What is so difficult for you to understand that the choice has already been made by man, and the choice made is not restricted by God, it is realized by God. If I put a piece of broccoli and chocolate before a child, I know which one he will choose to take. That does not mean a child isn't free to take the broccoli however. This is true in Christian dogma. But it's also true that every man makes the decision to follow a productive proper path, or an unproductive improper pathway. If some people choose to gorge on chocolate and ruin their health God knows, but that's the choice the person made. All these people made choices that led to ruin. There is your logical fallacy. They all had the option to behave in the right way...every single one of them. Your assumption is knowing is the same as causing, and it isn't! That's not what he does and the central message of Christianity is one of choice and choice is all about free will. Therefore when your logical fallacy meets Christian doctrine, you lose! Suppose you could look into the future and you discover that your precious child turned out to be a dismal failure and hopeless addict. Did you raise your son to be a failure? Or did your son choose to fail through the choices he made? IF God knows already how that person's life will turn out He knows that's how that person lived out his own free will. Worse than your dishonestly stacked deck? Failure is not God's "will" and you cannot prove it is. Everyone has the chance to succeed or fail and even if God knows failure will follow, that knowledge is based on choices made. This assumes that the God that created everyone only cares about the Christians among us. I reject this and if anyone should be discussing the will of God (a being you reject out of hand) it should not be you. By this "logic", since not everyone that goes to school will become a summa cum laude scholar, or even reach college, the purpose of education is to create academic failures and ruin people's life. The way you spin out logical fallacies, and disingenuously draw conclusions (such as God creates people just so they will fail and suffer) I'm not surprised. But you don't seem bright enough, or humble enough, to realize that the fault lies with you...not with God. You don't know one single thing about "my version". God's knowledge of what I will or won't do is based on my own free will and not on what God already knows about me. It seems incredible your brain isn't capable of making this one small adjustment, but it's true. I know my soon will choose ice cream over broccoli. I did not force my child to make that choice, however, through my knowledge. Not so no matter how many times you claim it. And do you really want to claim a logical absurdity that says God is "trapped" by his own omniscience? Isn't this like claiming that God can create a puzzle that even God cannot solve? Do you think this makes you a saint, or something. You are incredibly elitist and hypocritically so.
Okay. Let's perform the demonstration together shall we? The one you ran away from last time. You have two shirts, one black, one blue. Today, God knows that you will wear the black one tomorrow. Is it possible for you to frustrate God's foreknowledge and wear the blue one instead?
The "choice" has not already been made, though. That's the point. The outcome is already known, but the event has not yet taken place. If that foreknowledge is perfect, i.e. if it actually is omniscience then the known outcome must happen. There is no other possibility. But you don't know that. You are not omniscient. You have made at best an informed guess, and so have a better than 50-50 chance of getting it right. We all make informed guesses. And all of us guess wrong every now and then, proving that we did not "know" the outcome at all. There actually are children who prefer broccoli to chocolate. Perfect foreknowledge never gets it wrong. It knows every single outcome of every event, with 100% accuracy. Therefore, nothing can occur other than what is already known. Because if it could, that foreknowledge would not be perfect. If omniscience exists, then none of those people actually made any choices at all. Each of them did exactly and only what the omniscient being already knew they would do. Today's outcomes were already set in stone yesterday, and last week, and last century. Because that long ago, God knew what they were. There is no fallacy here, Yosh. You certainly have made no effort to actually point one out. So it's not a question of "logical fallacy meets Christian doctrine" at all. It is a question of logic meets Christian doctrine. And Christian doctrine proves unready for the encounter. If God is omniscient, then however I raised my son and however he turned out was never in either of our control. It was all part of God's plan , and all responsibility ultimately falls on Him. If God is the omniscient creator then by definition everything is his will. From the beginning of time and before, everyone's success or failure was written. Nobody can alter one whit of creation in defiance of that foreknowledge. There is no "test on earth." There is no choice of good versus evil or right versus wrong. If you are going to hell it is because God created you specifically to follow his script and go to hell. I have no doubt that such a God would care about everyone. It's simply a sad fact that the most common evidence of his care is vast and gratuitous eternal suffering in a lake of hell fire. Bad analogy. The more correct analogy would be an educational system in which people were arbitrarily assigned their grades before they even showed up for the first class. Nothing they did could change those grades. Actual attendance at class was ultimately a farce, since the decisions of pass versus fail were decided long ago. And yes, if that system flunked most people, then that would have been its purpose. Actually, now that you've gotten personal I must disagree. I do believe that all fault lies with me. But I can afford to believe that because I do not believe in an omniscient God, or a test on earth, or salvation or d@mnation, or heaven or hell. This atrocious scenario I've described of a universe created for the purpose of maximizing suffering does not flow logically from my beliefs. It flows from yours. I know everything about "your version." I used to be you. Alas, I got free. I am no saint. But I try to be a good person.
Then lets try again. You have two shirts, one black, one blue. Today, God knows that you will wear the black one tomorrow. Is it possible for you to frustrate God's foreknowledge and wear the blue one instead?
I will take that as you have no proof. God knows what choice I will make I have the freewill to make it. It is foreknowledge not predestination
Your running away a third time does not constitute a lack of proof on my part. It simply demonstrates again your unwillingness to look at it.
But the known outcome says nothing about how it was arrived at. You constantly ignore/overlook this. Yes, I didn't mean for anyone to think I was literally claiming omniscience. But the number of children preferring chocolate over a vegetable must be nearly 1,000 to one. The point is, made even stronger now, is that my "knowing" what outcome will occur when you present the chocolate/broccoli choice to a child still doesn't take the choice away. The choice must still be made! Yes. Based on the choices they made. But choices were still made. That God knew about them last century does not invalidate the choices that were made. The fallacy has been pointed out endlessly. Don't forget the "surgeons are criminals" example I have quoted twice now. Logically, the example is sound, because it follows a logical sequence. But we know, in reality that surgeons aren't criminals because they sometimes cut people. But, it's NOT God's plan. It's God's knowledge of the choices you made. Big difference...and I will not be arguing this endless mistake of a thread after this last post. I've already said it all, again and again. No. Not God's will! No more than it's the will of the meteorologist that the snow he knows is coming in is his doing. Let's make a drinking game of this: Once again, God did not create people to "follow his script". The choice comes first, the knowledge after (even if it's known to God centuries beforehand, because God resides outside of our time line, someone has to cause an action before others can know about it). LOL, as they say. What do you base this on? Your all encompassing knowledge of the afterlife that you insist does not exist? You have no way of knowing if millions reside in lakes of fire (which most all theologians reject as medieval dogma with no basis in scripture) or they all sit around and sip diet sodas watching episodes of Jerry Springer and Riki Lake on comfy sofas. You are the best proof that atheists know next to nothing about theology. My analogy, as written, is absolutely apt. You needn't try to change it around. Mine? Really? Have you already forgotten your childish temper tantrums because I would not claim absolutely that God is omniscient? I argue against your mistaken, malicious claims more out of your mistakes than my beliefs, and I've already said so. All you know is I believe in God (in some version), to some degree. That's all you will ever know. Don't presume. It isn't pretty. Well try harder.
It doesn't matter how it was arrived at. You could propose any number of creative and fascinating mechanisms for explaining foreknowledge. You can propose time travel. You can propose a deity that stands outside of time and so sees all of material history as if it has already taken place. You can propose angelic messengers that rend the time space continuum to whisper in God's ear what they saw in the future. It doesn't matter. None of them solves the fundamental problem that foreknowledge comes before the "choice." If the outcome is genuinely foreknown there is no possibility of any other outcome obtaining. QED: There is no choice. And every 1001st time, you will be wrong. So you are not omniscient and the possibility of choice is preserved. That's my solution too. I deny omniscience just as you do here. They haven't even had the chance to make a choice yet, and the outcomes are already known. You really have your temporal sequences mixed up here Yosh. The "choices" were not even presented yet and God already knew the outcomes. So when time come for the "choices" to take place, there was only one thing that could happen. God's foreknowledge had to be fulfilled. There was no other possibility. You have described no logical fallacy there. You have provided a syllogism with a false premise. But it still bears no resemblance to the argument I have offered. It is not even vaguely analogous. Are you actually denying that God has a plan. My, my, my what a heretical little minx you turned out to be. But that is neither here nor there. There is no difference. If God is omniscient, nothing He does can be in ignorance, and nothing He does can be other than what He intends. It the cosmic "buck stops here." If God is an omniscient creator, then everything is His fault. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Oh.... really, really bad example there, Yosh. You may never have stepped out dressed for the predicted 80 degrees and have it turn out to be 60, but most of us older than ten can remember a few instances. The best meteorologists are right only about 85-90% of time. They (like you) are not omniscient. On the other hand, if God says tomorrow is going to be 80 degrees and sunny, is it possible for it to rain instead? There you go... coming up with a mechanism to explain omniscience. But that doesn't matter. We are firmly embedded in time regardless of whether God is or not. We are the ones who will fulfill God's foreknowledge tomorrow, whether we want to or not. If he knows today what we will do tomorrow... by definition the knowledge comes first. He knows when he creates us whether or not we will wind up in heaven or hell. He doesn't have to create anybody he doesn't want to. If you end up burning for eternity in a lake of fire, it is only because that's exactly what God intended for you when he made you. Even worse. That is even more gratuitously cruel than the lake of fire. The best? Really? Gosh, I'm flattered. I must be really, really making you sweat to elicit such high praise. Because I gotta tell you, you are only a passingly mediocre proof that dogma pretty much destroys the ability of some people to think in a straight line. Your analogy sucked. That you still defend it does you no credit. You do not ever actually argue. You avoid genuine argument at all costs. Getting you to place a rhetorical stake in the ground is like trying to make a Chihuahua birth a Great Dane. You are so terrified of the logical implications of your beliefs that you try to hide them (not very well of course) and tap dance around the arguments like a Christian version of Dancing with the Stars. You fool only yourself with those games. The rest of us have your number. Keep it a secret then Yosh. It is the only thing that allows you to preserve your illusions, if not your dignity. No.
This is from post 283 I will take that as you have no proof. God knows what choice I will make I have the freewill to make it. It is foreknowledge not predestination
Foreknowledge and knowledge are two different things. Foreknowledge is knowing something will happen before it happens. How can you know something before it happens without predestination ?
God knows it but that does not mean you are predestined. If you change your mind God knows that will happen. I have the choice god just knows what choice I will make. I am not predestined. Knowledge is not predestination Why do you say it is predestination? Who or what causes the predestination?
It's what's referred to as the illusion of choice, but I'say that it doesn't really matter on a subjective level - I am experiencing myself as making the choice, this experience is my lived "truth", there is nobody and nothing determining my choice at the moment I am making it. Through consideering the difference between 'objective' logical reasoning and lived, subjective experience, the riddle resolves. Both assertions are true. That's if there is predestination.
Depends on what choice is made to be. In this case it is not merely choice but free will coexisting with omniscient beings. And that's just another illusion of theistic faith.
Well, yeah. I am not so interested in God and omniscience, since I reject both, just thought I'd add my 2 Euros on predestination, since this a philosophical subject I have had some thoughts about.
