense.
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Dad-O-Lot
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ramblin_ag02 said:

I've heard that argument before, but it only works if God is an impotent observer who merely witnesses our choices and is not involved. Then you could say He knows the outcome but did not determine it.

However, as an omnipotent creator, definitive foreknowledge absolutely precludes free will. If God knows every decision we will make even before He makes us, then He has the choice to make us that way or to make us differently so we will make different choices. All if our decisions become a direct result of how He made us. In that case there is no human free will, everything is God's Will, and there is no room for sin.

The entirety of Christianity falls like a house of cards without free will. Sin becomes a nonsensical concept, as do justice and responsibility and forgiveness. The ideas of submitting to God's Will and repenting both assume free will as does any notion of sacrifice.

Not too get all Messianic on you, but I my mind this is what happens when you try to make God and the Bible conform to Greek ideas of thought and logic. Gid doesnt have to fit within our concepts and boxes, even if they start with omni-
What I believe is that for the vast majority of human activity, God is hands off.

I believe that there are critical decision points in the history of creation where God intervenes to ensure a specific result.

I can't point to any basis for this in scripture or tradition. I don't believe it is contrary to any Official Catholic Dogma.
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diehard03
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Hope that makes more sense.

Thank you for responding. I won't duplicate Astro's words, because he has eloquently captured my thoughts on it but I will deviate here:

Quote:

God doesn't have to know what happens if I chose B or C at each juncture, because he knows I will always chose A

I don't see this as a lesser amount of knowledge compared to your second case, because these are non-value added items. It's essentially, in my mind, not knowledge.

diehard03
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Why do you believe that?

I would also follow up with "how do you know God is hands off?"
ramblin_ag02
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I agree with you on your last point, and it's my main disagreement with Astro's point.

If God made me so that I always chose A, then what would happen if I chose B or C is not knowledge. Because God is omnipotent and omnisicent, He knows I will choose A. The idea of me choosing B or C is as nonsensical as an object falling upward or pi being 3.2. It's on the same level as the square circle question.

I dont believe in multiple universes, but it makes a good analogy. A fully omniscient God has the total knowledge equivalent of one universe, while a God that allows free will without foreknowledge would have the knowledge equivalent of a near infinite number of universes. He just doesnt know which one will turn out to be the real one.

Much more knowledge, but way less certainty.
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Aggrad08
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AG
Every time this is brought up the logical conclusion of the dual Omni-s can not be worked around. It's pure hard determinism with no alternative. It can be shown as syllogistically deterministic. But all you have to do is drop one "Omni" and make it a "really really" and the problem is solved. I've never understood Christian resistance to this since the "omnis" are poorly supported (and sometimes appear flatly denied) in scripture.
Zobel
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I think positive or cataphatic statements about God are inherently troublesome. For us to positively assign a value to God creates an identity relationship which can only be false, given that by understanding one side of the identity relationship we presume to constrain the other.

God is not, technically, omniscient...because we can grasp what the word omniscient means. He is transcendent...but even that falls short, because we can in some way carry the entire concept of transcendence in our minds. When we have negated every possible thing in the universe, we have come to the place where an uncreated being would be.

Edited to expand. God's essence is beyond our conception or description in every possible way. Everything we presume to know is not Him but something about Him, which we call His energies (a term borrowed / evolved from Aristotle's energeia, from energon or "at work"). So we could say that God's working is omniscient and omnipotent, but as above, if His workings are only really really vs omni it does nothing to limit Him as He Is.
Drum5343
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I don't believe it is contrary to any Official Catholic Dogma.
It may not be contrary to official Catholic teaching, but I think it is probably contrary to the vast majority of Catholic thinking through the centuries.
The Lone Stranger
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I was predestined before the foundation of the world to choose to follow God.

We all have wills, but when we stick 'free' in front of them, things complicate.
ramblin_ag02
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If your will is not free, then you might as well be a Turing machine or playing Candyland, completely beholden to a set of scripted instructions.
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diehard03
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Who says that we aren't? And why does it matter if the actors have no knowledge of whether it's scripted or not?
ramblin_ag02
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Who says that we aren't? And why does it matter if the actors have no knowledge of whether it's scripted or not?
I made the point earlier in the thread. Then conceptual underpinnings of Christianity, including sin, repentance, redemption, sacrifice, justice, atonement, and forgiveness, are all rendered moot if we have no ultimate control over our actions and decisions.
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diehard03
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I made the point earlier in the thread. Then conceptual underpinnings of Christianity, including sin, repentance, redemption, sacrifice, justice, atonement, and forgiveness, are all rendered moot if we have no ultimate control over our actions and decisions

I know you did...but these are just concepts, as you mentioned. They might actually be moot. But this doesnt not negate their value in the context of our understanding. This is why I question whether it matters if we have absolute free will or not.
bjork
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diehard03 said:

Dress it up all you like, but if the outcome is known, then the choice is removed. There can't be any other options.

This often sounds like the cognitive dissonance we choose because we just don't like the idea of everything being controlled for us.

It's ok though. We don't know how the strings are pulled, so to our perspective...it might as well be free will.
What if all free-choices were considered but only one reality was actualized?

1. God's natural knowledge
2. God's knowledge of counterfactuals, 'what ifs' (person A in circumstance C would freely choose X option over Y - if God want's choice X to occur God executes the reality that puts person A in circumstance C)
-Creation of the universe-
3. God's sovereign knowledge

It's as-if you had all 52! permutations of a deck of cards. You could pick whatever deck achieved your objective. Instead of cards, God had a deck of human choices to countless 'what if' scenarios and how we would freely choose.
Aggrad08
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AG
Waiting 2 years for the next episode is gonna suck. I really liked it.
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diehard03
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What if all free-choices were considered but only one reality was actualized?

This is, more or less, that ramblin suggested. The same counterpoint applies: what actual happened as a subset of all available possible permutations does not constitute knowledge.

If God knows exactly which "deck" happens, then there's no choice. No other deck can occur.
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