Determinism, Free Will, And God'S Omniscience

[etana]

I see no need to accept that, etana. In fact, it strikes me as philosophical hooey. Ethereal information about our future actions propogates backward in time and causally determines God's prior knowledge of those future actions--and not the other way around?

Information is not ethereal. I suspect you chose that term to passively belittle my input, based on the history of the concept of the ether in physics. In other words, I saw what you did there. Your use of "hooey" was a bit more honest. By the tone of your post, i think i may have upset you. I apologize as no offense was intended.

You were close to it. I don't want to say too much because that is like explaining a joke and forever depriving others of the joy of "getting" it.

That's the same as saying God doesn't know what we're going to do until/after we do it.

Very nearly isn't it?

It appears to be an untenable assumption. I suggest you abandon it.

God is an "untenable assumption" as is omniscience.

[cksalmon]

Information is not ethereal. I suspect you chose that term to passively belittle my input, based on the history of the concept of the ether in physics. In other words, I saw what you did there.

Ha. Touché.

Your use of "hooey" was a bit more honest.

I intended it to be Real Honest, etana.

By the tone of your post, i think i may have upset you. I apologize as no offense was intended.

Not to the slightest degree was I offended. I will confess to a general tone deafness with regard to messageboard musings, my own and others. I intended no "tone."

To return to my claim of hooey: You wrote, essentially, that God's perfect foreknowledge, in a temporal stream, necessitates reverse causality. Or, to put it in a different light, God’s "foreknowledge" of our future actions supervenes on our temporally-future actions. Please correct any misapprehension on my part.

I suggested, and continue strongly to suggest, that yours is an untenable assumption. I'm using "untenable" in a standard, dictionary-toting sort of way: that is, your assumption is indefensible against objection.

You were close to it. I don't want to say too much because that is like explaining a joke and forever depriving others of the joy of "getting" it.

Okay, but see directly above.

Very nearly isn't it?

I'll take your word for it. If I'm pretty darn close in my interpretation--"That's the same as saying God doesn't know what we're going to do until/after we do it"--I can't see how you can possibly claim to be speaking of God's "foreknowledge" in a meaningful fashion. You appear to be intentionally confusing your terms. I would be open to an explanation of the joke, as it were, though.

God is an "untenable assumption" as is omniscience.

Not in the sense that I'm using the term "untenable."

c

[etana]

Not to the slightest degree was I offended. I will confess to a general tone deafness with regard to messageboard musings, my own and others. I intended no "tone."

So i shouldn't take offense when you label a component of my faith as "hooey"? I don't mean that facetiously.

I do appreciate the time you took to reply.

To return to my claim of hooey: You wrote, essentially, that God's perfect foreknowledge, in a temporal stream, necessitates reverse causality. Or, to put it in a different light, God’s "foreknowledge" of our future actions supervenes on our temporally-future actions. Please correct any misapprehension on my part.

I wouldn't use "supervenes", but more or less. If you can think "reverse causality" without using superimposing our own relative sense of "before" and "after". Language tends to fail when used to describe things outside of the experience of those who created it.

I suggested, and continue strongly to suggest, that yours is an untenable assumption. I'm using "untenable" in a standard, dictionary-toting sort of way: that is, your assumption is indefensible against objection.

I suspect you are using "untenable" with some attached semantic imperative that is part of the technolect of Logic or Philosophy. I'm afraid i have no formal training in those disciplines and so may not be equipped to cogently participate in a proper dance using the steps you are used to.

My response was to the original poster's question in general and to Mudcat's question in particular. "tenebleness" has absolutely no relevance to the efficacy of this idea in reconciling my faith with the paradox as presented.

That is that If we accept the statement that God has granted us free will and that God is omniscient (two transcendent things) based only on our decidedly untranscendent experience, then we can only conclude that God is inaccurate about either free will or omniscience (or more precisely, lying or that his Prophets were, or that they were mistaken, or that our language is to imprecise to describe either phenomena). If however, we grant that there are variables outside of our experience (such as the one i posited) then we can also take God at his word as it has been presented to us.

Sorry for the wordiness, I'm usually much more concise. I'm content to leave much between the lines.

[cksalmon]

So i shouldn't take offense when you label a component of my faith as "hooey"? I don't mean that facetiously.

Reverse causality is a component of your faith? I thought you were a Latter-day Saint, but may have been wrong. If I'm not, I've only ever seen one Latter-day Saint posit your reverse causality hypothesis as a tenet of any brand of Restorationism: You.

But, yes, if you're tempted toward offense at what I wrote, I'd suggest you try on some thicker skin. Some Latter-day Saints on this board, for example, label my soteriological beliefs as heinous, repugnant, awful, etc. Do I take offense? Sure, to some degree. But, certainly not to the degree that I'd lobby for them to be disallowed to say such things here merely because they offend me (not that you're doing that, either).

I do appreciate the time you took to reply.

I appreciate your replies, as well, etana. You expressed an interesting thought. That I think it is bunk doesn't make it less interesting, but more.

Language tends to fail when used to describe things outside of the experience of those who created it.

"Of those who created [language]?" I don't know what you mean.

I suspect you are using "untenable" with some attached semantic imperative that is part of the technolect of Logic or Philosophy. I'm afraid i have no formal training in those disciplines and so may not be equipped to cogently participate in a proper dance using the steps you are used to.

No, I'm not using it in any specialist sense. (Nice use of "technolect," though, btw.) Otherwise, hogwash. You're manifestly capable of participating in the discussion at whatever level you so choose.

My response was to the original poster's question in general and to Mudcat's question in particular.

Yeah, I read that. Mudcat wrote:

I'd be more curious to know how an LDS that does accept the notion of man having free will and God having total omniscience, would reconcile the two without adding some sort of qualifier?

You responded:

i don't see a conflict and generally avoid applying any of my limited mortal qualifiers to God's claimed attributes.

And then proceeded to reconcile the two by positing the Mother of All Qualifiers.

"tenebleness" has absolutely no relevance to the efficacy of this idea in reconciling my faith with the paradox as presented.

If logical tenability is utterly irrelevant to your hypothesis, then, sure, say whatever you want. I gladly concede the ground, etana, and freely grant you the last word.

c

[mfbukowski]

If however, we grant that there are variables outside of our experience (such as the one i posited) then we can also take God at his word as it has been presented to us.

If you are going to do that, just forget the convoluted theory and call it a "mystery we accept on faith" and leave it at that.

There can "be" no such thing as a "variable outside our experience"- if it outside our experience it is not a "variable"- it is nothing. It is unspeakable. It is magic- it is a mystery.

I don't mean that pejoratively - I have no problem with the concept of the unspeakable- I think many experiences are beyond words.

The problem arises when you try to talk about what cannot be said.

[DH]

Most of us Mormons will concede that Man is a free creature; free to act and think as he so desires. And I think most Mormons will concede the fact that God is omniscient, without feeling the need to add qualifiers. Most of us understand the inherent conflict in accepting both statements of fact as 100% true. For those that don't accept these statements of fact at face value, how do you reconcile the two?

Big UP!

Lamanite

To start out, I'm not convinced that people actually do have perfect free will. Sometimes we act out of instinct. Sometimes our behavior stems from poor coping mechanisms, a faulty worldview, or just plain stupidity. Some people are developmentally disabled, and others may suffer from mental illness. Many different factors may limit our free agency, and the Church recognizes this to some degree by not requiring baptism for certain people it deems to not be accountable (for example, some people with Down's Syndrome or other conditions). Even those who are healthy are influenced by many things. However, I do think most of us enjoy at least a degree of free agency, and we need to exercise it wisely.

Your question is an interesting one. Unfortunately, I don't have a definitive answer for you! There are certain people I know quite well. Take my mother, for example. Often I can predict, with a pretty good degree of accuracy, what kind of book she'll enjoy reading. (I use this ability when buying gifts for her.) Does my knowledge of her taste in reading material limit her free agency? Is her free agency limited by other factors, and I just happen to have a good idea of how they affect her?

[etana]

Reverse causality is a component of your faith? I thought you were a Latter-day Saint, but may have been wrong. If I'm not, I've only ever seen one Latter-day Saint posit your reverse causality hypothesis as a tenet of any brand of Restorationism: You.

I don't see the relevance here. We don't have any creeds regarding the working of time and space. I may detect an effort to marginalize my thoughts by highlighting their uncommonness though.

But, yes, if you're tempted toward offense at what I wrote, I'd suggest you try on some thicker skin. Some Latter-day Saints on this board, for example, label my soteriological beliefs as heinous, repugnant, awful, etc. Do I take offense? Sure, to some degree. But, certainly not to the degree that I'd lobby for them to be disallowed to say such things here merely because they offend me (not that you're doing that, either).

I appreciate your replies, as well, etana. You expressed an interesting thought. That I think it is bunk doesn't make it less interesting, but more.

Certainly different ideas about soteriology could be contentious. We are here only discussing a thought experiment so no one should feel the least bit threatened by any disagreements.

"Of those who created [language]?" I don't know what you mean.

We (mankind) created language and continue to do so daily. That makes it tough to use it to describe thing we have no knowledge of.

Yeah, I read that. Mudcat wrote:

"I'd be more curious to know how an LDS that does accept the notion of man having free will and God having total omniscience, would reconcile the two without adding some sort of qualifier?"

You responded:

"i don't see a conflict and generally avoid applying any of my limited mortal qualifiers to God's claimed attributes."

And then proceeded to reconcile the two by positing the Mother of All Qualifiers.

Ahh, i think is see at least one of our disconnects here. I read both Lamanite's original post and Mudcat's question about qualifiers as pertaining to qualifying either omniscience or free will. I don't qualify either. In fact that is my point. Given the standard understanding of omniscience the problem actually solves itself.

Let me try it this way: We can call some future act "A" and God's knowledge "B" which gives us God in our relative past with the knowledge of C=B+A. Now there are two ways to interpret that:

1. information from the future adds to God's knowledge in the past. This gives us "omniscience"

2. God "knows" C which (with the standard assumptions of infallibility etc.) requires "A" to occur. This gives us "omnipotence", which is something else entirely.

of course this leads to more questions such as: is God outside our temporal reference, is he superior to it, etc but that is really beyond the scope of this simple though experiment. I think sometimes we do God a disservice when we anthropomorphize Him to be mostly like us, but with superpowers. We limit Him based on our own limits. But I'm not sure it's possible to imagine a box that is bigger than our imagination.

If logical tenability is utterly irrelevant to your hypothesis, then, sure, say whatever you want. I gladly concede the ground, etana, and freely grant you the last word.

c

I don't like getting the last word because I assume that i have killed the thread.

[etana]

If you are going to do that, just forget the convoluted theory and call it a "mystery we accept on faith" and leave it at that.

There can "be" no such thing as a "variable outside our experience"- if it outside our experience it is not a "variable"- it is nothing. It is unspeakable. It is magic- it is a mystery.

I don't mean that pejoratively - I have no problem with the concept of the unspeakable- I think many experiences are beyond words.

The problem arises when you try to talk about what cannot be said.

Exactly. The Wholeness of God and the workings of Omniscience are mysteries. I'm not sure we can work them out based solely on our mortal experiential tools. God himself is a "Mystery we accept on faith".